Cinema Seminar:
The Shining
The Shining (1980) is, in many ways, a traditional haunted-house tale. It centers on a seemingly peaceful family who moves into a grand hotel, high in the Rockies, to take care of the property during the desolate winter months, and find themselves tormented by unholy and terrifying spirits and violence. Described that way, it sounds like a picture that’s been made a hundred times. Of course, there have been a bunch of movies about a strange object in space, too, but only Stanley Kubrick made 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Many have celebrated The Shining, as well, suggesting that in Kubrick’s hands, it becomes a movie replete with intentional and provocative inconsistencies, satire, and unanswered questions that elevate it above the typical genre offerings and even the acclaimed 1977 Stephen King novel on which it is based. That the author continues to publicly criticize the adaptation even decades later—he famously referred to it as “a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it”—has only fueled further examination of the film.
The Shining draws upon gothic conventions to haunt the world of its characters, representing family life as fraught and the American Dream as riddled with violence. In this seminar, we will explore the nature of the horror in Kubrick’s film, grappling with how it depicts the American family and the mythos associated with capitalism that, instead of being a dream, can be seen as a nightmare.
