There’s a scene in Toy Story where Buzz Lightyear realises that he can’t fly. He’d always assumed he could. There are wings on his spacesuit and everything. Having hauled himself up to the top of the stairs, Buzz launches his plastic body into the void only to come thudding back down to earth, his left arm completely broken off, in what could be argued is a straight retelling of the Icarus myth. It’s a big rug-pull moment for him because it illustrates that he’s just a toy and not a real astronaut. The scene is accompanied by a wistful Randy Newman song called ‘I will go sailing no more’. Flying is sometimes described as sailing through the air.
Moments before his ill-fated blast-off, Buzz stands atop the stair-railing and we see that the carpet on the nearby landing consists of a familiar diamond pattern previously made famous by the carpet in The Shining – in a scene that also features Danny Torrance wearing an Apollo 11 sweater. The director of Toy Story (Lee Unkrich) is a big fan of The Shining and there are many other Easter eggs throughout the Toy Story films. Here, the thematic significance of the carpet’s pattern is striking. Buzz Lightyear is an obvious reference to real life astronaut, Buzz Aldrin. Buzz Aldrin was aboard the Apollo 11 rocket depicted on Danny’s sweater. So we have the repeated elements of an astronaut named Buzz, the diamond-patterned carpet and the notion of ascending towards the heavens in flight.
In the scene in The Shining, Danny, wrapped in his Apollo 11 sweater, has a sort of symbolic Buzz launch too. He starts the scene crouched over his toys. At some point, a mysterious tennis ball is rolled towards him from off camera. He stands up and the rocket on his chest is thrust upward. Filled with trepidation, he (and, presumably, the astronauts in the ship on his sweater) venture towards the mysterious and frightening Room 237. We don’t actually see what happens to Danny in Room 237 but we see the aftermath. He appears downstairs with a large red mark on his neck. The collar of his Apollo 11 sweater is badly torn. Danny is so scarred from his experience in Room 237 that, from that point on, he becomes almost mute and is essentially replaced in the movie by his imaginary friend, Tony (“Danny’s not here, Mrs. Torrance”). This is a deeply disturbing piece of psychological horror.
Over the years, many have posited the theory that Stanley Kubrick was involved in helping NASA to create fake images and footage in support of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Whether he did or not is up to the individual and is not something I will tackle here. However, it is safe to say that, by the time Stanley made The Shining, some 10 years after the Apollo 11 moon landing, he would have known about the rumours of his involvement in the supposed space-hoax.
If, during the making of The Shining, Kubrick decided to have a little fun with these notions of faked spaceflight, he may well have included Danny’s horrific mission to Room 237 as a sort of allegory of Apollo 11’s failure which is, in itself, another retelling of the Icarus myth. And this seems to be the part of the story that Lee Unkrich has picked up on. More than just including a similar carpet pattern, Unkrich has created a scene where an Astronaut fails to fly in the way that he thought he could and is subsequently broken by the experience, just like Danny, just like Icarus.
If you think I’m drawing too long a bow, you might consider this. In 1998, during his speech in acceptance of the D.W. Griffith lifetime achievement award, Kubrick eludes to the Icarus myth and wonders whether the moral of the story should be, as is generally accepted, ‘don’t try to fly too high’ or whether it might be better expressed as ‘forget the wax and feathers and do a better job on the wings’. Could Kubrick be giving us a clue as to his views on the veracity of the Apollo moon landings? In bemoaning the quality of the wings that failed to hold Icarus aloft, is Kubrick hinting at the failure of Apollo 11 to reach the moon? Does Danny’s terrifying proxy Apollo mission that ends in physical harm and mental breakdown talk to the same theme? Is Buzz Lightyear’s attempt at flight that results in a severed arm and complete disillusionment an example of another director developing Kubrick’s ideas?
In 1967, just 2 years before Apollo 11 apparently made its historic journey, Gemini astronaut, Gus Grissom famously labelled the craft that was supposed to ferry the astronauts to the moon, a lemon. Grissom, who was touted to be the first man to walk on the lunar surface, and his fellow astronauts Chafee and White, were killed soon after the lemon incident in a mysterious and controversial fire.
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