The most believable theory presented in Room 237 suggests that Stanley Kubrick, the director of The Shining, directed the movie to reflect the genocide of the American Indians. When first hearing this theory, it seems completely absurd. How can a horror movie about a homicidal maniac trying to kill his family have any correlation with the displacement, exploitation, and murder of thousands of Native Americans?
Now, wait, before completely throwing this theory to the curb, there is actually some credible evidence. One of the first pieces of evidence that was presented in Room 237, was that Stanley Kubrick and his team did extensive research on the location for the film, Estes Park, Colorado, and discovered that the town and the hotel had
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"-the movie the world recognised-was first premiered in the home town of New York on the 16th June 1960.The film follows the life and strife of a young beautiful woman Marion Crane, played by the Janet Leigh, who is on the run from the police after stealing $40.000, she manages to find refuge at the Bates motel where she makes her worst mistake possible. During and after the film production of "Psycho" Alfred Hitchcock had his aids buy as many copies as possible of the novel "Psycho"-written by Robert Bloch. Why? To conceal the ending form the public's eye so when the film was shown in cinemas the audience would'nt know the ending. When people found out the title of the movie Hitchcock said it was based on a greek love story "Psyche".
The Crucible by Arthur Miller The Crucible is a fictional retelling of events in American history surrounding the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century, yet is as much a product of the time in which Arthur Miller wrote it, the early 1950s, as it is description of Puritan society. At that particular time in the 1950s, when Arthur Miller wrote the play the American Senator McCarthy who chaired the ‘House Un-American Activities Committee’ was very conscious of communism and feared its influence in America. It stopped authors’ writings being published in fear of them being socialist sympathisers. Miller was fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials and that human beings were capable of such madness. In the 1950s the audience would have seen the play as a parallel between the McCarthy trials and the Salem Trials.
Psycho is an American horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960 based on a 1959 novel with the same name. Alfred Hitchcock typically uses certain elements in almost all of his films. In Psycho the following elements appear; blonde woman, conversation that is not important to the story, alcohol, Hitchcock appearance, Mcguffin, pursuit, the camera looks around, a P.O.V., creating suspense by letting the audience in on a secret, mother figure, birds, stairs, and a narrow escape.
“Do you have the slightest idea what a moral or ethical principle is?” Deontology, or the adherence of one’s actions to a certain moral or ethical principle of operation, stands as an intruiging philosophy by itself. The opening sentence of this essay clearly possesses relevance to deontology. However, the quote does not originate from any philosopher, but instead from Jack Torrance of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The film, from a superficial point of view, stands as an atmospheric horror film. However, instead of providing audiences with just a technically proficient film, Kubrick weaves the grounds for a foreboding subtext throughout his film. This essay examines The Shining by examining Robert Tonkin’s distinction between religion and
Many years ago, the culture and atmosphere was amazingly different. The expectations of people and communities are extremely high. During the Puritan times, many laws and regulations existed pertaining to government, religion, and witchcraft. In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, the one word that best describes the Puritan beliefs and the community structure is strict.
In many ways Las Vegas can be an escape from stressful life. A vacation from all the worries and problems those plaques the people of America on a day to day life. Many people come to seek fame and fortune. Though when looking for this American dream comes at an expensive cost. Hunter S. Thompson paid this price the hard way and even then did not achieve the American dream he was searching for. In Thompson’s novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thompson explains that drugs will change people even turn your best friends against you and those drugs can make you happy, but will not allow you fully achieve happiness that the American dream promises through allusions and symbolism.
The film, Vertigo (1958) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, is classified as a genre combination of mystery, romance, suspense and thriller about psychological obsession and murder. Filmed on location in San Francisco and on the Paramount lot in Hollywood, California in 1957, the cultural features of the late 1950’s America were depicted in the films mise en scène by costume and set designs current for that time period. The film was produced at the end of the golden age of Hollywood when the studio system was still in place. At the time Vertigo was produced, Hollywood studios were still very much in control of film production and of actor’s contracts. Hitchcock’s groundbreaking cinematic language and camera techniques has had great impact on film and American popular culture and created a cult following of his films to this day.
They brought real Natives to play the Natives on the big screen and eventually movies were created by Natives themselves. Around the same time was the Hippie movement; many people wanted to be like the Natives they saw in the films even though it was not an accurate depiction of the Natives. They liked the 'positive stereotypes' of the Natives in the movies, the family unity and their strength as warriors. In the 1960's the American Indian Movement (AIM) also began and in 1973 The genocide at Wounded Knee occurred. Jim Jarmusch says “That is a genocide that occurred and the [American] culture wanted to perpetrate the idea that [the natives] these people are now mythological, you know, they don’t even really exist, they’re like dinosaurs.” This shows just how much Americans wanted to belittle the Natives, and despite succeeding for a number of years, the New Age of Cinema commenced and movies like Smoke Signals began what some would look at as a Renaissance. The Renaissance explained in Reel Injun discusses the rebirth of the Native American in the Hollywood films, and how the negative stereotypes went away with time. Reel Injun also makes a point to explain how it impacted not only the films but Americans who watched them, and ultimately America as a
The Mccarthy era was a very drastic time during the 1950’s when ideas about communism disseminated throughout the United States, particularly the government. Author of The Crucible, Arthur Miller, was very critical of this time and used characters, plot events, setting and literary terms and features to convey his message. Miller creates an allegory by using Witchcraft as a controversial topic similar to how communism was during the McCarthy era, characters such as Danforth, Hathorne and Hale to compare to organizations and more characters such as Abigail and Procter to delineate specific people from The Great Fear.
Joseph Conrad polish colonial worked as a seaman on French and British ships before becoming a British citizen in 1886. He developed an elegant, stunning English prose style what probed many of the modern fiction in his short stories and novels. His works ware by turns adventurous and darkly gloomy, attentive in the traditional qualities of resoluteness and bravery. Also, it concerned with the epistemological voids that define modern reality and awareness. It noted one of the most experts of fictional impressionism. Conrad offered that type of fictional rendering of subjective retort that reflectively impact on writers. However, the experiences of his life as a sailor greatly influenced his writing. He wrote that the principal task of the novelist was “Heart of Darkness”.
The Shining is about a white middle class dysfunctional family that suffers from natural and supernatural stresses in an isolated Rocky mountain hotel. .The father, a former teacher turned writer, is portrayed as a habitual drinker, wife- and child-abuser, with a kind of evil streak The mother is shown as a battered woman. The film suggests that due to the abuse at the hands of his father and the passivity of his mother, the child of this family developed psychological problems. He had imaginary friends and began to see frightening images.
Abigail says to John that she waits for him – John says that he made
Louis Althusser) was a French Marxist philosopher who “revolutionized Marxist theory” with his own ideology theories and their influence upon politics and culture (Ferretter, 2006, p.i). Karl Marx distinguished the hierarchy found in society: the infrastructure or economic base, which consists of “a combination of the ‘forces of production’ and the ‘relations of the production’”(Storey, 2009, p. 60), and the superstructure that contains two levels in itself- political and legal institutions (law, the police, the government) and ideology (religious, moral, legal, political, ect.) (Blunden, n.d.). The relationship between these levels in society can be viewed from two ends of a spectrum: a side where the superstructure both justifies and challenges the base, or a side where the base determines the limits of the content and form of the superstructure, as it is the forces of production. (Harman, 1986, pp. 3--44) Althusser rejected the economic base and the superstructure’s passive relation (Storey, 2009, p. 72).
A Clockwork Orange is a Stanley Kubrick film from 1971. Kubrick directed the film and wrote the screen play based on the 1962 novel from author Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange was originally rated, “X” and nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Screenplay, but lost in each category to William Friedkin's The French Connection (filmsite.org). The set design is by John Barry, costume design by Milena Canonero, music by Wendy Carlos and cinematography by John Alcott. A Clockwork Orange was awarded the New York Film Critics Awards for Best Film and Best Direction (FilmReference.com).
There are four crucial scenes of this film in which Hitchcock shows a change in perspective and identity through the mise-en-scène. Hitchcock’s signature motifs, style, and themes are conveyed through the mise-en-scène.