Short Response 6 English

“…why do humans constantly perpetrate such ‘inhumanity’ against humans. When asked what ‘The Shining’ is about, Kubrick has only answered, ‘It's about a man who tries to kill his family.’ That family is the family of man” (Blakemore 8).

Bill Blakemore’s argument is that The Shining is a film about the mass genocide of American Indians that humans manage to overlook, like they do all their crimes against humanity. The quote above questions why humans have always fought against each other, when we should be standing aside the human race as a whole. Blakemore believes Kubrick is an artist who “is holding a mirror up to nature, not judging it,” meaning he wishes to reflect our indecencies toward other human beings, but in actuality, we will never recognize our horrible wrongdoings (Blakemore 8). This has been a theme throughout history in humans, not only in the case of the American Indians as Kubrick highlights in the film, but hundreds of other times, such as world wars, massacres, slavery, civil wars, and the countless crimes and murders committed daily.

In the beginning of the film, Blakemore notices that the hotel is introduced as having been built on an Indian burial ground, a key detail which helps support his theory. He further explains, the name of the hotel, “Overlook Hotel,” indicates humans are hardly ever aware or care about our violent, cruel past. Despite the frequent hints about Indians in the film, people fail to realize it, therefore, the film’s “very relationship to its audience is thus part of the mirror that this movie full of mirrors holds up to the nature of its audience” (Blakemore 2).

Not only is the film about the mass murder of American Indians, but it is about the racism and violence African Americans still face. Humans have always found a group to discriminate or target throughout every stage of history. We can never come together and accept all looks and backgrounds. Since Chef Hallorann is the only African American character and person other than Jack to die in the film, it is clear there is a message Kubrick attempts to convey as he laid there bleeding out in horror, and it is that African Americans are a “victim of similar racist violence” (Blakemore 3). Just as African Americans experience hate, discrimination, and prejudice in many parts of the world, people everywhere are discriminated against and even executed based on their religion, gender, sexuality, abilities, and so on depending on the nation and its cultural history.

Blakemore points out that the blood that rushes from the elevator shaft represents more than just the blood of the millions of Indians, but also the blood that “this nation, like most nations, was built” (Blakemore 3). This is to say that there has almost never been a civilization that has formed and progressed without some kind of bloodshed or group exploitation and marginalization.

Finally, Blakemore recounts the fact that four presidents stayed at the hotel; the leaders of America. This can be connected by how nearly all brutal, inhuman moments in history occur from the influence and leadership of a head of a nation, either leading thousands into battle, pushing the destruction of an entire race, encouraging the enslavement of a group of people, or what all else.

It is evident that humans really are out to kill their family, which is the family of man. In all events through history, people have chosen violence displaying a great inhumanity toward humanity. We question why we continuously make the same mistakes, and whether we will ever learn.

Source:

1. The Shining (1980) by Bill Blakemore.