by Jason Adams
Why isn't the face of "Cabin Fever" that of Shelley Duvall's? Why isn't it her Wendy Torrance huddled behind that bathroom door holding a knife that we see, instead of Jack Nicholson's Jack peering through the broken slats? I mean we all know the answer -- it rhymes with "Fuctural Fisogyny" -- but maybe we should start to do something about that. All of the news stories we've seen over the past few weeks about the victims of domestic abuse being quarantined at home with their abusers feels like a good start to having that conversation. Losing your mind trapped in a single location is scary, but being trapped in one place with a person you love who has lost theirs is scary tenfold.
For all of the abuse that Shelley Duvall suffered as an actress at the hands of her director Stanley Kubrick in the making of The Shining it feels just, and way overdue, to re-situate the film as that of Wendy Torrance's story of survival...
It's not a tough re-situation, y'all -- Shelley has been there this whole damn time giving the best damn performance in the film. It's time to snatch it right out of their hands, smack 'em back with a baseball bat, and seriously give Shelley Duvall the credit she deserves for turning in one of the single greatest Horror Performances that's ever been put on a screen big or small.
Long derided as hysterical and unappealing, Duvall's Wendy needs to be repeatedly and loudly re-framed as that of a gas-lit woman facing down the abyss of total annihilation and saying "no thank you, and fuck you also," as she picks up a baseball bat and starts swinging. Like Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at a certain point Wendy is running along on the fumes of survival instinct alone, and like Sally she manages to make it out, and on top of that she manages to bring her son with her.
Yes Duvall's performance shines a bright light on a twisted face of absolute terror we might not want to see in ourselves, but therein lay its truth and honesty. We all go a little mad sometimes. It's what we do with the madness that matters.
previously in this series:
- Barbara Hershey in Insidious
- Bonnie Aarons in Mulholland Dr
- Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion
- Haley Bennett in Swallow
- Lupita Nyong'o in Us
- Max Von Sydow in The Exorcist
- Ronee Blakley in Nightmare on Elm St
- Sonoya Mizuno in Ex-Machina
- Una O'Connor in The Invisible Man