The document provides a detailed scene analysis and theme analysis of the bathtub scene in Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining (1980). It discusses how Kubrick uses color, sound, and camera techniques to build tension and reveal themes of duality, personality change, and isolation. The bathroom setting plays on vulnerabilities while also linking to influential prior films. Mirrors are used to show changing identities and decay of the main character's mind. The document also analyzes Kubrick's directing style and how the film fits within the horror genre at the time as it was being reformed.

1. The Shining (1980) – Stanley Kubrick
Katie Hair-Morse
Scene Analysis – Room 237 / Bathtub scene
(1) The beginning of the scene shows Danny foaming at the mouth and shaking. He is
wearing a red shirt which connotes danger and can be considered a warning to the audience
of what’s to come. The image has blue tones to insinuate darkness, coldness and a less
welcoming environment which links to the theme that the hotel is a dangerous place and
gives the audience an indication of how the character is feeling. A slow zoom on Danny’s
face jump cuts to the inside of room 237 and the camera begins a moderately fast pan of
the room. I feel that colour is a key part of this scene as it gives greater meaning to the
events as they happen. For example, the sofas in room 237 are purple; a colour that often
represents poison and foreshadows the death of a character. This is contrasted with green
which is also heavily featured in the set of the bathroom; a colour which represents illness
and jealousy. Furthermore, the bathroom is trimmed with yellow; a colour commonly used
to represent a hazard and could connote toxicity to the audience. As Kubrick was well
known for his meticulous set design and use of mise en scene, I feel it is likely that the
specific rooms have meaning and aren’t merely a coincidence. Although it may not be
considered a convention of the genre, many memorable moments in horror and thriller
films are set in the bathroom. This could be because it is a place where we are most
vulnerable and less likely to be able to protect ourselves. The bathroom is also a place
where a character would expect to be alone so for a horror scene to take place in a
bathroom feels like an invasion of privacy to the audience. This links to Hitchcock’s famous
thriller Psycho (2), where a woman is brutally stabbed to death while she is taking a shower.
This scene has such an effect on the audience not just because of the horrific nature of the
murder, but also because of where it was set. In my opinion, this is why the bathroom scene
in The Shining is so disturbing, especially as the woman appears from the bath completely
naked yet it seems that Jack is the one vulnerable as he is as clueless as the audience
regarding who she is and why she is there.
Sound is also a key part of this scene as it is used to build tension and create a dramatic
effect. The sound of a heartbeat becomes prevalent amongst the non diegetic high-pitched
string music that is conventionally used in horror films to indicate that something is about to
happen. As the pan is a point of view shot from Jack’s perspective, the audience can assume
that the heartbeat sound is his own. Kubrick uses a slow moving camera to show the viewer
the interior of the room and draw out the tension instead of cutting straight to the door. As
the camera (and Jack) approaches the bathroom door, the soundtrack gets suddenly deeper
and more foreboding, giving the viewer both visual and audio signals that something is not
right within the hotel, specifically room 237. The door opens to reveal the green, yellow and
white bathroom. The bathtub is in the centre of the frame and the eye of the viewer is
drawn towards it as it is a contrasting white within the mass of green that is the lower walls,

2. floor, toilet and sink. There is a shot – reverse – shot sequence between Jack, who is
captured in a medium shot and the room he is looking at which is a wide shot to establish
the environment with the audience. In the fourth shot of the sequence, a hand appears
behind the shower curtain and a naked woman appears. When she is stood up, the woman
is framed by the decorative alcove around her, once again forcing the viewers’ attention to
an even smaller area of the frame of which she is the centre.
There is a distinctive over-the-shoulder shot of the woman as Jack approaches her and the
music gets louder and has a faster pace than before, further drawing the viewer in to the
odd and intense encounter. Jack and the woman are in the centre of the frame and there
are no cuts as she runs her hands over his blood red jacket and they embrace into a kiss. The
camera cuts to Jack kissing the woman who appears to have stopped moving. Several
seconds elapse before he responds to this by looking up, giving the audience several extra
seconds of anticipation before the image cuts to a point of view shot of Jack holding a vile,
rotting old version of the woman he first perceived. The decaying of the woman could be a
visual representation of the decaying of Jack’s mind and is exactly what was insinuated by
the colour schemes in the rooms – sickness, hazard, decay and death. As the woman begins
to laugh, the sound overlaying the imagery as it flicks between shots of the woman laughing
and grotesque images of her laying in the bath.
Theme Analysis
The themes of duality and personality change are prevalent throughout the film especially
with the progression of Jack’s mental deterioration. Mirrors are used to as an icon of duality
and the way a character is seen. For example, in the bathtub scene, the woman is perceived
as young and beautiful from a normal camera perspective, then when Jack looks at her in
the mirror, she is seen as old, grotesque and half rotted. Another example of mirrors
revealing a new identity is when Danny appears possessed and writes ‘Redrum’ on the
bedroom door. (3) When Wendy wakes up and asks what he’s doing, the viewer can see the
word reflected in the mirror as ‘Murder’. Mirrors are prevalent in scenes where Jack’s
mental state is deteriorating, such as the bar in the Gold Room which has a mirrored back-
bar, or the toilets which have a row of mirrors in them that reflect a bold red colour
throughout the room.
The change in Jack’s personality is most noticeable when you study his treatment of his
wife: At the beginning of the film they act as husband and wife, perhaps not loved-up but
certainly walking holding hands and Jack treating Wendy with a decent amount of respect.
Although he never appeared to be the most loving and empathetic husband, there is a
distinguishable change in his behaviour after the family have been living alone in the hotel
for a significant amount of time. This is brought to the attention of the viewer in the scene
where Jack loses his temper with Wendy because she interrupted his writings. This becomes
even more disturbing when reflecting on the film later, as the audience learn that all he is
writing is ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’, perhaps showing that his short

3. temper was to disguise his wandering and disturbed mind – or rather his other personality -
from his wife. This leads into themes of domestic abuse and the breakdown of a family
which are woven throughout the film. For example, Kubrick hints at history of child abuse
and a strained marital trust even before the family move into the hotel, when Wendy
believes that Jack has hurt Danny and Jack reveals he ‘accidentally’ hurt his son before in a
monologue to his hallucination of a barman.
Isolation is also a key theme within the film that is prevalent from the very beginning. The
manager of the Overlook hotel goes as far as to warn Jack that the hotel becomes so
isolated in the winter that it has driven people mad and the audience are able to physically
see the Torrence family become cut off from the outside world when the snow starts to fall.
Wendy’s loneliness becomes most quickly apparent when she tries to make a phone call and
discovers that they no longer have a connection to the outside world other than the police
phone operator, whom she tries to converse with for as long as possible. Wendy is isolated
not just from the outside world, but also within her marriage, as Jack becomes increasingly
distant and unwelcoming towards her affection and company. Danny also becomes isolated,
especially as he is the only child in the building, and is often seen to be playing alone. He is
alone in his premonitions and illness caused by his ‘Shine’ skill and the strong sense of
wrong he gets being in the hotel. He is seen foaming at the mouth and convulsing but has
no one there to comfort him other than the voice in his head. Out of the family, Jack is the
only one who seems to deliberately isolate himself, dedicating himself to his ‘writing’ and
becoming angry when he is disturbed.
Auteur Analysis
Stanley Kubrick is known for his specific directing style and how the camera moves in his
works. The technique that stands out the most in his works is the zoom as he is able to force
the viewer to change their perspective of a person or scene by zooming close into or away
from the subject. It is used frequently in the Shining, often to isolate a character and show
their individual emotions, for example, (4) the camera zooms in on Jacks face as he stares
intently to the left of the camera, emphasising how distanced he has become from
humanity and how quickly he is now losing his mind. The technique is used in reverse in a
scene known as ‘La marche avant la charge’ in Kubrick’s earlier film Barry Lyndon. The zoom
out gives the audience a dramatic impression of the size of the cavalry that is charging
forward towards the camera, therefore making the zoom technique effective at building up
tension and creating an exciting atmosphere. Another technique that is used across many of
Kubrick’s works is the fade/dissolve scene transitions.
The Shining tackles many difficult themes such as child neglect / abuse as Danny is mostly
left to roam the hotel alone and is even left alone when he appears to be extremely unwell.
Although his mother is often with him or talking about him to Jack, she is unable to protect
her son from the marks he gets on his neck and the increasingly disturbed nature of his
behaviour. Moreover, Jack says at the beginning of the film that he thinks the hotel will be

4. good for his son and he will have lots of time to play and roam, not acknowledging how
lonely and potentially dangerous it would be to let the small boy be alone in the large hotel.
Although Jack promises Danny that he would never hurt him, it becomes apparent that he
has a history of hurting the child when Wendy discovers mysterious marks on her sons’ neck
and gets extremely angry at her husband. Ultimately, Wendy tries to protect her child when
Jack loses his mind but he ends up alone fending for himself and hiding from the man who
was supposed to look after and care for him. This links to Stanley Kubrick’s motion picture
Lolita (1960) which features a young adolescent girl who is put into the care of her
perverted step-father after the death of her mother. However, unlike Wendy’s character in
the Shining, Ms Haze did not have great love for her daughter and often neglected to spend
time with her child in favour of her new husband, ultimately sending her off to summer
camp far from her home.
Kubrick is well known for his meticulous set design and the Shining is one of his many films
that use colour and style to represent emotions of characters and to predict key moments in
the movie. In the Shining, Kubrick uses the colour red in the ballroom bathroom alongside
many wall mirrors which not only reflect the colour of the walls around, making them all the
more obvious, but also highlight the characters shift in personality. The set design indicates
to the audience that the scene causes a shift in the film’s plot and the actions of Jack’s
character. The bright red on the walls can be considered a warning and a sign of future
blood and death, the room is more modern than much of the rest of the hotel and
insinuates how Jack is thinking ahead and almost considering a future where he kills his wife
and child. Red is also prevalent in A Clockwork Orange, noticeably so in the carpet of the cat
woman’s house. The cat lady is seen doing yoga, lying on the carpet in her house which
could represent her blood in her death (5), which happens in the very same room when Alex
hits her over the head with a large sculpture. Her red hair might also be an indicator of how
she will die, which is a clever use of mise-en-scene by Kubrick.
Genre Analysis
The Shining falls into the Horror genre at the point of reformation in the genre cycle. It is
known for pushing the boundaries of horror and crossing over into a psychological horror
aswell as the typical jump-scare violent styles incorporated in horror of the time. The
Shining contains many conventions of a psychological horror movie, including insanity:, in
how Jack loses his mind and with it all affection for his family and remorse for wishing them
dead and Evil children; in the two little girls in the hallway, shown dead and alive and in the
scene where Danny writes ‘REDRUM’ on the bedroom door and hovers over his mother’s
head holding a knife. It also features icons typical of the classic horror genre, including
handheld weapons that are commonly found around a typical household, such as the large
kitchen knife that Wendy uses to defend herself and the baseball bat that Jack attacks her
with. The baseball bat has since been used as the murderers weapon in many horror films

5. and tv broadcasts since The Shining came out, for example the horror icon and monster
Chucky, uses it to brutally murder a teacher in the filmChilds Play 2 (1990). It is also used in
recent media, for example Negan, an antagonist in the tv show The Walking Dead, uses a
baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire has his main weapon and it has become an icon both
of the character and of the recent series’ of the show. This is just one example of how the
Shining influenced the horror genre as much as it was influenced by it. However, Kubrick has
incorporated many classic horror conventions into the film, for example, the Overlook Hotel
is said be tainted by a past involving a triple murder and that previous groundskeepers have
gone insane because the memories live on within the hotel. This is a twist on the classic
version of a haunted house that has been an icon of horror since the genre began. The idea
that the location is tainted by previous events is similar to the house in The Innocents (1961)
which is revealed to be full of ghosts that talk to the orphaned children within the house
and is linked to the mysterious death of their governess. The hotel affects Danny in much
the same way as the house does to Miles in The Innocents, as his ‘shine’ ability appears to
strengthen to a point where it debilitates him the longer he is in the hotel, and is seen to be
having some sort of seizure because of the memories in the hotel. Moreover, the owner of
the hotel tells Jack that it was built on a native burial ground, which indicates to the
audience that the hotels grounds have a far more brutal and violent past than they can even
comprehend.
Context
The Shining is a filmbased from a novel by horror author Stephen King and adapted to film
by Kubrick. It was created in a time where the Horror genre was being revolutionised and
horror was splitting into a multi-tude of sub-genres. Between 1970 and 1980, horror was
divided between two sub-genres, psychological horror and slasher horror films (such as
Halloween, John Carpenter 1978) which typically involved conventions of a vulnerable
‘virgin’ girl watching her friends get murdered by a psychopath with a knife, hence the
‘slasher’ name. The Shining was the second Stephen King novel to be adapted in this time
and both of them fell under the Psychological title.
The Shining could have a deeper layer of meaning centred around Jack’s desperation to
become more than his families current social status by moving away from his current life
and attempting to achieve more somewhere else. This is reminiscent of the American
Dream and how families and migrant workers would constantly travel in search of wealth
and success and hope of achieving the ‘dream’. It also discusses difficult issues in american
history, such as the conflict between the first settlers and the native American people as
their land was pillaged and stolen from them and how these issues have never truly been
resolved. This is prevalent in the way that the hotel was not only disrespectfully built upon a
native American indian burial site, but also decorated with an ‘american indian’ theme
which is appropriated from the original cultures of the land and making the history os the

6. area into a tourist attraction for the hotel. The movie has many examples of how history
affects the future of the film, and this can easily be related into modern context, for
example, the past of the hotel is directly affecting and hurting the family that are looking
after it over the summer, and the father of the family has become influenced by the history
of the place. This allows history to repeat itself which is indicated to the audience in the very
last shot of the scene, of Jack in the photo dated ‘1920’ showing that society and people in
power are no better than before, and maybe suggesting that we cannot stop the cycle
unless we face it and learn from it – in this case to close the Overlook hotel. In this instance,
Jack represents people of power in the world and Wendy and Danny are the people who
have to deal with the consequences of the leaders actions.
Bibliography
1. YoutubeClip:(2015).The Shining - Bathtub scene. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABubLDnAV1I Last accessed Oct 2017.
2. YoutubeClip:(2011).Psycho - The Shower. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WtDmbr9xyY . Last accessed Oct 2017.
3. YoutubeClip:. (2011). Redrum -The Shining. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLjixsUEj5E . Last accessed 9th Nov.
4. YoutubeClip. (2011). Jack Nicholson Stare. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRnvalwBhy8 Last accessed 9th Nov
5. YoutubeClip:. (2015). The Cat Lady's Death - A Clockwork Orange.Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dVlYPnGXQw.