Thread by @delaneykingrox

I finally connected the hidden apollo launch message in The Shining in a way that satisfies me as what what Kubrick was saying with the film, and it is relevant today.

This mistake conspiracy theorists make is that it is a confession that Kubrick himself filmed the lunar landings. But I don't think that is what he is saying. What he is saying underlines his story.

It's a ghost story without ghosts.

The film is about The Shining. Not ghosts. Not a haunted hotel. It is about the psychic powers of a small boy.

Danny is the cause of everything that happens in the film. It is all Danny.

Danny broadcasts the images to his father, who himself Shines, or is more open to Shining. As his mother becomes more disturbed, and Danny is in peril, his ability to broadcast images begins to reach her.

There are NO ghosts in The Shining.

It is 100% Danny broadcasting the images.

600 million people watched the lunar landing on TV. It was, at that point, the most watched piece of media in the world.

We watched hypnotized to the screen.

And here we are looking at Danny, who rises up out of the launch pad he has made from the carpet. From the hotel.

Danny is television.

Danny is broadcasting images.

Danny is captivating those around him with his ability. With his power.

He sends out images of stories he overhears, half understood, misguided, undisciplined.

Those images drive his father, who aches for childish escape, mad.

Danny is TV.

Danny is the media.

And Danny is a small child who causes mayhem.

This is Kubrick's message that underpins the whole film.

The shining is about TV.

Kubrick was well into Jung. Check out what is on the desk of the office. It's the red book.

The red book is about the hypnagogic state. Between waking and dream were the worlds overlap.

You know, that terrifying moment when you wake up but parts of your dream are still present?

You know when else we are both awake and dreaming?

When we watch television.

Danny and his father both have psychic abilities, including telekinesis (Danny pulling the ball towards him, Jack opening the locked door). Things we attribute to ghosts.

Both have imaginary friends, who they only talk to when facing mirrors, and the messge (redrum) is...

Murder being broadcast via a mirror image.

Danny is broadcasting images that lead to his easily manipulated father eventually committing the acts.

In one scene, a teddy bear Danny has discarded is laying on the exact spot and in the same manner that Dick Halloran dies.

His game, his toy, results in the death of a real man.

Again, I am pointing back to TV, to media.

The hypnogogic state we are all in, being fed images of violence and misinformation

When Danny is in trouble, when Jack is finally coming for Danny, he broadcasts images to his mother to drive her from the house, to come to his aid.

None of the images she sees makes sense. The dog/bear sex scene, the skeletons, her butler is not the butler jack talks to.

The media does the same. It manipulates us in the same way. It also does something to us that is more terrifying of all.

It passed the blame back to us. It misleads us. And it keeps us unable to fix the situations around us.

It keeps us... frozen.

The scene Kubrick added with the elevator (it isn't in the book) with a river of blood flowing out towards us, covering everything?

Yes, it is a face with eyes and it echoes the line where King writes the elevator looked "too much like a mouth".

But look again at the elevator, notice something about it's shape?

How many elevator doors do you see that are 4:3 aspect ratio?

It is literally a river of blood flowing out of the tv towards Danny.

The shining is about the effect of television on us.

What we are watching effects us on a psychic, cultural level and it comes out in our world.

Jack starts with no red.

Danny always wears red.

When his mother works, she wears no red. When she plays with Danny after workz she wears red.

All Jack's visions happen in red spaces.

By the end, jack is wearing red.

Danny broadcasts stories he overhears. Images he sees exploring the hotel. The pictures from the 1920s party.
The rumor of the twins being murdered by the caretaker.

The caretaker himself is shown to Jack as a butler because Dammy doesn't understand what a caretaker is.

It is all Danny.

And Danny is television.

And I think that is the core message the film carries.

Let me just leave you with one last image to add to your Shining nightmares.

What if Kubrick is right about the irresponsible use of hypnagogic state in media?

What if...

Like my shitposting? You can treat me to a coffee if you like... maybe I will put some red rum into it.

Ko-fi.com/dellak

Oh, and "here's Johnny" was Ed McMahon's intro for The Tonight Show introducing Johnny Carson.

Ad libbed, but EXACTLY on point. Kubrick approved.

This is what you want, isn't it? This is Television.

If you create media, you are Danny.

You are playing with that hypnagogic state.

You are Shining to the world.

Be responsible.

Oh, and one footnote for my many transgender readers...

You should know that electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos who did the music for The Shining is a transgender woman.

Her works include also did Clockwork Orange and Tron.

;)