This movie is Stanley Kubrick’s confession about faking the footage of the moon landing for the US government. He equates the faking of footage with the atrocities of the Holocaust and the slaughter of American Indians. Faking the footage wasn’t that bad for pete’ sake.

In fact, faking the footage was actually a good thing in order to ensure the US wouldn’t be humiliated if the moon landing went wrong, which would have had enormous negative repercussions for perceptions of US power, influence and competence hindering the ultimate mission of promoting and defending democracy worldwide.

Furthermore, perceived success with the Apollo 11 mission would inspire humanity to reach for the stars even when it’s beyond our capability. The people must first believe. That’s what 2001: A Space Odyssey was all about; the power of film to change the perceptions of the world and to inspire humanity even as it was itself a cover for the faking of footage of the moon landing.

Clearly sometime between 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining Kubrick had a change of heart about the virtuousness of faking footage, possibly with the antiestablishment sentiment of the early 70s. The Shining was very much a form of virtue signaling (albeit on a subliminal level) in suggesting that lying to the world is on par with major atrocities in history even while ignoring the enormous benefits of the lie.

TLDR: the woke message is “lying is evil even when the future of humanity depends on it”.

Are you trolling? What a ridiculous take. The Shining doesn’t mock the idea of a patriarch: Jack Torrence is an individual, not a stand in for “all men,” and as an individual he has weaknesses, chiefly alcoholism and an abusive temper, which the evil spirits in the hotel are able to exploit to their own ends. We never learn exactly what lead to Delbert Grady’s breakdown, but presumably it was something similar. The moral of this story is: Don’t take a job as a winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, NOT “patriarchs are bad.”

I suppose that there’s an argument to be made that the pacing can be a little plodding, but I think that it works for this particular film. I’ll admit that I rushed a bit on the oldies selection before I launched the site a few months ago. I could/should probably revisit them.

Did you know that Jack is at one point seen reading a Playgirl magazine with a headline about incest? Have you picked up on implication he’s molested Danny? Robert Ager has done an excellent analysis of this

I guess that I would disagree that it’s mocking the patriarchy. While it certainly doesn’t paint Jack or Delbert in anything approaching a positive light, I never got the sense that the filmmakers were standing on a soap box and indicting the concept of male leaders and maleness. That being said, that is sort of Kubrick’s schtick. So, there’s probably a case to be made for it.