One cheerleader cheers “Its contradictions pile up in your subconscience.” Another recidivist viewer avers “When you see things over and over again their meanings change for you…He’s playing with your acceptance of visual information and also your ignorance of visual information.” This is hero-worship, not analysis. Another Kubrick-lover insists “We are dealing with a guy who has a 200 IQ.”
Reverence for Stanley Kubrick overwhelms any understanding of The Shining. It is symptomatic of today’s celebrity veneration—the flip-side of the feeling of nothingness that makes nerds bow down to the likes of Nolan, Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson, Soderbergh and Kubrick. So they fantasize aboutThe Shining’s supposed profundity as when one professes, “We all know from postmodern film criticism that the meanings are there whether or not the filmmaker is aware of them.” This is the mess that criticism has come to. Fake erudition causes another to muse, “Why would Kubrick make the movie so complicated? Yeah, why did Joyce write Finnegans Wake?” This goofy comparison shows they don’t know the difference between literary and cinematic erudition. These Shining geeks don’t even know the hotel story of Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, a truly profound expression of memory and desire.
Sua Celência Armond White, a propósito do inane Room 237. Aprecio, sobretudo, o sublinhado a negrito.