Mirrors, Mazes and Mayhem: Set Design and The Shining

Kara Bombell

“What is anachronistic about the ghost story is its…contingent and constitutive

dependence of physical place and, in particular, on the material house.”

(Jameson. 1981. pg8, para 15)

Kubrick, not one to underestimate the importance of set design in the ‘haunted house’ genre, made no less than an historical feat of production and set design in his film The Shining. The Overlook Hotel that we see in the film is in fact an amalgamation of on-site locations and elaborate, constructed sets. Kubrick and screenwriting partner Diane Johnson made clear their intention to reconcile the audience’s seat in reality with that of a supernatural world. Is Jack Torrence descending into madness? Is he possessed by The Overlook Hotel? More importantly, is this the same thing? The interchangibility between the psychological and the paranormal provides The Shining with “the artistic satisfaction of a fairytale” (Ciment. 1980. para.11) and the ability to introduce elements of set design that not only contain performance, localise action or create mood, but create meaning, investing the film with ideas and feelings that would otherwise not be communicated. I will discuss three set design motifs used in The Shining and how they contribute to the film’s mise en scene.

Kubrick and production designer Roy Walker wanted ‘The Overlook’ to look as authentic as possible, taking inspiration from real hotel interiors, rather than adopt the heightened/embellished mode of set design often witnessed in the horror genre. The Overlook Hotel utilises punctative set design, one that enhances a functional set with expressive and subtle connections to character development, genre and place. (Affron. 1995. p51) Whilst at moments the action teeters on surreal, the set itself never reaches a level of embellishment or artifice. Kubrick has stated he attempts to emulate Kafkian literary style, extending it to a visual context whereby stories are "fantastic and allegorical," but the medium is "simple and straightforward, almost journalistic." (Ciment. 1980. para.12) This inspiration embeds itself within The Shining’s set production.

The construct of the doppelgänger in the horror genre dates back to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, where normality and the monster are two aspects of the same person. Dualities pervade all areas of the films narrative; the ghostly twins, the exterior maze and its miniaturised model, Jack Torrence and his immortalised still frame persona. The idea of ‘duality’ is visually evidenced through with the consistent use of mirrored and reflective surfaces. The mirror motif in The Shining allows Kubrick to utilise this cinematic device positioning protagonists as their antagonists but also serves to create a visual dialogue between psychological and supernatural worlds. (Dancyger. 2006. p240) As all paranormal behaviour is enacted in the presence of a mirror, Kubrick sets out to delineate his audience from that which is ‘real’ and that which is ‘unreal’. The mirror transcends its use as a function of set design; when used in correlation with camera movement, lighting, music, the mirror signifies the transportation into another world, an ersatz duplication which contains the past, the horror and blurs our interpretation of time, space and reality.

Kubrick’s decision to depart from King’s original murderous topiary garden and replace it with a hedge maze could superficially be argued as a decision based upon the limitations of special effects; however one cannot overlook the extended and marked symbolic use of the maze motif central to the films narrative and set design. The twists and turns of the hedge maze enhanced by the free flowing steadicam style create an endless sense of space, isolation and suspense, serves the film and its genre. ‘The maze’ extends to the labyrinthine corridors of The Overlook, replicated in the carpet prints within which Danny is continually framed, with subtextual reference to subconsciousness, memory and history. Whilst it is never suggested that Jack Torrence is possessed by a demon or occult force, film theorist Frederic Jameson argues that he is possessed

“by History, by the American past as it has left its sedimented traces

in the corridors and dismembered suites of this monumental rabbit warren,

which oddly projects its…after-image in the maze outside”

(Jameson. 1981. pg8, para 15)

Just as his conscious self becomes entangled and lost within the unconscious, he becomes consumed by the hotel and it’s past. The ghostly premise of the Overlook hotel is that it preserves and forcibly re-enacts histories upon those that get lost in the metaphorical maze. These compartmentalised yet interwoven histories are represented by the ceaseless and repetitive curves of the hallways, the engulfing prints, the horizonless maze. Set design, in this instance, provides The Shining with an accentuated and visually represented narrative. Just as Jack cannot escape the clutches of history, Kubrick may also suggest that we cannot depart from our own.

Bill Blakemore argues in his famed article ‘The Family of Man’ (1987) that The Shining intends to allegorically address notions of mans inherent violence, and extends this argument to specifically entail the genocide of the Native Americans. This controversial and highly debated is centred extensively on the nuances of set design and prop placement. Blakemore argues that as the hotels name suggests, The Overlook is the embodiment of an all but forgotten national history, continuing to haunt those that come into contact with it. Whilst an Indian motif seems logical given location, the proliferation of these motifs and extension into prop placement appears to have a greater narrative implication. The strategic appearance the Calumet baking powder cans in the food store at two distinct junctions in the narrative is said to represent various treaties undertaken between the Native Americans and arriving settlers. The Calumet, a Navajoan peace pipe, appears with Danny’s first recognition of his paranormal ability with Halloran, and subsequently at Jacks interaction with the ghostly Grady, whereby he is freed from the food store and begins his murderous rampage. The bold Native American trim encasing the elevator full of blood, the Navajoan prints that are consistently ridden over and trodden on, indigenous artworks hierarchically dominated by American insignia. We are bombarded with imagery, yet any references or inclusions of Native American culture are markedly absent from the films narrative.

"Kubrick made a movie in which the American audience sees signs of Indians in almost every frame,

yet never really sees what the movie's about. 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.1987.para 2)

Kubrick and production design Roy Walker have created a world not too dissimilar from our own, but through the nuance of set design, allowed space for a paranormal realm to ‘shine’. Maintaining a sense of authenticity in set design gives weight to the dramas unfolding inside the hotel, creating subtextual meaning that would otherwise not have been communicated to an audience. Kubrick’s intention to create dialogue between the psychological and supernatural relies heavily on the audience’s ability to succumb to the narrative, rationalising events not only as the actions of an insane man, but the actions of an insane man in an insane world.

Bibliography

Affron, Charles (1995) ‘Sets in Motion’ Rutgers University Press. New Jersey

Blakemore, Bill. (1987) ‘The Family of Man’ The San Francisco Chronicle Syndicate, July 29th 1987. Available at http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0052.html Accessed 5th May 2009

Ciment, Michael. (1980) ‘Kubrick on The Shining’ Available at http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.ts.html Accessed 5th May 2009

Dancyger, Ken. (2006). Stanley Kubrick: The Darkness of Modern Life in ‘The Directors Idea: The Path to Great Directing’. Focal Press. Oxford. p233-245

Hughes, David. (2000) The Shining in ‘The Complete Kubrick’. Virgin Publishing Ltd London. p196-217

Jameson, Frederic. (1981) ‘Historicism and the Shining’ Available at http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0098.html Accessed 23 May 2009.

Jenkins, Greg. (1997) ‘Stanley Kubrick and the art of Adaptation’. McFarland and Company. Inc. Publishers. North Carolina. p69-107

Kagan, Norman. (1995) ‘The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick’. Continuum Publishing company. New York Pp203-217

Nelson, Thomas Allen. (2000) Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze. Indiana University Press. Bloomington

Walker, Alexander. (1999) The Shining in ‘Stanley Kubrick, Director’. W.W. Norton and Company. New York and London pp234-268 Filmography

Kubrick, Stanley. (1980) The Shining. Hawk Films. London Kubrick, Vivian (1980) Making The Shining. Eagle Film SS. London