Mardi Gras season

A playbill/flyer for Queen Ida is spotted in the hallway of the Sonata Cafe.

It's difficult to read, but can be seen to the right of the reproduction of Matisse's 1958 Blue Nude lithograph, after an unidentifiable flyer. The Matisse litho neither looks blue nor nude, but the torso almost suggests a face or mask. The name is suggestive enough given our understanding of the color blue (scenes with Alice in bedroom, and naval officer montages) and the idea of nakedness in the context of Eyes Wide Shut. 

Queen Ida is the performing name of Ida Lewis Guillory, a Creole accordionist from Lake Charles, Louisiana. She learned French before English, and often sings in French. She moved to San Francisco at a young age. Her album Back on the Bayou was released in 1999, and features her brother, Al Rapone, who is also an accordion player and guitarist. The genre is called Zydeco, a style that evolved from French-speaking Creole (people of mixed African, French, Spanish, and Native American ethnicity) in Southern Louisiana

Here is the cover of Queen Ida's Mardi Gras album, released in 1994. 

The connections are obvious enough not to have to explain anything. But I will add that "Al Rapone" is coincidentally similar to "Al Capone," the surname of which appears in margins of the New York Post newspaper Bill reads. This is more of a "fun" reference that establishes a kind of authenticity. In addition to the mask and the connection between Zydeco, Creole, Louisiana, and Mardi Gras, we could add that "Ida Lewis" sounds slightly unusual. Lewis is at once an old American name coming from England. In Latin and Italian, the name is instead, Ludovico, like, say, the fictional Ludovico Technique shown in A Clockwork Orange. "Ludovico" also being "Ludwig" in German, like Beethoven. Lewis is like Louis, which can be pronounced with a silent "s." Louis is like the German name Loewe, like Levi, and Levi is one of the twelve sons (tribes) of Jacob (Israel) in the Bible. Levites were said to be the tribe associated with priestly duties. This would include singing and performing music in the Temple, as well as guard duties. Names like "Lewis" or "Levi" are not necessarily related to the Levite Tribe. "Lewis" in particular seems to be a British-Jewish adaptation. "Ida," surely more common in the early 20th century, is or was, also a fairly common Jewish first name for girls. 

The idea of "Queen Ida" being a false name and "mask" reveals another name which can easily also appear to be a mask. Again, like Bill, who wants to blend in, "Harford" is white-sounding-enough not to raise suspicions, it being a homophone of "Harvard," which is as white as it gets (or, uh, got?). Plus, we have the problem with "queen" being another slang word for flamboyant gay men. Bill isn't flamboyant. He's hardly the type to create an alternative identity as "Queen Ida." But maybe this background flyer points to his fears.

Perhaps he fears he is being perceived this way. The Yalies sling insults that seem to come from nowhere - loner status seems to imply homosexuality in this context: the male group is impossibly, totally male, straight, heterosexual, white. It's clearly an exaggeration of a stereotype, yet it's almost shockingly accurate. The group picks on the loner. Like "Moonwatcher" in 2001, - sure I'll compare hominids and real Homo sapiens people - Bill is a loner, but perhaps he's also a leader? That's the irony: the Yalies go out of their way to show their toughness, implying that Bill is in the wrong part of town (or country) - "go back to San Francisco where you belong!" (this comment ties us back to Queen Ida). 

It's ambiguous whether Domino's apartment is supposed to be located in Greenwich Village, which the Sonata Cafe is. Of course, we know that Sonata is reflected in the windows of the Rainbow rental shop, and that the Rainbow rental shop is just one block down from Domino's apartment. The camera is playing tricks on us, but we can use this to argue that Bill isn't quite sure where he is? If he is in the Village, he may not want to acknowledge this. Furthermore, the funny question is: what are/were the Yalies doing? Are they lost? Passing through? Crusading? 

Juli Kearns's map of the fictional Greenwich Village block where all of Bill's journeys take place is fairly accurate. That means that it is riddled with impossibilities, errors, and strange doublings - a la Kubrick. This isn't surprising - it's an urban maze without the trappings of a maze, similar to the various literal and figurative mazes in The Shining. We "see" everything, or the slow pace of the film makes us think we do. But the closer we look the more contradictory the setting is. 

It could be that the six-man group are intimidated by Bill's dark figure, hence their quick verbal attack, and the shove which seems unusually powerful. This probably suggests not how strong the Yalie is, but how weak Bill is, or how weak Bill's confidence is. Perhaps they could find themselves in a similar state as Bill in the future. Bill is discovering his true feelings and emotions as his life and marriage are growing fraught. Yet he seems to understand that sexual plunder is wrong, or a bad idea, or would have bad consequences, or isn't what he's really after. I've sometimes considered the sexual theme in Eyes Wide Shut to be a cover for a bigger topic that is roughly something like "crooked reality." The basic introduction to this would be the hypocritically consumerist Christmas season, and corrupt capitalism. 

Maybe sex is a big distraction in the film. There's certainly a case to be made for this idea. "Fidelity" - is it more about love and trust, or simply sex? It's still fairly ambiguous, yet sex seems to double as trust. Marital trust isn't true if it is broken (and therefore multiplied). Maybe Bill wants to use sexual infidelity to prove he is capable of mistrusting Alice. He seems to want to become the cheating aggressor, lest he become the weak cuckold. And conversely, he wants to place trust in other women (Marion, Domino, Mandy, Sally, etc.) to replace his dependence on Alice. The thing is, I think, Bill realizes that sex is the other half of trust, which is why he is never able to give in completely to his impulses with the other women. 

This is a good thing, yet I think it's something Kubrick intentionally diverts our attention from, having us focus more on the various pains and emotions Bill experiences during this trying time. Given that It's A Wonderful Life tells the story of family man, George Bailey's mid-life crisis, and near-suicide in the Christmas season, I'm tempted to think of Eyes Wide Shut as the 21st century's first classic Christmas film. It's devastating, but then, hope doesn't exist without despair, right?