Family Ties Unwind in The Shining

Though many horror films tend to focus on the idea of a female victim and a male killer/monster/etc… we can see an addition to this concept of gender in horror films with the emphasis on a family that falls apart. The Shining incorporates not only destroyed family values, but also gender roles within that family. Throughout the film we see the constant redundancy of male over female, emphasizing the gender association of power with males. This can be seen not only in Jack, the lunatic father, but also in his son Danny. In the case of Jack, it obvious he considers himself more powerful than his wife, and he displays this in the way he treats her and disrespects her, even though she takes care of him, somewhat like a mother would her child. Yet Danny also has this "bestowed power", the gift of shining, which is juxtaposed with the disembodied twin girls, victims of their father's crime. They seem to be a comparison of one another, Danny and Jack both lose their minds in the hotel, both of their concepts of power drive them to madness, displaying the family ideals that boys grow up to be like their fathers. Yet we see that Danny is also the victim, despite his divine power, and he soon takes on the gentleness of his mother, instead of following in his father’s footsteps, and this could be viewed as a loss of phallic power. 

The mother, Wendy, is viewed as this frail, mouse-like, quiet character, that tries her best of abide by her husbands demands and take care of her family and keep them together, yet all fails when she is forced to take on the masculine role. According to Dika’s concept of the empowered woman, Wendy begins to take on the masculine form towards the end of the movie where her maternal instincts kick in and she is forced to choose between her husband and her child, and like any mother would, she chose to save Danny. As Wendy always seems to choose Danny over Jack throughout this film, and consistently displays her maternal affection, Jack seems to grow jealous, because it appears as though he views Wendy as not only his wife, but his caretaker, or mother perhaps. Jack, viewing himself as the powerful controlling leader, eventually drives himself mad and blames it on his “duties” as a father, he feels entitled to sincerity from Wendy, and sincerity she isn’t giving him.

It is also important to note that one of the most important qualities of this film is the gaze between the characters, it says so much about the way the character is thinking and acting and more importantly what they’re feeling. Carol Clover states that “Within the film text itself, men gaze at women, who become objects of the gaze; the spectator, in turn, is made to identify with this male gaze, and to objectify the women on the screen; and the camera’s original ‘gaze’ comes into play in the very act of filming.” Wendy becomes an object of Jacks gaze, as he threatens her, walking towards her in the scene when she reads his “book”, he taunts her with his piercing look. An entirely different perspective occurs with Jack and the woman in the bathtub, he gives her the gaze of sexual wanting, of entitlement, he feels as though he deserves this type of woman and not Wendy. There is also an interesting scene between Mr. Grady and Jack, where the gaze between them seems to be a fight for phallic power, where Mr. Grady continually tests Jack’s ability to “control” his family.

Work Cited

Clover, Carol J.  "Her Body, Himself:  Gender in the Slasher Film."  Representations, No. 20, 1987