The Shining - The After-life
Synopsis of The Shining
A cult classic that’s saturated with heady conspiracies surrounding the meaning of the film. From allusions to Kubrick filming the moon landing with the number 237, to Danny wearing a NASA sweater that depicts space exploration, Kubrick’s version of this horrific tale is a staple piece in classic cinema. The film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1977 novel, The Shining is a 1980 psychological cult horror produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick and co-written with novelist Dian Johnson. It stars the infamous stars Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and Danny Lloyd.
A little synopsis for y’all
The film's central character is Jack Torrance (Nicholson), an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of the isolated historic Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. Wintering over with Jack are his wife, Wendy Torrance (Duvall) and young son, Danny Torrance (Lloyd). Danny possesses "the shining", psychic abilities that enable him to see into the hotel's horrific past. The hotel cook, Dick Hallorann (Crothers), also has this ability and is able to communicate with Danny telepathically. The hotel had a previous winter caretaker who went insane and killed his family and himself. After a winter storm leaves the Torrances snowbound, Jack's sanity deteriorates due to the influence of the supernatural forces that inhabit the hotel, placing his wife and son in danger.
Filming Locations
Production took place almost exclusively at EMI Elstree Studios located in the UK, with sets based on real locations. Kubrick often worked with a small crew, which allowed him to do many takes, sometimes to the exhaustion of the actors and staff. The new Steadicam mount was used to shoot several scenes, giving the film an innovative and immersive look and feel. There has been much speculation into the meanings and actions in the film because of inconsistencies, ambiguities, symbolism, and differences from the book.
The film also uses lighting and framing as a means of depicting the Overlook hotel as a purgatorial state for the Torrence family. In the main lounge Jack Torrence sets up shop as a huge office space filled with nothing but stolen Native artifacts and appropriated art. This same office space with huge windows looking out of the hotel has always been purposely over-exposed, meaning brighter than the surrounding space in the shot which blows out the picture and makes it hard to see what’s outside the windows. This is a common depiction of what purgatory or hell is like. The inhabitants are trapped in their cycle and are unaware of the space outside of their personal hell. They are incapable of even peering outside to another reality, to safety, or even to recognize where they’re at as the film goes on. The bravura is in the cinematography and lighting of the scenes in the lounge. The grips and lighting techs had to setup and build ginormous sky panels and lights outside the set of the overlook hotel in order to execute that extremely over-exposed backdrop that imprisons the Torrence’s.
Very well done, good stuff, big big stuff, nice!
Ambiguities in The Shining
King’s novelty depiction of The Shining is a haunting tale of ghosts where as Kubrick’s interpretation is less definitive. Kubrick presents a brilliant study of “madness and the unreliable narrator” which leads me to suspect the observers are a legion of spirits that occupy the rooms of The Overlook Hotel. We see Jack Torrence interact with the former caretaker Charles Grady as they have a seemingly sinister exchange in the bathroom. In this scene we see the former caretaker take on the role of a butler; the servant to the current caretaker and occupants of the Overlook hotel. Jack now has the power to allow the sadistic entity to possess him as it presents the choice of being the man in a perilous situation or the man who has ‘always’ been at the Overlook.
Jack Torrence presents the spiral into madness in the The Shining. His psychologically and spiritually metamorphosis into a murderous utility for the evil Overlook represents the repetition of evilness in man. They are the coagula of reincarnates and legions of evilness manifested as mankind. Hear that theydies? Stay away from those fucking men cause theyre pure EVIL!
Behaviors of Projection
Danny Torrence has been analyzed as having Oedipal anxiety. Just as he had to split his parental figures he also split himself into two figures as a protective move. Danny created an imaginary guardian angel to watch over him. Tony, who lives in Danny’s mouth, talks through Danny’s finger. This creation of a doubling and interchangeable self helps Danny project his negative thoughts about his father onto someone else.
In Carl Jung’s words, the behavior in project as an “unconscious, automatic process whereby a content that is unconscious to the subject transfers itself to an object, so that it seems to belong to that object, so that it seems to belong to that object. The projection ceases the moment it becomes conscious, that is to say when it is seen as belong to the subject” (Jung, 1990, p 60) Danny’s shining can be regarded as neuroses. According to Jung (1990), neuroses result from a person’s failure to confront and accept some part of his/her archetypal unconscious. Instead of integrating this unconscious part to his/her consciousness, the neurotic individual insists on projecting it onto some other person or object. The dislocation accident causes Danny to have the anxiety of being annihilated. However, in order to protect himself, he projects all the destructive thoughts about his father onto Tony.
This idea of attaching ones memory can be philosophized as leaving echo of our existence. The shadow of who we were in that moment and the gravity of our attachment to that object, whether that be a tangible object, a location, or even a person themselves. Think of this like the concept of a Horcrux as depicted in The Harry Potter universe. A person’s soul can occupy a space and create a swell in gravity that surrounds that object. These echoes of a person’s spirit can resonates from beyond our dimension in what I’d refer to as ‘the further’ which is the after-life, dead zone, purgatory, eternal snooze fest, infinite resting place, whatever you believe in or dont believe in I literally don’t care because I’m here to tell you the binary truth of all things in life. Since im probably the only intelligent survivor of the pandemic and only able-minded outlaw in the bunker, it is my duty to steer yer straight of any tomfoolery and inappropriate thoughts about the after-life.
Okay so the After-life? What does all this have to do about the life that happens after this life?
Well, just like the movie series VHS where someone watches a tape that curses the viewer until theyre murdered, this podcast will have similar energies. Yet the time of death won’t be as immediate and it’ll slowly destroy all your cognitive functions until youre a mass of organs held together by the overstretched skin sack that is utterly useless to your brain now that you’ll be sitting there pondering the meaning of post-life realities and the insignificance of free will and any choices you’ve made since you’ll unknowingly be attached to some random object you held dear to you as a child or something like that. Maybe youre a materialistic asshole like myself and your prized possession is your car or bike so and the weight of your existence is being poured into this material object yet the moment your last breathe is stolen from you and you become food for the worms in my head, your once prized possession is now just another resource for someone to stumble upon. It’s to be repoed or repurposed from a bike into iKea shelves or maybe scraped for parts for a right-wing liberal studies major’s vibrator whose r0ommate is going to occasionally use and then spread a super virus and infectious coochie crawling, butt-tingling disease that picks away the students occupying the dorms of that liberal arts college and now has a substantial gravitational pull that has amassed from a murderous virus and all these confused, now dead 1st year liberal arts majors have now passed into the after-life and theyre fucking pissed. They’re raging and so upset at the insignificance of their lives and how ill-accomplished they are at the time of their death and now theyre attached to the fucking cum stained rooms of this rundown dorm that they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for yet is more run down than a 2009 midwestern bungalow AirBnB. There are so many places those lost souls reside in. Theyre just squatters, naked and afraid in the Men’s shoe aisle in a Ross dress for less.
The After-Life
Probably the most debated topic in history. To be or not to be? No actually to be free or to be me? Do we simply exist in the memories others inherit from us during our Time alive? Is it actually a life if our souls are in bondage to an object, a place, or a duty? Are all forms of life a duty that must be fulfilled by one of us and once we complete this task, the cycle of life itself will merely end?
Too many questions, too many cooks cooking up some contemporary controversial conundrums to coupe up in your conquest towards cottage-core complacency with your companion.
Let’s start our interrogation of the dichotomy between peaceful passing and grotesque elements in The Further, the After-life, or whatever lies yonder of ye imaginations.
The spirits of the Overlook hotel aren’t exactly guests of the hotel. They’re neither welcoming nor hospitable in their presence at the Overlook. The spirits that manifest within the Overlook a presumably connected to the horrendous actions of the settlers whom massacred the Natives who lived off the land upon which the Overlook Hotel digests sinister souls and foul spirits alike. The hotel rots as it drains the light out of humanity in juxtaposition to the the functionality of the individual. The Overlook tests the individual’s soul as the evil entity tests the strength and will of its prey. As we see Jack Torrence pounding away at his redundant opus, the narrator shifts from stalking the insidious caretaker to its next victims. If the Overlook can’t overtake the rest of the Torrence family then it’ll have no choice but to use vicariously act through Jack as its instrument of murder and destruction. The overlook is not just a building but a virus of evil that inhabitants the minds of the weak and desperate guests who seek an escape rather than refuge from their sins. The eternal ‘Paradise’ hotels offer and the pampering and amenities that come with the its service is a far distance from the sadistic agenda the Overlook instigates with each of its victims.
As for life in the Overlook Hotel..
The facade of hope for change. An opportunity for reconciliation with our former self. The Overlook hotel has all the amenities a haunted soul needs to rehabilitate themselves in order to make peace before wandering into the After-life. However, the Overlook, with its ability to project peoples enchanting evocations of their tumultuously terrorizing past (okay for all the first time listeners you have to understand I fucking love alliterations)
An Itinerary of your eternal stay at the Overlook Hotel
First things first: you need some internalized drama and/or trauma that defines the victims Dionysiac impulses. On Page 1 of the itinerary we see scribbled in size 42 comic sans font:
All Humans Are Inherently: EVIL
The Overlook hotel remains a behemoth entity of torture. It’s under the predisposition that humans need only to unlock their evilness in order to fulfill their duty to serve for evilness. The after-life for the souls trapped in the weight of the Overlook are bound to its manifesto against anything pure. How does it feel to serve at the overlook, you might be wondering? Well, let’s pop in for a typical interview for the overlook hotel!
Once a soul dies in the halls of the Overlook it becomes a sinister servant for all eternity. The souls that wander the grounds can be locked away as we see in the Doctor Sleep movie as the adult Danny has learned how to repress the demons of the Overlook and use his ability to shine pass their evil intentions.
The souls are trapped as they routinely work their shifts to observe the occupants of the hotel, looking for a weakness to prey on. They study and stalk from afar, analyzing the insecurities and desires of their victim. The more souls the Overlook steals the more gravity the evilness amasses. Every single soul loses their sense of identity and personhood as theyre trapped in this purgatorial dimension of servitude for the Overlook. There’s no other place to hide from any of the observers as they all mesh into the omnipresent evil that only wishes to drain the energies of the guests that unknowingly extend their stay. Charging up their MasterCard for that infinity hell loop that isn’t really hell because you get to just pick your character and fuck with people during the off season.
The spirits of the shining are not be aimlessly wandering the decadent ballroom of the Overlook hotel. They are indebted to the sadism of the Hotel and will be tied to its gravitational pull for all eternity. Their now menacing echoes of existence will only reveal itself to seduce the helpless guests that mistakingly check into hell.
Extend your stay for all eternity in the most comfortable places evil can reside in, if you dare, dawg.
