The Shining is a drama/horror made in 1980. The film involves a family who move to stay in an isolated hotel during the winter. Propps theory was that there are seven different kinds of people in every movie, these are: The Villain, the donor, the helper, the princess and father, the dispatcher, the hero or victim and the false hero. Another theory is one by todorovs who had an idea that every film had normality at the start, an enigma which causes a pathway to resolution and the end of a film is the closure. Levi Strauss had another theory which was that rather than being a specific structure, there is a lot of opposites. The final theory is Bordwells theory. Bordwell believes that everything has time and structure.
When thinking about Propps theory and its validity to The Shining there are some links. We can see by the end of the film that Jack is the villain. We know this as he is the one who frightens his whole family and murders the cook. However at the start of the film it is not clear that Jack is the villain, as at this point he is simply a father and a nice man. The hero in The Shining could be seen as Danny. We start to believe he is the hero when he helps his mother escape from the house when Jack is trying to kill them. In The Shining it seems as the the chef is the donor as he tells Danny at the start about the shining that he has. However it could also be argued that the old caretaker is the donor. The old caretaker appears to Jack and tells him what to do and feeds him information. However this is just seen to be Jacks imagination so it is difficult to think of the caretaker as a real character. It could be said that there is more than one victim in The Shining. Danny and Wendy can be seen as victims as they suffer panic when Jack turns against them and tried to kill them. The chef can also be seen as a victim as he is killed by Jack at the end of the film. It could also be argued that Jack is infact the victim as the hotel has caused him to be insane and it is not actually in his nature to want to kill his family. There is no real princess and father in this film so this could mean the film does not fully fit the theory by Propp. The helper in the film appears to be the cook as throughout the film we see him trying to help Danny and the family.
Todrovs theory somewhat fits The Shining. At the start of the film there is a sense of normality when they are at home. The events are the disrupted as Jack is then told about the old caretaker and choses to take the job at the hotel. Therefore it could be argued that the hotel is the enigma in the movie. Then for most of the film there is a bumpy path when they are trying to get through there time at the hotel. The resolution as the end is that they escape from the hotel. however we never see the full effects of what has happened to the family as Jack has died. It could be said that they never got back to normality as they lost Jack.
The next theory is by Levi Strauss. At some points in The Shining we do see quite the opposite of what we expect from people. One example of this is that Danny is a young boy and we do not expect for him to have voices in his head and to see blood and other images. We also see Danny talking about cannabalism which is not what is expected from a young boy. Another example of this theory is that we would not think of Jack as a father wanting to kill his family however this is infact what he ends up doing. In other ways the film is not the opposite such as Wendy is a fairly typical mother as she tries to keep Danny safe and sort out all of the problems.
The final theory is Bordwell which somewhat applys to the film The Shining. In the film the months are clearly marked as they come up. They firstly come up as months, then followed by weeks and days. This adds tension to the movie and shows that Bordwells theory applys to The Shining.
Overall I would say that the theory by Levi Strauss has the most validity when linking to The Shining. The general feeling in the film is quite shocking at not what the audience would expect which makes the film link very well to Levi Strauss' theory.
You successfully argue in favour of one theory while explaining how the others may link to the media text.
ReplyDeleteBe careful not to make your points appear like a list. Each idea must be explained with evidence to support your answer.
If you re-read the part of your essay on Bordwell and Thompson, you should see that it doesn't really make sense, nor is it explained. The months are marked up, then the months are followed by weeks and days? This needs deeper explanation AND to show why it is significant.