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11:00-11:01; 11:12-11:13; 14:38-14:45; 15:06-15:18; 15:53-15:57; 37:40-37:54
IDENTITY
For a long time I thought the headline about a “Nuclear Satellite” was likely a reference to the Vela Incident, in which a strange nuclear flash was detected by an American Vela Hotel satellite in the Indian Ocean on 22 September of 1979. What I liked about that the most was that it seemed to confirm that the film opens on what happens to be the feast day of St. Maurice, who is referenced in a painting within the Overlook. The first painting Jack passes on his way to the interview. While the film more likely ends on Dec. 13th, which is the feast day of St. Lucy, who is referenced in a postcard from the Torrance fridge.
Now that detail will have to stand represented by those those artefacts alone, thanks to the research of a fan of the site by the name of Neal Bridges, who managed to get a scan of the exact paper.
I’ll transcribe what we see on the page, as this page will shrink the image to the point of obscurity.
Along the top of the page, three boxes advertise articles on other pages: “CIA Chief’s Hand Strengthened/Praise From Carter: Page 4, Front Section” and “Will Marvin Davis Rise Again? Connor on A’s Deal: Page 19, Section C” and “Mitchell Recalls Turbulent Era/The Education Scene: Page 28, Section D”. I don’t know if Mitchell is Maurice Bernard Mitchell, the 13th chancellor of the University of Denver, but he did serve from 1967-1977, which would likely make this part of his retirement activities.
The paper was 15 cents for 54 pages of news.
The upper article has the headline: “Area Radiation Tests Negative as N-Plant Gas Floats Away” and it’s by Bill Strabala, Bob Jain and Pat McGraw, who are listed as “Denver Post Staff Writers”
“Radioactive gas which escaped Monday from the Fort St. Vrain nuclear power plant 35 miles north of Denver may now be floating in the upper atmosphere.
Although officials of the Public Service Co. of Colorado couldn’t estimate how must gas escaped in the one-hour release, they insisted it was “minor” because the plant’s gas-filtration system was in operation.
Officials said the radioactive gases probably rose into the atmosphere along with the escaped helium coolant, because helium is lighter than air.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials, who license nuclear plants, said an aerial sampling was planned over the area near the plant Tuesday afternoon.”
I don’t know that there’s a point in transcribing the whole thing, but some details worth recording would be that “275 employees” were evacuated and checked for radiation in “Johnstown”; the company president was “Richard Walker”; only “three to four curies” were released when “5000 curies” is the acceptable annual amount; “Fred Swart” contacted “Weld county authorities” about the matter; something called a “scram system” took over “between 9:15am and 9:30am Monday”; “Dr. Anthony Robbins” director of the Colorado Department of Health noted he was contacted at “10:30am” an hour after the start of things; local milk is tested for fallout at dairy farms; an “Al Hazle, director of the health department’s radiation disposal section” is mentioned; “Robbins noted that radioactive iodine loses half its radiation every 8.3 days”; the plant is “6 years and hundreds of millions of dollars behind schedule”; it’s “the first commercial reactor of its type, being cooled by helium instead of water and fuelled mostly be thorium instead of uranium”; the plant was at “70 percent of its 330-megawatt capacity”.
The other article, “SOVIET PROBE FALLS OVER CANADA/Nuclear Satellite Burns”, was by “WASHINGTON (AP)”. This one is significantly shorter, and seems like the more important one. I’ll transcribe it in full.
“A Soviet military spy satellite containing a nuclear reactor fell from orbit Tuesday morning and plummeted toward a sparsely populated area of Canada, US officials said.
A Canadian government spokesman in Ottawa said there was no reason for concern about any danger from radioactivity. He said it was unclear whether all of the satellite had disintegrated and burned when it re-entered the atmosphere about 850 miles north of Montana.
However, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security aide, said the vehicle broke apart and burned when it hit the atmosphere. Asked why he thought the satellite had disintegrated before hitting the earth, he said that based on scientific experience, ‘it was very highly probably it would burn up.'”
It seems we lose part of the article, as the article top line for each column seems to be further ahead in a different thought. Personally, I don’t mind this, as we’re never seeing (that we know of) the underside of the paper.
“would not comment on the satellite’s purpose. He said the satellite’s nuclear reactor was used to generate electricity and was not a weapon.
If any radioactivity reached the earth’s surface, it would be similar in amount to that caused by a nuclear explosion in the high atmosphere which could drift around the globe for several years, Brzezinski said.
Government sources said the vehicle was a spy satellite launched Sept. 18 under the designation Cosmos 954. The vehicle was designed to keep track of US Navy ships and submarines through radar, the sources said.
The sources, who asked not to be identified, said the Soviets had been unable to get the satellite to work successfully despite repeated radio commands. The Soviets also had tried to get the satellite”
And the third column begins, “some time that the satellite was losing its orbit but that it had been unclear until Tuesday where or when it would land.
Brzezinski’s announcement climaxed about 2 weeks of intensive consultations between US and Soviet officials as it became apparent that the satellite was going to drop out of orbit. Government officials said experts as recently as Monday thought it would come down in Brazil.
He said that in late December, the US, which routinely tracks Soviet satellites, found some indications that the Cosmos was encountering difficulties and that it “would re-enter the atmosphere with some difficulty.” On Jan. 12 Brzezinski conveyed a message to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin expressing Carter’s concern”
And finally, we see, “space when their normal functions are completed. The high orbits keep them circling the earth for 500 to 1000 years while the nuclear fuel loses its potency.”
SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE
I’ll add thoughts later on how this piece would connect to Kubrick’s other films. For the moment, I’ll say that I suspect these duel radiation stories are intended to reinforce the connection that exists between the Grady twins and the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A lot of the print media appearing in the film comes from January, March, April and May of 1978. This newspaper only ever appears in tandem with the May 1978 New York Review of Books, so there was at least that much time for Kubrick to have looked into this story. I’m curious about it only because the cleanup became known as Operation Morning Light (something that will effect other Kubrick films), and because the debris fell on the lands of Dené, Métis and Inuit peoples (resulting partly in this high-ranking podcast of 2022), which would make this part of the indigenous peoples subtext of the film. Would it be purest coincidence that one of the people most affected were the Dené, whose name sounds so similar to Danny?
Finally, there’s the “70% of 330” thing, which is 231. That’s a very significant number in the Avenue of the Dead theory. Namely, that Jack is absorbed into room 231 after his destruction by the Overlook. But 330 is a very important number from Kubrick’s other films, so I’ll have to come for this later.
For the moment, I’m going to leave part of the analysis that was here before, only because I’m not sure if this info is still available elsewhere on the site, and I think it still applies to the St. Maurice business. Oh, but if you skipped the IDENTITY section, there’s likely someone named Maurice referenced in one of the headlines, which means we would, coincidentally, still have some “Maurice” energy about this newspaper.
This newspaper also appears amidst the various papers present as Jack whips his tennis ball in the lounge. If I’m right about the date, Jack’s tennis ball day is November 30th, which would be either 69 days later.
Another cool thing this does with time is put 84 days between the start of the story and the end: Sept. 23, 1979 – Dec. 15, 1979. The number 84 has a few significances, but in this case, I would point to the film being 8484 seconds long, from the start of the Warner Bros. logo to the beginning of the credits.
Now, we can only be certain that the 13th is the day of Dick’s murder. We don’t know for certain that Jack’s frozen face day is the 14th or that the photo face day is the 15th. But if that’s the case (someone had to get to the hotel and put all the sheets over all the lobby couches at the end, in time for afternoon light to be pouring in…unless that’s yet another absurdity), then it’s exactly 12 weeks (7×12 = 217 jumble) between the start and the end, but this could also be written as 11 weeks and 7 days, the Tower of Babel number. And that magazine is also in this shot.
Next literary reference: The New York Review of Books – The Carter Collapse
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EYE SCREAM 