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Health & Fitness

Room 237 & The Shining: the moon landing hoax

In a previous article, I detailed two related theories from the documentary Room 237 (2012) dealing with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). One said that the film dealt with the Indian Holocaust; the other, the Jewish Holocaust. The former taps into several references to the American Indian and has moderate validity; the latter derives from a book that claims that the subtext for all Kubrick films is the Jewish Holocaust.

The wildest theory, and one that few people can take seriously (subsequently taking Room 237 down many notches), maintains that the overriding message underneath the film’s actions contains Kubrick’s confession regarding his participating in the Apollo 11 moon landing hoax. While it is a theory I loathe on many levels, it fascinates me the most.

Starting with Jay Weidner’s premise – a premise that is presented as an accomplished fact, thus little or no background of this premise is given – that the 1969 moon landing was filmed in a studio. Weidner, however, doesn’t claim that the U.S. never went to the moon, only that this particular moon landing with Neil Armstrong was faked.

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Where does The Shining enter the picture? Apparently, Kubrick uses the film to confess to his part in the hoax. The trigger for the theory is a shirt Danny Torrence (Danny Lloyd) wears before he enters room 237. On the front is a rocket with the name Apollo 11 above it. The same space vehicle took Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins to the moon.

Room 237 embodies the hoax. Weidner focuses on the room key which reads Room No. 237. “Room No.” becomes a signal for Moon Room. Kubrick’s intent? To confess to his part in the hoax. Significantly, the lies Jack Torrence tells his wife about there being no one in the room and that Danny must have made up the encounter with the crazy woman in the bathtub Weidner interprets as Kubrick’s own lies to his wife over his complicity in the hoax.

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More evidence. Kubrick changed the room number in Stephen King’s novel, 217, to 237 because the distance from the Earth to the Moon is 237,000 miles. Weidner also sees the hallway carpet outside room 237 emulating the shape of the launching pad at Cape Canaveral. Amusingly, the hairpiece worn by actor Barry Nelson, playing the hotel manager Stuart Ullman, makes Ullman resemble John Kennedy.

The key to the actual faking of the moon landing is the use front screen projection, a process Kubrick used for the apes scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) to make an indoor filming looking as it were actually filmed outside. Indeed, the moon scenes in 2001 must be the most compelling evidence for a conspiracy.

However, another film, Capricorn One (1977), is the real culprit in creating believers in the hoax. One of my relatives related scenes from the movie as evidence that we did not land on the moon! Yet, the cover-up in the movie centers on a fake landing on Mars. The film is directed by Peter Hyams, who made the 2001 sequel, 2010 (1984).

While I’m fascinated by the details Weidner culls from The Shining to support his theory, I am astounded by his naivete. He approaches movie like a Dan Brown protagonist sees a work of art. What matters is the code for some secret meaning. In the wake of the search, all sight of the artist is lost.

Weidner has no vision of the movie artist, Stanley Kubrick. He doesn’t know how deeply Kubrick is steeped in how things are shot for his stories, how everything revolves around the integrity of his art. Kubrick is what I call an “Aesthetic fundamentalist,” by which I mean that he sees art giving meaning to existence: Art comes first and foremost; all is subject to the primacy of aesthetic principles.

Further, any study of Kubrick’s films shows a distinct skepticism for all Authority: people who believe they know how the world works. Starting with military and government figures, like those in Paths of Glory (1957); Dr. Strangelove (1964); A Clockwork Orange (1971); Full Metal Jacket (1987). The idea that Kubrick would work for the government, even be coerced by the government, to fool the public would betray the basic principles of his art.

Weidner produced a video document, Kubrick's Odyssey (2011) in which he tries to show that 2001 was a research and development project meant to create the Apollo 11 moon landing footage. We can be amazed how well the secret has been guarded for the last 45 years. For once, our government has successfully kept its secrets. Wouldn’t the NSA have felt more comfortable had Jay Weidner told the world about their bugging billions of telephone calls? No one would believe it.

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