Lost in the labyrinth: Understanding idiosyncratic interpretations of Kubrick's The Shining

Abstract

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining still generates intense interest nearly four decades after its release. There are numerous books, documentary films, websites, blogs, and YouTube videos dedicated to analyzing the film's content. Many of these analyses are wildly speculative. For example, the film is a coded confession by Kubrick that he faked the Apollo 11 moon landing footage. What about The Shining's content may contribute to some viewers generating such unusual interpretations? The present article applies psychoanalytic theory, supported by findings from cognitive science, to answer this question. It is argued that The Shining's ambiguity generates an “intolerance of uncertainty” for some viewers, which leads them to project their own beliefs and experiences onto the film's scenes and narrative. Additionally, the film's oedipally themed content evokes archaic associations that some viewers may struggle to integrate, which promotes cognitive regression to a less demanding mode of thought. Although this article focuses on a fictional film, its method and findings are potentially generalizable to other phenomena in which idiosyncratic interpretations are expressed.