Stanley Kubrick and the Aesthetics of the Grotesque

ABSTRACT “The grotesque,” which became a stylistic term in the Italian renaissance and later contributed significantly to all forms of modernist art, can help us better understand the so-called “coldness” often attributed to Stanley Kubrick's films. The whole of Kubrick's art is designed to produce a grotesque clash of emotions, an unstable blending of humor and terror that derives ultimately from anxieties about the human body.