Twins exert a special fascination and fear in the subconscious. According to anthropologist Rene Girard, they personify mimetic rivalry. The mimetic response (“I see you want it, now I want it”) is the basis of culture - and of all seething envy. Murder ensues which is legitimized by sacralizing it - scapegoating. ”They had to die.” I love The Shining because it perfectly fuses the banality of an ordered space with the brooding atavisms of the unconscious. I first saw Kubrick’s masterpiece in Paris while working as a luxury chauffeur for a 12-year-old Saudi prince, his British tutor and a rather crude and fascistic member of the French National Police. As we walked out of the theatre, the cop said to me, shuddering, “Only a man who takes drugs could make a movie like that.”
(Source: thecarlosramos)
