Danny emerges from his fateful trip to room 237 with a badly bruised neck. The Apollo 11 sweater he wears is torn around the collar area. In shock, unable to speak, he looks to have been strangled. Horrified, Wendy rushes to comfort the boy. Instinctively, she accuses Jack…
Wendy [To Jack]: You did this to him, didn’t you? You son-of-a-bitch! You did this to him! Didn’t you?! (Jack shakes his head in denial) How could you? How could you?!
In a later scene, Jack pleads his innocence saying Danny may be responsible for his own strangulation…
Wendy: Oh, I just don’t understand it. What about those bruises on his neck? Somebody did that to him.
Jack: I think he did it to himself.
I find it interesting that Dr Strangelove, who is at least partially modelled on Wernher Von Braun the developer of the Apollo 11 rocket, is in fact strangled by his own hand in a scene towards the end of the movie. Seems a little too specific to just be a coincidence, doesn’t it? Could this theme of self-strangling and reference to Apollo 11/Von Braun lend a little more credibility to the controversial idea that The Shining contains covert themes relating to Kubrick’s involvement in the moon landings? Is Kubrick intimating that he was himself metaphorically strangled from speaking about his involvement with the Apollo missions?
To add to this self-strangulation theme in Kubrick’s work, it’s probably worth mentioning that, in Full Metal Jacket, private Pyle is instructed buy gunnery sergeant Hartman “Now choke yourself… (Pyle puts his own hands around his throat but Hartmann interjects) goddammit with my hand numb-nuts.”
Are there any other references to self-strangulation in Kubrick’s work? What do you suppose he’s getting at with all this auto-throttling?
hamishspencer 