Cinema and ArchitectureWeek 7 – The Shining

• The Shining

• The Chronotope (Bakhtin)

• Hauntology (Derrida)

• The hotel

• The labyrinth

Hauntology

• Philosophical/critical concept originated by Jacques Derrida

• Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, the state of the debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International, trans by Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994).

Hauntology

• ‘Conversing with spectres is not undertaken in the expectation that they will reveal some secret, shameful or otherwise. Rather it may open us up to the experience of secrecy as such: an essential unknowing which underlies and may undermine what we think we know’ – Colin Davis

The Chronotope

• Chronos - time, topos - place.

• ‘Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history’ – Mikhail Bakhtin

Innisfree (José Luis Guerín, 1990)The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)

The Quiet Man(John Ford, 1952)

Innisfree(José Luis Guerín, 1990)

The Shining

temporal layeringchronotopic hauntology?

Mark Fisher, HOME IS WHERE THE HAUNT IS: THE SHINING'S HAUNTOLOGY

The hotelin cinema

Juhani Pallaasma

- Finnish architect and theorist- Born 1936- The Eyes of the Skin – Architecture

and the Senses (1996)

The hotel in cinema

“The hotel provides a setting to intertwine the fates of individuals from totally different social backgrounds. The combined transparency and opacity of the hotel, the privacy of the hotel room, the anonymity of the guest, and the hotel lobby as theatre stage, provide situations for hiding and presenting oneself, and creating chance encounters.”

- Juhani Pallasmaa

The hotel in cinema

“There is also an air of privileged luxury, decadence and eroticism in the early hotels in movies. Hotel parallels the movie theatre in its inherent imagery; they evoke fantasies and turn dreams into realities. In addition to the secrecy of the individual room, the architectural element of the hotel that provide foci for cinematic action are the lobby, revolving doors, reception desk, restaurant and ball rooms, stairs, elevators and corridors.”

- Juhani Pallasmaa

The hotel in cinema

“The typical characteristics of the hotel lobby […] indicate that it is conceived as the inverted image of the house of God. It is a negative church… In both places people appear there as guests. But whereas the house of God is dedicated to the service of the one whom people have gone there to encounter, the hotel lobby accommodates all who go there to see no one”

- Siegfried Kracauer, ‘The Hotel Lobby’

InterContinental Paris Le Grand, lobby

Ibis Budget, Perth

The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

“Architecture serves as a metaphor for the human mind in accordance with the traditional psychoanalytical view: characteristics foarchitecture are reflected in mental structures and mental concepts are projected in architecture.”

- Juhani Pallasmaa

“You’re it, not my daddy. You’re the hotel.’ - Danny in King’s novel

The Labyrinth (again)• The labyrinth outside the hotel

• The labyrinth in the hotel

• The hotel as labyrinth

• Jack as minotaur

• The mind as labyrinth

• Narrative structure as labyrinth

The Architectural potential of Steadicam

• How is fear/horror embedded in the architecture

• Think about the relationship between space and sound

• Think about the temporal layering of the film (the chronotopic hauntology?!)

• The labyrinth outside the hotel

• The labyrinth in the hotel

• The hotel as labyrinth

• Jack as minotaur

• The mind as labyrinth

• Narrative structure as labyrinth

The Labyrinth (again)

---------------------------------------------------

• What are the things to be afraid of in The Shining? List as many things/aspects as you can.

• Describe how the style of the clip engages with the space.

• How is the trope of the labyrinth used here? What does it look like? What is the significance of it?

• How is the relationship between bodies and space being used?

• Why does Jack not want to leave the hotel?

• Analyse the performances of Jack and Lloyd here. What do they suggest in their manner an din their words?