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APPEARANCE
122:35
IDENTITY
I couldn’t say which issue it was, and I don’t know if anyone could. By the way it pokes out from under three other magazines and a box of Tiddley Winks, it might be more about invoking the idea of Time Magazine more than any particular issue. What seems clear is that it’s one with a cover image that goes dark along the bottom, and has a white trace border. So these are some of my picks for likeliest from the era.
SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE
The Nicholson cover is not likely, since his doesn’t seem to have a white trace border, and since his has that blue ribbon cutting through the red part of the border. I mentioned that one because this is the scene where Nicholson might be invoking Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are, and that was released in late June of 1974. The Nicholson Time was from the first week of August that same year. And as you can see, they say he’s got a “killer smile”.
As for the others, which are all vastly more likely, the middle two come from 1979, and the last is from 1978, which probably makes it the most likely. Tiddley Winks is a game with a shot named after John Lennon, so “John Paul I” would be quite appropriate. But the idea of Germany being a place of “Pride and Prosperity” would also gel well with the recurring appearance of the Burda Moden magazine.
The notion of “time” might be intended to remind of the various time-based subtexts throughout, like the clock hands analysis in the Treachery of Images section, or the one-minute to midnight part of the Masque of the Red Death subtext (in which case it might be offered as an explanation for why Jack’s attack is happening at all, which would illuminate the death/time element in my fifth horseman analysis). The time codes in the various songs that play in the film are richly significant, with the editing on the song in this scene being one of the most complex cat’s-cradle efforts in Kubrick’s canon, so far as I’m aware. We should probably also consider the one second this magazine is ever visible: 122:35 or 2:02:35. That’s 7355 seconds, which looks like another 237 jumble. But that 22:35 element from both time codes also reminds me of the There’s No Place Like Home study, where we found the connection between the 22-41 images and the 22:41 moment of Jack and Wendy setting foot in their future domicile, which Jack is stepping into in the same way here, though in much different spirits. At 22:35-22:37, Jack was first peeking into Danny’s future bedroom and saying, “Perfect for a child.” There’s a couple unconfirmed art objects in this moment of a couple bears dancing and a snowy landscape of some kind. Perhaps these will reflect on the concept of “time” and things (like The Wizard of Oz? like the new pope?) being “perfect” for a child.
Next literary reference: The Three Little Pigs
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EYE SCREAM 