Spiritual Horror

[Hidden X]

Quote Originally Posted by Auditor

Quote Originally Posted by Robert Adam Gilmour It's a good one. Bizarrely there's still no official complete version on disc, because one scene is still considered too blasphemous. The complete version can be found in certain "international waters" where there are many dastardly "pirates" sailing about...

So, is the missing scene just overhyped/over-teased as per usual?

While christians still have the numbers/influence to cause outrage, one wanders exactly what is it that can be considered "too blasphemous/offensive" in this day and age, especially for a movie like that one...

[paeng]

The poems mentioned earlier remind me of one of my favorites, from Wordsworth:

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Quote Originally Posted by Hidden X

Quote Originally Posted by Auditor Quote Originally Posted by Robert Adam Gilmour It's a good one. Bizarrely there's still no official complete version on disc, because one scene is still considered too blasphemous. The complete version can be found in certain "international waters" where there are many dastardly "pirates" sailing about... So, is the missing scene just overhyped/over-teased as per usual? While christians still have the numbers/influence to cause outrage, one wanders exactly what is it that can be considered "too blasphemous/offensive" in this day and age, especially for a movie like that one...

It really isn't that bad for today's standards, you can find it easily on youtube if you search "The Devils rape of Christ" along with other deleted stuff. But it might be partly that people at Warner Bros hold a grudge against Ken Russell or somebody easily offended is giving the permissions.

[Masonwire]

Quote Originally Posted by DarkView

Quote Originally Posted by ChildofOldLeech - Recently, Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining has been exerting a renewed fascination over me, and I have come to regard it as a preeminent example of spiritual horror for the secular age. I'm pretty sure Kubrick was either a non-believer or an agnostic, and accordingly created a haunted house story that was devoid of the customary spiritual/metaphysical underpinnings of the supernatural, which may be one reason why the film has had such a consistently unnerving effect; King's remark that Kubrick made the film "to hurt people" comes to mind. The force at the center of the Overlook, although demonstrably an inhuman, supernatural evil, does not behave or be fully explained by traditional narratives, religious or otherwise; the mystery of just what is inhabiting the Overlook and how it got that way is left to the viewer to interpret. I personally have come to view the Overlook mythos as being somewhat similar to Chambers' 'King in Yellow'; there are two Overlooks; the one which physically exists in our world, and the timeless, otherworldly Overlook where it is constantly New Year's Eve 1921 and where Jack Torrance has always been the Caretaker - with the latter bleeding through and influencing events and people in the former. My theory is that the unique confluence of violence that occurred at the site of the Overlook reached a peak in '21, a sort of singularity of evil, that resulted in the creation of a spiritual double of the Overlook, a genius loci perhaps, which exists outside of linear time. And, because it is outside of time, this Overlook has in fact, "always" existed, preceding the actual hotel's construction and the horrific events that would eventually occur there. As a result, causality is inverted and a perverse fatalism comes about - events reverberate in time before/beyond their occurrence: Torrance is corrupted and ensnared by the Overlook because he has always been a part of it, even before his mortal self had the slightest awareness of the place. Effects and causes are confused, and the echo comes into being before the sound: was Grady, the previous caretaker driven to murder his family as a result of Torrance, the once and future Caretaker's actions a decade later? In the end, the implications of the Overlook are so chilling because they are the result of human actions, rather than any outside entity or force; without meaning to, we have damned ourselves, given birth to Hell in a universe that lacks any heaven - and it has always been, and will always remain that way. . . Youve always been the caretaker. - YouTube That's an interesting perspective on the film. I'd like to expound a bit with the idea of that singularity of human evil as perhaps creating a spiritual world consisting only of that evil in the same way you mention it creating a version of the hotel as existing outside time.

Quote

During the making of the movie, Stanley Kubrick would occasionally call Stephen King at 3:00 a.m. and ask him questions like “Do you believe in God?”

I seem to recall an interview with King in which he said that when he replied to Kubrick something in the affirmative or something along those lines Kubrick simply hung up.

Kubrick took King's warm story of redemption and turned it into a cold nightmare.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Hanns Heinz Ewers is a book people looking for spiritual horror need to seek out. Alraune is considered to be his finest novel, but its predecessor is more powerful.

[Mr. Veech]

@ Strength

I can imagine you have a strong distaste for the poststructuralist "school" of thought which developed mostly from certain reinterpretations of both Hegel and Nietzsche, especially the former. I know I certainly did for a long time. There's really not much to say once you ignore all conceptual distinctions.

Sorry, it's a bit easier for me to approach this subject from a philosophical standpoint.