On what we can make of the two opposed endings to the novel and film
versions of the same scary story.
I don’t like losing readers, even for the best of reasons; but if you either
haven’t read Steven
King’s The Shining (1977) or haven’t seen Stanley Kubrick’s film
version (1980) of the novel, and are interested in checking them out
sometime, you should probably skip this post, as I’m gonna spoil the heck out
of the endings to both. Because while there are definitely stylistic and even
thematic differences between the two versions throughout, it’s really the
endings where they become not only distinct but starkly contrasting and
opposed. I won’t spoil every single detail, but suffice it to say that King’s
novel ends hopefully, with notes of redemption for its protagonist Jack
Torrance and especially for his relationship to his son and family; whereas
Kubrick’s film ends with Torrance murderously pursuing that same son with an
axe and, thwarted, freezing to death, more evil in his final moments than he
has been at any earlier moment in the film.
There are various ways we could read this striking distinction, including
connecting it to the profoundly different worldviews of the two artists (at
least as represented in their collected works): King, despite his penchant for
horror, is to my mind a big ol’ softie who almost always finds
his way to a happy ending; Kubrick has a far more bleak and cynical
perspective and tended to end his films on at best ambiguous and
often explicitly
disturbing notes. Those different worldviews could also be connected to two
longstanding American traditions and genres, what we might call the sentimental
vs. the pessimistic romance (in that Hawthornean sense I
discussed yesterday): in the former, such as in Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables
(1851), the darkest supernatural qualities give way by the story’s end to
more rational and far happier worlds and events; in the latter, such as in his
contemporary Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick
(also 1851), the darkness is only amplified and deepened by concluding events,
leaving us adrift (literally and figuratively) in an eternally scary world.
King’s and Kubrick’s texts, and more exactly their respective conclusions,
certainly fit into those traditions. But given that both create similarly
horrifying worlds and events right up until those endings, I would also connect
their distinct final images to the dueling yet interconnected ideas at the
heart of my current
book project: dark histories and hope. Where the two versions differ most
overtly, that is, is in whether they offer their audiences any hope: in King’s
novel, Torrance finds a way through his darkest histories and to final moments
of hope for his family’s future (achieved at great personal sacrifice); in
Kubrick’s film, hope has abandoned Torrance as fully as has sanity, and both
his family and the audience can only hope that they can survive and escape his
entirely dark world. Obviously you know which I prefer; but I would also argue
that, whatever the appeal of horror for its own sake, without the possibility
of hope and redemption it’d be a pretty bleak and terrible genre.
Crowd-sourced post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So what do you think? Responses to the week’s topics? Thoughts on other
American scary stories, of any type? Add ‘em for the weekend post!
11/2 Memory Day nominee: Conrad Weiser, the farmer, soldier, tanner, judge, and monk (they did a lot back in the 18th century)
who also served as Pennsylvania’s chief diplomatic emissary to Native Americans for many decades of complex but important cross-cultural encounters.
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