Essay On The Shining By Stanley Kubbrick

Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film, The Shining, based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel, is listed among the greatest horror movies, viewed by some as one of the greatest films of all time, and is now being noted as an influence for Taylor Swift’s new music video for “Shake It Off” (Zalben). Though it deviates from King’s writing, Kubrick’s translation of the source material is steeped in mystery and conspiracy. On the surface, The Shining is a horror movie based on a family trapped in an eerie hotel where its isolation and influence take a toll on the father, Jack, who then tried to murder his wife and telepathic son. At least, that is how I watched it as a eight year old. Now, I understand The Shining not as a movie about the murders at the Overlook
hotel, but the murder of a race, the Native Americans, and the consequences of that. Ostensibly a murder, haunted house story, The Overlook Hotel disguises complex messages and symbolizing along with creepy realities of both the movie and society. It begins with a struggling writer, Jack, taking a job as the winter caretaker of the vast, historic Overlook Hotel. Joining him deep in the Rocky Mountains is his wife, Wendy, and young son, Danny. Detached from the world by the harsh winter months, Jack becomes progressively madder, losing his mind in this evil environment with a violent history including a few ghosts. Meanwhile, his son, Danny, possesses “the shining,” a psychic ability allowing him to see the past and future.
Jack is presented as aggressive and deranged, while his wife, Wendy, is mousy and meek but on the edge of breaking. In The Shining, each character teeters on the edge of extinction (Nolan). Danny balances a persona of a scared child one moment to creepy and threatening the next. However, The Shining should not be taken as a character study, Kubrick has more interest in thematic ideas and allegory. Instead of analyzing the characters, a viewer could critically engage with the film by looking past its ostensible message and finding its deeper value.
For example, Danny’s ability to see both the past and the future could later connect to the concept and consequences of murder. Taking closer looks will leave little doubt that the consequences “Manifest Destiny” had for the Native Americans were not all that far from Kubrick’s mind in creating this horrific work of art. The first clue is when the hotel manager casually mentions to the caretaker’s wife, “The site is supposed to be located on an Indian burial ground, and I believe they actually had to repel a few Indian attacks as they were building it.” Though this is the only time the word “Indian” is blatantly said, there are plenty of other implications, like Indian chanting as background noise during the movie's climax. Another example of such implication is the obnoxious amount of Indian motifs in this film. Although they are never the main focus, these artifacts command our attention and demand from the viewer a deeper reflection on the brutal history of a stillyoung nation (Nolan). Wall hangings, carpets, and architectural details decorating the hotel compete with the prominence of the red, white, and blue color palette used. These details serve as a background for many of the key
scenes. An example of such a scene is when the hotel manager, who, coincidentally or not, looks just like John F. Kennedy, is sitting at this desk. At his desk stands an American flag and behind him a bald eagle. He himself is wearing a red, white, and blue suit, similar to the costume design of the entire movie. Additionally in the two food-locker scenes, Calumet baking powder cans with their Indian chief logo are carefully placed in the background. If that does not imply the line between Americans and Indians enough, at the bar, Jack uses the phrase, “white man’s burden.” This term historically refers to the white man’s duty to imperialize and improve the life of others, akin to what happened with the Native Americans. It is these verifiers found in the details that validates further critical analysis of the larger ideas and scenes in the movie. One could more deeply analyze the ghosts in the movie to represent America's culture heritage, serving as a stand-in for the massacre of the Indian people by settlers.
Kubrick carefully equates the Overlook Hotel with the United States. As the manager tells Jack in the opening interview about the horrible murders that took place at the Overlook, it is implied that something violent and horrific happened America’s history, something haunting, like the ghosts, ever since. One example of such ghosts is in the well known scene of the flooding river of blood from elevator shaft, surrounded by Indian artwork-embellished frames, presumably sinking into the Indian burial ground itself. As it is the blood upon which the Overlook Hotel was built, it is the blood upon which this nation was built, the blood of slaughtered Native Americans. The ghosts in The Shining represent the dark memories from America’s past that we try to repress. This movie forces viewers to confront the consequences and effects of America’s past. The film is an allegory, and the repressed memories driving Jack mad represent an American unable to deal with its history, causing damage in his and the countries present. Murder is the means by which the present and future are linked: the death of the past cannot be changed, the present is full of menacing signs, and the future is always already defined by death
(Nolan).
With skillful weaving and subtlety, Kubrick artfully and cleverly hid this unsettling meaning into his film to prove exactly what he may have been trying to convey. Why not be more explicit about his message? The inability or unwillingness of the average viewer to see past the ostensible message fully demonstrates his concept of the “Overlook.” Instead, Kubrick made a movie in which the American audience sees signs of Indians in almost every frame, but leaves it up to the media literate to engage with it beyond as a horror movie about a man who goes crazy and tries to kill his family. In a cultural critique of Kubrick’s film, Amy Nolan makes apparent its power of horror to represent the coexistence of surface and depth, inner and outer, word and image, mind and body. Though played out upon the surface of modern problems like alcoholism and failed communication, underneath lies the deeper labyrinth of American history and the collective “ghosts” of its power ideologies (Nolan). By going against the grain and engaging with The Shining as so proves its explicit veritable message about Americans’ general inability to admit to the gravity of the genocide of Indians, or its ability to overlook it.