The inner life manifest as supernatural in The Shining
Hi there,
I wrote a thing. Like, just a few minutes ago. I thought I'd tell you about it here first.
The inner life manifest as supernatural in The Shining: Are the ghosts real? Yes. No. Maybe.
I rewatched Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) this week as homework. I've been writing so much about metaphorical haunted houses and I thought the metaphor was getting a little thin. I wanted to ground it in a real haunted house. Or at least a real fictional haunted house story. I thought the movie was even better than I remembered it, more beautiful, much scarier, and much richer in meaning. However, it's not so much of a clear-cut haunted house story. My spouse, who watched it for the first time with me, found the ambiguity annoying. Are we supposed to think the ghosts are literally real? Are the characters hallucinating them? Are they a metaphor? What really happened? Read more...
See you on the internet! AK