This is so great -- I loved both the movie and the book, but I don't remember the details well enough to do your argument proper justice. But this made me think about a couple of things:
How rigorously does the movie leave the "reality" of the ghosts ambiguous? You mention the unlocking of the freezer, and I can't really think of a "natural" explanation for that though I guess one might be possible. Could Danny have done it? Was he separated from his mother at this point at all? I think there's also a scene where a ball rolls down the hall by itself toward Danny -- the girls are trying to attract his attention. I suppose that could be Jack, strolling the corridors and playing a creepy game with his son. But IIRC, there's very little else that couldn't be explained as a hallucination. The business with the photo at the end could just be movie!cheesiness. I think your point about the way the 70's caretaker is incorporated into Jack's 20's fantasy is a brilliant argument that most if not all of this is happening in Jack's head. .
Your point about the ghosts as a metaphor for writer's block also sent me off spinning on a tangent thinking about Jack. Because it's not like he's an established writer having a bad spell -- at best, he's sold a couple of stories, as pretty much a hobby. IIRC the book may be clearer on this than the movie, but he's pretty much a failure, isn't he -- hasn't he gotten fired from his last job because of his temper, as well as hurting Danny? So he's much closer than Wendy, who's a bit of a sentimentalist, to visualizing the collapse of his whole world, his whole family. He's already in a dangerous place in his head, full of dread and visions of disaster, even before the hotel starts to work on him.
I picture the whole prospect of this caretaking adventure as kind of a desperate fantasy on his part, to use his writing hobby to turn his life around. And when he actually gets the caretaker job, it's like a dog catching a car after chasing it - what the hell does he do now? There's this mixture of exhiliration, of all boundaries coming down and all things being possible, and sort of an "oh, shit" sense that this is it, he'd better live up to what he fantasized about. The pressure, combined with the sense of collapsing boundaries, must be very disorienting. So no wonder he loses track of the line separating sanity and reality.
You make an interesting point about the visions and ghosts having their own agenda, their own autonomy, and therefore not being purely Jack's creation. But their "agenda" seems to be about perpetuating the fantasy, about protecting it from interference by people with a stronger commitment to reality -- whether it's Wendy, who can be shocked out of her acquiescent haze by fears for her son, or the Scatman Crothers character, who senses what's up with the hotel and is actively hostile to it. So I wonder if this point really does take things entirely out of Jack's head; the sense of a separate agenda could be a blocking mechanism that cuts Jack off from some feelings he's not willing to examine.
Not to say, of course, the hotel isn't a catalyst. It clearly is that, and maybe even an active agent. But when it comes to horror, I think the more ambiguous the spooks are, the better. And The Shining walks that line nicely.
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How rigorously does the movie leave the "reality" of the ghosts ambiguous? You mention the unlocking of the freezer, and I can't really think of a "natural" explanation for that though I guess one might be possible. Could Danny have done it? Was he separated from his mother at this point at all? I think there's also a scene where a ball rolls down the hall by itself toward Danny -- the girls are trying to attract his attention. I suppose that could be Jack, strolling the corridors and playing a creepy game with his son. But IIRC, there's very little else that couldn't be explained as a hallucination. The business with the photo at the end could just be movie!cheesiness. I think your point about the way the 70's caretaker is incorporated into Jack's 20's fantasy is a brilliant argument that most if not all of this is happening in Jack's head. .
Your point about the ghosts as a metaphor for writer's block also sent me off spinning on a tangent thinking about Jack. Because it's not like he's an established writer having a bad spell -- at best, he's sold a couple of stories, as pretty much a hobby. IIRC the book may be clearer on this than the movie, but he's pretty much a failure, isn't he -- hasn't he gotten fired from his last job because of his temper, as well as hurting Danny? So he's much closer than Wendy, who's a bit of a sentimentalist, to visualizing the collapse of his whole world, his whole family. He's already in a dangerous place in his head, full of dread and visions of disaster, even before the hotel starts to work on him.
I picture the whole prospect of this caretaking adventure as kind of a desperate fantasy on his part, to use his writing hobby to turn his life around. And when he actually gets the caretaker job, it's like a dog catching a car after chasing it - what the hell does he do now? There's this mixture of exhiliration, of all boundaries coming down and all things being possible, and sort of an "oh, shit" sense that this is it, he'd better live up to what he fantasized about. The pressure, combined with the sense of collapsing boundaries, must be very disorienting. So no wonder he loses track of the line separating sanity and reality.
You make an interesting point about the visions and ghosts having their own agenda, their own autonomy, and therefore not being purely Jack's creation. But their "agenda" seems to be about perpetuating the fantasy, about protecting it from interference by people with a stronger commitment to reality -- whether it's Wendy, who can be shocked out of her acquiescent haze by fears for her son, or the Scatman Crothers character, who senses what's up with the hotel and is actively hostile to it. So I wonder if this point really does take things entirely out of Jack's head; the sense of a separate agenda could be a blocking mechanism that cuts Jack off from some feelings he's not willing to examine.
Not to say, of course, the hotel isn't a catalyst. It clearly is that, and maybe even an active agent. But when it comes to horror, I think the more ambiguous the spooks are, the better. And The Shining walks that line nicely.