Stanley Kubrick's 1980 psychological horror film The Shining has not aged well for the contemporary audience. Here is what has not aged well and why.
Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 psychological horror film The Shining has not aged well for a contemporary audience. Adapted from Stephen King’s 1977 novel of the same name, the film follows the Torrance family at the haunted Overlook Hotel. Starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, it features an array of problematic and triggering instances of domestic violence and child abuse. While movies have the power to highlight and examine important issues such as these, Kubrick’s film and characters brush them off as unimportant and permissible.
Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is a writer who suffers with alcoholism. When he is offered a caretaker position at the Overlook Hotel for the winter, he jumps at the opportunity to seclude and focus on his writing. He takes his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny with him. After a month, Jack’s writing has not progressed at the rate he hoped for and the spirits of the hotel convince him to start drinking again. As a snowstorm approaches The Overlook, Jack psychologically torments his family and threatens their lives in various ways.
Ultimately, Danny and Wendy escape Jack and leave him to freeze to death in the hotel’s hedge maze. The story of Danny Torrance continues with the sequel, Doctor Sleep, and reveals a much more complex history of his life at the hotel. Jack’s abuse on Danny has followed him into adulthood. While it is not highlighted as much in the sequel, The Shining does not shy away from establishing the fact that Jack Torrance abused his wife and child. Due to the abusive nature of the character and Kubrick’s own abuse of his cast, the film has not aged well in the modern day.
In both the film and novel, Wendy (Shelley Duvall) discusses the abuse that Danny has experienced at the hands of his father. While she addresses that it is an issue that Jack hit Danny, she doesn't treat it as important because, at that current moment, he stopped drinking and the violent behavior ceased. Furthermore, Wendy discusses the abuse she has experienced from him as well as what she continues to face as the film progresses. The film does not handle the subject matter well whatsoever, as the characters brush off the abuse and continually make excuses for Jack’s treatment of women and his child.
Jack Torrance was not the only abusive character on set. In recent years, Kubrick has been exposed for utilizing methods that purposefully tormented Shelley Duvall in order to enhance the terror that her character would exhibit. Duvall faced physical injury from the abuse she experienced when the director would not allow her to take a break. The film made Duvall consider leaving the industry all together. Stephen King has also regarded Kubrick’s adaptation as grossly misogynistic. Furthermore, King’s novel does not depict Wendy as a woman who would put up with abuse; she actually predicts the events before they happen, and protects her son. In the book, Wendy was initially a strong woman that Kubrick chose to tear down.
Ultimately, the misogynistic depiction of Wendy alongside the film’s issues of not addressing the problems of domestic violence and child abuse results in a film that does not age well in the slightest. Furthermore, Stanley Kubrick’s own abusive methods towards Shelley Duvall and egregious misinterpretation of the Wendy Torrance character place an additional layer of problems that the film has. The Shining has not aged well, especially with the rise of #MeToo and the constant fight for legislature to protect women and children from violence.
