A couple years ago, I heard about this documentary called Room 237. It was supposed to be a documentary where people discussed the work of Stanley Kubrick in general and The Shining in particular.

I thought that sounded great. I love media analysis of all kinds and I thought it would be really cool to hear intelligent, learned types talk about an amazing movie adapted from my second-favorite Stephen King novel. (Carrie comes first for sentimental reasons.) And like I have said, I have an insatiable appetite for intelligent discussion.

So I went into watching Room 237 with my roommate Julian today with eyes wide open (not wide shut) expecting the sort of discourse I get from the podcast community.

But I should have known better. I should have remembered why I knew I could never be an English major. I should have known that Kubrick has the power to make otherwise intelligent and intelligible people lose their freaking minds.

I really should have seen it coming.

Because Room 237 is an awful, awful movie. Instead of cogent and focused discussion of an undisputed cinematic masterpiece created by one of the most brilliant minds ever to be turned to the making of film, I got four or five pretentious windbags abandoning all common sense and contact with reality to vanish up their own novels as they irresponsibly theorized with the brakes off.

One person thought the whole movie was an allegory for the slaughter of Native Americans by European whites because of that whole Indian burial ground thing (I wonder what they thought of Poltergeist?). And you know, there are a lot of pictures of Indians scattered around the Overlook Hotel. The blood? Why, the angry blood of the slaughtered Indians! And it comes in from the sides in front of a closed elevator door to represent how we have tried to shut out the knowledge that white Europeans did terrible things to the noble Red Man.

I swear, I’m not making this up. I’m not capable.

Another thought it was an allegory all right, but for the Nazi extermination of the Jews. The fact that the guy was a professional historian who specialized in Nazi history was not the disqualifying factor you might think it would be, because it takes a sense of irony to say “But you know, I have seen so much Nazi stuff that I see Nazis everywhere now” and we have clearly left the land of irony far, far behind.

His proof? There are a lot of pictures of Nazis lying around the Overlook. Plus, there is one dissolve where the kid’s image is replaced by a suitcase.

And we all know how much the Nazis loved sticking children in luggage, right?

Another one actually trotted out that leaky old canard about how the movie was really Kubrick’s way of working out the issues he had with having been the person who faked the Apollo 11 moon landing for Kennedy.

Because, you see, the kid is wearing an Apollo 11 shirt. A clear confession!

It was a potent lesson in just how much I hate that kind of bloviating horse apples. That is why I could never be an English major because 99 percent of literary analysis is just like that. People reading far too much meaning into simple things and ascribing godlike powers of cultural encoding to writers who, no matter how brilliant they may be (and Kubrick had an IQ of 200) are just people trying to tell a story.

It occurs to me that the only difference between literary theory and conspiracy theory is that nobody ever got tenure by writing about the New World Order and the Bohemian Grove.

At least, nobody working at a really good school.

It also occurs to me that Kubrick must be to film majors what James Joyce is to literature majors : a major figure of enormous cultural stature considered to be brilliant and inscrutable to any mere mortal (but my theory proves I understand him! Tenure, please!) that is therefore the perfect platform for the wildest of speculation because there is absolutely no way to objectively determine which theory is true.

After all, who can tell you that Picasso’s Guernica is not actually a complex ideogram proving Picasso was sexually abused by a milkmaid when he was three and a half years old?

Certainly not your fellow theorists, who deep down know that they dare not introduce reality to their cloistered milieu lest their own bullshit face sensible scrutiny.

And certainly not the average citizen, who does not understand what the theorists are saying but dares not say so for fear of looking stupid in front of people who seem so much smarter than them.

Even other intellectuals can be intimidated by stepping into the foreign fields of someone else’s specialty.

So who does that leave to shout out that Emperor not only has no clothes but a hilariously tiny cock?

Me. It leaves me. Hey, check out the “royal scepter”!

See, I know that writers are not gods. (Not even me.) There is a hard limit to how much any human being can consciously encode into a work of fiction, and we need to remember that if we are to stay out of La La Land.

I remember when I first presented my play What’s On to the head of the UPEI theater society, an English prof. He read the whole thing then said “It seems to be about freedom. ”

And I said “Does it? How interesting. ” I mean, what do I know. I only wrote the damned thing.

In many ways, this kind of analysis is like the parable of the Four Blind Men And The Elephant. In it, four blind men encounter an elephant for the first time in their lives, and try to figure out what it is.

One gets hold of the trunk, and declares it to be a snake.

Another gets hold of the tail, and declares it to be a rope.

Another gets hold of a leg, and declares it to be a tree.

And the last one feels the elephant’s sides, and declares that they have encountered a wall.

But it’s not a snake, a rope, a tree, or a wall.

IT’S A FREAKING ELEPHANT. They all have drawn their conclusions from a small part of a much larger (and presumably extremely patient) animal, and they all think they have found the truth.

And the thing is, they have accurate data, more or less. Nobody can tell them that what they have observed is not there. And if the data is accurate, then the theory must be right. Right?

Wrong. All these theories have a grain of truth to them, but the conclusions drawn are completely and utterly wrong. None of them actually know what they have encountered. But they all THINK they do.

And so it is with this kind of reckless speculation. The Native American theory seems true because, well, look at all those pictures of Indians. The Nazi theory seems true because hey, that kid dissolved into a suitcase. That definitely happened! Here, I can show you the frame…

And the moon hoax theory is true because just look at the rocket on that kid’s shirt!

But none of them are true. The truth (or at least, my own theory of it) is that the movie, like the book, is about the deepest blackest darkness within the heart of Man, and by Man I mean male human beings. (Ladies have their own darkness, but Stephen King wasn’t writing about them. )

And therefore the movie IS about Nazis. It’s also about every other genocide, as well as senseless war, domestic abuse, bar fights, the sexual exploitation of children, and every other form of barbarity and inhumanity men have perpetrated.

But that’s all it is. The movie is not exclusively about Nazis, Indians, the moon landing, or gay aliens.

It’s a freaking elephant.