What do people mean when they talk of hidden eyes in The Shining ?
They are talking about a perceived human faculty for finding meaning in random arrangement of things such as a house with two windows and a door in the middle being representative of a face. Kubrick plays on this faculty filming the overlook hotel in such a way that at times it seems to be looking at us. Examples of this are when Jack smashes out two panels of the bathroom door or the boilers in the hotel basement that Wendy tends. (1) The hidden eyes represent the presence of an unseen entity watching the protagonists, recalling the widespread fears of the all seeing evil eye in many cultures. For instance Greek fishermen paint an eye on the bows of their boats to ward off danger. Freud (2) named this phenomena the ‘omnipotence of thoughts,’ after a description offered by one of his patients, this idea, according to Freud, harks back to the animistic belief held by children and non-literate peoples that the universe is alive, and therefore capable of observing us. Examples of Hidden e
