Stanley Kubrick intentionally treated Shelley Duvall and even Scatman Crothers like shit behind the scenes to emulate the enervating emotional state of narcissistic (spiritual) abuse. There are countless analysis by people like Rob Ager (Collative Learning), trying to break down the true meaning of The Shining.
One of the analysis which I believe more than anyone else is jonny53's breakdown of the movie, which he didn't even intend to do - he started it all because his ADHD had him distracted on Danny's "Apollo 11" sweater while the rest of the movie was happening.
In that analysis, he provides an insight on reviewers like Rob Ager:
"Iâve found out if you discover something, and write about it watch out. I now know how it feels to be surrounded by noisy know-nothings. Iâve been hardened by the experience and Iâm changed. But someone must have really gotten under Stanley Kubrickâs skin for him to have put all the thought and energy into weaving this crafty artifice. He mustâve loved to crush his chess opponents. Maybe he also pulled the wings off of flies as a child because looking at what he did here, it has its similarities. Itâs like he was having fun with the annoying chess nerds, film critics and assorted Hollywood losers that he must have certainly and continuously come across in life. He totally manipulated this crowd. The endless barrage of persistent genius wannabes and Pseudo-intellectuals who think theyâre on his level, constantly orbiting around him, and endlessly trying to figure out the deeper psychological meanings of his entire body of work. They inhabit a weird Kubrickland. Hoping maybe by basking in this light, figuring everything out and becoming âtrue fansâ some of his genius will rub off on them.
[..]
Itâs annoying to have simpletons criticize your work. Theyâre quick to comment yet donât actually bother to look into what youâre talking about before piping up. And itâs always the âexpertsâ that are the loudest. I especially canât stand âskimmersâ who quickly skip around than ask dopey questions that were actually answered if they had read the whole text. It must have been a thousand times worse for Stanley Kubrick, especially after working on projects for five years or more. He must have hated to be criticized or asked to explain his movies by the same lummoxes over and over again. The Stanley Kubrickians remind me of the Ellen Jamesians in the âWorld According to Garpâ. Thick as bricks. Whether he loved the attention, or hated it he may have looked down on or even despised this crowd of underlings."
Now, the analysis does a good job highlighting what's really going on, comparing the exact differences between source novel and film. But what isn't mentioned is the idea of narcissistic abuse, probably because it isn't part of the mainstream lexicon - it's not something people would talk about in the open unless you've been subjected to it already.
The hotel behaves like a narcissist. Besides lying to Jack through mental projections like Grady and influencing his vulnerable mind, and frightening Danny with the twins, you'll notice the illogical layout of the hotel - the doors which shouldn't exist, or the corridors which end up into impossible places. This is the experience of narcissistic abuse: like how rileycs had openly cheated, and his narcissist friends Viscose and Pinguefy had covered it up with smug deflections and explanations which do not hold water up close to logical scrutiny. It's how a lot of people who hold credentials and gravitate towards positions of authority operate - they macro-bullshit, break promises, hold no real principles besides self-serving interest, sweep things under the rug and avoid accountability.
I had a friend from India, who I got along in my very little friend group with the narcissist who I met in junior high. He wasn't exactly nice, but he was a normal person, and that narcissist tried practicing therapy on him in summer of 2014, when he invited the both of us to his apartment. It was drunken therapy, they both had drank vodka, and through my narcissist friend, I witnessed helplessly as my Indian friend was vomiting into the toilet by the end and left incredibly distraught.
By the time it was 2016, that Indian friend had hated my guts, and disparaged me, and I hated him in return for putting me down - when in retrospect, he was unconsciously looking to me as a source of refuge from narcissistic abuse (none of us knew what was really going on). The narcissist invited both of us to a camping trip by the creek, and it was poorly planned out, I was bossed around and treated with contempt while my narcissist friend engaged with my Indian friend about politics, military might, whatever. The next day, I ended up over-using the bunsen burner fuel, having been put in charge of cooking the noodles for breakfast, and this ended up causing a huge rupture as my narcissist friend was forced to abort the whole trip, and it was just a nightmarish argument on the drive back home - culminating in him flooring the accelerator, and threatening to crash his SUV.
I turned to The Shining for some reason, and where I saw Jack Torrence lashing out at his poor wife, Wendy, particularly during the long scene when she's discovered how he's been writing nothing but "All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy," it was like watching a mirror of my Indian friend. It didn't really click in for me until now, how narcissists and dark personalities leave a trail of spiritual desolation in their wake, while still presenting the squeaky clean image to the world - there is Elliot Rodger, who lashed out in the 2014 Isla Vista Killings, and who wrote a lengthy diatribe/autobiography of his story where, if you observe the ill treatment, neglect and disrespect of Elliot by his narcissist father, Peter Rodger (and who reveals just how he has zero love for his son, period, in an ABC interview with Barbara Walters).. that's how in The Shining, the hotel gaslights not just Jack Torrence, but also the viewer into believing that he has been "the caretaker, all along."
In 2025, when I had undergone a manic episode in October, I accused Rob Ager of being a credential-holding psychopath in plain sight. Of course, this isn't true. He is rather full of it, who might point out details most viewers might have missed, but then twist things into meanings which have nothing to do with Kubrick or the movie, because Kubrick's movies are essentially spiritual, which those who are out of touch with their own spirituality have no grasp of, period.
"The Truth of the thing does not necessarily lie in the think of it - A, B, C.. Z, but in the feel of it. In those spaces and silences that go beyond the rigid straitjacket of reasoning."