REDRUM! REDRUM!
On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily breaks down the horror masterpiece, The Shining. The sisters walk through the ways in which Shelley Duvall’s portrayal of Wendy Torrance is an unexpected feminist icon, how Kubrick created an intentionally incoherent film while abusing his actors (except for 6-year-old Danny Lloyd), and just what is up with the theory that the film is a critique of the genocide of Native Americans. Also: Emily shares her deeply held belief that moving hedge animals are NOT SCARY.
Jump on your big wheel, throw on your headphones and listen…if you dare!
CW: Discussions of domestic violence, child sexual assault, murder, and genocide
Mentioned in this episode:
"MAZES, MIRRORS, DECEPTION AND DENIAL" by Rob Ager
The September House by Carissa Orlando
https://www.salon.com/2013/10/04/stanley_kubrick_misogynist_partner/
Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theater
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-shining-1980
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
REDRUM! REDRUM!
On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily breaks down the horror masterpiece, The Shining. The sisters walk through the ways in which Shelley Duvall’s portrayal of Wendy Torrance is an unexpected feminist icon, how Kubrick created an intentionally incoherent film while abusing his actors (except for 6-year-old Danny Lloyd), and just what is up with the theory that the film is a critique of the genocide of Native Americans. Also: Emily shares her deeply held belief that moving hedge animals are NOT SCARY.
Jump on your big wheel, throw on your headphones and listen…if you dare!
CW: Discussions of domestic violence, child sexual assault, murder, and genocide
Mentioned in this episode:
"MAZES, MIRRORS, DECEPTION AND DENIAL" by Rob Ager
The September House by Carissa Orlando
https://www.salon.com/2013/10/04/stanley_kubrick_misogynist_partner/
Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theater
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-shining-1980
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
I'm Emily Guy-Burken and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I will be discussing the 1980 film the Shining with my sister, tracy Guy-Decker, and with you, so let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Speaker 1:Trace, tell me, what do you know about this movie? I know this is not like anything from either of our childhoods exactly, but it's just like a pillar of the culture and I know you've seen it. But that's about all.
Speaker 2:I know about. I have seen it. Yeah, I have seen it. I'm trying to remember, as we're talking like, where I saw it the first time. It was sometime in the past 20 years, so I was already an adult, for sure, but a young adult, I think, and I think maybe. Actually I think there was. There was like a remake or something right like in the early aughts, that was in like 1997, I think.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, um okay so while I was in college, I think I think I saw some or all of the remake, possibly with, and then that sent me to the original with Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. In fact I'm certain I saw it with dad, because I remember late in the movie when the I don't remember his name, but the black guy comes, dick Calloran, yeah. So when Dick comes to try and save the kid, because they have that connection and I remember dad saying something like wow, for a man who shines this. There's not a lot of gore and I think it's the gore and the jump scares that really make it hard for me to watch horror and this movie doesn't have a whole lot of that.
Speaker 2:But you and I have spoken a little bit about some of the gendered roles, uh, gendered.
Speaker 2:There's gendered violence that's different than ordinary gendered violence, but still very much gendered and kind of the characterization of wendy by shelly duvall and and and and how she sort of comes off, and that's the thing that like sticks with me the most is her terror and also like the trappedness of that is a part of that terror and the concern for her kid. Those are the things that like stick with me emotionally and of course, some of the iconic moments of you know the delusions were like with the twins and like the long hallway and the big wheel, and you know that show up like people make visual references to that all the time, including in ghostbusters. There's a reference to that, like there's a big wheel at one point when the ghost busters are showing up after, after gozer has come. So I have some like surface thoughts about it, but I'm really I'm excited to to dig into it a little more deeply with you. So tell me what's at stake here. Why, why did you want to bring this one to the deep thoughts treatment?
Speaker 1:So the shining is not like a foundational text of my you know literary DNA in the way that like Neverending Story and the Princess Bride, even Back to the Future, are, because, like you, I did not really engage with it until I was an adult. I read the novel first and then saw the movie. I don't remember exactly how that came about, but I kind of got on a bit of a Stephen King kick in the early 2000s. I loved the novel. It is my favorite Stephen King novel but only because it has a really fucked up group sex scene. Until we got to that point it was my favorite Stephen King novel and then I was like that like it just took me out of the story because it's like, clearly you've never been an adolescent girl and, like you, completely overshot the mark.
Speaker 1:And why did you not talk to Tabitha, who is his wife, who is also a gifted writer in her own right, who would have been like, do something different here here? Anyway, I think it's interesting that I read the book first and then saw the movie, because I think it gave me a much different view of how this adaptation works than if I'd done the opposite. And not that I have any issue with people having done the opposite, but just there are things that they were like lovely surprises, that made it something where I was like, oh, I really appreciate this adaptation, rather than like going like, oh, this is missing from the movie that I know of, or this is different. So I read it and loved it, saw the movie, watched it multiple times and really loved it and didn't really think about it. Um, and didn't really think about it. So sometime around 2016,.
Speaker 1:Um, for some reason, I saw people talking about it again and talking about what a weak character Wendy Torrance is, and some of that is from Stephen King. Um, and I don't hold this against Stephen King, because it was an adaptation of not only his work but a very personal piece of his work because the Shining was about Stephen King working through his own demons of alcoholism and so changes to that story that are extremely personal, that story that are extremely personal. I can't even imagine how that feels. So I don't hold it against him that he said like Shelley Duvall's acting is the most misogynistic portrayal he's ever seen on film Relative much, yeah, and now some of it is Shelley Duvall's Wendy Torrance is not Stephen King's Wendy Torrance. Stephen King's Wendy Torrance had a lot more fight in her from the very beginning. She is much more of an equal in the marriage from the very beginning and you get more backstory. So some of that as well. Like you learn that she's estranged from her parents. She is in a lot of ways trapped by circumstances in ways that we just don't know in the film and I, seeing people say that I was like did we watch the same movie?
Speaker 1:And I went back and rewatched it and it was right around the time when people started self-identifying as nasty women. People started self-identifying as nasty women and I remember thinking, like Shelley Duvall's version of Wendy Torrance is an undercover nasty woman, because she is all the things that I think of when I proudly wear my nasty woman shirt. She is strong, she is resourceful, she makes hard decisions. She puts the people who she loves first in a way that is not like there's some selflessness to her, but it's a it's not a martyrdom a sense of like I have to be the one to take care of this because there's no one else and she, at every turn, makes the best possible decision she can with the resources she has for the people she loves.
Speaker 1:Now she seems to be kind of like, you see, that she's an avid reader, but you don't get the impression that she's like a towering intellect. But so what? And that's, I know that's another part of why Stephen King didn't particularly like this portrayal is is his Wendy was very smart, and I'm not saying Wendy Torrance, as played by Shelley Duvall, is not very smart. It's just that you get the impression that she's accepted some things that you would not expect a strong woman to accept, and so there's an assumption that she must not be very smart because of that. I so I I rewatched it and I started.
Speaker 1:I was like I really kind of want to create a list of like undercover nasty women, and I had trouble coming up with any other examples. But you know rewatching it about, you know, eight years ago, seven or eight years ago, and looking at it from that point of view, I was like this is an extremely feminist film, even though it doesn't pass the Bechdel test. There is another woman character, but she is not named, that they have a conversation about, a conversation together and they're talking about her son, they're talking about Danny and they're talking about Jack. So it's not exactly.
Speaker 1:But, they're all. She had a name, yeah, but they are also. They're talking about parenting. So like I think it would count if the doctor had a name, but she doesn't, okay, but it is.
Speaker 1:In a lot of ways it is a very feminist movie in part for the same reason that I feel like the Handmaid's Tale is a feminist book about a woman who does not consider herself to be strong. Now I have my own issues with the Handmaid's Tale. I find Margaret Atwood to be so cynical, and by cynical I mean there's despair, which is when you give up for yourself, but there's cynicism when you give up for everyone else. But she set out with the story of Offred to tell the story of someone who's not fiery, someone who is just kind of an ordinary woman, and her little rebellions and little resistances and the way that she would survive. And I actually really appreciate that there are so many ways to resist, to be strong, to be nasty, even if you are not the one leading the fight or leading the charge, even if you're not fiery yeah, you don't have to be general whatever.
Speaker 1:Yes, organa, yeah, whatever leia's name was in that, and in order to to actually be a part, of the resistance, uh-huh, and so I feel like stanley kubrick created an extremely feminist horror film that is entirely about domestic violence, while perpetrating emotional abuse on the one main black character and the one main actress.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about that. I don't know anything about that. Tell me so, stanley Kubrick. Anything about that? Tell me so.
Speaker 1:Stanley Kubrick was known to be exacting. So, for example, during Making of the Shining, he would have his actors, and all of them. I mean Jack Nicholson as well, but Shelley Duvall, jack Nicholson and Scatman Crothers, who played DeCalleran. He would have them do the same. Take 160 times, and I'm not making that number up 160?.
Speaker 2:Yes, holy shit yes.
Speaker 1:There's interviews with Crothers saying like he got to a point where he was just like what is it you want from me for this? Take Cause I don't I don't already done it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can remember writing like a piece of copy and like when my boss was like I kept track of the things and it wasn't when it was number seven, I was like I got nothing left. Yeah, yeah, I don't have it. And that was seven.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I don't have it. And that was seven. So Kubrick was very exacting. That was true Always. Didn't do some research yesterday. I found that that was always true. But when making the Shining, he was like, gave these emotional and sarcastic outbursts, whereas normally he was very calm throughout. He was like okay, we're just going to do it again, like for all, 80 or 160 times or whatever. No idea why this was different. There's someone who has a, a theory that kubrick was trying to, because they also did a making of documentary while they were making the film, which was very unusual for kub. He was very like, tight lipped and like kept a closed set and like. That was unusual. And so this person is suggesting that there's that Kubrick was making himself into Jack Torrance, which like what? I don't know, I don't know. I don't know enough about Kubrick as a, as a like. I know he was eccentric, but I don't know.
Speaker 2:I know he was eccentric, but I don't know. So you're telling me that while they were filming the Shining, not only was he making them do it dozens and dozens and hundreds of times, he was yelling and belittling them while doing it.
Speaker 1:Just Shelley Duvall and Scatman Crothers. Oh, jack didn't get the emotional, jack Nicholson did not. And I want to say, to be entirely fair to Kubrick, danny Lloyd, who plays Danny Torrance, was six years old at the time and he had no idea he was in a horror movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I can actually recall dad talking about this when I was about six, saying how impressed he was and Danny does a great job. I I mean, I don't know how they got now some of it was kubrick was a director who could get a great performance out of any actor, I think partially because he did so many takes, so many takes, yeah, but he was, uh, he was very protective of danny lloyd, and so lloyd thought that the movie was about like a family drama and so he thought there was tension, you know, like about parents fighting while living in this hotel, so which was something that you know a little boy can handle. But he had no idea and was not there for any of the most like horrifying scenes that they filmed, so like, on the one hand, that's fantastic. On the other hand, he clearly knew how to keep boundaries around people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and didn't for Shelley Duvall, didn't for Shelley.
Speaker 1:Duvall or Scatman Crothers.
Speaker 2:Scatman.
Speaker 1:So I don't exactly know what to do with that. Has duval talked about it? Or crothers? Um, crothers has he? I know a little less about his, his experience. I know he was interviewed for that making of and there's a point where he tears up in the interview and the tearing up is is like supposedly about how excited or like feelings of joy at being able to do this work with this renowned director and Jack Nicholson and stuff like that. But the the thing that I was reading was saying like, but he's also not long after talking about the 160 takes. So there's emotion high at the surface and Shelley Duvall, like she left acting for a little while after this.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:It was, and she talks about. She had to be crying for 12 hours a day, five or six days a week, for nine months.
Speaker 2:Holy cow day, five or six days a week for nine months. Holy cow, oh, what'll that do to you, psychologically, physiologically yeah, somatically, yeah, so it's this like I have.
Speaker 1:I grew up with shelly duvall, like in um, so she did that. That was it. Not fractured fairy tales, but that fairy tale um thing. Do you remember that at all from the 80s? No, I'll have to look it up and I'll put it in the show notes, but there was. There was a like a half hour fairy tale show that she, she did in the 80s that I really liked.
Speaker 2:She was olive oil in the I remember that olive oil in the pop boy movie.
Speaker 1:She was in Roxanne with Steve Martin. She was who was she? She was her name. The character's name was Dixie, I think, and and she was just a friend of Steve Martin.
Speaker 2:She was a friend of Steve Martin. Yeah, I remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she like owned a cafe or something. Yeah, yeah, something like that. So she was always someone I kind of. She was on my radar as, like I know her. Yeah, I always liked her eyes she's a huge, gorgeous eyes and I liked I couldn't have articulated this I liked that she was very pretty in a very approachable way, to the point where, like she was abused. I mean there's there's no other way around it. For this film. I like I feel very protective of her.
Speaker 1:There was a, an article about her a few years ago, talking about she. She's dealing with some mental health stuff in her retirement and doesn't like and nobody cares about her anymore. And so someone did this expose and some of it was like pictures of her, like look about her anymore. And so someone did this expose and some of it was pictures of her like look at her now. And I was just like, leave the poor lady alone. And she apparently so. Roger Ebert has a review of the Shining as part of the Great Films series, so it's a review that he wrote well after it came out.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it wasn't contemporaneous. It wasn't a contemporaneous one I could not find. It was already the shining.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I could not find a contemporaneous Ebert review and he talks about talking to Shelley Duvall about the experience and she just was like it was brutal. We'll get into like a bunch of this actually real quick, cause we haven't done this. Let me talk about what happens in the, in the story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, please do.
Speaker 1:So the story is we've got this little family living in Boulder there's Jack Torrance, who is a former school teacher, he's a writer, his wife Winifred, who goes by Wendy, and their little son Danny, who's about five or six years old the Overlook Hotel, which is in a very remote area of Colorado, to become the winter caretaker. The Overlook closes from October 30th to May 15th every year because it is in such a remote area and the only road to get there is called the Sidewinder and the cost of the 20 feet of snow removal for 25 miles is too great to make it worthwhile to keep the hotel open. So they need someone there over the winter to heat it in alternate rooms, so that pipes don't freeze, to make sure the boiler's okay. So it's a very basic caretaker position. So they look for men with families to be caretakers because the isolation can be very difficult.
Speaker 1:While Jack is at the interview he is told about a previous caretaker from 10 years before named Charles Grady, who they called it cabin fever. Something happened, he snapped and he killed his two daughters and his wife and then killed himself. So he used an ax on his family and a double-barreled shotgun for himself. Jack says don't worry, we're good. They show up at the hotel on closing day and we meet Dick Halloran who is the head chef of the Overlook. He immediately realizes that Danny the little boy has what Dick calls the shining, which is he talks about. When he was a little boy he can remember having a whole conversations with his grandmother without either of them ever opening their mouths. There's never really in the film a clear explanation of what shining is, although it's very clearly explicated in the book, but there's. There's the sense that you kind of know things before they happen. You can see things from the past and you can kind of communicate with other people without talking, but only other people who shine it's like ESP, only other shiners yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Danny has an imaginary friend called Tony, who he describes as a little boy who lives in his mouth and he uses his finger to talk as Tony, and Tony is clearly some manifestation of his shining. The hotel is scary. Before going there and Danny asks Dick, are you scared of the hotel? Are you scared of room 237? Halloran says there's nothing in room 237. And I'm not scared of that room, but it's none of your business, you just stay out of there. The family moves in.
Speaker 1:It's a month later and it's clear that Wendy is doing all of the work of caretaking and she is doing what she can to make this a happy environment for Danny. Whereas Jack says he's really, really happy there and he's trying to write, but he's having trouble, strange things start to happen. Danny sees two little girls who are dressed as twins and were actually played by twins and who he knows aren't actually there. He is drawn to room 237 on multiple occasions and Jack becomes increasingly nasty and angry towards Wendy, telling her never to interrupt him while he is in the Colorado room, which is where he set up his typewriter. So there is one day where there's a storm brewing. So, like you know, they're really really stuck there and Wendy hears Jack crying out in his sleep. She finds him asleep on his desk and he had this horrible dream that he killed her and Danny. And it was even worse, he didn't just kill them, he chopped them into little bits. She's trying to calm him down.
Speaker 1:When Danny, who had seen that room 237 was open and gone to investigate, comes in sucking his thumb and his his shirt is torn. So he comes in. She at first is trying to get Danny away, cause she's trying to calm Jack down. And then she goes and sees that his shirt is torn and he has bruising all over his neck and she's like, oh my God, you did this to him and runs away with, uh, with Danny. And she's like, oh my God, you did this to him and runs away with Danny. Jack then goes into the ballroom where he sees a bartender who serves him alcohol, even though there's nobody there. He also ends up having a conversation with Delbert Grady. So it's one of the many inconsistencies in the story that's not the name that we.
Speaker 2:Charles Grady was the name of the.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it is one of the most chilling scenes where Grady is telling him that I needed to correct my children. You should correct Danny. He is attempting to bring an outside influence in and then he uses the N-word to describe Scatman Crothers' character, danny. Because of all this, he has reached out to Halloran who is in Miami, and Halloran starts trying to call, can't get through, calls the local forest service and asks them to radio. They can't get through through and we see that jack has disabled the radio. So, uh, halloran flies to denver and then, like, rents a car and then a snow cat to get up to the overlook to check on them.
Speaker 1:Things come to a head where Danny finally is able to like tell Wendy that it was a woman in room 237. So she goes to Jack and tells him that's what happened. He's like, are you out of your fucking mind? And then next thing you know, you see he's going into room 237. There is a naked woman who is young and beautiful in the bathtub who, like, steps out slowly and Jack starts like leering at her and then she, she like, invites him closer and they kiss. And then he looks in the mirror and she is like this old, bloated, rotting body. And so he like backs away, wendy wants to get Danny out of there. She, she's terrified for him. She and Jack get into an argument about it and he leaves their little apartment in the hotel. And then she ends up like, okay, I need to go talk to him. And that's when she finds his manuscript and finds that instead of actually writing something, he has written all work and no play, makes jack a doll boy.
Speaker 1:Over and, over and, over and over again in different like formatting and like yeah, yeah, and that, actually that was, that was a kubrick invention that was really cool, oh my goodness, like, like, because in the book Jack also had writer's block, because the book is about writer's block basically, yeah, but he had written like current plays over and over and over again. So like, also kind of freaky, but not the same.
Speaker 2:The way that Kubrick has it happen is just so chilling because it's not just that, it's and like back and forth dialogue and like it just it reads so much more unhinged than if it was just a solid wall.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah starts threatening her. He's like I'm no, I'm not gonna hurt you, I'm just gonna fucking kill you. And so she's backing up up the stairs and she, she is. This is also like the scariest moment, because she's holding the bat. She clearly doesn't want to use it against him. She's terrified, she's heartbroken and she's like, very ineffectually, like kind of swinging at him. She ends up connecting with his hand and he's like ow, and he kind of like pulls away. And then she manages to like really whack him on the head and he falls backwards and she drags him into the kitchen and locks him in the pantry. And that's when he tells her that she should check the radio and the snowcat because they're not going anywhere.
Speaker 1:And she finds that the snowcat has been disabled, something has been taken out of it. So they are stuck there. Grady lets him out of the pantry. The ghost, the ghost, the ghost. Now that is the only portion of the film that could be, or that is, somewhat unequivocal. Um, because every time that you see something, it could be either hallucination or jack, like talking to himself.
Speaker 2:I mean, except that Danny had was injured right Well there's something to that too?
Speaker 1:okay, all right. So anyway, kubrick, I think, did not want it to be that there were ghosts. I think it was for him. He wanted it to be that there was a like a rational explanation for everything.
Speaker 2:In any, case definitely lets Jack out of the pantry.
Speaker 1:Well, Jack is talking through the door to the actor who plays Grady and you hear the actor's very proper British voice and the door opens, but you don't actually see who opens the door or how it's opened or if there's. So I've seen some suggestions. There are other ways. There are other other ways he could have gotten out, but okay. So Jack is limping at this point but he gets an ax and he breaks into the family apartment where Wendy is sleeping and Danny, in the Tony voice, is going red rum, red rum and writes it on the bathroom door. It finally wakes Wendy up and she looks in the mirror and it's murder. That's what Red Rum is.
Speaker 1:Backwards. Jack starts breaking down the door. She and Danny get into the bathroom. She locks the bathroom door, she opens the window and lets Danny out through that. She can't get through the window and Jack breaks in with that famous here's Johnny moment. Then they hear the snowcat of Dick Halloran arriving, which is what saves Wendy. At that moment she was cornered. Dick Halloran comes in and I really hate this Like he's immediately killed by by Jack.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the moment when Dick takes the ax. That dad said the thing, yeah.
Speaker 1:And to be fair to the character, he didn't have any reason to believe that there was any danger other than psychic danger maybe.
Speaker 2:I mean, he was in touch with danny though. Right, yes, but danny, what danny? Didn't realize his yeah, what sent him was what happened in room 237 uh-huh so but yeah, okay, I it still feels like if you kind of can see the future, like wouldn't your shining like warn you about imminent danger?
Speaker 1:And in the book, Halloran survives and becomes a father figure to Dany.
Speaker 2:Oh, I like that better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was. That was like Kubrick, like changed that which for you Kubrick, yeah, which, screw you, kubrick, yeah, and like Halloran actually. So Stephen King likes to do kind of like extended Stephen King universe, so he'll have, in unrelated books, characters will show up. So Dick Halloran shows up, and I don't even remember which one it was. I think it might've been it.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. Well, that's very interesting. So, so what happens next? So so, so Dick gets killed immediately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Wendy has a knife. She's running around trying to find Danny. Danny was hiding but then he hears Dick get killed and he freaks out and he runs away. Jack follows him. He's limping, as I said, because he hurt his ankle. They end up outside in the hedge maze.
Speaker 1:Danny has played in the hedge maze quite a bit and so he leads his father on this chase through the hedge maze. Danny has played in the hedge maze quite a bit and so he leads his father on this chase through the hedge maze and finally at one point he's far enough ahead that he then walks backward in his footprints. So it hides because his father is following his footprints to know where he is and he's able to back up hide until his father passes is. And he's able to back up hide until his father passes, then run out of the hedge maze where he finds his mother, right at the snowcat that DeCalleran rode up and they get in and they leave and then last scene, we see Jack frozen to death. And then we have a closeup on an image from july 4th 1921 at the hotel where jack is in the center.
Speaker 2:Hey, yeah, so not so, like, so, like the same. Well, nothing's clear. I mean, you said that, but yeah, but some implication that this same psychic energy person keeps returning to perpetrate violence in the Overlook, mm-hmm, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I want to talk a little bit about like. So there's that, there's the. When Wendy's running around, there's a point where she interrupts a man in like an air costume, looking like he's going down on a man in like a 1920s era tuxedo, and that is like I remember. When I watched it I was like, even though I had read the book, I was like what the hell? Because there's backstory to it in the book yeah, there's also like oceans of blood. Yes, yeah, is there a backstory to that, or is it just that?
Speaker 1:Kubrick invented that oh okay, all right, there's weird things with time. So, for instance, well, there's inconsistencies. So Charles Grady had a daughter who was eight and one who was 10. Is what they, what Ullman, who's the manager, says? And I always was like, oh okay, well, people just don't realize that the, the, the twins, as they call them. They look like twins because they're they're dressed exactly the same. No, they were actually twin actresses, actors.
Speaker 2:They're identical twins.
Speaker 1:Identical twins. And so there there are these inconsisten. And his name was Charles, not Delbert Grady, so it may be unclear. Now, I'm not a we mentioned before I started. We started recording. I'm not a huge like Kubrick aficionado. I've only seen 2001,. Dr Strangelove and this All three of those movies. When I finished them I was like what, yeah, that was intentional. And part of what makes it difficult is that this is based on a book written by a consummate storyteller who does not do that right right so you've got things that.
Speaker 1:So I always just assumed like, oh okay, the little girls just look too similar, like I assumed that, even knowing how meticulous that Kubrick was, so this was an intentional choice. He intentionally wanted it to be like wait, that's not correct, wait, what about that? Wait, that's not correct, Wait, what about that? So another thing they talk about Jack. We don't know the backstory of how he lost his job, but we know that he was an alcoholic and we know that he hurt Danny. We hear the story from Wendy that he'd been drinking, he was in a bad mood and Danny had done something to Jack's school papers and he went to like kind of lift him away from it and he pulled too hard and dislocated his shoulder and it had happened five months before and Wendy said so the good news is that he said I'm never going to drink a drop again because. So there was a good thing that came out of it.
Speaker 1:Then, later on, when Jack is talking to the ghostly bartender and saying like I would sell my soul for a beer, and the bartender is like here, have some bourbon. And he's like here's to five months of sobriety, well, they've been at the hotel for at least a month and possibly probably longer than that at that point. So five months, why five months? Then there's also the fact that the injury happened when he stopped drinking and he telling Lloyd the bartender, like okay, I did hurt the kid once, but it was three years ago, so all of that is intentional, like you know. Like okay, I did hurt the kid once, but it was three years ago, so, like, all of that is intentional, it's intentional on.
Speaker 1:Kubrick's part, because none of it makes sense. So someone's unreliable, and who?
Speaker 2:is it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also think so. The other problem that Stephen King has with the film is the fact that Jack and Wendy have zero chemistry.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like from the beginning, Jack seems kind of not okay. In a way where I'm like why would Ullman give this man the job? And in a way where, like even recognizing that Wendy has few choices, I don't know why she would agree to going to the hotel with him where they're going to be isolated over the winter and that is all choice, Like some of the stuff I was reading, like even Jack Nicholson got the you got to have like 16, 20, 50 takes. He wasn't immune to that, but he was treated better than Shelley Duvall and Scatman Crothers, and Nicholson is a very good actor. Now he's got a little bit of Jack Nicholson to him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a little bit of like, no matter what character he's playing. There's a little bit of that there, yes.
Speaker 1:But there is there is no sense whatsoever that he is a loving father and husband ever at any point, which is another because Jack Torrance is a stand-in for Stephen King, so Stephen King has is uncomfortable with that.
Speaker 2:And I don't like it's. I don't waiting for the moment to it's like a sleeper cell axe murderer. So, although I don't know, you know you think I think about like as the viewer, like we kind of have to believe that Wendy would have I started to say chosen, and maybe that's not the right word but accepted this partner at some point, like what was it for?
Speaker 1:her for her. That's that's the part that I like. That's where I feel like this movie falls down, is like I don't, I cannot imagine a world where they met and flirted, and like I can't imagine a world where they met and flirted, and like I can't imagine a world where they were attracted to each other like, let alone fell in love and got married. Like I that, and that's why I like I find it very, very confusing why Kubrick chose to bring that performance out of Jack Nicholson. Kubrick chose to bring that performance out of Jack Nicholson Because I feel like Shelley Duvall's performance of Wendy, who is kind of mousy.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:And some of that has to do with the fashions they have her wear I mean she's this?
Speaker 2:No, it's a choice. I don't think Duvall has to be mousy no, no, no, it's a choice. I don't think duval has to be mousy, no, no. And I think that makes her more vulnerable too, which is part of the horror of it, because we see her like just so very vulnerable and and so the the horror of the danger that her husband poses then is is greater, because we as viewers don't believe that she can do anything about it yes so we have this, this, you know, very vulnerable woman who seems like a very ordinary housewife.
Speaker 1:We don't see, like, what other options she has. And the thing is like there's no chemistry between jack nicholson and shellyall, but there is intense chemistry that word sounds weird, but like between Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd you believe that she's his mother. Yeah, like the kind of flirtatious older man that is like sweet and gracious in a, in an old-fashioned way to a young woman and she responds in kind, um, and she, she really does like, she seems like she makes the best of what she best of the situation. She, she, she can. It's just that the jack nicholson is the odd man out in this, because at no point does he seem like someone you'd want to spend time with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which makes sense why Stephen King would reject it if Jack was a self-insert of sorts. Yes, so I'm watching the time and there's like a whole category of things that we haven't gotten to yet, so I'm going to maybe ask before we started recording, you were mentioning to me that there are some sort of allegories that maybe Kubrick was including on purpose. Do you want to share those with us?
Speaker 1:So yes, the one that I saw yesterday that was kind of new to me was that this is an allegory.
Speaker 2:Now I've seen that it's an allegory for domestic violence before.
Speaker 1:That's not a surprise, I mean, it's not even an allegory Like it is, it's a story about domestic violence, yeah, yeah, but that Danny's experiences and even the man in the bear suit are hints that Danny has not just been emotionally and physically abused, but also sexually abused by his father.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:So there are like and I'll link to this in the show notes there was a video that I watched that talked about there are a lot of connections between Danny and bears. So when he is in the apartment in Boulder and lying on, uh, on his bed and the doctor comes to to to check him out, he's lying on a pillow that is shaped like a teddy bear and its eyes have been like, altered from how it actually appeared on, you know, when you bought it in 1978, to look more like the eyes or the dials above the elevator that the blood comes out of. So that's creepy.
Speaker 1:And there is a scene early on where it's on closing day. Jack is sitting waiting for the manager to come take him on a tour on closing day and he's having something to eat and he's reading magazine. It's Playgirl.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and I knew that. But this person like found that it was like the january 1978 edition, I don't know, and one of the cover stories was about incest, parent and child, which I think it was just one of those like how does this happen? Kind of stories. But considering how exacting kubrick was, that was intentional and the specific injury done to danny theoretically by the woman in room 237 would be consistent with someone like kind of holding someone's neck and forcing, forcing them down.
Speaker 1:Yes, fuck yeah, it's, it's ugly um much darker than I realized yeah, I, and I knew it was dark.
Speaker 1:It's dark, and this theory talks about how the scene of jack embracing the the woman in the bathtub, woman in the bathtub is like danny's way of dealing with it, like he's kind of dreaming and and and dealing with his trauma, and so he's his father is standing in for him in the in this, and just before all of this happens, there's a scene where Danny goes into the apartment, finds his father awake and his father says come here and has him sit on his knee and they chat and it is so bizarre. It is so bizarre and and and kind of ugly. And so it's this idea of like going from something loving that is wanted, like sitting on your dad's knee and getting comfort from him, or embracing a beautiful naked woman, to something that is horrific, which is what Jack may have been forcing Danny to do, and that naked woman turning into an old, rotting ghost. So it's, I don't think it's. Wow, I think that's in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm convinced. I mean it's been a while since I saw the movie there. Yeah, I'm convinced. I mean it's been a while since I saw the movie, but yeah, I'm convinced.
Speaker 1:And here's the thing that I like one of the other reasons, like we talked, I started talking about how this is a very feminist movie. People, including this guy. I've read all like. He has like 22 chapters of interpretation of the Shining and it's really fascinating. It's really good stuff. I read all of it yesterday because I was like this is really good.
Speaker 1:But this guy he referred to Wendy as weak at one point. I was like, well, you clearly don't get that. But the reason why people think that is like, well, why didn't she leave? He is abusive and obviously she can't when they're in the overlook. But it reminds me of like the best book I've read this year. It's called the September House by Carissa Orlando, which I am sure was in part inspired by this. It's a woman who has been married to a very abusive alcoholic for like 30 years. They never had enough money. They finally have enough money to buy their own house and it turns out to be extraordinarily haunted. And he's like all right, we have to leave. And she's like no, I'm home, I'm not leaving. And one of the things she talks about is like in all these situations there are rules. So you just need to find out what the rules are and follow them, which is exactly what she's been living with with this abusive man her entire life, and so it's.
Speaker 1:The house is haunted all the time, but September is the worst, and she never put her foot down to her husband until their daughter was in danger of being harmed. Their daughter was in danger of being harmed, and the same thing happens with the house where, like she's just, she'll let it. You know, like you can always figure out the rules, there's always ways to bend until her daughter is threatened. And then at that point, because she's been kind to all the ghosts other than the like the big bad scary, they help her. And what I loved about that, that book, and what it reminded me of in this, is like what we see as weakness is a kind of core strength that you couldn't like, I'm thinking even just like you know, you bend, you twist you, you you always find ways around it, and that's not always necessarily strength, but it can be.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the thing is that we think about strength in sort of we've been taught to think about it in sort of black and white terms, when it's not, because life isn't that way. And so, ultimately, survival strategies are survivals. If you survive, then they worked right and there was strength in survival. And so if one is like, no, fuck you, I'm going to fight you and then you die, were you in fact strong? Or what did your strength get you, you know what? So I think that's part of my reaction. To get you, you know like. So I think that's that's part of that's that's part of my reaction to what you're talking about, and especially when we're talking about anyone who is in an abusive relationship and has a hard time leaving especially women, but really anyone. I think to say she's weak because she didn't leave the abusive relationship is completely unfair and just a fundamental misunderstanding of what an abusive relationship is.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and the thing that. So when Wendy hits him on the head, they are this hotel is huge. They're in the Colorado room. It's not like it's. People have made maps of the hotel but it's a little unclear how far away the kitchen is. But Jack's got to outweigh her by 40, 50 pounds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and she drags him Because she knows, because it would be very easy for her to just leave him and then go lock herself in the apartment. It would be very easy to do, but she knows we are not safe and this is the best way. And she locks him in a place where there's food and this is the best way to make sure he's okay and we're okay. And that's amazing. That is amazing and that like that level of competence which you don't see from like the the other thing. So when he and Delbert Grady are talking through the pantry door, one of the things Grady says is like your wife appears to be stronger and more resourceful than we thought to be stronger and more resourceful than we thought. And one of the things that Grady says is like are you up to this? And so like Jack is incompetent in all the things he tries to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in this film, whereas Wendy is competent in everything that she does.
Speaker 2:Right Right, mm-hmm, right Right, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Like she's an excellent mother. She's a good wife.
Speaker 2:She's an excellent caretaker.
Speaker 1:She's a good friend, she does what needs to be done to protect the people she cares about, and she gets her kid out of there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean she does have an assist on that one, but she does have an assist.
Speaker 1:but actually, even with that, like Danny probably would have survived. Well, I don't know if he would have survived, but survived long enough. Um, if Halloran hadn't arrived at that moment, like it was just if Halloran had arrived eventually. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So she got her kid out of there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, still watching. The time Is there something else.
Speaker 1:The one other interpretation that was not new to me but is like blew your mind when I mentioned it is that this film is an allegory for the genocide of Native Americans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, walk me through it, because I'm not, I, I, I don't.
Speaker 1:So this is based on a number of visual clues. So there's calumet, baking soda or baking powder, uh, in the storeroom that has a a native american in in a feathered headdress as yeah, like it's, like that's the logo of that brand. So there's things like that they talk about and this was an addition was not part of the Stephen King's book that the hotel was built on Native American burial ground.
Speaker 2:Oh, so that's one of the possible explanations for the ghosting thing too, huh.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, there are the way that the hotel is decorated. There's a point where Wendy says like, oh, are these, you know, real Indian designs? And Ullman says, yeah, it's Navajo and Apache motifs. So there's quite a bit in there. And so Kubrick was extremely critical of America. He was an American but he lived like last few 30, I don't know some years of his life in the UK, as far as I understand it. So it makes sense that this would be like some subtext he would put in that the.
Speaker 1:The movie is about how Americans just kind of come in and destroy things and the hotel is a stand in for America. Also, something else that I've seen is the way that Danny gets away from his father by stepping backwards in his footprints is reportedly was something that some Native American tribes would do to hide their path. There's quite a bit in there. People get really deep in the rabbit hole about this, and I don't think it's incorrect, considering how exacting Kubrick was. What I find ironic is that Kubrick was apparently trying to make this statement about like white colonial settlers in America, and he did that by perpetrating abuse on the female actor and the black actor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's also something like that feels really like a like a real tension for me. And if this is a statement that this white dude is making about his home country, that it then appropriates about his home country, that then appropriates Native American culture and features no Native American creatives or actors or stories, I don't know, I don't know, it just feels like there, just feels like saviorist potentially, but also just, I don't know, naive, immature, orally thought out, which I know everything kubrick did he thought about. So you know I feel a little weird saying that, but I mean it.
Speaker 1:It's like we were talking before we started recording. I was saying like he had very strong opinions, political opinions, but they weren't exactly coherent. Yeah, yeah, and that's kind of what this feels like. It's like I want to make this statement, but not like coherently think through what it means to make this statement, what the what, the implications are, or the legacy conducting myself on on set and the blood is like. The river of blood is also considered to be one of the symbols.
Speaker 1:That's, that's part of oh from native american yeah, from various genocides and and I mean, I I think there's definitely something to be said about the, the like appropriation of land and appropriation of culture and images, and and I like I think that's very interesting and important.
Speaker 2:I just, yeah, yeah, it's just, it's such a weird vehicle for it because it's like yeah, who reads the Stephen King novel and goes like, yeah, this is the way I'm going to talk about genocide of Native Americans? Yeah, kubrick does apparently.
Speaker 1:So it's possible because he was inspired by the decorations of various hotels, so like that, some of the like. There's one, I think, in California that had a lot of the kind of Native American motifs and decorations, and so it may have been like because of that, but it's, it's. It's bizarre, it's really really bizarre, which isn't you know?
Speaker 2:that's on brand for Stanley Kubrick.
Speaker 1:And like that's. I feel like ultimately that's what he wanted, is he wanted people to be talking about this movie and being like what the hell? I don't understand. And like, well, which is so different from what Stephenhen king wants to do. When you read a story of his and like, honestly, the the one thing I just I will never comprehend why he had jack nicholson. Do full jack nicholson from the beginning, like if you just have a little bit of loving father yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:A scene or two of like hey, sweetie, you know, and because even when he's at his sanest he still seems like I don't know if I want to leave you here in the hotel by yourself for the duration.
Speaker 2:All right, any final important insights before I try to synthesize back what you've shared with me final important insights, before I try to synthesize back what you've shared with me.
Speaker 1:No, I think just I really want to reiterate how important it is to have stories that are about domestic violence like this, that do show this, that do show different types of strength and that do show like a woman who's not glamorous, who is, you know, kind of simple, having this incredible character arc and prevailing in horrifying situation, like cause people talk about, like they, they, they hate when she's looking for Danny, and like she's so scared and holding the knife and I'm like why that's a rational response, like she is responding rationally to what is happening around her and she does not stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, she keeps looking for Danny.
Speaker 2:So and like that's what bravery is yeah, so well, I think that's where we started too. So so, if that's what bravery is, feminist, insofar as it's not. You didn't say this, but I'm going to. I'm going to say it this way because we often on this show talk about not like other girls, feminism. That is not what this movie gives us. Wendy Torres is just like other girls, and that's kind of the point. And she is, you know, she's mousy and selfless and maybe not so bright, unclear, and she does what she needs to to survive and to help her kids survive. And there is, there is real strength in that.
Speaker 2:Kubrick was a dick. Kubrick was a dick and that manifested in many ways, but notably in the exacting nature of his direction scene, so that Duvall was forced to be crying for 12 hours a day, five days a week, six days a week for nine months. Oh, that sounds awful. He also you noted it wasn't just exacting in what they were forced to do, but also subject to outbursts from him, which we know he was capable of containing because he protected Danny Lloyd, the child actor, on this film. He protected Danny Lloyd from that and from being a child actor in a horror film. So we know he was capable of treating his actors with care and setting up boundaries for them, and he chose not to do that.
Speaker 2:You talked a bit about adaptation as well and the ways in which adaptation like. It makes sense that Stephen King, the originator of this story, hated this adaptation which actually is not a judgment of the adaptation because King had Jack as a self-insert, and so when Kubrick made him even more horrific, even more reprehensible, with the implications of incest with his son, with the implication there is no loving father or husband inside this tortured alcoholic writer's block, failed writer, of course King hated that because he saw himself in Jack Torres, and so that that I mean that that's probably the horror writer's biggest fear, right, is that he is truly, ultimately, a monster.
Speaker 1:And King had some pretty serious substance abuse issues, and so this was in the midst of his substance abuse.
Speaker 2:I mean he wrote it or Kubrick made it in the midst of his substance abuse.
Speaker 1:I think he didn't get clean until the mid-'80s. Oh, wow, okay, I might be wrong on that. The other aspect of it is I'm sure that Wendy Torrance, as King wrote her, was based on Tabitha, his wife, who, as I understand it, is like just Sharp as a whip and all those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not mousy.
Speaker 1:Not the Shelley Duvall version of Wendy.
Speaker 2:So Tabitha does she use King? Yes, yeah, tab, the Shelley Duvall version of Wendy. So Tabitha does she use King? Yes, yeah. So Tabitha King is a not like other girls feminist. So to put a like other girls character in her, in her place or in that slot is is also probably uncomfortable for for Steven. So that's, that's an interesting piece of this, like thinking. I mean, that piece of this conversation actually really to me puts interesting new layers on the question of the death of the artist, you know, and sort of the nature of the art once it has left the artist's hands and it iterates its way through, right, like you don't, stephen King doesn't get to decide what happens to Jack Torrance once that book has been published, and that's a really interesting piece.
Speaker 1:Well, and what's kind of fascinating to me about it is, my realization yesterday, as I was rewatching and doing some research, was that Kubrick did not care that he deviated from the novel. Yeah, that wasn't his point. It wasn't the novel anymore, it was Kubrick's story that he took inspiration from and a lot of plot points from, but ultimately it didn't bother him in this life.
Speaker 2:It was fan fiction, it wasn't canon, exactly, yeah, yeah. And another piece of that too is that, even as a viewer who had read the book first, you said to me I don't know if you said it on tape, but you said it before we started recording that there were some things that Kubrick did that were better than what King did. I think you did say it, because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy so much more powerful and chilling than Jack. Like re-keying recent plays and like that.
Speaker 1:And then the other another aspect that stephen king had was, um, there was no hedge maze but there were hedge animals and they'd move and like, I'm sorry, that's just not scary. Now, some of it was like the CGI and special effects available in 1979, 1980. Couldn't have filmed it, but it was also just like I just don't find that scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a couple of the other things that we discussed was this film as intentionally incoherent. That's a piece of what Kubrick is delivering with intention. So we get the inconsistency in the name of the scary ass ghost who's egging Jack on. We get inconsistency in was it a 10-year-old and an eight-year-old, was it twins?
Speaker 2:Inconsistency in the timeline, that was Danny hurt five months ago or was it three years ago? Has Jack been sober for five months or has it been longer? Those sorts of inconsistencies that were clearly done very intentionally to keep us, as viewers not knowing what's real. I'm putting quotes around that word, so that's something that's really interesting that you talked about. And then, in the midst of that incoherence, there are these allegories that are baked in, also intentionally, of the domestic abuse, which is not allegoryory, and of, like a deeper potential sexual abuse of the child, which is, and of and this one is still like I'm just shaking my head of white people stealing land and murdering native people on this continent. I'm not saying I'm not in favor of calling that out, I'm just saying like I didn't see it in this film. What did I forget him?
Speaker 1:The story of domestic abuse and how and this is one of the like I think I can't remember if you and I talked about this recently about like feminist horror as its own, as its own genre, almost Genre. Which is interesting that, like I would consider this a part of feminist horror, even though it was written by a dude and directed by a dude, based on inspiration written by a dude.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, and directed by a dude, and, um, based on inspiration written by a dude. Yeah, but the, uh, the. What makes feminist horror what it is is that it is examining the horrors of living as a woman in our society, and so and you can get any number of different types of things from like psychological suspense to body horror, just in a woman's experience of living as female, and so I feel like this is a really good example of that. In talking about, you know, 1980 doesn't seem like it was. I mean, it does to my kids, but it doesn't seem like it was that long ago. But the number of options available to Wendy Torrance even in 1980, were so much more limited that making the best of the situation was kind of her only choice.
Speaker 2:Right, Right, I didn't know what I was in for when we sat down today. I mean, that's kind of always the case, yeah, so all right. Well, next time it's my turn and I'm going to be bringing the original Christopher Reeves Superman movie to you, which we watched when we were like when it was new.
Speaker 2:Yeah, little little, and I haven't seen it in a long time. So I'm gonna be watching it before we, before we record again so and and doing some research to to look back at at, uh, at clark kent and lois lane and and all that. So I'm looking forward to that and in the meantime, do you have some listener comments you want to share with us?
Speaker 1:I do. I changed up how we do things a little bit. I mentioned on social media that we're going to be talking about the Shining and I asked people like, do you have any hot takes? So my friend Lori told me that the last time I watched it was at the Garden City Hotel on Long Island and I realized I was staying in the same hotel room number. So she was in room 237. Oh, freaky. Oh, yeah, yeah, that would freak me out. My friend Teresa said I saw it in the theater when it first came out and I hated it. I've never watched it again.
Speaker 1:I decided then that I didn't like horror movies. So this one was so overdone it bordered on being funny. Wow, there's something funny to Jack Nicholson's. Um, agreed delivery. Yes, um, and humor and fear, or um, laughter, fear close together. So like people laughing at something terrifying is is is not unusual, yeah, um. My friend Jill says I love the book and I've seen the movie a million times.
Speaker 1:I thought it was really interesting that shining was mentioned in the Barbie movie in the car chase scene. I didn't recall that it was. So, she says. My first thought was would Sasha, which was the daughter in the Barbie movie, know that reference, but I loved that it was included because it calls out a superpower between the two women, like witchy in a good way. And then, finally, karen says Scatman Crothers' role seems under-discussed. He connects Danny to his gift and himself as a resource. The Shining could also be discussed as an abusive relationship taken to the extreme, involving intelligence, dominance and violence, taking someone deeper into darkness, and how intuition, protection and love can battle darkness with light. Nice, yeah, yeah, wow. So yeah, got some smart friends and, by the way, listener, we would love to hear your smart takes to find us on social find us on social.
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