Not too long ago, somewhat bored, watching The Shining (or, not watching, but, rather, trying to "see"), I happened to notice something rather surprising. Having spent the long winter months reading various theological texts in conjunction (and in their own right) with the philosophical writings of L. Wittgenstein, some of the philosopher's questions have stuck in my mind (like mold, or, no, more like a pleasant lichen). Needless to say, entering into the Kubrickian universe, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. To the contrary, Kubrick's films - The Shining in particular - deal heavily in the promulgation of powerful imagery. I only hope my findings are not ordinary and underwhelming.
Let's consider the encounter with Danny and Tony in the mirror. The dialogue happens thus:
Danny: Tony, why don't you want to go to the hotel?
Tony: I don't know.
Danny: You do to know, now, come on, tell me.
Tony: I don't want to.
Danny: Please? ...
Tony: No.
Danny: Now Tony, tell me.
This dialogue ends somewhat abruptly, followed by a montage that Danny "shines." Below is the sequence of shots (1. Danny transfixed; 2. Blood comes through elevator doors; 3. Shot of the Grady twins; 4. Blood floods room and covers camera; 5. fade to black; 6. Psychologist examining Danny's eyes [or mouth?] after he evidently passes out.
The camera zooms in to Danny in the mirror's image speaking to "Tony," the imaginary friend who lives in Danny's mouth for the duration of the dialogue. We should draw attention to the detail that Tony lives in Danny's mouth if we want to make full use of any references to Wittgenstein. Danny's eyes grow wide with fear (or wonder) after the last line and the scene cuts to a slow-motion shot of the elevator doors being flooded with what is a blood-like substance (the script, I think, says "blood," but, whatever). It occurs to me the ingenuity of this cut when I seem to recall something Wittgenstein said about what can be shown or told. The actual line is this, from his early "logical positivist" work, Tractatus:
4.1212 What can be shown cannot be said.
So, what? Tony shows Danny his reason for not wanting to go to the hotel. He doesn't tell Danny. Showing is not the same as telling. We can't really describe what happens when we see Danny's vision. There is far too much happening, and far too much developed in the story thus far to provide a frame of reference, besides. This is the power of what can be "shown."
Literally, Tony disobeys Danny by showing him why he doesn't want to go to the hotel. Danny wants to be told an ostensibly simple answer, but instead, receives a complex and frightening vision. This in itself proves that "showing" and "telling" are not the same. Notably - and I love this, on more reflection - we do not see foreshadowing of later events via literal re-cutting of the same film. We don't see Jack chasing Danny, or killing Dick, etc. We see creative, abstract, symbolic imagery that never "occurs" outside of the context of Danny's mind. Arguably, we say the images are all "true," or at least, semblances of what is true. Blood is spilled, the daughters "were" killed (or, "are" killed in the context of the telling of The Shining story itself in real time), Danny is terrified, etc. Yet, we never see these images actually take place. Obviously, some of these events are past, which makes sense. This must mean that Tony is worried or upset about what has already happened. This is very interesting, and supports the theory that the Overlook is timeless, or outside of time.
Again, consider L.W.'s observations when thinking about Danny's expression. "Danny is terrified," we might say, but, we can't be satisfied with this. It looks as if Danny has seen Satan himself, or pure evil - something he has never seen. The look is not merely "terror." At the same time, the fact that Danny's face mirrors the elevator doors is a detail too disturbing to put into words: is Danny going to be "sacrificed?" Is the blood Danny's? Is it a coincidence? Does Danny understand this? Is he still looking into the mirror? Etc. Furthermore, contrasted with the well-lit bathroom scene, in which Danny almost seems hypnotized or "seduced" (which is creepy enough), the following shot of Danny's shrieking face is worth far too many words.
It is interesting that Tony chooses to "reveal" to Danny why he does not want to come to the hotel. I admit I've never read King's novel, so I can't comment on the degree to which this scene is faithful to the events in the novel (if at all). Regardless, Kubrick's film is a creative work in its own right. And, we must consider that, at least in the filmic version of this encounter, Danny is speaking to Tony, who, mysteriously, lives in Danny's mouth. Tony lives in Danny's mouth. When Danny speaks to Tony, though, Danny also voices Tony. Again, I haven't read the novel, but from the film alone we can imagine notions like demonic possession - a demon overtaking Danny's speech and thought. Danny's voice is Tony speaking: Tony has taken control of Danny's body. Maybe. If this were the case, then Tony's home in Danny's mouth could be significant: Tony may be conscious of all of Danny's language. He may listen to Danny's words, and thoughts, for that matter.
Another consideration: Tony lives in Danny's mouth, yes, just as speech lives in the body. We then must ask: who is speaking? Later in the movie, it is obvious that "Tony" overtakes Danny - most memorably in the "Redrum" scene. But, then this duality is one that we've already learned is problematic for Danny, Tony having been created only after the first time Jack abused him physically. Tony is an escape - a separate entity that eventually is given power over Danny's true identity - and this is evident in his speech.
The twins (who are arguably the "true" victims in relation to the image of the bleeding elevator) flash for a second or near-second amid the bloody-elevator, followed by a shot of Danny in agony. The shot of Danny ties back pareidolically to the elevator, but also thematically, arguably, to Dave Bowman in the space-pod in 2001. This may be a bit of a coincidence, an intertextual similarity, or, it may be, as some have argued, a thematic similarity in the hypothetical seven-part series of 20th century life on earth that was Kubrick's last seven films. The theme would be: the modern, isolated individual. But more on this later.
It is especially funny given that these stills "randomly" inserted into the psychedelic star-gate sequence were not really "random," but were functional, serving the purpose of connecting the star-gate film strips. Yet, even if it was functional, the still shot obviously creates a break in the action, and offers a sort of hyper-meditative glimpse into Dave's cosmic exile. Clearly, Kubrick intentionally repeated this method with Danny's visions in The Shining, offering shots of the twins, or of the bleeding elevator, and more, to condense (or expand) the visual narrative. It seems these stills were not functional, but were/are indeed, powerful symbolic images advancing a narrative. Danny "shines" several times, and if I'm not mistaken, each time features the same still-shot "flashes" which fragment the montage. Not to go too deep down a rabbit-hole, but, these breaks in some ways are far more powerful at asserting a character's presence than by speech/dialogue alone. In other words, the fear or agony or terror Danny feels because of his ability to "shine" is best explained by showing us what he sees. This is an incredible and maybe banal tool in filmmaking that we could never hope to possess on earth - to actually see what/how someone else sees.
Arguably, the images Danny sees aren't ordinary images, or scenes which we would readily imagine. Hence these images strengthen the idea of the individual, before they tell us about the supernatural, or other-worldly. In other words, the individual is whoever experiences the world as it is. It happens that, where words (and images) would often fail a character like Danny, a child, Kubrick sees this separation as an opportunity to show the actuality of Danny's seemingly childish fits and moods (it follows that there are images and scenes Danny witnesses which we, the audience, do not see, and we can only imagine what he might be seeing - not that we'd want to).
To the extent that we can say Danny's cut-screen and Dave's cut-screen are similar, we should also note the differences. One theory on the difference in positioning may be that Danny's horror is real/psychological whereas Dave's horror is cosmological/technological. There's also the sense that Danny's face is what the mirror sees, what "Tony" sees, and this is why he is seen full frontal. Dave Bowman's face is contorted due to the technological shortcomings of the pod on its mission to Jupiter, or at least, I think, this, in conjunction with travel in deep-space. I think it is said that Keir Dullea actually forced his body to shake under pressure when being filmed, with no outside-agitation present. And finally, there's something different here given the nature of the source of the horror: in The Shining, we know that the "former" caretaker murdered his family with an axe and shot himself. We might form an image of this if we thought about it.
But, in 2001 we have no reference for the horrors of space travel, let alone, to a planet as distant as Jupiter. These horrors are shown to us in the final segment, just as the horrors of the Outlook Hotel are revealed in real-time throughout the film. These horrors are imaginable, cognizable, not psychedelic; Kubrick leaves the horrors of space speculative. Light, color, form, stand in place for what is un-sayable, or, un-showable. And this is fine. What is showable, here, is equated with what is indescribable. Surely unsurprising to readers of his work, Wittgenstein made many remarks on color. Consider the excerpt from On Certainty:
126. I am not more certain of the meaning of my words than I am of certain judgments. Can I doubt that this colour is called "blue"? (My) doubts form a system.
[I think] what L.W. is saying is that I judge the perception of "blue" things by referring to them by their name, i.e., "blue." Now, this point is not really about color, but, we could say that there is no "explaining" a sensation like "blue" beyond the fact that whatever "blue" is, it is represented by the word-name "blue." This agrees with the sensation, unless someone has eyes that see more teal than blue, or more blue than green, and then we find it curious that someone says a blue t-shirt is teal. Since color-blindness is not color anarchy, we are surprised by these minor disagreements between judgment and word-meaning. But, assuming we are not color-blind, we do not ask a person what color their eyes are as we look into them.
Dave Bowman's experience of horror reads as a horror which is interior and abstract. The problem is that we know it isn't - for he is likely the first and last person traveling through deep space alone. But, because we know this is an unknown, something about which we can only speculate, this creates an opportunity for the filmmaker and/or audience to "imagine" this horror. That this horror is "unimaginable" or "unconscionable" is arguably plausible: we lose sense of scale with the star-gate sequence - where are we? Who are we? The strange baroque room is our "saving grace" for human intelligibility. To be continued.
The horrors of The Shining, whether it be the axe-killings, or, the allusions to the Holocaust, Native American genocide, etc., are all "of this world." They are known, they are present, or past, but they are fleshy and "ordinary." The horrors of space remain abstract, matters for which we have no reference. It is quite interesting how we, the viewer, become a surrogate of Danny, the innocent viewer or passenger, whose clairvoyance affords us the vision of "things to come." This is clear, given that Danny is a child, that he cannot really choose to be somewhere else but with his parents, etc. In a similar way, Kubrick subordinates us to be the mere viewers or witnesses of a particular apocalyptic vision. But then again, what is film worth if not viewed, not critiqued, not discussed? An exegesis of Kubrick's work is an exegesis of our world - and that is what makes our task so difficult, yet so satisfying.
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