Wendy Darling – THE SHINING

It is by no stretch to call THE SHINING is a masterpiece.  Not just my kind of masterpiece, either, which may vary wildly from the standard definition.  The grand status of this film is a widely held opinion.  It is the defining cinematic statement on atmosphere.  Stanley Kubrick gets the lion’s share of the praise, which is valid, given the movie is 100% his vision.  Jack Nicholson is also lauded for his supremely disquieting portrayal of Jack Torrance, again justifiably.  We also think of the weird little kid croaking “Redrum” over and over.  I feel that people tend to overlook (ha ha, Shining pun) Shelley Duvall’s contribution to the movie, though.  This is despite the fact that the terrified face of Wendy Torrance is just as iconic as Nicholson’s “Here’s Johnny” pose.  That terror is usually the first and only aspect of her performance that comes up.  With all her shrieking and shivering, Wendy is rarely used as an example in lists of strong female characters.  I don’t think that is a fair assessment.  THE SHINING has at least a semi-annual spot in my October horror line up, so with this viewing I focused entirely on the poor, put upon housewife, and found that Wendy is more than meets the eye.

Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) finds her simple life upended when her emotionally distant, recently sober husband, Jack (Jack Nicholson), hauls her and their spooky ass six-year-old son, Danny (Danny Lloyd) deep into the Colorado mountains to the scenic Overlook Hotel just as the place is shutting down for the winter.  For five months, the family of three will be the sole occupants of the cavernous hotel while Jack looks after the place and works on his great American novel.  Even though her selfish hubby is the only one happy with the arrangement, Wendy puts on a smile and tries to make the most of it.  The Overlook’s grand features like the gilded ballrooms, bold carpet patterns, and the challenging hedge maze soon lose their appeal, and Wendy’s days are filled with tense monotony.  With the increasingly cranky Jack pounding away at his typewriter at all hours, and Danny incessantly tooling around the hallways on his Big Wheel, the only human contact Wendy gets is chatting for a couple of minutes with the local rangers by radio.  Sure, there’s always Tony, the little boy who lives in Danny’s mouth, but who the hell wants to listen to that downer.  To make matters worse, she starts to suspect her no account husband has fallen off the wagon, thanks to his mysterious new pal, Lloyd the Bartender (Joe Turkel). Plus, he might have taken up with that child abusing floozy in Room 237 (Lia Beldam/Billie Gibson).  When she discovers that Jack’s big writing project has all been a sham for him to goof off with his ghost friends, Wendy finally puts her foot—and her bat—down.  Jack winds up in the dog house (or technically, locked in the pantry) until his enabling bar buddy, Grady (Philip Stone), butts in and riles him up into a confrontational mood.  Wendy has had enough of her husband’s bullshit, though, and has made up her mind to take Danny out of this unhealthy environment and leave Jack in the cold.

The biggest takeaway from my Wendy-centric viewing was that I rarely considered the Torrance family before coming to the Overlook Hotel.  There is not a lot of footage, just two scenes of Wendy and Danny in their small Boulder apartment and the one scene of them on the road to the hotel.  These scenes are key to understanding Wendy’s character, however, and why she reacts the way she does.  Her timid deference and forced smiles are classic symptoms of a woman in an abusive marriage.   

There is no indicator Jack lifted a hand to her prior to their winter getaway, but at the very least, he was emotionally abusive.  Nicholson lays on the contempt and condescension as thick as the Colorado snow in every word he speaks to his wife on the way to the hotel.  Obviously, the abuse becomes exponentially worse once the ghosts start driving him mad, but it was present from the start. 

The scene in the apartment where the doctor examines Danny has another classic example of abused spouse behavior.  Wendy bends over backwards to put a spin on the accident that put Danny in the hospital when he was younger.  Oh, no big deal, my drunk husband yanked up our three-year-old son so hard he dislocated his little shoulder.  Just one of those things that happens all the time.  Smile, smile.  She also lies, or at least misleads, about the timing of the accident in relation to when Jack stopped drinking, making it out to be the silver lining when they really weren't connected.  She is trying to convince herself as much as to the doctor.

It is easy to see why Jack takes to the Overlook so quickly.  Jack is the Overlook.  Just like the haunted hotel, he is cold, distant, and unsettling.  Underneath his pleasant-ish façade, dark desires and malicious impulses dwell.  Not much effort was required to nudge old Jack from simmering, resentful father to raving psychopath.  He’s certainly having a lot more fun in life once the safety cap comes off.  Jack is such an easy mark that the ghosts must have been hi-fiving each other when he walked through the door.  Or whatever the 1920s ghost version of a hi-five is.  

I was not exaggerating when I called Wendy Torrance an icon.  She is instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with horror, Kubrick, or cinema in general.  No one else looks like Wendy, not even Duvall in real life or in other roles.  One factor is the wardrobe.  Wendy defines mom casual to such a degree she seems to have walked straight out of the women’s apparel section of the 1978 Sears catalogue.  Name one other person who could pull off wearing a bright red long sleeve shirt and stockings under a blue Raggedy Anne dress?  Other than your mom in the '70s. 

Another factor is the actress herself, who does not conform in typical Hollywood model.  Duvall had a very nontraditional beauty and physicality, and those traits were amplified with Wendy.  With her thin face and huge, wide eyes, Wendy is almost birdlike.  She looks like a fragile creature, even before being overtaken by terror.  Once things really go south, Duvall throws herself so deeply into fear that she is practically the physical version of Munch’s The Scream.  I think the only person who tops Duvall’s commitment to hysteria is Marilyn Burns from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.  

The thing is, even though Wendy seems frail and timid, looks can be deceiving.  Both Jack and his misogynist ghost buddies totally underestimate her.  Jack spends too much time savoring her confusion after she discovers his “manuscript” that he gives Wendy the opportunity to clean his clock, even if she is holding the bat all wrong.  Wendy, on the other hand, wastes no time getting her momentarily disabled husband locked away tight.  If it wasn’t for some spectral intervention from Grady, he would be in that pantry until spring.  

A slight aside about the manuscript reveal.  “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is another bit from the movie that has been forever entrenched into pop culture (even Homer Simpson paraphrased it).  The scene is so well known that it almost loses its impact.  When you really think about it, though, that shit is devastating.  Wendy’s perception of Jack suddenly tilts from “grouchy and on edge” to “totally divorced from reality,” and that he has been that way for a long time.  Even if he is only repeating the same sentence over and over, that is months of work at a manual typewriter, especially with all the creative formatting.  Which means Jack was off the deep end almost from the very beginning.   

Additionally, it makes the scene early on where he is being an absolute dick to her when she interrupts his “work” that much worse.  The nerve of that guy.  This motherfucker didn’t lose his train of thought, he was only working with ten words.  All that time she was busy doing his real job of maintaining the hotel for him, he was just slacking off and having drinks at the bar during Ghost Happy Hour!  She should have busted him upside the head right then.

Another aside - I hope my wife doesn’t think this is what I’m doing when I say I´m working on my blog.  

Yes, Wendy does settle in for a nap after she locks up her psycho hubby in pantry prison, but you can’t blame her.  It has been an emotionally draining few hours.  The second Jack starts hacking away at the bedroom door, though, Wendy is back on the clock.  She doesn’t waste time trying to question or reason with a man swinging an axe, she gets Danny (temporarily) out of danger and slices open Jack’s hand when he reaches through the door to unlock it.  Some might say she is saved when Jack is distracted by Dick Hollorann (Scatman Crothers), but I think Wendy had a good chance of taking out the bastard even if he forced his way into the bathroom.  At this point, Wendy had already given Jack a cracked noggin, a bad limp, and a lacerated hand.  The worst injury she’s had is a sore throat from all that screaming.  

Speaking of Dick Hollorann, this poor dude has even worse luck than Wendy.  He should have been safe as houses in his swank Florida bachelor’s pad, but he’s such a decent guy that he can’t ignore Danny’s call for help that comes shining into his dome.  He flies all the way across the country, drives up a mountain in a blizzard, and slowly plows the rest of the way up in a rented Snow-Cat, only to get an axe in the chest as soon as he walks in the hotel.  Thanks Danny, that worked out well.  I’m glad for any screen time I can get, though, because 1) Scatman is always a welcome addition, and 2) he gives the best “what the fuck are you talking about” expressions ever.  

The primary action from that point on is between Jack and Danny, but there’s no down time for Wendy.  The Overlook pulls out all the stops to drive her off the deep end, slapping her with one nightmarish vision after the other.  She even gets hit with an insane bit of furry fellatio, a scene that left me as confused as Wendy the first time I saw it as a clueless preteen.  No judgments now, of course.  However two consenting adults, alive or dead, want to express themselves is fine by me.  In this context, though, it’s still a bit of a shocker.  Despite the decayed partygoers and elevators of blood, Wendy refuses to crack up.  She escapes the hotel, scoops Danny into her arms, and trucks away in Hollorann’s Snow-Cat, leaving Jack lost and alone, destined to become an ice sculpture.  

Incidentally, wouldn’t it be fitting if Ghost Jack gets stuck in a crummy service job for all eternity, like Grady and Lloyd?  Having to wander the hedge maze every day in overalls, forced to keep the bushes tidy.  All three of them hanging out at the bar after hours, just complaining about women.  Losers.

So, while Wendy Torrance may seem to be a weak, hysterical pushover at first glance, when you really dig into it, she kicks all sorts of ass, both physical and ethereal.  I hope Danny appreciates what a great mom he has and make her a really awesome macaroni picture for her next Mother’s Day.  Maybe get Tony to lighten up a little bit around her, too.  I have the feeling that little boy inside her son’s mouth really freaks her out.  In any event, let’s raise a glass to the indomitable Mrs. Torrance, who left her good for nothing husband and a hotel of unspeakable evil in the rearview of a dead man’s Snow-Cat.  Cheers.

C Chaka