Episode Details

Video link

Jasun Horsley is the author of several provocative books on movies, conspiracies, and combinations thereof. His new book The Kubrickon: The Cult of Kubrick: Attention Capture and the Inception of AI may go down in history as the best book on Stanley Kubrick ever written by an author who hates Kubrick. Since I personally rather like Kubrick and find that most of his films have redeeming social and artistic value, this interview turned into something of a debate—one that I was guaranteed to lose, since Jasun is a Kubrick expert and I’m not.

Below is full but slightly edited transcript of the interview.

Kevin Barrett: Welcome to Truth Jihad Audio-Visual. I'm Kevin Barrett talking with interesting folks from all over the world who have perspectives that you don't often encounter in the mainstream. But maybe you should encounter some of these perspectives. And my guest today, Jason Horsley, definitely has a very interesting perspective. And I don't think they're going to put him at the top of the headlines of the mainstream media anytime soon. He's the author of a new book on Stanley Kubrick called The Kubrickon: The Cult of Kubrick: Attention Capture and the Inception of AI. And it's probably the best book you'll ever read on Stanley Kubrick by somebody who hates Stanley Kubrick, because it's probably the only one, but it's actually pretty good. So, hey, welcome, Jason. How are you doing?

Jasun Horsley: Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin Barrett: It's a very provocative, interesting book. And I'll tell you right off the bat that I'm going to have to do a bit of a debate here. And I'm guaranteed to lose the debate. Though I'm not a fanatical Kubrick fan by any means, I'm kind of an admirer who appreciates—I don't know if enjoys would be the right word, and in many cases, it certainly wouldn't be—but I'm one of these people who's kind of a moderate pro-Kubrick type. And your book didn't fully convince me not to be. So maybe you can lay out the argument against him. I haven't seen most of his movies recently. In fact, there's a couple of them I haven't ever seen. And so you're at a great advantage and you should be able to totally mop the floor with me.

Jasun Horsley: Well, first off, you're a moderate. I'm not really interested in trying to demolish the opinion of moderates, because moderates are not enslaved by some ideology. My truck with Kubrick began with the extremists. There's such an extreme consensus around Kubrick, even though it's maintained like perhaps many, if not most, consensuses, by a minority of academia and intelligentsia and film people—the film community. There's been a concerted effort, starting with Kubrick himself, to reify both the man and the movies. And I'd say it's been extremely successful, so much so that you don't find many moderates. You find people who may be not interested in Kubrick—or very occasionally (I don't know how rare it is actually) quite a few who just don't really like his movies. And then you have those who swear that he is the greatest thing that ever came along in the world of cinema. So that's where I begin my interrogation, if you will. Is Kubrick really such an unparalleled filmmaker, or is something else going on? And what I — I won't say conclude because I think this is more like halfway through the thesis — but what I have to acknowledge even very early on is that Kubrick is an exceptional filmmaker, that he's not like other filmmakers.

I think I have always acknowledged that. It's just in my initial period as a film cr