Category Archives: Shining, The

January 24, 2014 · 4:25 am

There is above the lamp in the entry to the inner apartment of 237 a picture and at its bottom one of the shadowy forms occasionally seen in the photographs of the lodge instead of the usual chronicle of faces arranged about a table. One has here a sense of something like the abyss, and a great question mark concerning the figure staring across that great desert–though the picture appears to be of a lake. The image blends with other background paintings in the hotel that are instead wastes of snow. Knowing that later Jack will come up to Room 237 to inspect it, the silhouette presence in the image imparts the impression of it being Jack.

Kearns points out a very interesting, apparent transformation of this silhouette figure into a boiler switch in the subsequent crossfade. I’ve captured some screen shots to show the effect. When I first read about this, I thought that maybe Juli was looking too deep at this particular aspect, and seeing too much.

I believe I’ve changed my mind, given that the switch is red, and the very next scene transition, a cut this time, has almost directly overlapping red rectangles. Toggle back and forth between successive frames around this cut pictured below to see the effect. How much did Kubrick plan?? I haven’t even begun to reach the depth.

Red rectangle at bottom of safety poster…

… transforms into rectangular red bottom of pack of Marlboro cigarettes.

So let’s back up and see what Juli has to say about that boiler switch/painting silhouette match. I’ll focus on the provided pictures:

Fig. 17 – The silhouette in the painting at the entry of Room 237.

Fig. 18 – The silhouette in the painting at the entry of Room 237 begins to overlay the boiler in the basement.

Fig. 19 – The silhouette in the painting at the entry of Room 237 seems to reverse orientation, when it is instead a switch on the boiler becoming more prominent.

Fig. 20 – The switch on the boiler in the basement.

As the silhouette from the painting fully merges into the hardware on the boiler, and the crossfade ends, Wendy leans to the right so that the lean of her posture mimics the silhouette/hardware. We will see this kind of side-leaning mimicry again when Jack knocks a number of objects to the ground on his way to the Gold Room, in the scene where he comes upon all the balloons. In that scene, the side-lean will be observed also in a poster beyond Jack.

Here’s the leaning Wendy, seeming to mimic the angle of the red and black boiler switch in question to her left.

Again, I now think Ms. Kearns is definitely on to something here. So let’s look again at the chOking poster also displayed not once but twice in this particular Shining shot… this is shot 263 of the film according to Kearns’ counting. Quoting her again…

The unique CH O KING poster has the 0 slightly truncating the red form of the pyramid or plane below, which reminds of Wendy’s action of operating the can opener over a crossfade of the mountain in the Tuesday section which results in a sort of truncation of the mountain so it is concealed from view for the remainder of the movie.

We will learn in a little while that a “crazy woman” has attempted to strangle Danny in the bathroom of room 237. The crossfade from room 237 to Wendy in the boiler room when Danny asks if she’s in there, and the presence of the CH O KING poster and the pinups of the nudes could place Wendy in Room 237 symbolically if not literally, or are simply revealing to us the story of what is happening to Danny at this very moment.

She then provides this close up of the poster, which I’ve already displayed in the 1st post of this little series just below. Here it is again.

Continuing…

No two ways about it, we’ve no ordinary safety poster here giving instruction on what to do in the case of choking. The lettering is hand done and has the feel of 1950s/1960s horror film movie poster lettering. We see above the truncated pyramid, in the O, what appears to be a human face, mouth open in a large O. A depiction of a choking individual? The Blu-Ray’s colors are more intense and one wonders what is that red field down below the mouth? It doesn’t appear red in the DVD, and there are some scenes in the Blu-Ray where the colors are so completely wrong it’s a travesty. Can we take this as an image of Danny being choked? We also can glean here the image of Danny screaming in horror of Dick’s being killed.

Keep in mind we see *2* CH O KING posters in shot 263, one in the boiler room, and another in the utility room just outside, with the washers and dryers. We’ve also already seen this in a photo above, (far left center) representing the very last frame of the shot. The 2 posters appear identical; twinned.

Green and gold Wendy runs between green washers and golden dryers to end shot 263.

(continued in)

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January 23, 2014 · 4:05 pm

Monkeys (Hey Hey!)

TEXT SOON.

http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=205856&page=33

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January 23, 2014 · 2:09 pm

Gray (S)adler

http://idyllopuspress.com/idyllopus/film/shining_tuesday.htm

208 MS Jack. (45:47)

Wendy exiting, as she reaches the end of the rainbow painting, cut back to Jack from the angle of where she had been standing. As we hear her footsteps continuing across the floor, Jack returns to work. The scrapbook shows different images and paper is already in the carriage. This shot of Jack appears out of joint with the others, his temperament and face dramatically different, no hint of rage there, but Kubrick has styled the shot so that Wendy’s departing footsteps heard over it tie the cuts together aurally.

The door beyond is now hidden by the lamp. Jack’s position conceals whether or not the table and chair, which were there then gone then returned, are there or not.

Juli contends this is the *real* (or realer) Jack typing the horror story based on the scrapbook he found in the Boiler Room (in King’s book; not shown in or edited out of Kubrick’s film, however, as discussed previously). The typewriter has changed colors from white to gray in the meantime.

Later on in her “Tuesday” section, Juli reveals her “base plan” starting with the above photo…

Jack’s expression is so different here, I really do feel like this is one of the few “real” shots in the film (there are a couple of others), and that the rest are only Kubrick allegory world and mental scenes from Jack working away on his novel. None of this really happens. It is a story. And that’s all right. After all, it’s only a story anyway. It’s fiction from beginning to end.

The film is full of impossibilities from beginning to end, and I have said repeatedly that one can’t approach this realistically. I really do think we have two stories, that of the writer who is at a lodge typing out his story, perhaps one a lot like Stephen King, an alcoholic with anger problems, and the story is inspired by this and a working out of it. And the story is also an allegory, a vehicle for the story Kubrick is intending to tell.

I’ve already discussed this idea of a story within a story (within a story) as well, most likely inspired by an earlier study of Kearns’ massive Shining document. Back to the Base Plan… Juli gives a list of some of the movie’s perceived “90 degree turns” and inexplicable, attached disappearances. She then states…

Fig. 48 – Pyramid and pyramidal trapezoid, monolith, vanishing point and single point perspective, all wrapped up in one, but the apex (and, hence, the vanishing point, the pyramid, the angle of convergence) is obscured.

An expresion for these 90 degree/right angle turns and the disappearances and appearances that seem to be associated with them I again find in the “vanishing point” (angle of convergence) of the trapezoid pyramid shape that is repeated throughout the film. Again, when one views this not as just a trapezoid but a rectangle viewed from an extreme perspective we find in it the disappearing angle of the vanishing point.

Kubrick consistently expresses the trapezoidal pyramid shape in the film with a circle above as if obscuring the angle of convergence. Take a look at the sconce on the wall above Jack’s head and how we have this expressed even in the shadow created by the light and the bottom of the sconce being what obscures the angle of convergence. This is an example of what I’m talking about. A simple expression of light and shadow and geometry.

We see the same later in the peculiar choking poster.

We see it implied in the Colorado flag.

She goes on to give several other examples of this vanishing point, including a corner of the hotel related scrapbook in one shot that appears to be altered by Kubrick to represent this. I personally think Kearns is on to something. She concludes her “Tuesday” section with the following, directly connected to the scrapbook’s sudden, unexplained appearance in the film…

Up to this point in The Shining, things had been going fairly well for Wendy and Danny and Jack at the Overlook, in as much as he hadn’t entered his crisis yet, that state of obsession in which he types over and over again the one phrase, “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” But that has now changed. The shift has been made.

Things could even said to be heading *south* from this point on.

(continued?)

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Tagged as MONOLITH

January 22, 2014 · 4:35 am

Reversed: Danny strangles Jack!

http://www.synchromysticismforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=602&start=60

Brought to you by the makers of “What’s Up Doc?”.

Steptoe Series 04

(continued from)

A second, smaller Danny-head suddenly appears from the back of his first head, turning the opposite way.

What we have here in this 4 part collage animation is a meshing of several separate scenes from The Shining. The Danny related images — head, arm, dart, extra head — come from early in the film, when he first directly encounters the Grady Twins while playing darts in the game room of hotel the family’s just arrived at. Danny throws 3 darts at the board, scores no points apparently, (missing the scoring area each time) and then goes up to the board and pulls 2 of the 3 darts out before being “alerted” to the presence of the twins behind him. We’ve also spoken about how the board in front of him would have a backwards 2-3-7 in alternating numbers (culled from Kearns’ research once more). The last dart he pulled was right below the 3 in the center, reinforcing this. There’s no doubt, to me, that the character Danny sees all this, and attaches the dartboard with Room 237 later on in the film. He’s a bright boy — he “shines” even. 🙂

Why is Danny then throwing a dart at Steptoe Butte, and at a giant ear no less? We’ve identified the ear as that of Michael Stipe, lead singer of the REMs. Michael Stipe has been translated, through the not-to-be-underestimated power of Carrcass-1, into the variant Steptoe Butte (same name as the mountain), heading a variant band known as Murmur (in “our” reality, the name of the 1st album of REM). The giant ear seems to be about their music, since it is Stipe’s. I’ve already speculated, I believe, (writing this several weeks after the last collage interpretation) that this is more about the belittled early single “Shiny Happy People”. And this brings us directly to the second, major section of The Shining indicated in Collage 04 images: the Jack-Lloyd bar scene. Or actually scenes plural, since Jack visits the time warp bar on two separate occasions while living in the hotel. From the bar scenes, we have Jack’s head, Lloyd’s head, and the lighted top of the bar itself between them. In a two tier process, these second Shining elements emerge from behind the first (Danny-dart throwing). And in Collage 04c, we have an interesting transformation of Danny’s dart into what appears to be a cigarette or maybe a cigar. But perhaps it is a marijuana cigarette instead — a joint? Anyway, it certainly also doubles as a lighted fuse if so, and in Collage 04d, the final permutation, the background Jack-Lloyd stuff disappears in a flash of white hot light, taking Danny’s arm and transformed dart with it, and also the inverted VW bug (blue) rushing toward the mountain in 04a, 04b, and 04c. I suppose that would be another, different aspect of The Shining to figure in here — Jack driving the VW bug up to the hotel at the beginning of the movie, and then again (plural scenes once more), when taking wife Wendy and son Danny to the hotel after procuring the winter caretaker position. The VW has reversed position and color (yellow to blue) from Collage 03 before this. I believe it represents a switch from emphasis on Tom’s Petty High (Tom Petty variant band) to Murmur (REM variant band) in Carrcass-1, per the colors demonstrated in Collage 00, 01, and 02 already (red = Story Room, yellow = Tom’s Petty High, blue = Murmur). That Danny’s head rests atop Stipe’s torso and Stipe’s ear projects from Steptoe Butte in Collage 04 reinforces this interpretation.

Bull’s eye becomes Bull’s ear — what does this mean, then? We’ve all heard the expression eye for an eye (and tooth for tooth), which means retributions will equal damages done. The ear is on top of Steptoe Butte, and Stipe has become the same as Steptoe in variant terms… so the mountain’s top represents *his* top (or head — ears included). That Stipe’s *eye* shows up on Danny’s bigger head in Collage 04d is telling… as the ear disappears at the same time after being present in 04a, 04b, and 04c. I believe that the spirit of Danny has quote unquote possessed the head of Stipe, or Stipe allowed this takeover — for the purposes of enacting the collage animation. When the process ends, i.e., the Jack-Lloyd elements have been manifested and then destroyed, in effect, then Danny can allow Stipe to repossess the head, eye returned (and perhaps the rest of the head’s elements shortly). The smaller Danny head then emerges from the back of the larger Danny head, which is being returned to Stipe, we’ll say. This smaller head then becomes the true Danny-head after this. The head turns around from the position of the first. In The Shining, this is when Danny turns his head away from the dartboard to view the Grady Twins. The dart game appears to be over, just as the Jack-Lloyd bar elements of Collage 04 and the Steptoe collage series as a whole have ended.

Moving on for now: what happens in Collage 05?

Well, The twins are also seen there (!), but in a grassy meadow and not in the game room. We’re still near Steptoe Butte with this picture’s background, so one can imagine the smaller and now truer Danny-head actually sees this collage when turning around from Steptoe Butte itself. He sees the twins, but he also sees Jack from the very end of The Shining movie, positioned like The Devil in his namesake tarot card as also already talked about quite a lot in this blog. I’ve also seen discussion about the Grady Twins being identified with The Twins card (card 6 of the Major Arcana, as The Devil is card 15), and there’s actually a degraded version of what appears to be these same twins in card 15, now loosely chained to the devil itself and not free.

And there’s yet another tarot card more obviously present in Collage 05: The World, its final (21st) trump card. Behind the first physical appearance of the Grady Twins in the movie is a controversial poster seeming to depict, in a lower resolution capture, some kind of horned being surrounded by what might be an ourobouros image, or a snake swallowing its tail. To me, it seemed very similar to the circular wreath of “The World” card, and earlier in this blog I made an attempt to overlap the two and discuss the results. Through Collage 05, I’ve now more successfully integrated the two, and also incorporated Jack’s image as the devil. How is this done? Through the bull pictured on The World Card, which lies in the lower left corner to us. Simply put, I substituted the bull’s head of the card with Jack’s, or, more accurately, superimposed Jack’s head atop the bull’s. The bull represents Taurus in the card, one of the four fixed signs of astrology along with Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius. Each of these signs are represented in the card by figures: bull for Taurus as spoken about, lion for Leo, eagle for Scorpio, and man for Aquarius.

“The World” tarot card.

Danny first sees the Grady Twins, w/ controversial poster under discussion highlighted.

(continued in)

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January 21, 2014 · 7:51 am

Steptoe Series 03

(continued from)

bb:

As usual, Hucka D., I’m rushed for time, even though I should have a bunch of time.

Hucka D.:

Too many projects. Too many project reviews. That’s good!

bb:

So I’m enlisting your help again.

Hucka D.:

No. You can do it.

—–

This is Collage 4 of the Steptoe collage series, which is in four parts of an animation. We’ll call these 04a, 04b, 04c, 04d. The above is 04a. Hucka D. wants me to do this alone. We have Jack’s VW bug, but reversed in color from yellow to blue, and heading the opposite way from the previous collage (Collage 03) already reviewed. Jack’s son Danny from The Shining also re-emerges here, or at least his head and arm. He’s already appeared the Steptoe series in Collage 02, also an animation, and taking place in the midst of a small Washington state cemetery named Stipe (variant name: McConnell). Collage 03 also takes place in the same general vicinity, or at the entrance to the same cemetery. In Collage 04, we also haven’t moved far away, staying in the area to visit Steptoe Butte about 10 miles to the nw of the cemetery. The butte is a very prominent landmark, rising about 1000 feet from the surrounding, flatter terrain. It can probably be spied from the cemetery itself. So what is happening in the 4 part Collage 04 animation? The figure of 04a has Danny’s head, true, but a different body. It’s that of REM lead singer Michael Stipe, culled from an earlier Jan. blog post. Danny, with his own hand, is playing a game of darts not with a dartboard but Steptoe Butte itself, with the traditional board’s bullseye being replaced by an ear. Eye for an ear. It is then a bull’s ear. So what does *this* mean? Hucka D. is still not going to help me. The ear is that of Michael Stipe again, severed from the head and placed near the top of the butte. As Stipe is a musician, we might assume this has to do with hearing or listening to his music. And I think the particular song inferred here is “Shiny Happy People”, as will become evident during the animation’s progression. So here we have ear substituted for eye; Michael Stipe’s body substituted for Danny’s; and Jack’s VW car and car shadow reversed. Keep in mind as well that Steptoe Butte has become a variant name of Michael Stipe himself — Michael and this standalone mtn. have become one and the same in the collage series. As Stipe/Steptoe Butte have been assoc. with the color blue through the cube topped Story Room figure, it seems that the change in Jack’s VW color signifies that we have moved into REM territory and away from Tom Petty’s yellow.

Tom Petty’s signature song of Carrcass-10 is “Running Down a Dream”, dubbing the very first part of the movie where we have the golden bug navigating through huge ~~Montana~~ Colorado mountains. If we run with the current theory, then the REMs’ primary or significant song is “Shiny Happy People”, although their later hit “Stand” is also included in Carrcass-10 (as Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More” represents his own second and last entry in C-10). The reason I believe this is that pictorial elements dubbed by this song in The Shining begin to appear in Collage 04b, which would be the Jack-Lloyd scenes at the bar of the hotel’s Gold Room.

The dart and the ear are still there, true, but behind them is now the head of Jack and Lloyd respectively. Also significant is that the lighted bar glass appears in the road below them, a seeming continuation of the white trailing VW from 04a. The original photo I took all 3 of these Gold Room elements from is this one.

In Collage 04c, the held dart and target ear have vanished altogether, leaving us with a plain view of Jack and Lloyd the bartenders’ heads. The inverted blue VW has reappeared, but further away and on Steptoe Butte itself now, forming a tight pyramid-type triangle with the 2 aforementioned heads.

This is a continuation of the animation of 04a (car with light shadow) and 04b (lighted bar top), and now it can be inferred that the bar itself is one with this inverted VW and its shadow. The road leading to Steptoe Butte gives the appearance of a runway (related to Petty’s “Runaway”??), and I think back to the Barry-Shin(i)n(g) 03 post and the close proximity of Barry, Minnesota with a Stanley Field airstrip.

Danny’s dart also seems to have transformed into a cigarette, losing its red tail in the process. A wiff of smoke emerging from the point opposite Jack gives the illusion that he’s smoking this “cig”. I believe this particular drug vice is substituting for the Jack Daniels drink that Jack actually partakes of at this bar, as poured by Lloyd the bartenter. Smoking a cigarette equates with drinking the Jack Daniels in a glass.

*But*, in reference to the next and last part of the 4 part Collage 04, the cigarette also infers a lighted fuse that, when burned down, will *explode* Jack and also his bartender, his inverted VW heading right for him, and even Danny’s arm holding the cigarette/fuse.

(continue to)

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January 19, 2014 · 7:56 pm

Red Book

Why is a copy of C.G. Jung’s Red Book on Ullman’s Table in the Interview section of The Shining?

How was there even a copy available at the time (circa. 1980)? In fact, there couldn’t have been.

Given the prominence of Red in The Shining already highlighted here, the Red Book in all its facets may become super important.

Aha! A mention of Jung’s Red Book in The Shining, *before* it was published. The blog post compares it to the similarly red “Catcher in the Rye” book, seen in the scene prior to this. Super!

http://overlaphotel.blogspot.com/2013/08/catcher-in-rye-with-diamonds.html

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January 19, 2014 · 8:28 am

Steptoe Series 02

(continued)

bb:

Hucka D., I may call on your help tonight. The Steptoe series is a tough one to analyze.

Hucka D.:

Not really. So in Collage 03 (above) we have the actual start of The Shining film depicted. Jack’s yellow Volkswagen is heading up the Going to the Sun Road in Montana — that’s where it’s shot. But the road has been replaced by the dirt road to Stipe Cemetery in Washington state.

bb:

I could have said that!

Hucka D.:

Yes but you didn’t. And now I’m here. So just listen [ basically]. Baker Bloch is front center in the collage. The collage is separated into 2 basic parts, the left side being the entrance to the Stipe Cemetery, and the right the field to its immediate west. There we have a mashup of Jack’s body with Hallorann’s, the African-American person he murdered in the movie (but didn’t in the source novel). And also Danny, don’t you think? That’s Danny’s head that Jack is holding, in effect.

bb:

It’s not but it is.

Hucka D.:

Yes. So this mashup of figures deals with all the confusions of The Shining, and Jack as abusing Danny, and Hallorann and Danny’s special shine bonding — an arm appears like a foot. It’s all the confusions of The Shining in one composite. A kind of mess, in a manner. The image started as just Hallorann lying in this field. Then he acquires Jack’s head, and Danny’s head along with it. Danny’s arm subs for one of Hallorann’s legs. It speaks of the intertwined destiny of these 3 characters: Jack is bound to axed Hallorann to death, and Danny is bound to then kill Jack in the maze. It’s all set up beforehand, like a play… like a movie of course. So the right hand side is all this, and the left hand side is the beginning of the movie, all lean and clean and cleared of confusion. Do you know what this is, then?

bb:

It’s the beginning of Carrcass-10, the trimmed down version of the film. Clean and lean, or cleaner and leaner.

Hucka D.:

Yes. It’s the same start as the movie visually — Jack Torrance’s yellow bug driving through the huge mountains to the lodge. But it’s — what do you call them?

bb:

What?

Hucka D.:

The variant band that plays here.

bb:

Oh. Tom’s Petty High. That’s Tom Petty’s variant band.

Hucka D.:

So it’s playing here instead. Just let, as you said I believe, the first of the music fall on the first frame of the film, where we see little Wild Goose Island. So cute. So mirrored. So the yellow bug accompanied by Tom’s Petty Band soundtrack now, a new, different music — not better…

bb:

No. Just different. Variant.

Hucka D.:

Yes. That now takes us up to the lodge and Jack’s interview. In your Carrcass-10, you still have part of the interview, the crucial part describing the past axe murders several years back in the hotel. Then you have the start of Story Room.

bb:

So the yellow ball Danny finds in the cemetery is the same as his father’s yellow VW bug.

Hucka D.:

Yes. A reinterpretation. A repurposing.

bb:

It’s the yellow bug at the hotel, which is the same as this cemetery, going back to the fact that the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground, perhaps.

Hucka D.:

The cemetery is the hotel. And that’s where we first pick up the Shining-Steptoe resonance.

bb:

So getting back to Collage 03, we have golfer Tom Kite, who is probably still playing on the senior circuit but who was more famous back in the 80s, I suppose.

Hucka D.:

About the same time as The Shining movie, yes.

bb:

He’s center as well, directly in front of Baker Bloch. He’s swinging a club. There’s an odd(er) object in the sky, an “i” shape. Perhaps the golf ball he hits is represented by this.

Hucka D.:

Yes. The golf ball is light.

bb:

Hmm.

Hucka D.:

We should… go ahead. You go.

bb:

We should probably state that McConnell Cemetery on the sign behind him is the same as Stipe Cemetery. Another variant name?

Hucka D.:

Perhaps. So another Tom — and the Kite part of his name refers to the expression, “high as a kite”. This has to do, then, with Tom’s Petty High again. The song is a drug song. Tom was flying in the car, singing his little Runaway Beach song.

bb (ignoring wrong title of song):

So Tom and the car are inextricably tied together. The golf ball or whatever that is in the sky, is high. The scene on the right, Hucka D., may represent the past of Jack, Danny, and Hallorann, before the events of The Shining movie take place. Jack and Danny already have a history in Boulder and before. Hallorann’s been shining since he was a kid. Jack himself could make a clean start as winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. It was a beautiful day and the sun shone down. Everything is flying, clean, different. He’s going to the sun.

Hucka D.:

Good. So we have a new start. Old problems left behind, hopefully. The “i” points up instead of down. But the right part of this collage also speaks of the inevitable doom that lays ahead. Jack-Danny-Hallorann, all bound up with each other in the end. So he’s carrying all this with him, like an impossibly large amount of luggage packed in this little car.

bb:

Baker Bloch is attached to the car because it is his Carrcass-10, through me his user.

(continue)

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January 16, 2014 · 3:18 am