If I made any right decisions in my life, it was how I consumed “The Shining” (1980) and its sequel, “Doctor Sleep” (2019). I was able to enjoy the latter without suffering in comparison because I watched it so long after the prior. I read the novel as if in some alternate timeline divorced from both—probably before I became an adult. After I saw “Doctor Sleep,” I wanted to have a double showing. Just under three years later, HBO MAX made that desire a possible by making both films available for streaming. Mom is losing her memory, which has erased decades of deriding horror movies as demonic. She is restored to her original settings and enjoys horror movies again so we started with “The Shining” (1980), which I still love and holds up after four decades. This essay is not a review, but a collection of impressions about Stanley Kubrick’s classic and will contain spoilers from the novel and the films.
Kubrick’s cinematic adaptation of the novel does not make it clear that the hotel specifically wants Danny, and that Danny has amplified the Overlook’s supernatural shenanigans. Instead Danny seems as dangerous as his father as if he is possessed until the denouement when Wendi reads Redrum in a mirror. Danny and Jack experience the supernatural, but never talk about it until Danny breaks off-screen under questioning from his mother after sustaining visible injuries. Jack Nicholson chewed the scenery as Jack Torrance, who seemed mad from the jump so King’s criticism of his casting is fair, but King underappreciated Kubrick and Shelley Duvall’s creation of Wendi as the Final Girl.
“The Shining” roots its horror in Wendi taking on more than her fair share of the social contract as a mother and wife and surprising herself when she is forced to rise above her circumstances. Kubrick rarely shows the family in a single frame or establishes them as normal maybe because he thinks that they never were with or without The Overlook.
Wendi reminded me of Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” franchise for being able to withstand most of the stressors that the males in her family could not, but unlike Leia, appears to be falling apart while keeping it together. Duvall embodies the contradiction of her character. Her husband wants to move to an unfamiliar area not once but twice. She is enthusiastic and encouraging! Her kid speaks in a strange voice. She does not call the exorcist and plays along. Her husband screams at her for wanting company and checking on him while he is working. She just makes herself smaller and avoids him while finding a flash of adult company with a ham radio. She adapts and never questions her role. Unlike the novel, Kubrick shows Wendi doing everything, including maintaining the boiler room, which is a caretaker role, not Jack. She does not mind doing all the cooking and watching their son. How does she get rewarded? By waking up to a nightmare. Wendi accepts everything, even psychological abuse, with a good spirit until it becomes physical. When Wendi strikes Jack with the bat, Duvall nails it by expressing as much surprise as Nicholson does. This woman is as close to a realistic, unglamorous, emotional Stepford wife as a woman can be and even she has someone within her who screams, “Enough!” For her, the horror begins when she realizes that everything she has done was to accommodate her husband writing, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Even if Jack had not physically attacked her afterwards, that revelation wakes her up and makes her question everything. She unquestioningly believed in her husband’s talent, and THIS was the work that she was serving. When Jack ridicules her decision making during his staircase attack, it is painful because it probably echoes what she is already thinking.
Until Jack physically attacks Wendi, she is immune to the Overlook’s psychic attacks and Jack’s abuse. If one watched “The Shining” in a vacuum, one would suspect that Danny got his powers from his dad’s side because they are the only ones vulnerable to the hotel’s influence. Kubrick creates an image of toxic masculinity as demonic before the term was coined. The reality of Wendi conflicts with Jack’s image of his wife as a burden. Jack could not find a more compliant and uncomplaining spouse if he tried, and yet she is not good enough for him because he believes that she only sees him as a child abuser. He is not wrong because she lashes out at him when Danny is visibly wounded, but it is a rational reaction if no one else is in the hotel and given Jack’s history. She unquestioningly accepts Danny’s off-screen vindication of his dad, which shows her relief and willingness to revert to believing in her husband, but is sufficient proof to Jack that Wendy never supported him.
I am sympathetic to Jack as a writer whose self-image is rooted in his work. He has this idea that under the right circumstances, he can become a great writer. If a writer is on a roll, becoming infuriated at any interruption is human though not acceptable. The Outlook is a turning point to discover whether he is talented, just some guy who needs to move on or talented but unable to execute. He cannot bear to grapple with the truth about himself so Wendi becomes this blank slate for him to project all his frustrations about his lack of talent and/or discipline, his fear of not providing for his family and his awareness that his life and place in society pales in comparison to where he thought that it should be. Jack’s horror is based in how society makes it more acceptable for men to blame their families as if they are something that happened to them, not choices that they made, than to be introspective.
The Outlook, like society, encourages violence over self-awareness or improvement by inflating his ego. Jack’s desire to be a writer shifts to devotion to the Outlook, his employer, a gender-normative acceptable alternative to sacrificing his individuality, his agency, dreams, family, and humanity. He accepts the social contract and sells his soul because it is easier than accepting his deficiencies and changing. Wendi does actual work. Jack plays and pretends at productivity in exchange for privilege. Everyone values his fake work more than her real work. If anyone threatens to expose reality, it is met with violence. My mom noticed that the first time that Kubrick shows Jack playing, not writing, the sound of a ball hitting the wall sounds like gun shots. Kubrick draws a continuum of violence that starts in ways that are not considered violent. Nicholson stares catatonically out the window at his family playing like Danny seeing future visions of violence.
“The Shining” depicts Jack as a man who knows his lines during the interview and his interactions with the hotel’s apparitions, but is not as good at improv as his wife when his expectations of how a scene should go fall flat. I’m fascinated by Jack’s internal conflict. He believes that he loves his son. His horror after the bad dream of murdering his son was genuine yet when he is awake, he loves The Outlook and echoes the Grady girls’ desire to be there forever. He is willing to pay the price of murdering his son for malevolent ghosts to treat him well. More than Danny, he knows that The Overlook is death disguised as a willing naked woman or servants happy to serve him. He recognizes and confronts Grady. He questions Lloyd’s generosity. He knows better and still loves it. He is an example of informed consent. He is a dry drunk. Unlike the other characters, his story is circular. He is the ancestor to the Midsommar protagonist-sleepless, susceptible and happy. His ending has a retroactive effect that reverberates to the past as reflected in early photographs of him in the hotel before he was born. He continues an institutional tradition of patriarchy, embraces a death cult, and becomes the high priest to a temple devoted to human sacrifice.
I absolutely disagree with anyone that suggests that The Overlook is not a fourth character in “The Shining”, and that the human characters’ delusions explain the supernatural developments. This family cannot share delusions considering how estranged they are from each other. Danny sees everything that happens later in the film, but never shares those visions with his parents. When Jack talks to Grady, Grady reveals information about Danny and Halloran that no one else knows about. Jack has barely hung out with his son. He does not know that Danny and Halloran have powers or even spoke to each other. Jack maybe thinks that his son is sick. The hotel knows because the hotel is omnipresent and supernatural. Danny never told his mom about his visions other than the woman in the bathtub who strangled him yet Wendi sees the blood pouring around the elevator bank once she becomes vulnerable to the hotel’s influence. When the hotel controls Jack, Jack only gets angry at the prospect of Danny or Wendi leaving, but Jack is not invested in them staying there. Also Wendi and Jack would concur that Wendi trapped Jack in a kitchen storeroom, but The Overlook releases him.
The irony of the alliance between Jack and The Outlook is that because it is rooted in patriarchy, not merit, they are doomed to fail. The Outlook explicitly acknowledges it. Because Wendi is not susceptible and surprisingly resourceful despite her demeanor, she is not an option, but The Outlook tries to neutralize her by attacking Danny and Jack at the same time and making her choose which one to save. It is a no brainer: nightmare versus visible injuries. Danny is a child. Despite The Outlook’s advantages, a hysterical, bookworm, couch potato, chain smoking wife beats it. Kubrick did not intend to create a film about evil’s Achilles heel, but I left with that message. Be a mess, but fight.
