ADVENTURES IN THE UNDERWORLD
- ‘The pit of the Pendulum and Hope’ (1963) – a man being locked up and trying to escape from the tunnels of the catacombs underground. The first-person camera makes the audience feel like a helpless victim. Close-up shots disable us from observing the whole scene, only pieces of it. It creates a bigger being looming over the protagonist. Closed off spaces – running without escape.
- ‘Bone Mother’ – The retelling of the folk tale about Baba Yaga in stop motion. Immortality – it is full of suffering and can be given as a punishment.
- ‘Afterlife’ – Death – doors to the afterlife. There is no set afterlife, they all mix, the human body no longer contains souls, souls morph into animals, beings we can’t comprehend. In the afterlife our souls are free.
- ‘Necrology’ – The list of dead people portrayed my them going on the escalator to reach heathen (?). The Cast list is just it, the NECROLOGY.
- ‘Street of Crocodiles’ (1986) Brothers Quay – The puppet journey through the shop and him encountering other strange creatures. Space is almost like purgatory, full of broken, but still alive things, that follows the main character throughout his trip.
- ‘Fear of the Deer’ – modern horror retelling of Rudolf the red nose reindeer story.
STANLEY KUBRICK’S ‘THE SHINING’ and ‘ROOM 237’
What is the SUBTEXT? Evidence?
- Genocide of American Indians. Bill Blakemore
- CALUMET baking soda can – means peace pipe. Shows up in the movie as a background prop, but the timing is always when a person is offered a peace offering, treaty. Danny and head chief at the beginning of the movie and later when Jack is locked in the dry foods pantry.
- Indian visuals – murals, paintings, art. The hotel is built on the American Indians burial ground.
- The poster of bull rider and artwork of Native American with bull headpiece – it just brought up the history of colonialism, how natives were murdered by new settlers and enslaved by them.
- Holocaust. Geoffrey Cocks
- Typewriter – German brand ADLER (eagle), symbolises state power, was a symbol of nazi Germany.
- Number 42 – 1942 the start of the Holocaust.
- Putting both of them together, it historians mind it equals Holocaust imagery. Holocaust was highly mechanical, performed industrial, bureaucratic way; devoid of any humanity.
- Transition in the film of a pile of luggage morphing into a group of people. – subtle nudge to holocaust and concentration camps were jews belonging were taken away while people were led to their deaths.
- The Past.
- The film is about how The Past infringes.
- Nightmare of history. How ignored Past becomes a nightmare.
- How to escape that nightmare? By retracing your steps (Danny retraces his steps when he is in a hedge maze with Jack chasing him); Acknowledging and learning about it (Wendy encounters skeletons and blood out of the elevator shaft); and getting out (After confronting their ignorance, Wendy and Danny manage to escape and run away from the hotel).