***WORK IN PROGRESS***
Any true fan of horror that's worth their weight has undoubtedly seen Stanley Kubrick's stunning masterpiece The Shining, or have at least read the original novel by Stephen King. But how many of these fans have really taken a good, hard look at this film? It is apparent that the director, Kubrick, has packed, and I mean packed the entire movie with codes, secrets, symbolism, allegory and allusions, and many other things related to film psychology such as spatial awareness and set design, use of certain colors, etc. This thread's main purpose is to dive into the visual masterpiece that is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, and the many many theories surrounding it.
For starters, let us understand the amount of analysis this film has undergone by listing the major theories and themes surrounding it and embedded within it.
1. Stanley's involvement in The Apollo Moon Landing Hoax
This is arguably the largest, most known, and most supported theory in regards to the film. At first skeptical, after some serious investigation the message becomes blatantly obvious at a plethora of points throughout the course of the movie. It is said that Kubrick, being "the most meticulous of film directors known to man", was not only a part of the Apollo 11 moon landing hoax, but he directed the whole thing to success under his genius.
2. The Holocaust
Another major and well-known theory, Kubrick appears to reference the Holocaust and Hitler's Nazi regimen several times in this film. We'll get to that later.
3. The genocide of Native Americans
A similar and less popular yet still supported theory is Kubrick addressing the genocide of the Native American peoples in America's early history. Both this theory and the Holocaust theory both tie in exceptionally well with the next.
4. History repeating itself
A common theme for many works of art and literature, it seems the past cannot escape itself. History is fated to repeat itself. This theory may be the least well supported, but retains solid evidence from the movie to back it up, so we will explore this as well.
5. Sexual abuse
6. Numbers Theories
The final of the Sinister Six, as I like to call them, is the plethora of not-so-innocuous numbers that appear all throughout the film, many that are appear to be very significant not only to the film and its plot as a whole, but to the other main theories as well. This theory has perhaps the second largest amount of evidence, as numbers are truly ubiquitous in this film, but is also perhaps the most far-fetched of the group, as numbers can also be seen as just numbers. Perhaps the viewers are reading too far into things?