{"id":480,"date":"2015-10-22T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T13:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/undergrad-students-publishing\/?p=480"},"modified":"2015-10-22T08:00:42","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T13:00:42","slug":"how-to-spend-your-halloween-with-the-shining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/2015\/10\/22\/how-to-spend-your-halloween-with-the-shining\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Spend Your Halloween with The Shining"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lindsey Buttel \/\/ Blog Writer<\/p>\n

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Come October, everyone, even the more fearful population, is more prone to watching horror movies and reading horror novels.\u00a0 But with so many to choose from, how do you know that you are actually getting the greatest fright?\u00a0 Both Stephen King, author of the novel, The Shining<\/em>, and Stanley Kubrick, director of the movie, The Shining<\/em>, have laid out opportunities for you to sit back and tense up.<\/p>\n

When it gets to Halloween night and you want a fun thrill, Stanley Kubrick\u2019s adaptation would be the best option to seek out.\u00a0 With little of the back-story that King includes, more of the piece focuses on the cringe-worthy overtaking of The Overlook Hotel.\u00a0 Kubrick\u2019s film is not what we think of when we usually think of a horror film.\u00a0 There are no jump scares and flashes of demons like many of the horror movies today.\u00a0 Most of the fear you get watching this 80s film comes just from Jack Torrance\u2019s (Jack Nicholson) face and the slow, uncomfortable movements of the creatures at the hotel.\u00a0 Nicholson can contort his face \u2013 especially his eyebrows \u2013 in ways that become more intense and more possessed throughout the entire movie.\u00a0 The scene where Nicholson hugs his five-year-old son, Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd), is one that is so uncomfortable and unnatural that that father-son relationship could be used alone without the other demonic beings in the hotel.\u00a0 And this dynamic of Jack becoming more and more consumed by the hotel starts from the very second he walks in, while in the novel it takes about four hundred pages for the hotel to take its full toll.<\/p>\n

In a movie, there is little to let your mind imagine (or hold back) so all of the blood is very present.\u00a0 The ax-murder scene is slightly longer and more thrilling, mostly due to Nicholson\u2019s acting and Kubrick\u2019s direction.\u00a0 More characters are killed and there is a chilling lack of closure in the end.<\/p>\n

However, for something a little deeper than a light, Halloween scare, taking the time to read King\u2019s novel would definitely be worth it.<\/p>\n

The book has two main layers of horror which Kubrick lacks (primarily for time purposes).\u00a0 King\u2019s novel, split into five different parts, takes a lot of time to set up each of the character\u2019s backstories and different aspects of the hotel.\u00a0 The demons and ghosts are slowly eased in through Danny\u2019s \u201cshining\u201d so the reader has time to process and react to it, even though the descriptions of these characters are specific and gruesome.\u00a0 Most of these creatures, however, do not actually appear until the last two parts of the novel.\u00a0 Additionally, Jack\u2019s undying love for his son is strongly emphasized throughout the novel and murderous tendencies do not come out until the very end.\u00a0 He is still obsessed with the hotel at the beginning but it has not yet consumed him like it does in the movie.\u00a0 The horror that comes in the first sections come from the backstories.<\/p>\n

The characters in the hotel and the hotel itself, can be written off as things that are not real when the viewer goes to sleep.\u00a0 But in his novel, King includes very real elements. \u00a0Rampant alcoholism-turned-aggression in both Jack and his father run through his mind the whole novel and only grows stronger when the hotel induces flashbacks.\u00a0 The feeling of being unloved by your family and never being able to be a good enough mother plagues Wendy Torrance to the point that she provokes an already slightly murderous Jack when she just wants Danny to love her equally.\u00a0 Danny is also a way more developed character as half of the book is written in his point of view.\u00a0 He spends most of the book in fear of his gift, both from the precognitions he sees and in fear that, no matter what, no one will believe him.\u00a0 Danny is in a dilemma most of the novel knowing that his family will be harmed by the hotel while also knowing that he has no way of saving his loved ones.\u00a0 These fears are all very real and can be very close to home depending on the reader.\u00a0 These horrors do exist and will not go away when the television is turned off or when the book is closed.\u00a0 Though Kubrick\u2019s movie is complex, it does not have these dual layers of horror that create a more terrifying story\u2014both real and imagined.<\/p>\n

Getting a group together to watch The Shining<\/em> will fulfill your light horror thirst on Halloween, but reading King\u2019s novel is a deeper, more complex horror that doesn\u2019t necessary involve the demons we want to see on Halloween.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lindsey Buttel \/\/ Blog Writer Come October, everyone, even the more fearful population, is more prone to watching horror movies and reading horror novels.\u00a0 But with so many to choose…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}