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Domestic Violence In The Shining

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Despite the increased emphasis on spirits as representing the psychological rather than as purely supernatural, the movie does lose some of the direct representation and explanations of history in the novel. Many of the scenes directly explaining and going through what happened in the hotel (that the dead woman in the bathtub is an old woman who had an affair and committed suicide, for example, the gangster violence that happened in the presidential suite is completely left out, and the party Jack finds in the book is explained and given context as one of the opening parties of the Overlook) are left out. Jack’s desire to write a book inspired by the hotel and a scrapbook he found documenting its history are also left out, scenes which directly …show more content…

Without the Supernatural aspects of the story both the book and the film would be reduced to being a simple domestic violence narrative. A particularly terrifying one, augmented by the isolation of the Overlook hotel and questions of both Jack and Danny’s sanity, but a story only of domestic violence nonetheless. This is even more true of the film than the novel, in the novel there’s more individual characterization while the film becomes a more generic tale of domestic abuse. Even before they get to the hotel, in the car ride there, Jack is already irritated by Wendy and Danny, snapping at Danny when he complains about being hungry. He continues to be angry, especially at Wendy, throughout the film. He’s dismissive of her discomfort about telling Danny of cannibalism on the car ride there, berates her when she dares to interrupt him at his typewriter, and when Danny asks him if he would ever hurt the other members of their small family his first question is, “Did your mother tell you that?” (The Shining --:--). When Jack finally makes a clear break from mundane, rational reality by talking to Lloyd, the bartender in the Gold Ballroom who shouldn't even be there, it's unsurprising that the first thing he does is complain of his wife. They go through a series of sexist cliches, starting with Jack referring to his wife as “The old sperm bank” (The Shining --:--). Later on, when Jack …show more content…

As a result so much of the Shining deals with the way history informs and creates individuals and interpersonal violence. One of the most iconic scenes of The Shining- played in its commercial, played in Danny's mind over and over again- is the vision of the elevator full of blood. The essay “Death by Typewriter” begins by pointing out this specific scene of The Shining. The scene opens and gallons of the stuff pour out, flooding the room and even converting the lense of the camera. More blood than two men, Dick Hallorann and Jack Torrence being the only actual casualties of the film, could hold. Even added Wendy and Danny as best casualties all the blood isn't explained, it's an impossibly huge wave of mysterious red liquid. But perhaps when you add all the casualties of the Overlook Hotel in- the Native American fight for their burial ground “repelled", Grady and his family, the corpse in the bath of room 237, and, according to Geoffrey Cocks, the blood of all the violence of the 20th century- perhaps then you get enough. With the violence of oppression, the historical violence of racism, colonialism, and misogyny, considered the scene and

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