Listening to Stanley Kubrick (32 page)

19.
http://the-american-catholic.com/2011/04/09/lilliburlero
/.

20. This distinction is sometimes referred to as diegetic music and non-diegetic or extra-diegetic music. The former is music that is part of the diegesis, the milieu on-screen, and the latter refers to the score.

21. A tempophon is a device that allows one to modify the pitch or speed of something recorded on magnetic tape. In Germany, where the device was pioneered, it is called
zeitdehner
, or time-stretcher, and in English, it is also known as a rate-changer.
http://www.granularsynthesis.com/hthesis/gabor2.html
.

22. Frederick’s authorship of this piece is doubtful. Eugene Helm and Derek McCullough, “Frederick II,” in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001), 219.

23. Charles Osbourne,
The Complete Operas of Mozart
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1978), 143.

24. Osbourne,
Complete Operas of Mozart
, 156.

25. Michael F. Robinson, “Giovanni Paisiello,” in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001), 911.

26. John Reed,
Schubert: The Final Years
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972), 173.

27. Neal Zaslaw, “Leclair,” in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001), 446.

28. William Makepeace Thackeray,
The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.,
ed. Andrew Sanders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 188.

29. Thackeray,
Barry Lyndon
, 184.

30. Thackeray,
Barry Lyndon
, 244.

31. AMC Filmsite,
http://www.filmsite.org/aa75.html
.

32. Tim Robey, “Kubrick’s Neglected Masterpiece,”
The Telegraph,
February 5, 2009,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4524037/Barry-Lyndon-Kubricks-neglected-masterpiece.html
.

Chapter Six

Midnight, the Stars, and You

The Shining

With
Barry Lyndon
,
Kubrick came close
to perfecting the use of music as an element of time and place. The music, carefully chosen and expertly arranged, became an element of setting that suffused the beautiful images and static scenes with additional significance. From
2001
through
A Clockwork Orange
and
Barry Lyndon
, Kubrick’s musical choices were becoming ever more precise and effective. His next film, 1980’s
The Shining,
continued this process, achieving what some consider the pinnacle of his success in marrying music to film: “
The Shining
(1980) exemplifies a level of both sophisticated interaction of music and moving image, and general reliance on music for contextual, characterization and narrative purposes, rarely equaled in his output.”
1
As Kubrick had put his stamp on black comedy, science fiction, and the period drama,
The Shining
allowed the director to bring his unique vision to the genre of horror. Those who appreciate this vision have discussed the film as a high artistic watermark for the genre.
2

Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s
The Shining
would not be as eerily effective without his musical choices. The aural landscape of
The Shining
features
Lontano
by György Ligeti, whose music Kubrick had already used to great effect in
2001
; Bela Bartók’s
Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
, which lends an eerie, lonely sound that seems to mirror the isolation of the Overlook Hotel; the
Dies Irae
plainchant realized on the synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, suggesting the specter of death at the Overlook Hotel; and the music of Krzysztof Penderecki, which accompanies some of the most terrifying moments of the film. These musical choices effectively evoke both desolation and Jack’s descent into madness, but
The Shining
also features the 1930s-era tunes Jack hears in the Gold Room. Far from being a comforting respite from the atonal music of the hotel, this music appears in the context of Jack’s visions, as the hotel gradually causes Jack to slip away from sanity.

Technological Innovation

Kubrick did the unthinkable in
Barry Lyndon
, lighting scenes with only candles, pushing the envelope of technological innovation to its limit. Kubrick continued to make films on the cutting edge of technology by using a fairly new invention in
The Shining
, a camera stabilization system invented by Garrett Brown in the early seventies and eventually sold by the Tiffen Company. Called the Steadicam, the system allows a camera to be mounted on an armature that absorbs any unsteady movement made by the camera operator, resulting in fluid movement without the limitations of a dolly track. In her book about the Steadicam system, Serena Ferrara describes how the device works:

The Steadicam isolates the camera from all but the largest movements of the operator by means of the stabilizer arm and gimbal. The gimbal prevents unwanted effects from the angular movements of the operator (and allows the camera to be aimed with the lightest possible touch), and the arm’s two-spring system absorbs the up-and-down jerks caused by the operator’s movements through exploiting the high inertia of the rig (camera and electronics) and the flexibility of its support (the arm).
3

In the context of
The Shining
, the fluidity of the movement contributes to a sense of large space, as the camera travels through the hallways and rooms of the hotel—and later through the hedge maze—with a startling level of freedom. Kubrick likened it to a magic carpet, and it allowed the camera an even more intimate way of inhabiting the scenes, especially as it follows young Danny on his explorations of the hotel.
4
When Kubrick first wrote to Ed Di Giulio of Cinema Products Corporation, after seeing a demo reel, he was already thinking about filming from a low angle. The last thing he said in his communication to Di Giulio was, “Is there a minimum height at which [the Steadicam] can be used?”
5
He might have been thinking about shooting from Danny’s point of view, or perhaps he was thinking of the sequence in which Wendy drags the unconscious Jack into the pantry. The use of the Steadicam on a low mode rig—essentially with the rig turned upside down to allow the camera to move across the floor— was one of two unique innovations that were developed on the set of
The Shining.
6
The other innovation was Garrett Brown’s use of the so-called two-hand technique, in which one hand controls the arm of the Steadicam to control position and height, while the other hand pans and tilts.
7

American Cinematographer
made
The Shining
its cover story in August of 1980. One of the articles dedicated to the film explored the challenges of using the Steadicam system, including how to design lighting that was actually part of the set (and looked like it was part of the hotel), so the camera could move and turn freely without running into or revealing the theatrical lighting.
8
The Steadicam also contributed to the narrative, as the freedom of movement suggests a presence that is not bound in regular “earthly” ways. Serena Ferrara believes that Jack’s descent into madness “makes itself felt almost in a material dimension, through which the Steadicam moves.”
9
After seeing the film, Di Giulio wrote to Kubrick and said of the Steadicam, “It was like a malevolent POV. Evil was following the kid.”
10

The Shining
in Popular Culture

Although
The Shining
was the first Stanley Kubrick film since
Paths of Glory
not to receive an Academy Award nomination, it was among the top ten highest grossing movies in the year of its release and among the top fifty moneymakers of the decade. It has become a pop culture touchstone, parodied on the mainstream animated television shows
The Simpsons
(“Treehouse of Horror V,” segment titled “The Shinning”),
Family Guy
(episode “Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater,” in which Stewie encounters twin girls who ask him to come play), and Cartoon Network’s
Venture Brothers
(in which father Rusty Venture advises his son Hank that “not all black men have ‘the Shining’”). Excerpts of
The Shining
are seen at a drive-in during the film
Twister
. As a tornado destroys the drive-in screen, a famous scene from the film—the “Here’s Johnny” scene—can still be recognized as it is projected on a wall of rubble as it travels through the air.
The Shining
has also been mentioned on numerous other television shows, even recently; a 2012 episode of USA Network’s comedy
Psych
featured a
Shining
-themed episode called “Heeeeeere’s Lassie.”

In addition to its presence in popular culture, there is perhaps no other Kubrick film that has inspired so much speculation as to hidden meanings. It is full of symbols and symbolism, and it lends itself to multiple readings. In 2011, Rodney Asher created a full-length documentary,
Room 237
, which outlines some of the most prominent theories that have been shared in various media since the release of the film in 1980. In many of these readings of
The Shining
, the Overlook Hotel is often interpreted as a stand-in for America, an America that is powerful, secretive, or corrupt. And many of these theories originate in one particular deviation from Stephen King’s source material. While taking the Torrances through the Overlook Hotel in the film, Wendy asks, “Are all these Indian designs authentic?” to which the manager Ullman replies, “Yeah, I believe [they’re] based on Navajo and Apache motifs.” He goes on to explain that, “The site [of the hotel] is supposed to be located on an Indian burial ground, and I believe they actually had to repel a few Indian attacks as they were building it.” The inclusion of news like that—in light of Kubrick’s rigorous attention to detail—suggests that it is not a casual piece of information. Perhaps Kubrick simply wanted to convey that the site of the Overlook was a contested piece of land, the final resting place of spirits who have never been able to find peace. (A similar idea was used in the 1982 film,
Poltergeist
, in which a family whose house is built over a supposedly relocated cemetery is terrorized by hostile ghosts.) The production design’s choice of Native American decorative motifs throughout the hotel is another aspect of the film that has no antecedent in King’s novel.

One of the first interpretations of
The Shining
was presented by David A. Cook in 1984, who viewed the film as a metaphor for “the murderous system of economic exploitation which has sustained the country” since our ancestors came here and made an Indian burial ground of the entire country.
11
Another prominent theory also draws upon the Indian burial ground theme. In 1987, journalist Bill Blakemore suggested that the film refers to the genocide of Native Americans.
12
Blakemore sees meaning in the presence of cans of Calumet baking powder in the pantry, a brand named after a Native American peace pipe and featuring in the logo a stylized Native American in a headdress. Blakemore argues that the cans represent treaties, some honest, but most broken, dishonest, and false. The presence of former caretaker Grady’s twin daughters (not described as twins in the book) represents the duplicity of the white man.
13
In 2012, Blakemore published additional commentary on his original 1987 article online.

Like Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks has seen a hidden agenda about genocide in
The Shining
, but in this case Cocks sees a connection to the Holocaust. We know that Kubrick showed an interest in making a film about the Holocaust for part of his career and that a few years after completing
Full Metal Jacket
, he collected voluminous materials for a film on the subject called
Aryan Papers
, which he planned to film in the 1990s.
Aryan Papers
was based on the 1991 novel
Wartime Lies
by Louis Begley. Although he never made this film, Kubrick’s interest in a project on the Holocaust never seemed to wane. We do not know, however, if the subtle references to the Holocaust, as outlined by Cocks, were indeed Kubrick’s filmic exploration of the phenomenon, but Cocks dedicated an entire book to patterns in Kubrick’s career as a filmmaker that seem to refer in ways both subtle and overt to the Holocaust. In
The Wolf at the Door: Stanley Kubrick, History, and the Holocaust
, Cocks suggests that
The Shining
is Kubrick’s meditation on the Holocaust. If this is true, Kubrick’s interest in making
Aryan Papers
is puzzling, but perhaps he wanted to approach the subject in a less covert manner and perhaps he was inspired by
Wartime Lies
.

In the very first chapter of
The Wolf at the Door
, Cocks refers to the scene in
The Shining
in which a torrent of blood pours out of an elevator covering a hallway (and eventually the camera) with blood. He says of this scene, which has no analogue in Stephen King’s novel, “The ocean of blood flowing from the elevator in
The Shining
is the blood of centuries, the blood of millions, and, in particular, the blood of war and genocide in Kubrick’s own century.”
14
Music is a significant part of Cocks’s argument for
The Shining
as a Holocaust film since Kubrick’s choices bear “the heavy historical weight of the Holocaust”
15
because they represent the work of Central and Eastern European composers, something we will discuss later in this chapter.

The idea that the Apollo 11 moon landing was a hoax rather than a real historical event has occupied conspiracy theorists for decades. It has been suggested that Kubrick might have been the filmmaker responsible for the footage of the allegedly faked moon landing, a possibility explored in French filmmaker William Karel’s 2002 “mockumentary”
Dark Side of the Moon.
Rather than stating Kubrick’s involvement as fact, it provokes the viewer to understand that footage and interviews taken out of context can, in fact, be used to support an unsubstantiated claim and provides an example of “hyperreality,” the theory that media can change or color our understanding of events. The film had the blessing of people like Kubrick’s wife and representatives from NASA, who agreed to read scripted lines for the camera.

The idea of Kubrick as filmmaker of an Apollo hoax was taken up in earnest by occultist and filmmaker Jay Weidner. In his 2011 film
Kubrick’s Odyssey: Secrets Hidden in the Films of Stanley Kubrick; Part One: Kubrick and Apollo
, Weidner explains that
2001
was Kubrick’s practice for filming the moon landing and that
The Shining
is Kubrick’s admission of his involvement in the hoax. As Weidner states in the narration,
The Shining
is a film that “described the ordeal of faking the Apollo Moon landing.” But why would Kubrick need to make such a film? Weidner argues that Kubrick was weighed down by guilt and could not have confessed to the filming of the moon landing outright because he might have been killed by the powers that be.
The Shining
, Weidner suggests, is Kubrick’s covert confession.

Weidner explains the addition of information about the Indian burial ground is a way to make the hotel a stand-in for America (just as Cook argued). The character of Jack Torrance, who represents Kubrick, is charged with maintaining the hotel or, in this case, maintaining the U.S. An early snowstorm represents the Cold War, while the bears and eagles found around the hotel are the Russians and the Americans, respectively. In the film’s “most crucial scene” Danny plays with trucks on the rug, and the rug’s hexagonal design seems to echo the shape of launch pad 39a, where Apollo 11 blasted off; in this scene, Danny’s sweater also has a rocket labeled “Apollo 11” knitted into it. He stands up—literally lifting off from the rug launch pad—and goes to room 237, which was changed from 217 in the book—according to Weidner to represent the 237,000-mile distance between the earth and the moon.
16
To Weidner, room 237 is the fake moon set. Kubrick’s replacement of Grady’s daughters with twins is another signal, as the NASA program previous to Apollo was the Gemini program, and the astrological sign Gemini is represented by twins. Finally, Weidner suggests that Jack’s repeatedly typed phrase, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”—invented for the film—is yet another attempt to describe Kubrick’s ordeal. Weidner interprets the “All” of the beginning of the phrase as “A-11,” a code word for Apollo 11.