Sonny's A2 Media Blog

The Shinning Narrative structure

There are four theorists that theorys fit well into the idea of the horror structure of The Shining. These theorists are Levi-Strauss, Vladimer Propp, Tzventan Todorov and Bordwell & Thompson

The main Theorists that have the best view on structure, in terms of horror on for the Shinning, is Levi-Strauss, Levi-Strauss says that horrors have binary opposites, he says that there are Good (Danny/Wendi) and Evil (Jack/Hotel), Past (When Jack is in the ballroom and it goes back in time in the hotel) and Present, Normal (Job, family) Strange (Ghosts, unlocking of the door by Grady who was believed to be a figment of Jacks imagination.), Known (Humanity, Jack, Danny, the family etc.) Unknown (The Ghosts, The 'gift' the shinning, again the 'ghost' unlocking the door.). Most of Levi's ideas seem to fit into the structure of the shinning with the exception of Alien/Humans and Earth/Space.

Propp also makes some useful pointers about the structure which slightly fits into the Shinning, however even though it may not be accurate it does have certain character types e.g. the hero the villain the helper, which then makes you think who actually is the helper? Or even the hero? So even though he's not fitting the whole structure correctly he is making some very useful points.

Todorov's point of the equilibrium and disequilibrium is slightly right in the way that it starts off a normal family, where Jack gets a new job and the family get slightly excited, this is the Equilibrium and then when they get to the house and things start to change and ghosts start to appear and Jack goes insane is the disequilibrium, however, arguably, it doesn't really finish on an equilibrium, you could say it does because Wendi and Danny escape, however at the same time it finishes with Jack in the picture which gives confusion to the audience because it doesn't really explain why he is there so it slightly leaves on a cliff hanger with no actually closure.

Bordwell & Thompson do have a fairly good narrative structure theory applying to the shinning how they talk about films playing around with time, well like Propps idea of past and present we can see that this is correct because when Jack is in the present in his modern clothing he walks into the ballroom to find the past seems to have joined with him with many people in suits etc. and clearly aren't in modern clothing, which is linking past and present with each other rather than only the audience seeing the past the actually character from modern day is in the past. Which also applies to the picture at the end of the movie which has Jack at the front waving but it's a black and white photo which is from years ago and obviously wasn't Jack's era so it does play with time.