The Shining

By now, I've read approximately over 50 different conspiracy theories of The Shining that have ranked from plausible to downright insane.  On Netflix, a documentary called Room 237 depicts these theories including Holocaust theories, Native American theories, and a fake moonlanding theory. All of which are eerie and obsessive in their own way. But the fact is, The Shining does seem to have many continuity errors that a perfectionist like Kubrick would hardly not notice; over the semester, we've seen all of his films, and they definitely are works of art. Kubrick is deliberate, careful, a visionary who knows what he wants.

As I was researching for my final paper, I came across numerous theories, but one of the most chilling (for whatever reason) was that the number of chairs or furniture pieces disjointed correlated to the number of people in the room, as if the hotel was inviting people in, already aware of the events about to take place before they happen. This creates an intense haunting atmosphere of the house.

Another I read was focused on Danny, making Danny the center of the entire narrative, for perhaps the entire movie was Danny experiencing vivid dreams, repressing sexual and physical abuse from his father - resorting to intense storytelling, hallucinations, and paranoia.

However, theories aside, it is important to not speculate a meaning of the film for the purposes of filling the gapped void Kubrick presents, but rather to marvel in its utter bewilderment, meant to not provide a clear, universalizing meaning. Hello, this guy was a Modernist, after all, preoccupied with dismantling Enlightenment ideals of a Truth (with a capital T). His frequent Freudian side reveals this, for Freud's Interpretation of Dreams is just that: dreams inherently have multiple meanings. Interpretation takes new twists and turns with such revelation.