Redrum/ Murder: The Shining

While writing the script, Stanley Kubrick was reading an essay by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, usually translated as The Uncanny. In the original German, the title is "Das Unheimliche": "heim" means "home," and the prefix "un" means "not" while "liche" is "like," so a more literal translation that really pertains to his 1980 hit The Shining is "The Un-Home-Like." However, "heimlich" in German means "concealed, hidden or in secret," and it's this idea which prompted Freud to coin the phrase "to be robbed of one's eyes," to not be able to see something that, as the audience, we should; so Kubrick who wrote, produced and directed the (eventual) hit, is trying to "not conceal, not hide or keep something hidden," but the complex symbols make it a forest through which we can't see the trees. The dramatic events unfold in a structure which is not a home, but a hotel, the Overlook Hotel, a detail we are apt to "overlook" as we try to understand what happens; revealingly, Jack Torrance enters the Overlook and says that it's "homey," so his ideas of what make a home conflicts with the traditional. I don't think the Overlook Hotel is the only "un-home-like" aspect of the film, but the very family itself, and the lop-sided power which they each yield works to make it so.

When a film (such as Poltergeist referencing the year 1976 to invoke the Centennial of the United States, please see The Family Graveyard: Poltergeist for more) mentions a date, it really means to draw the audiences' attention to an event which occurred on that date; as Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) interviews for the position of winter keeper at the Overlook Hotel, Ullman (Barry Nelson) explains of the horrible accident which happened in 1970 with Grady (Philip Stone) killing his wife and two daughters; in the winter of 1970, such a crime actually happened, the MacDonald Family Massacre in which the husband/father Jeffrey R. MacDonald was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two daughters. Jeffrey MacDonald always blamed the murders on hippies tripping on acid, similar to the Manson murders. But the similarities to Grady's murder spree in The Shining are unmistakable. As Ullman (a play on "all man" and his first name Stuart means a "steward" of something, i.e., all men are only stewards of this country) explains the situation, you can't help but notice the small American flag on the right-side of the screen, suggesting that Grady's murdering of his family wasn't an isolated incident, but something on a national scale.

What else happened in 1970?
The Kent State shootings.
If we are going to bring the murdering of a family from the micro to the macro in 1970, the United States firing on students demonstrating about the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia would have to be the pathway (for more on the Vietnam War, please see my post on how America's position on the war is coded in the hit song An Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini and the Vietnam War). The Shining seems to be saying that the military firing on its own people is as brutal as a father (read founding father) "cutting down" (with an axe) their own children (the future). But there is another side to this story: 1921, the year the photograph at the end was taken. If you examine a timeline of 1921, you see numerous areas in the world becoming Communist, Fascist and the beginning of the Nazi party power take-over. The words repeated over and over about the winters at the Overlook Hotel are "isolation," solitude," and "cold," words which can also be linked to the Cold War being fought against Communism and the potential policy of isolationism the United States could have taken instead of being so pro-Democracy.

The main memorial at Kent State honoring the shooting's victims.

If we take this path, we must remember that it's Danny who makes off with Wendy, and Jack is left frozen, possibly a reference to the idea that, if the "founding fathers" hadn't gotten us in the Cold War, we wouldn't be in a position to be in the Vietnam War. The idea that the Communists would allow America to be a free democratic, capitalist society, as they enforced socialist systems throughout the rest of the world is impossible to believe, rationally. But the death of Jack, lost in "a maze" of international politics does verify that Kubrick did not support America's purpose in fighting the Cold War: getting out of the Overlook Hotel was getting out of the Cold War (Kubrick is sometimes criticized for being apolitical since he never registered with a political party nor did he ever vote; for more on the Cold War, please see my post on Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Abe Froman, the Sausage King Of Chicago).

The photograph at the end of the film.

Since we have just discussed the presence of Indian Burial Grounds in Poltergeist, I would like to expand that discussion now with The Shining and an extensive quote from ABC reporter Bill Blakemore who wrote his essay The Family of Man which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in July 1987:

He (Blakemore) believes that indirect references to the American slaughter of Native Americans pervade the film as exemplified by the Indian logos on the baking powder in the kitchen and Indian artwork that appears throughout the hotel, though no Native Americans are ever seen. Stuart Ullman tells Wendy that when building the hotel a few Indian attacks had to be fended off since it was constructed on an Indian burial ground.
Blakemore's general argument is that the film as a whole is a metaphor for the genocide of Native Americans. He notes that when Jack kills Hallorann, the dead body is seen lying on a rug with an Indian motif. The blood in the elevator shafts is, for Blakemore, the blood of the Indians in the burial ground on which the hotel was built. As such, the fact that the date of the final photograph is July 4 is meant to be deeply ironic. Blakemore writes,

As with some of his other movies, Kubrick ends The Shining with a powerful visual puzzle that forces the audience to leave the theater asking, "What was that all about?" The Shining ends with an extremely long camera shot moving down a hallway in the Overlook, reaching eventually the central photo among 21 photos on the wall. The caption reads: "Overlook Hotel-July 4th Ball-1921." The answer to this puzzle, is that most Americans overlook the fact that July Fourth was no ball, nor any kind of Independence day, for native Americans; that the weak American villain of the film is the re-embodiment of the American men who massacred the Indians in earlier years; that Kubrick is examining and reflecting on a problem that cuts through the decades and centuries.

Blakemore also sees this film as similar to other Kubrick films where evil forces get weak men to do their bidding.
Film writer John Capo sees the film as an allegory of American imperialism. This is exemplified by many clues; the closing photo of Jack in the past at a 4th of July party, or Jack's earlier citation of the Rudyard Kipling poem "The White Man's Burden". The poem has been interpreted as rationalizing the European colonization of non-white people, while Jack's line has been interpreted as referring to alcoholism, from which he suffers " (Wikipedia, The Shining (film) Native Americans).

The Overlook Hotel, timberline.

It's the sign of a really great film that so many different people can come to it and all take something different away from it. For example, when I see the photo at the end of the film, and I look at the exact same date which John Capo sees, I see two different events happening from that year: on July 2, two days before the film's photograph, President Harding signing a congressional resolution that America is no longer at war with Germany, Austria and Hungary (the official end of World War I); on July 29 of that same month, Adolf Hitler becomes the fuhrer of the Nazi Party. At the hour that one world war had ended, the next one had already started. There is, however, the dominant position in the film that, as a government "built" upon a land robbed from Native Americans (as the Overlook is built on the burial ground), what right do we have in telling others what government they are going to live under (democracy or communism)?

At home while Jack interviews for the winter caretaker position.

Psychoanalytic doubles are established within the first moments of the film: Danny (Danny Lloyd) has an... alter ego named Tony who discusses with Wendy (Shelly Duvall) the family going to the hotel for the winter. Meanwhile, Jack's double is Delbert Grady, and we can confidently say Grady is Jack's double because Jack will be "filling in the same role" at the hotel that Grady did. In various forms, it's these two roles that will battle throughout the rest of the film: Grady symbolizing the past, and Tony symbolizing the future, both wanting the United States (Wendy) for themselves.

The most important moment in the film: establishing Tony as the double for Danny.

The film itself establishes the practice of holding up a mirror and seeing something in reverse to see the thing more clearly: Tony is Danny's imaginary friend, but it could also be Toni, then holding up Danny's friend to the mirror to see Danny more clearly, it becomes the "i-not" of the film; who is Danny "not?" Probably the cook Dick Hallorann (Scatman Carothers) because they can communicate mentally the same way that Danny and Tony/Toni communicate. He's a big black man and that's absolutely not what Danny is.

Dick Hallorunn and the Indian Chief Calumet behind him.

Using this perspective, we can establish that Jack, as the founding father, and Wendy as the symbolic of America itself, has given birth not only to Danny, but to Dick Hallorann, those who were once slaves; like the Native Americans who never make an appearance but are continuously referred to throughout the film, America has many children that she must defend from the murderous tendencies of the founding father; like Mary Poppins, the Hottentots were not only "the other," but also, by adoption, British. For the British to kill off the Hottentots was to kill off their own people, and its Mary Poppins that makes that point (please see Mary Poppins: Frankenstein and Animal Farm for more). 

This is the point where analyzing the axe that is used would contribute to our understanding of what's going on. As I said in Decoding the Decoding: Scream, the chef's knife has a long history in slasher films of being associated with sex as a weapon, and Wendy utilizes the same symbol, the same strategy. The axe, in the hands of first Grady and then Jack is the weapon of the founding fathers, not only to cut down religious differences between people (the tree symbolizes the wood of the cross and the religious wars and civil wars which prompted people to abandon their homelands to move to America for religious freedom) but also the vast forests which had to be cut down for developing homes and farms and railroads. This is the reason the Donnor Party is mentioned: they were heading west, just like the Torrance family, looking for a new chance. The entire opening sequence of the car (a German Volkswagen which was literally developed at the order of Adolf Hitler) driving through the wilderness is like a wagon going west in the era of Manifest Destiny.

Blood spilling from the elevators at the Overlook Hotel. The Native American motifs are obvious, and it's a good line of analysis to work that it refers to the Indian Burial ground. Yet this is an elevator, not a closet, and when something is "being kept hidden" the usual symbol is a closet (consider, for example, Carol Ann's closet in Poltergeist). Elevators are used for moving, going up and down, as in levels of consciousness; so I think an added dimension to this interpretation is that, while we are thinking about protecting the rest of the world from communist take-overs, we need to remember that we ourselves took over the Natives of the land and didn't hesitate to kill for what we wanted the way the Communists were killing to get what they wanted and take over other countries.

I don't believe, however, that we can say the film is just about international politics.
There is a problem in this marriage and Jack's projections of what he wants are at odds with Wendy's lackluster character. Jack sleeps when Wendy brings him "breakfast in bed." Noting that it's already 11:30, Wendy says, "I guess we've been staying up too late," meaning, they've been having a lot of sex. Things will change, however, or at least Jack will perceive that they have changed.When he's having the drink with "Lloyd" the barman, he tells him there's a bit of a problem with the old sperm bank. Either Jack has become impotent--which has carried over to his writing--or Wendy is no longer agreeing to have intercourse with him. Given the prevalent images of the "cold" after this point, I would guess that she's become frigid to him. As she takes on the responsibilities of maintaining the hotel and he's left to his writing, she loses respect for him and won't sleep with him.

Breakfast in bed. In this still, we are seeing Jack in a reflection of the bedroom mirror.

The hedge maze, in which Jack gets lost and dies, is similar to the hotel in being a maze, and I think both can be said to be symbolic of the mind: we easily get lost in the dark corridors, like room 237, and the elevator shafts filled with blood. Since Danny is always going around the entire hotel, and he's been through the maze, he has, for his age, thoroughly examined himself. Jack, on the other hand, hasn't. We can say this for two reasons: first, he dies in the maze (and that's also a symbolic, spiritual death) but he also can't write: if he was going deeper into himself, he would have plenty to write, but since he can only write one thing, it's indicative of he himself being only one thing.

Selling his soul for a drink of bourbon.

What about the crazy woman in the bathtub who tries to strangle Danny?
I think this is a symbol fo America, and how Danny (the future) and Jack (the status quo) views the country: as America is trying to cleanse itself of crimes and sins (the bath) to the young generation, America is an old country, trying to strangle the younger generation that would change her from what she's become. To the establishment, such as Jack, she's a beautiful young woman, in the inviting bath where they, too, can be rejuvenated and project themselves as writers expressing themselves on paper. Why does the woman turn once Jack takes a hold of her? Because he can't get a hold of it. He's at a luxury hotel, but he's not on vacation, he's a servant (staying in the servants' quarters, in an apartment) not a jet-setter staying in a luxury hotel room. The room he enters is far nicer than their apartment, but because Jack can't succeed financially, it's like a beautiful woman taking a bath that he can't have as his own...

The "key to understanding" is in Room 237; Kubrick gives us this, so to understand what happens in that room is to understand the film. It's the same woman yet the old Torrance and the young Torrance have a different relationship to her.

Let's say a few last words about "Tony." When Tony is first introduced to the audience, we see him telling Danny that his dad got the job at the hotel and will be calling in a few minutes to tell Wendy; but it's only a few seconds. Tony shows Danny an image of the two little girls in blue lying in a hallway of the hotel, butchered and bloody, but Ullman had told Jack in the interview that Grady stacked the bodies up in one of the rooms. Danny tells the doctor that Tony hides in his mouth and, if he were to open his mouth, Tony would go to his stomach. This is clearly an association with Danny's appetites, the same way the women are projections of Jack's appetites. When Danny is being examined by the doctor, we notice that his bed pillow is a bear; bear symbolize fear because, whatever it is we are afraid of, we fear it because we think it can--in some way--maul us to death the way a bear does. Since it's on his bed, Danny may already be experiencing sexual fears, although I don't want to suggest that about the sex act itself, rather, about his place as a male in society, because we know that he hasn't made any friends,... other than Tony.

"Hello, Danny.""

This brings us to the two little girls. The second time Danny sees them he's in the game room at the the hotel and he's throwing darts; he turns around and sees them standing in the doorway looking at him. Nothing is said. The symbolism of this, at least on one level, is that, at Danny's age, he should be playing games, not being sexualized or fearing for his life. Instead of the darts being a phallic symbol, as they would be for his father, but for Danny it symbolizes the games we play when we are a child. The appearance of the two little girls, however, foreshadows that Danny will not get to play games; like Carol Ann in Poltergeist, he will have to grow up fast and realize that his father is trying to kill him.

"Come play with us, forever and ever..."

Let's talk about Wendy.
It's a weak character who manages to survive and that's important. The constant "torrents" of abuse and anger which Wendy endures helps her to see what's really happening to her so she can go with the "wind(y)." As Jack forces her up the stairs, backwards, holding a bat, we have a powerful image. The stairs, of course, symbolizes a higher plane of consciousness; but she's going up "backwards," which means she's not looking up, but looking down on the daily routine and what does she see? Herself, holding a bat, as if it were a phallus. Wendy, in taking over the responsibilities of maintaining the hotel, as also taken all the responsibility from Jack, something he complains about, but not something he does anything about.

When she looks into the bedroom and sees the bear sitting up and looking at her, as mentioned earlier, the bear symbolizes fear, and it's very likely that Wendy had or had not been giving Jack oral sex because she was afraid of him (remember, he was having problems with the old sperm bank). Wendy, a rather self-centered character, can only understand things in terms relating immediately to herself, so it's natural that, as she's trying to comprehend the situation, she does so in their intimate relationship.

When Grady tells Jack that he needs to "correct" Danny and Wendy, that his girls didn't like the Overlook, I think he's referring women's right to vote (trying to burn down the old ways) and how Jack--as the establishment--needs to discipline (put down) Danny (the younger generations) and Wendy (the country). Remember, the bathroom is red, so we're dealing with the appetites.

About Jack's writing...
We discover in the conversation in the bathroom with Grady, that Jack recognizes Grady because he looked up the newspaper articles. When Wendy had come in and wanted to know how his writing was coming, there was a scrapbook open on Jack's right side of the table, so Jack was probably trying to write a novel about what happened to Grady and why he killed his family. At this point, if this is what Jack has been doing, we could say that his conversation with Grady is a severe case of character identification. We also find out something very important about Danny: Grady recognizes that Danny has a very great talent and he's using it. This totally undermines Jack--not necessarily is authority--but worse, Jack's own knowledge that he doesn't have any talent.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
In order to understand this sentence, and its multiplicity, we need to define "work" and "play." I think this goes back to the complex situation of being a servant at a luxury hotel that he's living in, but his work means that he can't have any play because he would never be able to afford to actually stay there. Remember at the beginning when Wendy and Jack are getting the tour and she's gushing that it's the most beautiful hotel she's ever been in. This makes for a clear class distinction: there are all these gorgeous rooms in the hotel (for that time period) but they are staying in the servants' apartment. If you took Jack's situation, living in the land of the free where he can't get a job that he wants, and multiply Jack times a thousand (that there have been thousands of Jacks) then he has written a book; a book about class struggle, where never getting to play and enjoy life makes him dull ("dull" as in un-educated) and directly clashes with the idea of "play" that Danny has and needs to make sure that he doesn't become "a dull boy," but we have to question, is that what is happening? In both senses, Jack's and Danny's, "play" is essential to our individual identities because it also helps us to define what our "work" is. Towards the beginning, Jack was throwing a ball against the wall; many would consider that play but because he has no responsibilities, Wendy takes care of it all, he can't also have a sense of play.

The dream which Jack has and wakes up from, in which he had killed Wendy and Danny, is a dream, but the symbolic translation of that isn't he unconscious wish to actually kill them (our real feelings have to hide behind symbols) but he does "cut them into pieces." Has a "writer," Jack does cut Wendy and Danny to little pieces, with his words. I wouldn't want to have a conversation with him, at any time. And this is important because it reminds each of us how we must be the "care takers" of our conversations and our loved ones. In his "torrent" of accusations against Wendy, as she backs up the stairs, he talks about whether or not she knows what a moral and ethical responsibility is, and how he has made an agreement to look after that hotel. Well, she does know, because she entered into the "marriage contract" with him, which he first made prior to the Overlook Hotel agreement. His moral responsibilities to his wife and child superceedes his agreement to the owners of the hotel.

This final, utterly disturbing image is the image of the establishment in the United States in 1980, those who have been frozen by the Cold War and are trying to strangle the younger generation from making America their own home. He freezes to death with his eyes open, suggesting that, no matter how much you see it coming, there's still nothing that can be done about it. While the country had consistently handled its problems in the same way, over and over throughout the years, Jack vowed that he wouldn't, but when he was threatened, he did the same thing the others did: tried to destroy those who threatened him.

The Family Graveyard: Poltergeist

Poltergeist was released in 1982; Steven Spielberg wrote and produced the film that Tobe Hooper directed; it was nominated for three Academy Awards. Poltergeist is a symbolically intense film; I'm nervous just attempting it, so please be warned, I won't get to everything (as usual) but perhaps this discussion will draw your attention to something you haven't noticed before and those items I can't include here will come to your attention regardless of my inadequacy.

Until you realize when Steve Freeling (Craig Nelson) goes to the team at UC Irvine and reveals his age, his wife's age and the ages of the kids, you don't realize that Diane Freeling (Jo Beth Williams) was 16 when they had their first daughter, Dana (Dominque Dunne). This fact, delivered in an office interview is, quite simply, what the entire film is about: the ghosts in the family closet.

As the opening credits linger by, The Star Spangled Banner plays (recall, please, how at the beginning of Night of the Living Dead, as they drove into the cemetery, an American flag was "framing" the scene). As the trumpets are blaring, the word POLTERGEIST comes on the screen at the refrain.There's not just a poltergeist in the Free(ling) family (who live in the land of the "free") but in this country, and it's the television that's the clue to what's going on. If you will recall, in my post Contagion: Bats and Pigs, I noted how director Steven Soderbergh employed "noise" and "blur": it's easy to get frustrated that you can't hear the dialogue, but he wants you to hear that you can't hear it so you know that more is being said than what is in the dialogue; he blurs images or parts of images, so you can see that you aren't going to see everything that's going on.

Carol Ann in her parents' bedroom; they have left the television on while they sleep, symbolically, and the static takes over the home.

This opening with the television images blurred and the static are being employed in the same way: we are not going to see everything but it's inside the static that "they" come. Note that Steve has fallen asleep in his comfy chair and the dog is grabbing some leftovers to snack on; this image pretty much sums up the role of television in America: while we are asleep, and there is static, we are picking up things that are feeding our animal appetites and this can happen exactly because we don't realize it. But children can. And they do. The dog travels throughout the house, the appetites going to each family member just as "the beast" will do later on (but we don't think about it when it's a lovable Golden Retriever). Carol Ann is the only one the Golden Retriever doesn't seem to find something to "snack on," and that's the reason why the beast wants her: he doesn't have her yet, but he does have all the others.

Diane about to put Carol Ann's bird Tweety in the toilet. What does the bird symbolize? The Holy Spirit (and the Spirit descended upon the Christ in the form of a dove... artists use any bird--almost--to symbolize the Holy Spirit). What's important is where the bird's name comes from: television. The cartoons Carol Ann watches forms and cements her understanding, or lack of, about religion. What caused the bird to die? How many swear words have been uttered by this point in the film? "Air pollution" from foul language might be the cause...

List of what was going on in 1981 and that comes across on the television: it's with the television that Carol Ann is "connecting with," not her parents (and that's why her hands are on the screen), and just because it says it's signing off, doesn't mean that it is: television invades our every moment, thought, word and gesture. (As the film goes back into credits, and the audience arrives at the credits for the screenwriters, the background image of the neighborhood is the dead tree in the center of everything: please note, that symbolizes "dead faith at the center of everything").

Just before this scene, the guy coming in through the back door was riding a bike up the street, carrying six packs of beer; the kids sent their remote control cars after him, causing him to wreck and crash in his groin. The scene reverses the traditional roles: it's usually the kids on the bike and the grown up in the car, the adults who are sexually active and the children who are not, but this sequence shows us a "different reality" and it's alcohol that's the great equalizer between adult and child. What is Dana eating? A pickle, and anyone who has read Edith Wharton's Ethan Fromm knows the symbols associated with the pickle, meaning, she's sexually active. The writers managed to get all this in a few seconds.

Robbie climbs a tree outside, of course, symbolic of the Cross, and this is his own endeavor to understand why things are the way they are and how things are and, from this vantage point, he sees the storm coming, he knows metaphorically what's about to break out because he's looking at it from the perspective of the Cross and knows, like Zacchaeus in the Book of Lukebut eat the family (as the poltergeist it symbolizes).

As I was looking something up regarding the film, I came across someone who asked the question why there is so much Star Wars merchandise in the film. Like Casey in Scream they have learned about life from the television and instead of having religious symbols in the home, they have Hollywood symbols in the home (please see Decoding the Decoding: Scream). There is also the very likely possibility that Star Wars is the theology of the home (note that a poster of Darth Vader hangs in the closet door wherein "lurks the beast") and this shallow understanding of God and heaven is re-enforced for the audience in the next scene when Steve is watching Spencer Tracey in the 1943 classic A Guy Named Joe which helped to establish that heaven is a mundane place and it's much better to be alive here on earth where you can really enjoy life.  Diane is smoking a joint. No wonder she closed the kids' bedroom door.

This is the part where the immaturity of the parents really effects the kids' ability to grow-up to be adults. As Diane describes her childhood sleepwalking, note that her father had her checked for hickeys; Steve inflating and deflating his stomach in and out, "Before, after, before, after," actually prophesies how he is before the poltergeist and what he will be like afterwards. But the item of importance is Carol Ann. We see Dana talking on the phone in her bed, and this whole time, Carol Ann has had a phone with her in her bed.

The white phone she's holding indicates she's picking up Dana's bad habits who has picked up her mother's bad habits.

When Robbie and Carol Ann have moved into mom and dad's room to spend the night, the Star Spangled Banner plays once more, with images of Washington flashing by. Remember, in the previous sequence, as Diane was smoking a joint, Steve was pretending to read, Regan, the President and the Man, and in 1981, just a year before this film, Reagan had been shot in the chest. The assassination of a president is part of what Washington stands for at this time (but it you look at a timeline of the events of 1981 you'll see a number of disturbing things, including the first five homosexual men who would be diagnosed with AIDS).

Dana flipping off the workers making cat calls at her. Watching her from the kitchen window, her mother Diane just smiles, probably a chip off the old block. This is the reason Dana isn't really involved with any of the supernatural things going on in the house, the beast all ready has her and doesn't want to draw attention to it, but he has to get Carol Ann.

What I believe is happening in Poltergesit when "the beast" takes Carol Ann is not that they are trying to save her, but that Carol Ann is saving her family.
If it were not for the events that take place involving the disturbing supernatural nature of things, the Freeling family would never enter into a deeper awareness about what their lives mean. For example, before Robbie is attacked by the tree (the symbol of false religion because it's on the other side of the glass which symbolizes reflection and no one in the family knows what true religion is but Carol Ann it appears) the name "Jesus Christ" exists only to be taken in vain; when Diane sees Robbi being sucked in that tree, she says, "My God," which could be taking the Lord's name in vain, but I believe it's a prayer in this circumstance because of what's happening.

Given our previous postings, when Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight) tells the Freelings to tell Carol Ann to stay away from the light, we know what that light is: the light that appears to be the "real life," the fun and joy that seems to come easily to others while Christians seem to be toiling on their own Way of the Cross. Carol Ann is being tempted, like her sister Dana and their mother, towards the easy going life, and Dr. Lesh knows it.

The paranormal investigation team from UC Irvine.

The assistant who has a bite taken out of him, is the one who himself is always taking a bite out of something. First he's eating Cheetos, then he goes to the kitchen--the ultimate symbol of the appetites in the home--and then he takes a chicken leg as he prepares to fry a steak. (When Diane was showing Steve how Carol Ann was going to scoot across the floor, what was Carol Ann complaining about? Her mom wasn't going to cook dinner, and Diane replied that they would go to Pizza Hut for dinner. This succinctly summarizes Diane's parenting philosophy: give them whatever. Carol Ann intuitively knows dinner at home is best but Diane doesn't). The meat rotting and the chicken leg suddenly having maggots all over it is actually a very helpful form of addiction-breaking advice from the beast. When he himself starts rotting and turning inside-out, we have a clear picture of how something as simple as our appetites can utterly destroy our soul.

This is what the appetites look like.

This is the part where the unmoved graves are introduced. We've all seen the great ending where the skeletons are rising up out of the hole dug for the swimming pool in the middle of the rain storm, and know that the company developing the properties moved the headstones but they didn't move the graves. The president of the company tells Steve that no one has complained about living on a graveyard since 1976; what happened in 1976? America turned 200 years old. This references directly the founding of the country with Steve and Diane's founding of their family, and any of the wrongs committed would have to be answered for.

All their hope resides in her knowledge of the beast.

"Her life force, it is very strong...." Where have we heard this before? In discussions about Renfield, and now, spirits are trying to take Carol Ann's strong life force. Why is it so strong? It's not weakened by appetites, like those of her family and the tech assistant who would have eaten the moving, rotting steak. She goes on to say that the spirits keeping Carol Ann bound are attracted to her light, even though the real light has come to them but they refuse to go to it... This would be like someone someone who has talent suddenly being turned into a mega-star by the press, and instead of worshiping the God who blessed that person with those talents, the person is worshiped. Carol Ann, in her innocence, is actually being perverted by the beast to keep others from God. But what is also happening, is the spectral forces that she's supposed to lead to the light, is her own family, wandering hither and thither about the world, but not getting onto their own tasks of getting to God.

Monster Squad, "There's a monster in the closet."

Why is it the child who knows what the grown ups don't?
In Monster Squad, Eugene tells his daddy that there's a monster in his closet and the dad humors his son, when of course, there is a monster in the closet, it's the mummy. Symbolically, this means that their family has some dark, ancient sin locked away in their own closet, and Eugene knows it intuitively, but his parents won't acknowledge it; this is the real "noise" and the "blurs" which--like Soderberg and Spielberg--we employ every day in our own lives to keep others from seeing and keep others from hearing. But children can because they haven't learned that "double-talk" of adulthood, they still know what the truth is. When Tangina tells them to clear their minds because the beast knows what they are afraid of, she's referring to the things they keep "locked up in Carol Ann's closet" which is their own young, troubled relationship when they were teenagers, and they don't want that to "come out into the open," so they keep a lock on it.

On Steve's end, the rope symbolizes the umbilical cord, his love for Diane and Carol Ann "feeding them" in this time of trial. On the other end, Dr. Lesh is a "leash," giving them the discipline they need to get through and Ryan is the "rye" (wheat) the Bread of Life to help them get through to the other end.

Why is it that Diane goes?
There are reasons for her to go, but the truth is, the mother is not only the giver of the physical life, but the spiritual life as well, and the scene so clearly invoking the "birthing process" means to establish that Diane has to give birth to Carol Ann again so that she will have the spiritual life that won't be weakened--and ultimately destroyed by sin. It's Steve's own weakness caused by sin which causes him to not be able to trust and that brings the beast out. Because Diane has responded, her strength compensates and she's able to save Carol Ann but only after they have been "baptized." The breath of air they so desperately need to take in order to LIVE is the Breath of Life given by the Holy Spirit, just as it was first given to Adam. Because Diane has been cleansed of her "fall from grace," she has preserved Carol Ann from making the mistake that she did, so Tangina can pronounce, "This house is clean."

Carol Ann, after the ordeal, matches her doll. She doesn't remember anything.

Then they move.
As Diane tells Dana that they are spending the night at the Holiday Inn, Dana says, I remember that place, and it's obvious, once more, that Dana is a "lost cause." Waiting for Steve to get home, Robbie and Carol Ann get ready to go to bed as Diane is dying the Bride of Frankenstein gray streaks in her hair (symbolic that something has died in her, and this is the first step of wisdom, but Dana encouraged her to color it so she is....). Robbie, getting ready for bed, sees the strange face of his clown doll and attempts (for the second time in the film) to cover it with his red jacket. Robbie and Carol Ann had been fighting over toys earlier, as if nothing had happened, so what we really have to determine is, the house wasn't cleaned after all: even one speck of sin is sufficient to allow the demons back in, and they put up a really good fight.

Why are clowns so spooky? Because they're not supposed to be, but make-up used to "make-up" a clown can be deceiving, and it's that potential of deception which casts doubt on the motivations of the toy. There is also the element of abuse: toys are supposed to be played with, not play with the children like they are toys, and Robbie and Carol Ann are supposed to love each other, not fight as if they never met. So there is an element of "reflectiveness" which this spooky toy clown provides, as if he is a reflection of Robbie who is "robbing" Carol Ann of the security and protection she needs.

 As the beast launches its second attack and the animated clown takes down Robbie, Diane, blow drying her hair, doesn't hear the commotion in the next room; she's literally blowing "hot air," instead of the Breath of Life which her and Carol Ann both received (she makes an act of vanity instead of clinging to her hard won wisdom). Why does the clown drag Robbie under the bed? The bed in the Old Testament was a prophetic device for the Cross: as Christ would lay down upon the Cross and be crucified, so the Patriarchs would "suffer upon their couches," and the same metaphors are used in the Song of Songs. Having been absent from his sister's rescue, the suffering which Robbie is trying to escape (by pretending everything is normal) is "dragging him under."

The reason there has to be a  "scary monster" in horror films is because it's an accurate reflection of what the soul of the main character looks like. She's seeing this because it's her, and that's why demons are so powerful: they show the horror of what you have become, but you don't realize it's you (because if we did, we would also realize that we have the power to change it, but the beasts don't want us to know that, they want us powerless). The reason Steve saw the "beast" he saw when he tries to pull Diane and Carol Ann out too soon earlier in the film is because that's what Steve was when Diane was only 16, a sexual beast, like the wolf man.

Meanwhile, the beast has found Diane on her bed and literally starts humping her; why? She's letting Dana be humped at that very moment (Dana had gone on a date and was remembering the Holiday Inn earlier, remember? Diane is now paying for letting her daughter be promiscuous). Why does she crawl up the ceiling? Most mothers would be crawling up the ceiling if they even suspected what Diane knows Dana to be doing and Diane doesn't care, so the beast is literally showing her the proper way she should be behaving. Robbie stats fighting with the toy clown the way he might fight with Carol Ann. Meanwhile, Diane and Robbie are so consumed with their battles, they don't notice that the closet door is opening back up again....

Literally in the pool of death and with the colored shirt that the skeleton is wearing, there is no reason to not understand that "dead man" as her husband Steve. There isn't any symbolic difference between this sequence and the ones in Carnival of Souls and Nights of Cabiria.

The reason she falls into the swimming pool, which is also the muddy pit, is the same reason that Mary Henry in Carnival of Souls falls in: it's a fall from grace, and that's why horror films terrify us so much, it makes us genuinely see the horror of what we ourselves do and cover with blurry images and the noise of justifying it (please see Being-Unto-Death: Carnival of Souls). The second time she falls in is, literally, this second encounter with the beast that is going on at that very moment: she slipped on the mud of instead of standing on solid ground (Christian teaching and doctrine) and so she didn't understand what happened the first go, so she has to learn the lesson again (all the different skeletons are the different people effected by her sin; I would be able to make a stronger case for this had I the time to post on An American Werewolf in London, but that will have to wait). Think I'm wrong on this? What does she use to start climbing up the side of the pool? The air machine which reflects back on the air/breath that her and Carol Ann needed when they "came out" the first time.

Test shot of the "crawling up the wall" sequence.

I'm really sorry, I had no intention of making a post this long. Oh, well... you can skip around...
The really long hallway is a great image, because this is the type of moment which Christians are (supposedly) constantly preparing for: the running of the race (this will be important in The Exorcist). Diane hasn't been preparing, so that's why this trial now seems so overwhelming (remember, "Deep calling on deep," and she doesn't have the deep faith to meet the deep challenge). Because her love for her children is strong, that offers fuel for the Holy Spirit and she's able to meet the challenge.

A very young Spielberg directing Nelson.

But now, we're facing a monster that's.... a giant mouth. It's much like Return of the Jedi in 1983 when Luke and Hans are going to be thrown into the desert mouth giant monster... in Poltergeist, it symbolizes one thing: the family's lingering appetites, and that's enough to permit all this evil back in. We don't realize that the allowance of even our slightest sins, is an invitation to greater sins and all the beast needs to make our souls his home. But we also aren't prepared for the incredible outpouring of Grace that God desires to give us, when we only ask for it. "God, help me!" Diane screams, trying to pull Robbie and Carol Ann out of the room, and she's given the strength to save them from the demon, and this is a miracle: not only that she asked, but that she was able to respond to God's grace.

A parent reaching out to her kids.

The coffins coming up are, literally, of the old, and I think this goes back to earlier, the invoking of the year 1976 when the United States turned 200, and the "old skeletons" still in the closet which hadn't been properly retired (I just don't have room to write about it here, maybe a book someday). What's so funny (and Spielberg really is a funny guy) at that moment, Dana pulls up in a red sports car (remember, red is the appetites) and gets out; this is the first time in the film that her hair has been pulled back, and it clearly shows that she has hickeys... so we know what she's been doing. As they drive away, Steve utters a famous phrase from the Old Testament, "Don't look back," invoking the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (and even another Spielberg film, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy tells Marian, "Don't look at it, close your eyes and don't look!").

Holiday Inn in the background.

At the end, the family hasn't just made it to a safer location, they have made it to a plane of genuine conversion, saved by Carol Ann's ordeal. The sign "Holiday Inn" reflects not just a hotel--a symbol of a temporary dwelling for the soul (this will be important in The Shining)--but also a place of transition. Similarly, Holiday Inn is not only a hotel, it's also a movie (remember they were watching A Guy Named Joe earlier) and a new way of life. Lingering on the threshold, Steve accepts, for the sake of his family, that he is making  a transition; when he puts the television outside their room, he's made the hardest step: the first.

Next posts will be The Shining, Carrie, The Exorcist and The Philosophy of Evil, in that order, one a day!

Being-Unto-Death: Carnival of Souls

I first saw Carnival of Souls (1962) in 2004 and it has haunted me ever since. While the acting leaves a bit to be desired, the story line does not: made several years before Night of the Living Dead, in a lot of ways it is more sophisticated, more bite to the storyline, probably because NOTLD gives us several characters whereas Carnival of Souls gives us just one: a normal woman living an average life, and that is what's so haunting about it; it had a "trick ending" before Hollywood started doing trick endings. NOTLD leaves you startled and disturbed with how it ends but Carnival of Souls makes you see the mysterious dimensions of what "death" is and what happens when we don't understand death, why the ending could not be any different than what it is.

The opening establishes why everything else in the film happens: there is a race between a car with some boys and a car with three girls, and the car the girls drive crashes through the guard rail. Turning onto the bridge, was a sign that the road was under construction. This tells us everything we need to know and the rest of the film fills in the ghoulish details. The drag race the girls enter into symbolizes the nuclear arms race engaged in between the United States and Soviet Union; why is this important? It gave people a false sense of death and a false sense of living.

The girls' car driving through the guard rail and into the river below.

There was a continuous threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and that constant state of being anxious about death mis-led people in their understandings of what life is and what the purpose of life is. This, in its own turn, also distorted people's understanding of what death is. Carnival of Souls directly confronts this issue in the vapid personality of Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) because, in trying to forget about her experience with death, and go on with her life, she loses her life. Philosopher Martin Heidegger would say that in not having any "being" towards her death, she doesn't have any "being" towards her life, either.

The sole survivor to emerge from the car crash.

The symbols in this fast-moving opening sequence are clear and simple: the car symbolizes the Holy Spirit (please see, for example, My Favorite Zombie: Night of the Living Dead for more on how symbols of the Holy Spirit are vehicles). That they are entering into a drag race illustrates that they are mis-using their souls and gifts because cars have to be specially fitted out for racing, and neither the girls' nor the boys' cars are prepared for this kind of race; the Holy Spirit prepares us to run the race St. Paul speaks of, and to focus on a race for which we have not been prepared is to falsely understand one's identity, hence to falsely understand your life, hence to falsely understand your death. Everything, then, truly depends upon knowing what it is we are uniquely called to do in life, and this is prevalent throughout the film.

One of the boys inviting the girls to race against them.

So the girls have entered into a false race and they have turned down a road marked "under construction." Very simply put, the road is the "road of life" and for each of the young people involved, their road on life's journey is under construction, it is still being worked out, but they are on this road for the wrong reason, at the wrong time and--literally--in the wrong identities for each of them. They are not racers, and they are not to be racing each other. As I mentioned, this idea of the race invokes St. Paul's command, "Run the good race," to win the crown, but who did he want us to run that race against? The devil, the one who is trying to outrun our virtues with temptations to sin; in Carnival of Souls, the girls and the boys are acting the devil against each other, instead of anticipating each other in acts of love. Given all the problems with this situation, it's to be expected that the girls lose control of their steering (the car is out of control) and it crashes through the guard rail.

At the organ after the "accident."

Literally, the guard rail is protecting people from falling into the muddy river below, and symbolically, the guard rail protected the girls from "falling" into the "mud." The guard rail signifies the social and religious convention of not engaging in sexual activity but the girls "fall" anyway, crashing through, and drowning in the filth of the river below (water is always either a symbol for grace--that which gives life--or a symbol for sin--that which destroys life; because the girls die in the river, it symbolizes sin, and because Mary's neighbor is actively trying to get her into bed, the river bed becomes the sinful bed).

This is a great shot: remember in Dracula and The Mummy how the same up-close shots on the eyes were used for the old horror films? Mary, supposedly, is the heroine in Carnival of Souls, but the fear and strangeness of her eyes communicates the fear and strangeness of her life after her accident, and if we want to carry the analogy to Dracula and The Mummy to its conclusion, her soul has become sufficiently darkened to be the villain and the only thing for the narrative to do is let Mary make her own bad decisions with their inevitable conclusion.

When Mary emerges from the bed covered in mud (we're still in the very first moments of the film), read it symbolically as her soul is covered with sin, even though she didn't intend for it to happen that way, she was just going along for the ride. Most importantly, she's been under the water for 3 hours when she suddenly appears on the river bank; the 3 hours invokes the resurrection of Christ, especially since, during the rolling of the credits, the camera focuses on "dead wood" and tree stubs sticking up out of the muddy water, signifying the wood of the Cross and dead faith in religion. The scene invokes Frederico Fellini's 1957 film Nights of Cabiria : Cabiria, a prostitute, is attacked by a man who steals her purse and she's plunged into a muddy river, unconscious. A group of boys see that she's drifting towards the sewer and if she gets that far she'll be lost. Undoubtedly connecting the two women, Carnival of Souls insinuates that the loss of Mary's and Cabiria's souls are both connected to their sexual activities.

Ingres and Bather and the Surrealist parody by Man Ray.

The interesting part of Mary is that she is an organist, a Church organist. In the history of art, a woman's body has always been compared to a musical instrument, and in Carnival of Souls, the comparison holds. Mary's body, in symbolic terms, belongs to the Church, but she's willing to give it to anyone to let them "make music" on it as they want (her leering neighbor). Music, the sacred and the blasphemous, are in a death struggle over Mary's soul: she is a Church organist, but it's the dissonance of the carnival music that lures her and attracts her, and this is the whole point of all these posts I have been making. It comes down to a false understanding of what life is. Just as Renfield eats bugs to get the life force of them for himself, so Mary is wanting to have life that she's never had and giver herself to the carnival in order for it to give her life, but it can only give her the same type of life that the drag race at the beginning of the show gave her: death.

As she's driving to a new job, she passes an abandoned carnival and begins seeing the reflection of this... "ghoul" in the window. Over the course of the story, the ghoul increasingly replaces her own reflection in mirrors and she's drawn to the abandoned carnival in her thoughts and actions.

Very often, when someone has had a near death experience, or perhaps they are facing death due to a terminal illness, they consider all the things there hasn't been time to do and what they still want to do to experience life. "Go to Italy, watch whales swimming, skydive, go to the Super Bowl, meet a celebrity, take cooking classes, etc." and that's a bad sign. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things, but it is wrong when doing something is the definition of life, instead of "being" being the definition of life. Hamlet questioned himself, "To be or not to be," and "not to be" is, literally, not to have being; like Barbara in Night of the Living Dead, Mary in Carnival of Souls isn't strong enough to seek out a strong faith, so she just goes along and allows her faith to die a slow death without recessatating it. This is the inauthentic existence: claiming to be a Christian but not living the life of a Christian or living up to its calling is living a lie; this lie blurs Mary's identity enough so that she can't retrieve it (the blending of her reflection and the reflection of the ghoul's symbolizes this process).

The ghoul who accurately reflects what Mary's soul is becoming.

This process, the losing of identity, is discussed in Decoding the Decoding: Scream: the loss of the identity of whatever victim Ghostface or Jason or Freddy or Michael is about to kill is seen in the "mask" of the killer, i.e., the accumulation of sin which the victim has willingly participated in has destroyed their identity so they have nothing within themselves left to fight the identity-less killer because that killer is their very own nothingness which has finally caught up with them. In the pale, white and expressionless face of the ghoul of Carnival of Souls, we see Mary's own lost identity and, as she joins in the dance of the macabre, we see the souls who also have lost their identity and how willingly they gave it up just so they could dance to this morbid tune. 

Examining her hands is a moment of the deepest reflection for Mary: her talent, her unique identity is in the music her hands make; while practicing the organ one day in church, she suddenly stops playing the regular, sacred music of the organ and enters into playing the deathly tune of the carnival that she has heard in her mind. Employing her hands for the work of the profane instead of the sacred also translates to her giving her body for pleasure instead of the sacrament of marriage.

The film makes a brilliant comparison of what it is she's really doing: after the accident, Mary surveys the river from the bridge, then gets into her car; as she's reaching for the ignition to turn the key, the film immediately turns to her being at the organ, pulling on the instrument's knobs. Visually conjoining the ignition of the car to the music of the organ amplifies the importance of Mary playing music and her role as a church organist; when she profanes that role by playing the dance of death instead, referencing back to this quick visual commentary reminds the audience of the duty to which she was called, and the duty which she intentionally denies doing and how foul, literally, the phantom life she longs for is in comparison to what Christ wants to give to each of us.

Mary's face whitened like Michael, Jason and Ghostface.

In conclusion, Mary's false attitude towards her death reflects her false attitude towards her life; her lack of devotion to her religion causes her to seek out a life that is really only death. By not seeking out to be authentic in her religion, she's accepting an inauthentic life because she can't value anything which has genuine worth, only the fleeting moment of pleasure, and this is what most of the works we have examined up to this point have centered upon: the philosophy of evil that replaces the abundant life Christ wants us to have with the empty, "carnival" life that our appetites want. I don't want to give anymore away because I am hoping you will watch it; it's not only on Netflix instant streaming this month, but there are numerous places on the internet where you can watch it for free (like here at Internet Archive since its public domain).