Kevin Greutert's voice brims with enthusiasm as he vividly recalls the moment when he was introduced to "The Shining." He was a 14-year-old kid from the Los Angeles suburbs in early 1980, and like so many admirers of director Stanley Kubrick, Greutert's initial introduction to one of his classic movies took place inside a movie theater.
"Even as a very young boy, [Kubrick] was somebody whose films I really adored," Greutert recalled, ticking off "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "A Clockwork Orange" as among his favorites. "I remember I was at this theater at the Santa Anita Mall in Arcadia, California, and the teaser trailer showed these elevator doors opening in slow motion with all of this blood pouring out. I was like, 'What the hell is this?!' And then it's says, 'The Shining!'" Greutert described "The Shining" as "a perfect movie, and certainly the perfect horror film. Every time I make a movie, as part of getting ready to do it, I watch 'The Shining.' It's really just inspirational."
Greutert has the right to say the words "every time I make a movie." He recently directed "Saw X," which became one of 2023's most profitable studio films after pulling in $113 million on an $11 million budget. Before that, Greutert's other horror films include "Saw VI" (one of this author's all-time favorites), "Saw 3D," "Jessabelle," "Jackals" and "Visions." Yet fellow directors are not alone in admiring "The Shining." Journalists often rank it among their favorites: Empire selected "The Shining " as the No. 1 best horror film of all time out of a list of 100, while "Time Out" Magazine gave it the No. 2 spot out of 100 (after "The Exorcist"). Perhaps more notably, there are academics who devote large chunks of their career to "The Shining," either on its own or as part of Kubrick's grander cinematic oeuvre. When they watch "The Shining," these professors don't see a cheap horror movie worthy of derision, as the Razzie Awards did after its initial release by nominating Kubrick for worst director and co-star Shelley Duvall for worst actress. They see a profound work of art, pregnant with meaning about social issues like racism, sexism, antisemitism and colonialism.
Indeed, "The Shining" is held in such high regard that the scholars who spoke to Salon insist it still has important things to say about politics and society in our modern world. To use a popular buzzword, "The Shining" is "woke," both in that the movie subtly addresses complex social issues and because the in-universe clairvoyant act of "shining" allows characters to see past and future atrocities (some politically charged) that occurred in the Overlook Hotel.
Before it was co-opted by conservatives, the term "woke" was an expression originating in 1940s African American vernacular that meant being awakened to the presence of racial injustice. Characters who "shine" in the movie, as well as the moviegoers following the plot, become highly aware of the injustices — some of which involve the oppression of marginalized groups — on the haunted hotel's grounds.
"As you indicate, 'The Shining' as a film surely has a strong social message, and with it a stark condemnation of racism, sexism, and classism," Jeremi Szaniawski, an associate professor of film studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Salon. "I would say that in general, woke culture has been very mindful of minority rights (women, trans people, otherize people, people of color. . .) whereas 'The Shining’'s accent lay probably most pointedly on issues of class and social alienation in its manifest text, and, in its cryptic subtext, with the Holocaust, which reconnects with the question of ethnicity/race."
Geoffrey Cocks, a professor emeritus of history at Albion College, gave Salon specific examples of the movie's commentary on imperialism, colonization, and antisemitism.
"Unlike King’s novel, Kubrick’s film explicitly references European colonizers’ decimation of indigenous peoples in North America," Cocks explained. "[Co-screenwriter] Diane Johnson has said that she and Kubrick worked to incorporate references to the massacres of Native Americans into the screenplay; the most direct of these is the hotel manager’s remark that the Overlook had been built between 1907 and 1909 on 'an Indian burial ground.' Hence there is a more general discourse on race and racial hatred in and around the film’s narrative. The only person Jack kills in his rampage with an axe is the African-American hotel chef, who one of the hotel’s ghosts refers to as 'a n****r, a n****r cook.'"
Beyond these explicit references to historical injustices, Kubrick also layered the movie with references to the Holocaust, the genocidal murder of 6 million Jews and the most traumatic event to impact the Jewish community in the 20th century. While not a practicing Jew in any sense, Kubrick was acutely aware of his Jewish identity, which consequently influenced his work as an auteur.
"Kubrick, of Eastern European Jewish ancestry, was born in New York City in 1928, and most of his childhood and adolescence coincided with the rise of Hitler and the Nazi extermination of the European Jews," Cocks said. "It was to this end that Kubrick changed a ghostly 1945 party in King’s novel to the interwar period. That in 'The Shining' the horrors of the Overlook Hotel are revealed to the five-year-old Danny is therefore a recapitulation of Kubrick’s childhood before and during the Second World War. In the 1960s and 1970s, moreover, there was growing scholarly and popular interest in the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. It was also Kubrick’s intention to make a horror film that would prove to be an artistic culmination of the many horror films set in the milieu of family that were produced in America from the late 1960s into the 1970s. Given all this, a careful and informed viewing of 'The Shining' can provide insight into contemporary problems of intolerance and oppression anywhere in the world."
"The Shining" can even speak to the oppression experienced by other groups at the hands of Jews, as the global Jewish community reels from the collective mental health trauma of the Oct. 7th terrorist attacks, which claimed the lives of 1,139 people, including 815 civilians, in the highest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. In response, Israel has launched a relentless military assault against the Gaza Strip that has so far killed more than 40,000 people. Many critics are accusing Israel of genocide, and Szaniawski admits that it is intriguing to wonder how Kubrick would view the current Israel-Palestine war.
"Kubrick never gave simple answers," Szaniawski said. "But he knew that the Holocaust, and genocide writ large (also the extermination of the Native Americans) was (and is) just about the greatest horror on the planet, and he would never have condoned it. Now, with regards to 'The Shining,' I think it’s fair to say that while viewers will get a sense of its critique of racism and feminism quite clearly, the discourse about the genocide coded in its fabric is something for people to explore and learn to recognize (a lot of students and scholars are reluctant to this theory, however persuasively expounded by Geoffrey Cocks)."
Cocks laid out to Salon exactly how he believes "The Shining" can be used to educate sophisticated filmgoers about the Holocaust. In his essay "Kubrick and the Holocaust" in "The Bloomsbury Companion to Stanley Kubrick," Cocks identifies paintings, colors, numbers and other details in the movie that represent the Holocaust.
"Given the recent growing critical and popular appreciation of 'The Shining,' it is also important to note that younger people who have little or no knowledge of the significance of the Holocaust for Jews especially may well benefit from understanding this particular aspect of the historical discourse in the film," Cocks said. "And the fact that the Holocaust subtext in 'The Shining' is extremely indirect requires the type of careful thought and reflection over time necessary for true understanding of any serious subject. And while Kubrick parodies the conventions of scary horror films, a comprehension of this metatextual interrogation of such a popular genre can deepen any viewer’s identification with and empathy for Danny — and by extension all children (as well as adults) who suffer from terror and persecution."
Of course, a film plot that centers around a father trying to murder his family is naturally going to address issues like gender and child abuse. "The Shining" depicts these phenomena as rooted in toxic masculinity, with frustrated aspiring writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) taking out his self-loathing on his meek wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and troubled five-year-old son Danny (Danny Lloyd).
"Kubrick’s reading of [psychologist Sigmund] Freud manifested itself in the film in multiple ways," Nathan Abrams, a professor of film studies at Bangor University in Wales, told Salon. "It also deepens the film, giving it a profundity that few other horrors can match. 'The Shining' is more than just style or jump scares. [Producer] Jan Harlan may have called it a silly ghost story, but it’s one with an intellect." This is manifested in how "the heart of the film and book is child abuse — of Danny (explicit in the film) and Jack (only explicit in the novel). Jack is also an abusive spouse. He is a paradigm of privileged masculinity who feels emasculated hence his repetition of the word 'responsibility.'"
Abrams also compared "The Shining" to one of the oldest stories of child abuse still widely told: "'The Shining 'is a retelling of 'The Binding of Isaac' from the book of Genesis, in relation to the problem of blind obedience to authority in the twentieth century." Abrams noted that Kubrick was inspired in part by Stanley Milgram, whose famous experiments based on the Holocaust determined whether people could be manipulated into electrocuting people to death through blind obedience to authority.
Clearly Torrance is villainous right down to his core. Szaniawski, who acknowledges that the audience is meant to recognize Torrance is "completely insane," added that the film nevertheless shows that Jack's malevolence is also rooted in commonplace misogyny. "His sexism and brutality seem steeped deeper, to have always been there," Szaniawski said. "I like to remind people that it’s social precarity that underpins a lot of the tragedy at the heart of "The Shining" (blink and you’ll miss the hairdresser’s equipment Wendy keeps in a back room of the small apartment in Boulder, a way to make ends meet...), but Jack’s toxic masculinity, however fueled by circumstances, is an added element which he could not address or mitigate, and which tips the whole dynamic over the edge."
The film's critique of toxic masculinity is also evident in Duvall's performance as Wendy Torrance. A submissive wife who rationalizes her husband's abuse while trying to protect her child, Duvall's performance was harshly critiqued by contemporaries from Stephen King (who wrote the book upon which the movie is based) to the Razzie Awards, who nominated Duvall for Worst Actress along with Kubrick for Worst Director. The Razzies later retracted their Worst Actress nomination after behind-the-scenes footage shot by Kubrick's daughter Vivian revealed Kubrick to have emotionally abused Duvall himself while shooting the movie, constantly denigrating her and making demands of her in ways that seem to make even Kubrick's sycophantic admirers uncomfortable. While the Razzies' retroactive apology may have been laudable, it comes with the unfortunate implication that Duvall gave a bad performance because of Kubrick's abuse . . . when, in fact, her performance was key to the movie's success in addressing issues of sex inequality.
"Shelley Duvall’s performance in 'The Shining' is key to understanding Kubrick’s 'version' of Wendy Torrance," Rodney F. Hill, a professor of film studies at Hofstra University, told Salon. "Unlike the strong, determined character in Stephen King’s novel, Wendy in the film version fears Jack’s violent temper, which threatens to explode at any moment. Duvall’s Wendy lives in constant dread, perhaps unconsciously so, of Jack’s emotional and physical outbursts — and so she spends most of the film on pins and needles." Hill also tried to offer insightful context regarding how Kubrick's abusive behavior — which he consistently showed to thespians of both sexes in every decade of his filmmaking career — did not seem to strike Duvall at the time as problematic. This is not to say, however, that she enjoyed it in the least.
"While Duvall found the experience of filming 'The Shining' to be draining, perhaps even traumatic, she said in multiple interviews that she learned more from Kubrick in this one film than in all her other screen work combined," Hill said. "She also acknowledged that her resulting performance, fueled by her own anxieties during the shoot, made the film considerably more effective. She added, however, that she would not want to go through it again."
It is possible that, whether this was Kubrick's intent or not in abusing her, Duvall wound up channeling her ordeal into her art. After all, she knew all too well how it felt to be trapped for months on end ("The Shining" took 14 months to film) with someone displaying narcissistic behaviors.
"Objectively, the film is also a critique of a codependent relationship between a very perverse narcissist and a very vulnerable, echo personality," Szaniawski said of the dynamic between Jack and Wendy. "The genius of Kubrick is that he manages to keep things complicated enough that we too are under Jack’s narcissistic spell and that his demise leaves us with a weird feeling. For he too, in the end, is a victim. And the twist is that no industry has more contributed to cultivating narcissism through misguided imagery, than cinema itself under capitalism. Kubrick understood all this, but this is more than just a practical joke on the audience, of course."
Despite its psychologically fraught origins for some of the real humans who made it, "The Shining" shows a surprising amount of compassion for its fictional characters, at least for a Kubrick movie. The famously cold and detached director, according to Greutert, inspired people with "The Shining" largely because the movie has such fascinating and realistic characters.
"It's kind of tragic that the term 'wokeness' has been co-opted by the right," Greutert said. "We're still allowed to use it as a good term, but it's pretty tainted, and that's a shame." As far as Kubrick's movies go, Greutert described him as a "slippery character" and "craftsman without peer" whose empathy for the protagonists in "The Shining" belies his reputation for being unemotional — and helps explain the movie's interest in social justice issuers. Take the fate of Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers), the aforementioned heroic African American cook.
"Halloran is a totally sympathetic character and he's passing on this knowledge to an innocent white boy and he's trying to protect him," Greutert said. "That all began, of course, with Stephen King. But the way we see him wordlessly communicating with Danny over some ice cream; there is true warmth there from Kubrick for these characters. And I think it supports what you're saying. When the supernatural mayhem comes out at the end of 'The Shining,' we are seeing white privileged characters in this orgy of evil. That's definitely intentional. Kubrick's not the first person to use this sort of imagery, but ultimately for me though, the theme of 'The Shining' and Kubrick's attraction to the story is that there's this man who's privately enraged by his unsatisfying life as an ordinary father and a failed writer, and he has no one else to share his rage with but these ghosts."
These ghosts who, not coincidentally, want the privileged white man to resort to violence to achieve a sense of purpose again, even if it is against the most vulnerable people in his life, like his emotionally battered wife and young child. It is the type of horror that happens all too often in our real world, manifesting itself in terrible realities from war and discrimination to domestic violence. If a horror movie fan wants to watch "The Shining" just to be scared, they can do so without having to think too hard (or even at all) about these subjects. Discerning filmgoers, however, can find while watching "The Shining" that they too in a sense "shine" — if by "shine" one means become woke to how injustices from the past, present and future collapse into each other in ways that are often very, very frightening.
