Kubrick Is As Kubrick Does

For about five months spanning the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999, I woke up every morning thinking about Kubrick. Lately, here in 2009, I’ve also woken up many mornings thinking about Kubrick. The difference is that ten years ago, it happened because I was in film school, taking a masters-level class on Kubrick at USC. These days, I work in web development, so I’ve been spending a lot of time with Kubrick, the default WordPress theme on which so many others are based.

Both periods during which I’ve studied Kubrick have turned out to be transitionary periods for Kubrick.

Kubrick the film director died in 1999, toward the end of the semester, shortly before the release of his final film, Eyes Wide Shut. The professor, Dana Polan, came to class the next day dressed all in black, and delivered a eulogy to the class.

Kubrick the WordPress theme may be on its way out as well. Weblogtools recently posted “Is It Time For Kubrick To Retire?” It’s a commentary on high-profile WordPress developer Dion Hulse’s proposal to replace Kubrick as WP’s default theme.

Kubrick theme co-creator Michael Heilemann (with Chris J. Davis), calls Kubrick “my favorite director of all time” on his own site, but no further explanation for the theme’s name is offered.

Both Kubrick the director and Kubrick the WordPress theme get their name thrown around a lot by people who probably don’t know what they’re talking about. Whether you’re a blogger or a film student, it’s easy to say “Kubrick” in a way that leaves your otherwise worthless contribution to the discussion heavy with implication.

Suppose you are surfing the web over your friend’s shoulder, and she comes across a blog using the default WP template. You might say “Kubrick” as a way of showing, not just that you recognize the theme, but that you know what it means, that you have some deeper insight into the advantages and disadvantages that such a choice implies. Similarly, you may be smoking pot with friends, and as soon as someone else mentions 2001: A Space Odyssey, you may make sure that you are the first one in the conversation to use the word “Kubrick,” as if your invocation of the director’s name means that you could, if you wanted to, explain the last act of the movie. In the words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it’s the same damn thing.
Perhaps Kubrick is named after Kubrick because of the big blue rectangle at the top of the main page, arguably reminiscent of the big black rectangle that plays such a central role in 2001. Both rectangles have been very deliberately placed where they are, yet exactly why that has been done is also a mystery in both cases. The blue mass at the top of a Kubrick blog seems cool at first, but then starts to be imposing and even a bit obnoxious. It is a thing to replace with something else, a sort of built-in obstacle to be surmounted by the neophyte designer. The monolith in the movie much the same: an imposing and attention-grabbing yet willfully ambiguous mass that challenges humanity at every stage of development. It’s almost as if the aliens who brought us the monolith and the designers who brought us the WP theme are whispering in our collective ears: “Of course it doesn’t make sense. Isn’t that interesting? Now go create something.”

p.s. to the WordPress development community: If Kubrick retires, the new default theme should be called Starchild.

multi-monolith image by John Picken