Week of Review - The Shining

And so we come to the end of another Week of Review, though admittedly a much shorter one.  American Horror Story: Hotel will be premiering later this tonight so for the final film in my hotel horror marathon I’ve chosen the most blatantly obvious example there is: The Shining.  The Shining is considered by many to be the greatest horror film ever made and its depth, complexity, and importance continues to echo down the long halls of cinema to this very day.  The film has been analyzed and deconstructed nearly to death with whole documentaries created about its possible meanings such as the death of the American family, the shameful treatment of Native Americans, and even claims that it was Stanley Kubrick’s confession to faking the Moon Landing. 

With a film this well known, this talked about, this discussed and considered by academia, nerdom, and the mass populous alike I normally wouldn’t talk about but I wanted to cover a certain subject that always tends to linger around the film; its connection to the book of the same name.  If you’ve never read it The Shining the book is actually an incredibly different animal to the film and a decidedly less interesting or terrifying horror story, and I’m going to talk about how and why.

There are a bunch of major difference between The Shining the book and The Shining the film, some of them more cosmetic while the central one, the one that makes the film so much scarier, is more about ethos and identity.  We’ll get to that one in due course but first I wanted to confront some of the other major problems that drape themselves over the book.  The basic story about family coming to take care of the creepy old Overlook Hotel during the winter season is more or less intact between the two versions.  All the set-up follows one another pretty naturally, there’s Jack Torrence, the recovering alcoholic, failed writer, and recently fired teacher who’s taken the caretaking job as a means of making ends meet during his recovery.  Then there’s his son Danny who has weird and generally unexplained psychic abilities as manifested in his imaginary friend Tony and Jack’s wife Wendy.  Wendy is the most different character between the two versions. 

Wendy in the film is a much more outwardly fragile character, she’s panicky and weak willed against the onslaught of horrors in the film though her actions always speak to a greater inner strength than her demeanor lets on.  In the book Wendy is fairly strong from the outset, a firm and decided woman who never really panics or screams the way the character did in the film.  Between the two film Wendy maybe be the literal weaker character but ends up far more fleshed out and interesting as a result.  This plays into the bigger clashing themes at work but film Wendy is compelling because of the disconnect between her actions and her personality.  If you watch in the film she’s actually constantly picking up her husband’s slack, to the point that by the end she’s the only one actually maintaining the Overlook Hotel.  The same way that even though she cries and screams while confronting Jack after he’s gone full murder she ends up bashing him right in the head and locking him in up.  This is not an incompetent woman but rather a woman whose become afraid to show her own strength, that’s important. 

The other assorted differences come in the form of story derivations and visual language.  Some of it is just awkward swaps like Jack going crazy with a crocket mallet in the book instead of an axe like in the film or actually showing us certain scenes like Jack breaking his son’s arm.  There’s also a bizarre key difference in how Danny’s imaginary friend is personified between the two that also relates to how information is conveyed to us, the audience.  In the film we never see Tony, his imaginary friend, we just see Danny talking to him.  It’s part of how the film keeps us outside of Danny’s perspective and why we never really sympathize with him.  The same is true of Wendy’s frightened demeanor, it purposefully keeps us from identifying too much with her character.  We’re sort of forced then into engaging with Jack Torrence more than anyone else.  In the book when Danny talks to Tony we perceive Tony as a whole separate character, like with Wendy it’s part of how the book works to wheel us into emotionally engaging with the whole family unit instead of just one member of it. 

All these changes are building up to supporting the central difference in thesis between the book and the film, a difference that rests squarely on the shoulders of Jack Torrence.  In the book Jack’s downfall to the ghost’s control is more tragic than anything else.  We’ve spent the whole book with him and the sympathy built up for the family unit helps us to see how they were coming together and mending before this horrible outside force came in to drag them apart.  This is a big part of the book’s overall simile for substance abuse.  It’s established for us early on Jack is a recovering alcoholic, which is basically the book telling you its thesis.  The whole driving idea at hand is that Jack is a good person in his heart, it’s just that his weaknesses allow destructive outside influences to make him do bad things.  King has written quite a number of substance abuse metaphors in his career due to his own problems and its clear he views the issue as one of supreme tragedy and no small amount of horror.  The thing is that King also views substance abuse as almost entirely external, in The Shining the book the point is basically that Jack isn’t responsible for his actions, hence the tragedy.  It affords the audience distance both from Jack the character and personal responsibility.  The Shining the film offers no such safety. 

In The Shining the film, Jack’s alcoholism is still quasi-external but the important thing is its impact on him is internal.  When Jack drinks in the book he’s giving his body over to something terrible, when he drinks in the movie he’s letting out something terrible from inside himself.  That’s the importance of Wendy’s repressed strength or Danny’s freaky withdrawal, because Jack in the film is an abusive monster who seems to passively loath his family, even in the scenes he’s supposed to be nice to them.  Both stories end with Jack going on a violent rampage through the hotel, the central difference is that in the movie that rampage simply Jack with all the lies and artifice he forces over himself everyday stripped away.  However, the really scary part is that we relate to Jack in the film.  Jack in the film is the character we spend the most time with, he’s the most fun to be around and is generally pretty engaging.  Wendy and Danny are kept at arm’s length due to their damaged nature while we’re ushered into Jack’s company with open arms because Jack is us.  Jack is humanity’s hatred, greed, and loathing with all the stop gaps of civilization stripped away and we love him for that.  That’s the terror at the heart of The Shining the film, not that something else will corrupt our true nature, but that deep down…we’re all monsters, just waiting for the go ahead. 


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