You have to be a complete fanatic like I am to find all this.

[craigjclark]

Comments

[gfial95]

Well, Kubrick was notorious for going into insane detail on things that nobody really notices in his films. So, who knows, maybe that was a minotaur?

[craigjclark]

Nah, I'm pretty sure I would know a minotaur when I saw one.

[joeblevins]

While I don't buy the theory about the ski poster, the image of Jack Torrance looming over the miniature model of the hedge maze is quite miniature-like. The idea of Jack as keeper of the maze is not so improbable. What I think is important to remember when analyzing any text is that certain stories or cultural motifs are so deeply ingrained in our minds that they influence our stories and our images without our conscious participation. Among these are (but not limited to): Bible stories, folk tales and fairy tales, Greek and Roman myths, Arthurian legend, Aesop's fables, and of course, the events of American history and world history. And this is not to mention the gumbo of all the books, films, television shows, and advertisements we consume over the course of a lifetime.... sometimes, not even first-hand! A person might well be acquainted with the idea of being branded with a scarlet "A," for instance, without ever having read Hawthorne's novel. And Christ figures turn up in all kinds of stories, regardless of the religious

[craigjclark]

Prosaic or not, I look forward to whatever you have to say on the subject of the activities of those two gentlemen.

[internet_sampo]

I saw Room 237 at the IFC center last month. The Shining was a part of my life history: my first job was as a theater usher and when I started The Shining was playing. I am intrigued by Ascher's et al's ideas about the movie; I can imagine Kubirck trying something like this and can't imagine him (or any competent film crew) allowing some many continuity errors.

Except the moon landing stuff:

[craigjclark]

I completely agree that the moon landing stuff is the biggest stretch.

[joeblevins]

Highly recommended -- and available for free viewing on YouTube -- is a documentary called The Shining Code 2.0. It's all about the Apollo 11 stuff (I'm guessing it was created by the same Room 237 interviewee) and it's absolutely insane and ludicrous, yet so calm and so, so intensely detailed. There's also one floating around which posits that the film is about America's abandonment of the gold standard. I'm not making that up. That theory-spinner has one dynamite piece of evidence (a couple of dialogue exchanges between Jack Nicholson and Joe Turkel) and a whole lot of nonsense.