Blog Post #3: Gender and Family in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

    In Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the husband and wife, Jack and Wendy, each shows different problems with their gender roles that leads to their own ways rendered dysfunctional. Jack fails to be a traditional man who supports family members, while Wendy shows both a weak and strong woman. Jack loses his way to provide for his family; because he loses the teaching job so he is forced to move his family from their sweet home and eventually into the hotel.

On The Way To The Hotel

Wendy, while having her weak moments, overall is a strong character, determined to get her and her son out of the hotel alive. While she does not have the strength to leave her abusive husband, she stays as a way to protect her son. Her strength begins to show when she is actually in the hotel. She manages to knock Jack out and drag him into the freezer, locking him in. However, when she is being attacked, she hides behind the door and screams her lungs off, not actually using the knife she is holding. Throughout the film, Wendy is at the mercy of Jack and suffers emotional and physical abuse, the culmination of which occurs during the battle scene that Wendy survives.

 

“Often the truth that has proved so fascinating, yet so difficult to achieve, comes with a dramatic revelation of a sexually traumatic event in the killer’s past or the killer’s present gendered identity, or of his or her previously undetected utter lack of rationality” (Knee, 224). As Jack goes through a transformation into a sadistic killer who he believes is his duty to kill his wife and son, the film focuses on the effects of consumerism and the outcome of Jack’s inability to provide for his family. His violence and male dominance represents one of the messages of the movie.

The "Bat" Scene

   Danny’s family in the hotel represents typical family in American society. The society looks fine but each member suffers from his or her own problems. In the “bat” scene, Jack keeps pressing his wife and asking if she has ever cared about him and talks about his crucial responsibilities as a member of the community. However, on his paper, it is full of sentences saying, “All work and no play make jack a dull boy.” This may mean that each society member thinks that he or she actually works hard for the community but it is just a simple labor that falls to a part of machine. To sum up, people are proud of their efforts for family and society because they regard it as a creative work like writing. However, when you closely look inside, they repeatedly reorganizing themselves to seek for own private profits. In other words, they are not interested at all if there is no benefits for them. By describing such American family, the film may convey the message saying ‘we live in a sick society.’ This reaches a climax when Jack wanders in the maze like a beast and eventually freezes to death in the end of the film.

Jack's Death

Work Cited

Knee, Adam. "Gender, Genre, Argento." 213-30. Print.