Shining, The

On Halloween night we decided to stay home and rewatch The Shining. I've seen it probably 20 times previous with most interpretations circling some varietal of horror/domesticity but this time I finally got it in clear precision: The genocidal history of the United States. This is somewhat buttressed by Bill Blakemore's essay in the San Fran Chronicle but the essay only goes so far to my thinking, limiting the scope to decimation of native americans and leaving it there. While the film certainly does include that I couldn't help but feel that was more of a leaping off place, noting the placement of red/white/blue in nearly every frame, the iconography and symbols of USA surrounding Danny (goofy, apollo usa, baseball bats), the watered-down revisionist telling of events at the Overlook by Stuart Ullman (his initials a reversing of US), the placement of American flags, the British servant handing the reins over to Jack, and most pertinently, the final shot of the film, the push in to the photograph of the Overlook Hotel's 4th of July celebration in 1924. The man that oversaw genocide and widespread race destruction is not a mere antecedant of the modern man - his alcoholism, his abuse, his frustrations at the domesticity that entraps him - but in fact, the very same individual. Oh Kubrick, I love thee so. In every frame.  


edited to add link to this spot-on take on the shining written w/ more smarts and patience than i can manage