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It’s our second holiday episode, which means it’s time for a true Christmas classic: Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), a film that somehow contains one of the most infamous orgy scenes in cinema history.

In this episode, Ariel and Morgan unpack the cultural mythology surrounding the masked ritual scene and explain what the film is really doing beneath the cloaks, candles, and choreography. Spoiler: it’s not about pleasure, it’s about power, performance, and male insecurity.

They break down:

• Why the orgy may function more as theater than eroticism
• How masking, choreography, and voyeurism guide the audience’s gaze
• The role of ritual, anonymity, and class in the scene’s design
• Stanley Kubrick’s discomfort with sex and how that shapes the final result
• Ariel's hottest take ever (possibly in the history of cinema? You decide.)

This episode reframes the orgy not as transgression, but as a deeply controlled performance: one that exposes how sex, status, and masculinity are staged, surveilled, and policed.

Equal parts film history, intimacy analysis, and holiday chaos, this one pairs best with a glass of wine, a Venetian mask, and a healthy distrust of men in cloaks.

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Credits — Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Stanley Kubrick; Frederic Raphael
Based on the novella: Traumnovelle (Dream Story) by Arthur Schnitzler
Producers: Stanley Kubrick
Choreography (uncredited influence): Yolande Snaith
Actors (featured in discussed scenes): Tom Cruise; Julian Davis; Abigail Good; Cate Blanchett (voice, uncredited)
© 1999 Warner Bros. / Pole Star / Hobby Films. All rights reserved.

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