Film Thought: The Presence of Tony in The Shining
Posted by andreamaille | Posted in Film, The Shining | Posted on 21:45
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A piece I wrote for a class on King and Kubrick's The Shining.
The entity of Tony is a mysterious figure throughout Stephen King’s novel and Stanley Kubrick’s film, both entitled The Shining. However Tony plays important role in both mediums as he allows the young boy Danny to see visions of the future and the horrors that a wait at the Overlook Hotel. In the scenes in which Danny receives the first vision of the Overlook, Tony is a distinct voice but with a visual presence.
In King’s novel, he describes Tony’s voice as “faint, and high and sweet” (King 49) which also has a musical tone. However through typography and sentence structure, Tony’s dialogue becomes formally and visually different from the rest of the text. In the novel, Tony is an external manifestation of Danny’s mind and speaks to the boy from far away. Even though Danny has seen Tony up-close as “Tony had been beside him” (King 42) in a previous vision, there is no physical description of Tony’s features. In the instance when the reader is introduced to Tony, King creates Tony’s dialogue in a distinct style perceptible by the reader’s eye. Tony speaks in short choppy sentences that often offer vague warnings When Tony calls Danny’s name, it is often spelled “Danee” (King 45) in the way it is pronounced in order to create a visual difference on the page. Moreover, King distinguishes Tony’s dialogue further by italicising Tony’s words that only Danny can hear. King also employs other formal techniques such as eclipses and repetition in order to create rhythms in Tony’s voice but also to indicate when Tony is speaking rather than when Danny is reading someone’s mind. Ultimately, Tony becomes perceptible not only by what he says but also by the reader’s eye therefore giving him a special kind of physicality.
In Kubrick’s film, Tony is an internal manifestation of Danny as Tony is “the little boy that lives in [his] mouth” (Kubrick). Tony speaks through Danny and therefore Kubrick creates greater contrast between the tone of Danny’s and Tony’s voice. When Danny receives the first vision of the Overlook hotel, Kubrick zooms into the bathroom from the hallway while the audience only hears Tony’s voice but not the source, since Danny’s face is not visible in the frame. Through this camera work, Kubrick creates emphasis on Tony’s voice rather any physical description. In the film, it is very clear when Tony is speaking through Danny by the performance of the actor. Danny extends and extracts his index finger when Tony speaks and his voice changes into a raspy tone. Like King’s form, the movement of Danny’s finger becomes a visual cue of when Tony is speaking which continues throughout the film. Moreover, Danny repeatedly asks Tony to tell him why he doesn’t want to go to the hotel. However instead of telling Danny, Tony shows him through a vision as Kubrick cuts to the shot of the hotel’s elevator filled with blood, which creates a correlation between Tony and the act of seeing. Though Tony has no physical body, the reader can see when he speaks through Danny rather than just hear his voice.
The style of Kubrick’s film and the form of King’s novel exhibit how a single voice can have a visual presence without any description of a body. Tony is more than just a voice or far away shadows which suggests that Tony may be more than a manifestation of Danny’s subconscious, but a supernatural element within the works.
