The three astronauts knew they were looking at a potential death trap. Not long before he died, Grissom plucked a lemon from a tree at his house and told his wife, “I’m going to hang it on that spacecraft.”
1967, January 22, Gus Grissom, an American astronaut, held an unauthorized press conference in which he told reporters that the United States was “at least a decade away” from even contemplating a lunar mission. He was severely rebuked for giving that interview without permission. Following this reprimand, Gus Grissom later came out of a water tank reduced gravity simulation of the supposed lunar landing module, and hung a lemon attached to a coat-hanger in front of a NASA emblem to indicate to any cameras present, without speaking, what he and his fellow crew members, Roger Chaffee and Edward White, thought of the Apollo programme.
1967: January 27, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed on the launch pad when a flash fire engulfs their command module during testing for the first Apollo/Saturn mission. They are the first U.S. astronauts to die in the line of duty.
“This (Jasper 05) is The Diagonal, gate closed. Red top Edwardston Resident leads the cars up the gulch that is Pier’s Gill. The Way into East VWX Town has been blocked — by a coffee cup with Ernst’s Birds, Fish, Snake on it. The Fox rules this picture.”
“Then (Jasper 06) the gate is open. Cars can proceed down the broad highway. This is the opening to VHC City, but also East VWX Town. VHC City must now, or in the near future, act as a substitute for East VWX Town. Right now there is an artificial suspension of importance. VWX Town rules uber alles. This is because of the power of The Woods. The Woods must give partial power to VHC City in order to itself survive, or at least live longer. A dual pole is needed, Alpha and Omega. Right now the Alpha and Omega are sort of condensed in VWX Town, see.”
Probably nothing, but here’s a fellow named Carl Munck who formulated his code, sourced in the Giza pyramids, about the same time as The Shining was being filmed. I’ve checked through all of these pages in shot 437, and MUnck (Münck?) may be the most deviant variation of Jack in the prime sentence.
Remember that we’ve just seen a pyramid related object highlighted by a white speck in the shot before this (436), as well as a large red sparkle toward the end of the shot. This doesn’t seem chance. But what of the possible Carl Munck connection? Is Kubrick saying that Jack has become just as crazy as Munck with his huge matrix of geomantic number connections… page after page after page after page?
Also keep in mind here the thought that The Shining’s sno-cat, the rescue vehicle for Wendy and Danny, is a symbol for the Sphinx, which Munck claims in this video (1:48) is more a kitten than a full grown cat.
Rather than looking at it as crazy Jack simply having typed the same phrase over and over again in a fit of insanity, the repeated phrase is another expression of this deja vu and repeating patterns, such as in the world maze where we had the same repeating patterns ad infinitum. [my emph] This repeated phrase is, after all, a Kubrick invention. It did not appear in the King book.
I only half suspected that the false enlightenment themes of The Shining were related to the Eye of Providence until an email correspondent pointed out an important set detail in the Colorado Lounge. It’s seen only once in the film. As Wendy leans forward to flick through Jack’s manuscript there is a slightly out of focus strip of colourful designs on the ceiling that do not look like Native American designs. The strip contains alternating blue and red triangles, each with a circular object in the centre. They look very much like the eyeball and triangle design featured on the Clockwork Orange poster. Is this the Eye of Providence?
Quite bizarre. But we must get back to the Barry>Shining theme, and the new twist of Stanley’s *landing strip*.