Columbus lives; deal with it

Every reader - every Kubrick obsessive, buff, nerd, theorist, critic, etc. - would benefit from reading about some new findings straight from a true Kubrick dilettante. What are we waiting for? 

As a Lynch-obsessive might quip, "this is it." Yep - this really is it. Or is it? The viewer will notice two numbers on the sign left of the image. The number on top is 14, and the number below is 92. The establishing shot shows the hospital Bill enters in order to visit the morgue where Mandy is being held. 

The detail comes from this main frame. Notice that the three arches of the modern, oversize hospital arcade mimic the three ornate arches at the balcony of the great hall at Somerton where Mandy appears to "save" Bill. Also, notice the taxi. Notice the "do not enter / wrong way" sign above the taxi, as if suggesting "do not enter" the hospital. Notice the "one way" signs that direct traffic left, towards "1492." We think of chronology as happening from left to right - the traffic flow tells us otherwise: as the film progresses, forward action goes from right to left, backwards in time. The roar of traffic also insinuates a sort of hunger to return to "1492." This may just be a microscopic nod to Vico's circularity of civilization - decadence leads to barbarism before civilization can flourish again.  

There are arches everywhere at Somerton (and other interiors) and I think this fact makes the choice of hospital exterior obvious. Anyways, I'll just say it's coincidence that my next point also involves the number 3. 

Christopher Columbus. Kubrick was, perhaps, merely including the marginalia of incontrovertible facts to his pictures when he selected signs like "14/92," "STOP (CMB)," "Happy Holiday," and countless others. 

The Nina, The Pinta, The Santa Maria - but not the Rage Against the Machine song, "Sleep Now in the Fire." Or, maybe, that song, too, sure. Fourteen ninety-two. 14 is two 7s, which we see in the dual rainbows, and in "ZIEGLER" vs "HARFORD." 92 is seven less 99, like 1999. One four nine two. 1+4+9+2 = 16. Sixteen is four fours, or, two eights. 8+8, or, 4+4+4+4. Numerology kaputt. 

"88" is double infinity. Conquest x infinity? 1492. Christopher Columbus. The New World. America, and/or, the Americas. Amerigo Vespucci. Remember the model ship in Ziegler's billiards room he passes before several times. 

This is speculative, but some research shows that a model of the HMS Victory bears some resemblance to the model ship in Ziegler's room. The HMS Victory was built in the late 1700s and entered into the Battle of Trafalgar. Maybe this is wishful thinking; the ship in the shot may just be a ship. Victory would obviously echo "Victor" quite well. If anything, the ship ties us back to "1492," now, not to mention the man with Columbus-esque mask at Somerton.

This has been noted before, in connection with Ziegler's ship. The "1492" sign might just be the smoking gun. Black slaves, white slaves - the slaveries of the New World are manifold, and, we might speculate, have never truly "ended." Probably one of the only black characters in the film is a hospital orderly who allows Bill into the morgue. He has no lines. 

The many female characters walk a narrow path between identification as a person or as an object. Even in death, Mandy is arguably being objectified by Bill: her eyes open, the lifeless body appears as it may have when still animate. Her being is nothing in the absence of selfish, lustful men. She doesn't exist beyond the confines of her physical body. This is a "dire" consequence of a money-and-sex-fueled commodified neoliberal West. Maybe it's an extreme view, but we never know the full story of her death, not to mention, of her life. In fact it's summed up in one word: "hooker." Victor might just be an empty symbol of manifest destiny, colonialism, and continental grand larceny.