![]() “I’m talking about all the times in which Jack Torrance looks at the camera, but there’s no one to look at.”Īll are “very brief moments, captured by a few frames of film,” or even just one. “I’m not talking about when he looks at the camera because he’s talking to someone else,” says Uliveri. Throughout his performance as the Overlook Hotel’s increasingly troubled caretaker Jack Torrance, Jack Nicholson keeps looking directly at the camera. In the new video above (and an associated Twitter thread), Kubrick scholar Filippo Ulivieri exposes one such detail - or rather, a whole series of them. But over the past four decades The Shining has only become a richer viewing experience, and one that continues to yield heretofore unseen details. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, for example, which now, 24 years after its release, is enjoyed primarily as an artifact of its cultural era. But exactly which genre does it inhabit? Horror? Meta-horror? Supernatural thriller? Psychological drama? Most of the pictures made for these broad fields of cinema share a dispiriting lack of re-watchability, especially those reliant on the device of the twist ending: M. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining pulls off the uncommon feat of inhabiting a genre without falling victim to its vices. Follow him on Twitter at a rshall or on Facebook. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Pope John Paul II Takes Batting Practice in California, 1987īased in Seoul, Colin M a rshall writes and broadcas ts on cities, language, and culture. ![]() Watch the Bayeux Tapestry Come to Life in a Short Animated FilmĪnimated: Stephen Fry & Ann Widdecombe Debate the Catholic Church The Vatican Library Goes Online and Digitizes Tens of Thousands of Manuscripts, Books, Coins, and More Listen to a Brief History of Papal AbdicationĪ Brief Animated History of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses & the Reformation - Which Changed Europe and Later the World The schism went on for nearly 40 years, underscoring the alliterative truth that “even those who are supposed to be pious are prone to petty power struggles.” Most popes, like any figures of power, must feel lonely at the top - but that’s surely better than when it’s too crowded there. Each capital kept its line going, replacing popes who die and perpetuating the situation in which “European rulers were forced to choose sides as both popes vied for spiritual and political supremacy.” Only in 1409 did a group of cardinals attempt to put an end to it, electing a new pope themselves - who went unrecognized, of course, by the existing popes in Rome and Avignon. This began the schism, splitting Western Christendom between the capitals of Avignon and Rome. But Urban refused to relinquish his position, and in fact “entrenched himself in Rome while Clement and his supporters returned to Avignon.” Out of the chaotic process of selecting his successor came Pope Urban VI, who turned out to be “a reformer who sought to limit the cardinals’ finances.” Those cardinals then “denounced Urban as a usurper” and elected Pope Clement VII to replace him. Seven popes later, the papacy moved back to Italy - not long before the death of Gregory XI, the Pontiff who moved it. (It includes many amusing details, though I haven’t managed to spot any aggressive rabbits or snails, to say nothing of butt trumpets.) Pope Boniface VIII, the Church’s leader at the time, responded with the Unam Sanctam, “a radical decree asserting the pope’s total supremacy over earthly rulers.” The clash between the two resulted in the death of Boniface, who was eventually replaced in 1305 by Clement V.Īs “a French diplomat seeking peace in the war between England and his homeland,” Clement strategically moved the seat of the papacy to Avignon. However one labels it, “the origins of this papal predicament began in 1296, when France’s King Philip IV decided to raise taxes on the church.” So begins the narrator of the video, which animates the historical scenes he describes in the style of a medieval illuminated manuscript. This was The Western Schism - or the Papal Schism, or the Great Occidental Schism, or the Schism of 1378. ![]() The new TED-Ed video above, written by medieval history professor Joëlle Rollo-Koster, tells of the only period in which three popes vied simultaneously for legitimacy. The presence of several such unofficial Popes usually indicates particularly interesting times in the history of the Church, and thus the history of Western civilization itself. But if you scroll through Wikipedia’s list of popes, you’ll see quite a few entries without numbers, their rows cast in a disreputable-looking darker shade of gray. Pope Francis, who’s been head of the Catholic Church for a decade now, is officially Pontiff number 266.
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