Theme: Hotel California - The Eagles
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| Which clues did you overlook? |
Stanley Kubrick's kinos are the most talked-about in the history of the medium, in large part because, like his mutual influence David Lynch (Kubrick screened Eraserhead for the Shining cast to put them in the right mood), he was a cryptic son of a bitch. The Shining might even edge out his own Eyes Wide Shut for the most theorised-upon of films, with each viewer convinced it has some deeper meaning than the surface-level narrative suggests. Is it about the gold standard? Generational abuse? Occult themes? This is hilarious because it makes Stephen King seethe; he wanted everyone to appreciate his deep takes on alcoholism (bad) and white peephole (worse).
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| "And then the spooky ghost said...THE HECKIN EN WOOORD NOOO HELP ME NІGGERMAN I'M GOING INSAAAANE AAAAAGH" - Stephen King, The Shining, page 1. |
Personally, I suspect Kubrick's real deeper meaning was specifically to mock King: I'm reliably informed the wrecked car in this scene is the make and model driven by Jack in the novel, in a cheeky visual metaphor for Kubrick smashing King's sophomoric vision beneath his own weightier take:
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| Yeah, I'm not going to look it up. I'm pretty sure Rob Ager confirmed it, but he has four hundred and twenty billion videos about The Shining so if you want to find which one, happy hunting. |
Not content to limit his trolling to King alone, Kubrick further ridiculed the characters and plot with subliminal details like having Wendy dress like Goofy, and the cast by demanding ludicrous numbers of identical takes for random line readings. But whatever hidden meanings may have been intended, it's the hypnotic mood of the picture that makes it one of the most rewatchable of kinographs. To be honest, I never found it scary at all, but really funny, but I don't think that's a problem or even altogether unintentional. Nicholson's famous "here's Johnny" line was an ad-lib that Kubrick kept in despite his reputation for autismal micromanagement, most likely because it's a great laugh line and Kubrick found the material funny and the fact most of the audience were baffled by it funnier. He also hated furfags ahead of the curve:
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| "Yiff in hell subhumans" - Kubrick in the editing room, doing the Kubrick stare. |
But if we're to put on our serious hats, the most persuasive theory about The Shining to me is the pedo one: Jack reads a Playgirl magazine with an article about incest, which has been widely interpreted to mean he's fucking little Danny, and quotes Lolita (the novel about a guy trying to justify fucking a 12-y/o girl, which Kubrick adapted in the 60s) when attempting to talk down Wendy from trying to fend him off with a baseball bat. This is by no means incompatible with my fuck-Stephen-King interpretation, because King later wrote a child orgy in It, so it's entirely possible Kubrick was calling King (the author with the drinking problem) a nonce via his literally-him stand-in Jack.
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| Pedos in the glamorous world of entertainment? Well now I've heard everything. |
Just for fun though, here's a wildly different theory that makes you go hmm in an altogether contradictory direction. Perhaps the fact the same movie can be spun off into what seem like endless variations of interpretation is what makes it so perennially fascinating. You'll be watching it forever...and ever...and ever.
