🥫 Reading the Storyroom
"Now, this is the story room," says Hallorann, and walks the Torrances into the dry goods. Everything on the shelves is a word. Here are two screens, read.
First read: the boxes
The boxes in the storyroom are stamped with numbers, and one of them tells you what to do with them: SERVICE DIVISION. Put in the slashes. Divide them into dates.
Yes, we have ended up with the conspiracy theorist's pinboard, red string and all. We forgive ourselves. That is what a rebus looks like written down. And that scribble actually uncovers a goodsize chunk of the hidden plot! That it resembles the handiwork of a frenzied mind in the grip of a paranoid fever dream is part of the incredibly hilarious and erudite joke Kubrick is playing at our expense.
Reading the storyroom is just an example of reading a rebus. The props in The Shining aren't just props, they're words. You read them by discovering what they mean from their context, the way you learned new words as a child. Nothing, and certainly no prop, in this movie is an accident.
This is not free association. It is associative problem solving, based on reading. Every link is anchored in something on the screen or in a text the film points to. Stronger links make better puns, and the strongest close on themselves or have multiple convergent entrypoints. The most improbable link here, Paul dressed as the Somerton Man, led through seven cigarettes, seven concrete tubes and Mazes and Labyrinths to "The Somerton 'Troy-town'." And when that leap proved too hard, Kubrick gave a hint: he named the estate of the masked ritual in Eyes Wide Shut Somerton, and made it a pun on the Summer Town of Cape Cod.
The stakes are higher than a few hidden jokes. Read this way, The Shining is a whodunit masquerading as a supernatural horror story. Jack is the obvious suspect, and the red herring. Wendy and Hallorann are not who audiences have taken them for. The rebus doesn't just produce puns. It solves the mystery.
39000 / 01226. Take 39 as the year: 26 December 1939. Phil Spector is born. Spectre. He will produce Let It Be.
11260. 11 February 1960. In the Libyan desert, sixteen years after the plane vanished, the bodies of five of the Lady Be Good's crew are found. They walked 85 miles looking for help before the water ran out. LADY BE GOOD: LET IT BE.
Two boxes, one album.
The tour. On closing day, Ullman leads Wendy, Jack and Watson through the lobby in single file, talking over his shoulder. John, Ringo, Paul, George: the Abbey Road crossing. The cover that started Paul is Dead, where Paul walks barefoot as the corpse and a lookalike takes his place.
Paul = Somerton Man. On the Abbey Road cover, Paul is dressed as the Somerton Man. In the Somerton Man's pocket: an Army Club packet holding seven cigarettes of a different brand.
Seven cigarettes → seven concrete tubes. At the maze, where Wendy and Danny race, then walk, seven concrete tubes stand clear in the background, like cigarettes. On closing day they were hidden.
OVERLOOK | SEVEN SMOKES | LABYRINTH
Seven tubes → Mazes and Labyrinths. The sign at the maze names W. H. Matthews's Mazes and Labyrinths (1922). Chapter XI: "The Somerton 'Troy-town'." Somerton again. The loop closes.
The Beatles → the four Tlaloque. Tláloc's four Tlaloque hold up the four corners of the sky. On his mountain the shrine kept four pitchers of water: one brought a good harvest, one rot, one drought, one frost. John harvests, Ringo freezes, Paul dries, George rots.
Susie has photos of the four Tlaloque in her office, in this order:
RINGO | JOHN PAUL | GEORGE
The boxes reach the Beatles through Let It Be. The tour reaches them through Abbey Road. Paul is Dead isn't a dead end. You just have to make the improbable leap from there to the Somerton Man, which we did readily, since we had already cracked Eyes Wide Shut and he was top of mind. Somerton is the Abbey in Eyes Wide Shut, and Bill's path leading to it is the Abbey Road. Given that, we can take a shortcut: ABBEY ROAD → SOMERTON → SOMERTON MAN, and don't need to make the less likely jump from Paul to the Somerton Man.
Second read: the shelf
"How'd you like some ice cream, Doc?" EYESCREAM. Look at the shelf behind him.
Tang 2, Kool-Aid 3, S&W 7. 237.
Calumet 1. 1237.
Kool-Aid. KOOL is LOOK, and every face on every can is turned to Wendy.
Tang. C. See what you're missing. Tang and Kool-Aid are two eyes, triangulating on Wendy.
Calumet. One can, its chief turned to Hallorann's back. The chief is the head chef. Calumet is the peace pipe, and calumnia is the false accusation. Wendy has her back turned to us, and is using Hallorann as her ventriloquist's dummy.
S&W. Snow White, the Disney dwarfophile and the snow white peaks, the location of the winter sacrifice. The tribute.
Tláloc held the left shrine of the Templo Mayor, and at Atlcahualo, from 12 February to 3 March, the Mexica sent children up the sacred mountains to him. If they cried on the way, their tears were "positive signs of imminent and abundant rains."
Seven Up.