This makes sense. Many elements in The Shining are hotel and winter related. One of the old time bands in the movie played full-time in a hotel that was closed for the winter. In this case, Banff is most know for it's hotel which years ago was closed for the winter. Also, the road in the beginning of the movie, is also closed during the winter.
Rob Ager goes into some depth regarding the Native American genocide themes embedded in the film. Because I'm half Navajo, I recognized some of the designs and art, like the large Yei sandpaintings in the lounge above the fireplace. I think Ager misinterpreted some of the use of the art, but missed a couple of important elements. Kubrick had to have researched Navajo art because of the rugs and massive sandpainting. The other Southwestern art is more decoration than containing messages because there is variety, and not all of the depicted Natives died through extermination. For the most part, I think the designs were chosen for their patterns and to give subliminal continuity to the sense of embedded mazes that can be inescapable. The hotel itself is an impossible maze. In my understanding of why we depict Yei in our art, it wouldn't have relational significance to this film's story. The designs and overall theme of genocide may have been intentional to provoke or elicit a sense of internal guilt for viewers, which was layered with elements of confusion, isolation, and fear. Kubrick tapped into a lot of hidden emotion during a period of time when the U.S. was not ready to necessarily confront it. We still had boarding schools. The film was just after the Civil Rights era began. The who of the Natives is not as important as the idea of their being hunted and murdered by the U.S. government, which was uncomfortable at the time as an acknowledgment because of U.S. prosperity during the mid century. Westerns depicted our people as the enemy or as murdering savages, so Kubrick used it as a way to imply threat hidden in the maze of Jack's transformation and the physical maze of the environment. The viewer builds these associations from their respective pairing of the stimuli and longstanding prejudices, which were common at the time.
Thanks for your insight and explanation! I have watched Rob Ager's videos several times. They provide a good analysis. I have never found an exact copy of the sand painting in the Colorado Lounge on the internet, so I started to draw the sand painting using screengrabs from the film. I also drew the carpets and floor paintings in the Lobby. The mazes in the Shining are a story in themselves. There are different versions, such as the floor plan outside the entrance, the model maze in the Lobby and Jack's vision when he looks at the model. They are all different. The fact that Kubrick used many hidden emotions will come across differently to European audiences than to Americans. Perhaps that is why Stanley made two versions.
@deltabuilder You may be right, I have never actually thought about the difference between the intended audiences. That is a fascinating point. Also, yes, when Jack gazes down at the hedge maze it isn't a literal scale model, neither is the maze from the overhead shot. The maze map is also inaccurate because in the initial shots of Wendy and Doc and Tony, there are incongruencies. What we see from Jack is merely a projection from a disturbed person. I noticed you even made scale overhead shot renderings of that red corridor. That is soooo cool. You also have that video on the elevators, which is fascinating. The river of blood elevator always confused me because I could never tell if there were hallways on the right and left of it because on VHS, there appears to be just walls. Also, Wendy coming from that elevator with the breakfast tray always bothered me because early in the film while on tour the group uses the stairs. Why stairs if everyone is in a hurry and there is an optional elevator? The helicopter shots also confuse me because they don't show the maze. Also, the time stamp ahead of Wendy finding the snowcat makes no sense. At that point in the evening it would be darker out I believe in that part of Colorado during the winter. Those are just more things that are oddly confusing for no apparent reason. Also, on the aforementioned tour, the Jewish guy with the manager is creepy and just wanders around following everyone, always looking out of place. What was his deal?
Questions, questions, questions. There will always be questions about The Shining... The overhead shot was an 'in camera' trick. The middle part of Wendy and Danny in the maze was taken from above from the Canterbury House in Borehamwood in a parking lot and later edited into the film and merged with a model of the maze. So it is a combination in 1 shot. Stanley used this a lot in '2001'. Jack typing in the Colorado Lounge with the fireplace fire, is the 2nd shot that was merged like this. First the fire was recorded in a dark set, film rewound and then Jack was recorded with full lighting. The famous 'River of Blood' at the end of the film with Wendy, consists of 2 sets. The overshoulder shot of Wendy looking at the elevator is on the Lobby set, where in the hallway (where Jack walks with the axe) a false wall with elevator is placed. So on both sides there is a short hallway. Difficult to see, but on the 4K version it is. In that shot the blood is not visible, in the next shot the terrified face of Wendy is. The shot with the blood was shot on a 1/3 scale set at high speed with 4 cameras I believe. This was built on the backlot of Elstree Studios and can be seen for a few seconds in the documentary by Vivian Kubrick. About Stuart Ullman, Jack and Wendy taking the stairs... I don't see them coming up the stairs, they walk past them. Maybe they came by elevator, turned left, then right into the 'Twin Corridor', right twice, after which the shot starts. It is one possibility of many! The role of Bill Watson is also not entirely clear to me. Stanley Kubrick probably kept the possibility open during filming to expand his role, but that did not happen, just like the role of Susy (Alison Coleridge) the secretary.
@deltabuilder You could be right. The twin corridor would've been part of the tour because logically, Ullman would've wanted the family to see the linen closet. When Danny and Tony come around the corner and stop on the trike, to right in the frame, you can see a double-door linen closet. Bill Watson was an unusual character who was sort of just there. He made the audience uncomfortable in the office, and it continued. He is like an awkward silent observer... not necessary, other than he shares the uncomfortable knowledge of the truth about the hotel. Maybe he is supposed to appear as though he has the creeps in certain locations and is uncomfortable. Why is Ullman's office lit up before and during the murder of Dick? We already know the natural light is impossible and weird from the beginning... maybe it's to reinforce that and the early conversation in the office?
@deltabuilder I do know about the blood sequence from the documentary but never paid attention to whether or not the model had just walls or a break for a narrow hallway, especially with how the blood hits the wall. The false wall you mentioned when suddenly there is an elevator at the end of the corridor, that is a theme in the film. Like the impossible rooms down that one hallway of doors which would have hotel space too small behind them for hotel guests. Also, the 4th wall, which is constantly penetrated by Jack's staring directly into the camera. It is constant misalignment with reality and confusion.
Hello deltabuilder. I was thinking about theories about The Shining. I think a lot about two theories: The Wendy Theory, that the climax of the film was Wendy's hallucinations and she dragged Jack into the maze and ran away with Danny. And the other theory more disturbing than the abuse theory: Jack strangled and abused Danny on Monday chapter and that the bear symbolizes Jack. I don't believe these theories. What do you think of them?
Well, I'm more of an analyst of spaces and architecture and not into story analysis. Although I have had to analyze plays in the past in preparation for directing. I start from the story itself, in this case the film and not the book. What is not seen or said in the film may not have happened. In any case, we don't know and it is therefore speculation. But, just to drop a theory about the story... It is very well possible that Jack abused Danny, because the first clue is the story about Jack that Wendy tells the doctor, confirmed by Jack with Lloyd. The second clue is when Danny goes to the bedroom where Jack is sitting on the bed. He asks Danny to sit on his lap. This is a very tense scene, where you expect Jack might abuse Danny. The third clue, of course, is when Danny enters the Colorado Lounge with a torn sweater and abrasions on his neck just after this scene.
I think that all three of them went crazy because of traumas and/or what they did. I think they are in sanatorium and not in The Overlook Hotel. Remember the green corridor? Totally like hospital. And remember when Wendy sees Jack's "novel" conisting only of thousands same sentences? She is terrified not only because she realizes Jack is crazy but because she realizes all three of them are crazy. I think they are letting some gasses through vents to make the three of them hallucinate and examine their behavious. I mean, The Overlook hotel is spatially impossible, most rooms, many windows... Delta, could you tell us your opinion, what could be the reason for putting black and white photos of all those dead people on the walls of The Overlook Hotel? Thanks.
In answer to your question about the black and white photos, I recommend that you look at this site. The site belongs to Joe Girard and he has an interesting view on the black and white photos. eyescream237.ca/the-treachery-of-images-the-meaning-of-f21s/#origins
@deltabuilder Joe Girard's videos annoy me because he uses puns and word play to create associations that aren't there (as if that is a form of analyzing the film). In Philosophy and Linguistics, an early fundamental rule in making a point is that the meaning of words themselves are important, but when a word is referenced with a generally accepted definition and meaning, that is clearly enough to base your response and analysis on. The 'we' definition of something is implied to be suitable for nothing else but the accepted version. Even "Eye Scream" is just a pun. He presents word play like evidence. Rob Ager does this and believes it to be clever or evidence. Literal analysis doesn't include word play. It's a fallacy to try to rearrange a word or reinterpret it if the intent is the generally accepted definition. In Kubrick's films, the themes are somewhat verbally communicated, but more often, ice cream is just a thing that kids eat. The ice cream isn't a metaphor. The types of people who try this approach will take it to extremes with other fallacies until there is a very convoluted story that develops like psychosis. The Shining seems to do this to people because of all its open-ended confusion. That was the intent of all the misdirection.
That is a jolt to see him in a modern photograph, when you think he is from the 19th century. You have to be careful with people who claim to be "Indians" though. A folk-singer from the sixties, Buffy St. Marie, had a long career passing as a native American, but it turns out she was Italian American and her whole story about being adopted was baloney. She looked the part, though.
@@deltabuilder Hey, when I looked up his name, I found a different TM who sounds like the real one. - Tatanka Mani died on March 4, 1829, and was succeeded by Wacouta (Wakute, Shooter), his nephew or stepson
The 'Tatankamani' you are referring to comes from the Mississippi Valley. A completely different region than the Rocky Mountains. I don't think that Chief is the man in the painting.
@@deltabuilder Yeah, what I am thinking is the man in the painting named himself after the earlier one. I wouldn't be surprised if number two is a total fake, but I have nothing to go on. Just seems funny to me.
@deltabuilder I have a theory. The painting is referring to the Blackfoot native American tribes. Blackfoot was a test name during operation Redwing in 1956 on June 11. If you look at the painting above the fireplace that is of 4 kachina figures, they remind me of minuteman icbms. More specifically, the Navajo missile project and the ms-64. Which was the precursor to the Saturn 1 and 2. Minuteman carried the w56 warhead. The carpet? Missile silos. Danny's sweater? Apollo M.O. Amo Smith. One of the cars Danny is playing with is a pickup truck. Rudolph Schott use his truck to carry equipment out to devils gate dam on Halloween 1936. Of course I'm talking about Parsons, Forman, Malina, Kàrmàn, and GALCIT. I'll even throw in Goddard out at roswell, new Mexico who wasn't interested in them or maybe just Malina. However, he laid the ground work with A Method of reaching extreme altitudes and some 214 patients in 1921. Plus Einstein won the noble. Room 237 is U-237, uranium, and is not a natural uranium, which decay to neptunium 237. It's why the woman in the bathtub started to decay as if she had radiation exposure. The Shining is a nuclear flash and the overlook hotel is a vela satellite or vela hotel as they were called. Jack froze to death in a nuclear winter. The end. Peace through Ahev
This makes sense. Many elements in The Shining are hotel and winter related. One of the old time bands in the movie played full-time in a hotel that was closed for the winter. In this case, Banff is most know for it's hotel which years ago was closed for the winter. Also, the road in the beginning of the movie, is also closed during the winter.
Was that The Fairmont Hotel?
@@deltabuilder Correct! Fairmont Banff Springs
Rob Ager goes into some depth regarding the Native American genocide themes embedded in the film. Because I'm half Navajo, I recognized some of the designs and art, like the large Yei sandpaintings in the lounge above the fireplace. I think Ager misinterpreted some of the use of the art, but missed a couple of important elements. Kubrick had to have researched Navajo art because of the rugs and massive sandpainting. The other Southwestern art is more decoration than containing messages because there is variety, and not all of the depicted Natives died through extermination.
For the most part, I think the designs were chosen for their patterns and to give subliminal continuity to the sense of embedded mazes that can be inescapable. The hotel itself is an impossible maze.
In my understanding of why we depict Yei in our art, it wouldn't have relational significance to this film's story. The designs and overall theme of genocide may have been intentional to provoke or elicit a sense of internal guilt for viewers, which was layered with elements of confusion, isolation, and fear. Kubrick tapped into a lot of hidden emotion during a period of time when the U.S. was not ready to necessarily confront it. We still had boarding schools. The film was just after the Civil Rights era began.
The who of the Natives is not as important as the idea of their being hunted and murdered by the U.S. government, which was uncomfortable at the time as an acknowledgment because of U.S. prosperity during the mid century.
Westerns depicted our people as the enemy or as murdering savages, so Kubrick used it as a way to imply threat hidden in the maze of Jack's transformation and the physical maze of the environment. The viewer builds these associations from their respective pairing of the stimuli and longstanding prejudices, which were common at the time.
Thanks for your insight and explanation!
I have watched Rob Ager's videos several times. They provide a good analysis.
I have never found an exact copy of the sand painting in the Colorado Lounge on the internet, so I started to draw the sand painting using screengrabs from the film. I also drew the carpets and floor paintings in the Lobby.
The mazes in the Shining are a story in themselves. There are different versions, such as the floor plan outside the entrance, the model maze in the Lobby and Jack's vision when he looks at the model. They are all different.
The fact that Kubrick used many hidden emotions will come across differently to European audiences than to Americans. Perhaps that is why Stanley made two versions.
@deltabuilder You may be right, I have never actually thought about the difference between the intended audiences. That is a fascinating point.
Also, yes, when Jack gazes down at the hedge maze it isn't a literal scale model, neither is the maze from the overhead shot. The maze map is also inaccurate because in the initial shots of Wendy and Doc and Tony, there are incongruencies. What we see from Jack is merely a projection from a disturbed person.
I noticed you even made scale overhead shot renderings of that red corridor. That is soooo cool. You also have that video on the elevators, which is fascinating.
The river of blood elevator always confused me because I could never tell if there were hallways on the right and left of it because on VHS, there appears to be just walls. Also, Wendy coming from that elevator with the breakfast tray always bothered me because early in the film while on tour the group uses the stairs. Why stairs if everyone is in a hurry and there is an optional elevator? The helicopter shots also confuse me because they don't show the maze.
Also, the time stamp ahead of Wendy finding the snowcat makes no sense. At that point in the evening it would be darker out I believe in that part of Colorado during the winter.
Those are just more things that are oddly confusing for no apparent reason. Also, on the aforementioned tour, the Jewish guy with the manager is creepy and just wanders around following everyone, always looking out of place. What was his deal?
Questions, questions, questions.
There will always be questions about The Shining...
The overhead shot was an 'in camera' trick. The middle part of Wendy and Danny in the maze was taken from above from the Canterbury House in Borehamwood in a parking lot and later edited into the film and merged with a model of the maze. So it is a combination in 1 shot. Stanley used this a lot in '2001'. Jack typing in the Colorado Lounge with the fireplace fire, is the 2nd shot that was merged like this. First the fire was recorded in a dark set, film rewound and then Jack was recorded with full lighting.
The famous 'River of Blood' at the end of the film with Wendy, consists of 2 sets. The overshoulder shot of Wendy looking at the elevator is on the Lobby set, where in the hallway (where Jack walks with the axe) a false wall with elevator is placed. So on both sides there is a short hallway. Difficult to see, but on the 4K version it is. In that shot the blood is not visible, in the next shot the terrified face of Wendy is.
The shot with the blood was shot on a 1/3 scale set at high speed with 4 cameras I believe. This was built on the backlot of Elstree Studios and can be seen for a few seconds in the documentary by Vivian Kubrick.
About Stuart Ullman, Jack and Wendy taking the stairs... I don't see them coming up the stairs, they walk past them. Maybe they came by elevator, turned left, then right into the 'Twin Corridor', right twice, after which the shot starts. It is one possibility of many!
The role of Bill Watson is also not entirely clear to me. Stanley Kubrick probably kept the possibility open during filming to expand his role, but that did not happen, just like the role of Susy (Alison Coleridge) the secretary.
@deltabuilder You could be right. The twin corridor would've been part of the tour because logically, Ullman would've wanted the family to see the linen closet. When Danny and Tony come around the corner and stop on the trike, to right in the frame, you can see a double-door linen closet.
Bill Watson was an unusual character who was sort of just there. He made the audience uncomfortable in the office, and it continued. He is like an awkward silent observer... not necessary, other than he shares the uncomfortable knowledge of the truth about the hotel. Maybe he is supposed to appear as though he has the creeps in certain locations and is uncomfortable.
Why is Ullman's office lit up before and during the murder of Dick? We already know the natural light is impossible and weird from the beginning... maybe it's to reinforce that and the early conversation in the office?
@deltabuilder I do know about the blood sequence from the documentary but never paid attention to whether or not the model had just walls or a break for a narrow hallway, especially with how the blood hits the wall.
The false wall you mentioned when suddenly there is an elevator at the end of the corridor, that is a theme in the film. Like the impossible rooms down that one hallway of doors which would have hotel space too small behind them for hotel guests. Also, the 4th wall, which is constantly penetrated by Jack's staring directly into the camera. It is constant misalignment with reality and confusion.
Hello deltabuilder.
I was thinking about theories about The Shining.
I think a lot about two theories:
The Wendy Theory, that the climax of the film was Wendy's hallucinations and she dragged Jack into the maze and ran away with Danny.
And the other theory more disturbing than the abuse theory: Jack strangled and abused Danny on Monday chapter and that the bear symbolizes Jack.
I don't believe these theories.
What do you think of them?
Well, I'm more of an analyst of spaces and architecture and not into story analysis.
Although I have had to analyze plays in the past in preparation for directing.
I start from the story itself, in this case the film and not the book. What is not seen or said in the film may not have happened. In any case, we don't know and it is therefore speculation.
But, just to drop a theory about the story...
It is very well possible that Jack abused Danny, because the first clue is the story about Jack that Wendy tells the doctor, confirmed by Jack with Lloyd.
The second clue is when Danny goes to the bedroom where Jack is sitting on the bed. He asks Danny to sit on his lap. This is a very tense scene, where you expect Jack might abuse Danny.
The third clue, of course, is when Danny enters the Colorado Lounge with a torn sweater and abrasions on his neck just after this scene.
I think that all three of them went crazy because of traumas and/or what they did. I think they are in sanatorium and not in The Overlook Hotel. Remember the green corridor? Totally like hospital.
And remember when Wendy sees Jack's "novel" conisting only of thousands same sentences? She is terrified not only because she realizes Jack is crazy but because she realizes all three of them are crazy.
I think they are letting some gasses through vents to make the three of them hallucinate and examine their behavious.
I mean, The Overlook hotel is spatially impossible, most rooms, many windows...
Delta, could you tell us your opinion, what could be the reason for putting black and white photos of all those dead people on the walls of The Overlook Hotel?
Thanks.
In answer to your question about the black and white photos, I recommend that you look at this site.
The site belongs to Joe Girard and he has an interesting view on the black and white photos.
eyescream237.ca/the-treachery-of-images-the-meaning-of-f21s/#origins
@@deltabuilder Thanks a lot
@deltabuilder Joe Girard's videos annoy me because he uses puns and word play to create associations that aren't there (as if that is a form of analyzing the film). In Philosophy and Linguistics, an early fundamental rule in making a point is that the meaning of words themselves are important, but when a word is referenced with a generally accepted definition and meaning, that is clearly enough to base your response and analysis on. The 'we' definition of something is implied to be suitable for nothing else but the accepted version. Even "Eye Scream" is just a pun. He presents word play like evidence. Rob Ager does this and believes it to be clever or evidence. Literal analysis doesn't include word play. It's a fallacy to try to rearrange a word or reinterpret it if the intent is the generally accepted definition. In Kubrick's films, the themes are somewhat verbally communicated, but more often, ice cream is just a thing that kids eat. The ice cream isn't a metaphor. The types of people who try this approach will take it to extremes with other fallacies until there is a very convoluted story that develops like psychosis. The Shining seems to do this to people because of all its open-ended confusion. That was the intent of all the misdirection.
That is a jolt to see him in a modern photograph, when you think he is from the 19th century. You have to be careful with people who claim to be "Indians" though. A folk-singer from the sixties, Buffy St. Marie, had a long career passing as a native American, but it turns out she was Italian American and her whole story about being adopted was baloney. She looked the part, though.
@@deltabuilder Hey, when I looked up his name, I found a different TM who sounds like the real one. - Tatanka Mani died on March 4, 1829, and was succeeded by Wacouta (Wakute, Shooter), his nephew or stepson
The 'Tatankamani' you are referring to comes from the Mississippi Valley. A completely different region than the Rocky Mountains.
I don't think that Chief is the man in the painting.
@@deltabuilder Yeah, what I am thinking is the man in the painting named himself after the earlier one. I wouldn't be surprised if number two is a total fake, but I have nothing to go on. Just seems funny to me.
@@hermanhale9258 Another fake Indian is the Chief in the litter commercials with the tear. He was in a ton of Westerns. He was Sicilian.
@deltabuilder I have a theory. The painting is referring to the Blackfoot native American tribes. Blackfoot was a test name during operation Redwing in 1956 on June 11. If you look at the painting above the fireplace that is of 4 kachina figures, they remind me of minuteman icbms. More specifically, the Navajo missile project and the ms-64. Which was the precursor to the Saturn 1 and 2. Minuteman carried the w56 warhead. The carpet? Missile silos. Danny's sweater? Apollo M.O. Amo Smith. One of the cars Danny is playing with is a pickup truck. Rudolph Schott use his truck to carry equipment out to devils gate dam on Halloween 1936. Of course I'm talking about Parsons, Forman, Malina, Kàrmàn, and GALCIT. I'll even throw in Goddard out at roswell, new Mexico who wasn't interested in them or maybe just Malina. However, he laid the ground work with A Method of reaching extreme altitudes and some 214 patients in 1921. Plus Einstein won the noble.
Room 237 is U-237, uranium, and is not a natural uranium, which decay to neptunium 237. It's why the woman in the bathtub started to decay as if she had radiation exposure. The Shining is a nuclear flash and the overlook hotel is a vela satellite or vela hotel as they were called. Jack froze to death in a nuclear winter. The end.
Peace through Ahev