Shining Theories

   For this entry I’m going to be covering a film a bit more well-known then Grave of the Fireflies.

   While I’m sure most people have at least heard of The Shining, the movie in a nutshell is about a writer recovering from alcoholism that gets a job as a winter caretaker of a huge hotel and goes to stay there with his family. They’re stuck in the hotel all winter due to the snow, and the writer eventually goes crazy (from ghosts who apparently haunt the hotel or cabin fever) and tries to kill his family with an axe. He eventually wanders out into the snow and dies while his family escapes.

    So apparently, The Shining has a huge cult following of conspiracy theorists that say the film is full of different subliminal messages and hidden meanings. This article briefly goes over the cult following and some of their theories, saying that while some of the theories are certainly very strange, others are very interesting. This essay is quite well-known as it goes over one the earliest theories about the film, saying that the movie is actually about the genocide of the Native Americans.

 

   This is going to be a bit different form some of my other posts mainly because I couldn’t find anything about the director’s thoughts on any of these theories, but I think this kind of thing is still important to the original question. How valid are these theories? Going off the essay, the writer obviously managed to find some evidence of how his theory was supported. But how valid is the evidence even? Many of these theories are just going off continuity errors. One of the theories I read about was a poster of Dopey from Snow White being on the door of the kid in the film, but not being there later. Apparently this means that the child is no longer “dopey” or rather, he understands what is happening better. 

    A lot of these theories might have come about simply because the director, Stanley Kubrick, has a history of making very surreal films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange. Obviously this film MUST have a deeper meaning besides just an interesting horror film. A chair is in a slightly different position then it was before? There must be some symbolism there! It can’t just be a continuity error. 

    Maybe it’s because these theories are so outlandish that I have trouble swallowing them. But does the strangeness make them any less acceptable then a theory more grounded in reality? Honestly, my opinion so far is leaning towards “if there is acceptable evidence to back up a theory, it is more valid”. These theories are odd, but considering the director’s past work and the evidence found to support them, they’re more acceptable than many other theories.