Aggregate Fear (The Shining)

"Study, analysis.

An impulse, something that couldn’t be tracked with any conventional devices, then a steady feedback.  Pretercognition.  Spread out over several targets at once, it serves as her primary sense.  Each target is conceptualized in the context of twelve to eighty years of history.  More time, more feedback from the steady feed of information, and the images clarify.  Discard the useless elements, maintain the pivotal ones.

Deciphering, searching for the fulcrum points."
-Worm, Interlude 28

The Shining is a film that is widely discussed in great detail, and for very good reason. The film's construction is comparable to clockwork, a thousand moving pieces interlocking to create a cohesive whole. There are numerous elements that are well worth describing, from Jack's descent into mania to Wendy's complicated relationship to Danny's youthful perceptions to the screwed-up history of the Overlook hotel as a microcosm of America's legacy. However, one thing that I haven't seen discussed much is the element of the "Shining" itself, a concept which both King and Kubrick saw as relevant enough to make it the title of their respective works.

The first time we hear the term "Shining" in the film is when Danny talks to the chef, Dick Halloran, after learning that they can communicate telepathically. The Shining is Halloran's term for a psychic phenomena which allows certain people to communicate with some sort of greater power to glean information about the past, the future, or each other (this is far from the only Stephen King work to feature such elements). Danny's imaginary friend "Tony" is the most obvious manifestation of the Shining outside of direct telepathy and is responsible for many of the film's most iconic scenes. What is perhaps more thematically relevant to the film, however, is the idea that objects and locations can also be affected by the Shining. The Overlook Hotel, clearly stated as a place which "Shines", is overrun with strange psychic echoes of its messy past, ranging from the watchmen who killed his family back through numerous strange affairs which occurred in decades past (and which are implied to go back even further, given that the structure was built on an Indigenous burial ground without the consent of the Indigenous people). Jack's rampage eventually becomes part of this tapestry of misery and terror as well, as evidenced by his appearance in the photograph at the end of the film. The Overlook Hotel builds a piecemeal history out of the atrocities which are enabled by previous atrocities, with the most shocking a resonant events building on each other in the hotel's ephemeral "Shining". As much as some people may wish to forget or ignore the location's history, the grossest events linger on in the structure's walls, these echoes guiding psychics like Danny as well as laymen like Jack.

If the premise of a stacking and evolving history seems familiar, it is likely because the concept is echoed in many film theory discussions. Carol Clover explains the slasher film as a medium particularly rife with historical baggage and layered trends, discussing how such stories of gruesome domestic murder are "compulsively repeated" in film after film for decade after decade. In fact, her quoting of James B. Twitchell indicates that she views the echoes and patterns as more important to the slasher legend than any unique approach or paradigm shift. Horror draws power from tradition, with events and concepts building up over time until they become legendary. Jack Torrence may not be particularly distinct from the killers in older movies, but his actions build off of atrocities we've seen committed by Norman Bates and countless other unhinged weapon-swingers from throughout cinema's history. When Kubrick brings a novel idea to Jack's actions, that idea may go on to influence other directors further down the line (and it certainly did, as multiple horror motifs can be traced back to The Shining). Just like the Overlook Hotel, the figure of the movie slasher is a palimpsest of countless gruesome events, propagating itself through the continued anxiety and fault of every progressive generation.

In this light, it seems particularly fitting that both King and Kubrick would use the story of a slasher to discuss this idea of historical recursion and the power of legacy. The figure of the slasher arguably extends beyond fiction as well, with audiences wetting themselves over characters like Jack Torrence, Norman Bates, and Michael Meyers due to the distinct possibility that similar killings can and do happen in real life. Fictional slashers complement and amplify anxieties over real-life crimes while also preserving the legacy of older horrors, just as the Overlook Hotel does by manipulating Jack. The aggregate of every lingering atrocity becomes more powerful in our imagination than any individual work or event could be, and it is in this aggregation that the true power of the slasher, and of the Shining, lies.