One of the most frequent questions I've received about The Shining is “What does the guy in the bear costume mean?” The popular interpretation is that the scene is a throwback to a subplot of Stephen King's book, in which a party guest in a dog costume has a homosexual relationship with one of the hotel's former owners ...
One of the most iconic scenes in the movie is when a still-cracking-up Jack enters the Gold Room of the Overlook Hotel and sees a friendly-yet-sinister bartender there named Lloyd.
Jack takes his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), with him, but little do they know, the Overlook has some dark secrets of its own. Triggered by Danny's psychic abilities, the hotel releases some dangerous supernatural forces that break Jack's sanity — and the safety of Wendy and Danny.
Derwent throws the masquerade ball on the August night in 1945 that perpetually unfolds in the hotel's ballroom, and when Jack finally goes insane and gets drunk in the Colorado Lounge, Derwent is there teasing one of the ball's guests, Roger—who is dressed in a dog costume—with liquor.
Moments later, he would improvise the “Here's Johnny!” line, which was a reference to the intro of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Interestingly, Kubrick originally shot the scene with a fake door, but Nicholson – who once trained as a fire marshal – chopped it down too quickly.
The family has to care for the hotel for the winter, but they cannot leave the mountainous area. In this isolation every day becomes the same for Jack as his writer's block becomes quotidian. The combination of isolation, monotony, creative frustration, and supernatural forces extract Jack's insanity.
What mental illness does Jack have in The Shining?
There are several types of schizophrenia experienced by Jack Torrance, including schizophrenic simplex, schizophrenic hebephrenic, schizophrenic catatonic and schizophrenic paranoid.
In the book, the man dressed in a suit is actually Horace Derwent, the mysterious owner of the Overlook Hotel, and the man in the costume (which is a dog in the book) is Roger, a one-time lover of his. The novel provides Roger and Horace's story as an example of atrocities that have happened in the hotel.
At the hotel, Jack begins to display the telltale signs of drinking that Wendy has come to know so well. He constantly wipes his mouth with a napkin and chews Excedrin one after another.
Simply put, this The Shining analysis posits that the film is just as much about the genocide of Native Americans as it is about ghosts haunting the hotel. The aforementioned Room 237 doc covers this theory and the following video digs even deeper into this Native American genocide interpretation.
Spiked with sexual innuendo, this conversation holds several clues to the truth behind the relationship between Danny, his father and the imagery of the bear, with many suggesting that the animal is symbolic of Jack's predatory control over his family and sexual abuse of his son.
The film's creepiest scary moments involved the ghostly manifestations as in the hotel bar, the twin dead girls in the corridor pointing at Jack, & the rotting dead woman coming out of the bathtub in the haunted hotel room.
The ending of The Shining, particularly the photo of Jack in the 1921 ballroom, suggests that Jack is a reincarnation of a former hotel employee, although this explanation is not explicitly stated in the film. The Shining explores themes of cyclical violence and abuse, and Kubrick's film is full...
After a corpse tries to strangle Danny in the infamous room 217 and Wendy and Jack see the resulting bruise on their son's neck, Wendy accuses Jack of abusing Danny.
One of the most frequent questions I've received about The Shining is “What does the guy in the bear costume mean?” The popular interpretation is that the scene is a throwback to a subplot of Stephen King's book, in which a party guest in a dog costume has a homosexual relationship with one of the hotel's former owners ...
Wendy is implied to have an active imagination, as she's seen reading throughout The Shining and Jack mentions that she's a fan of horror stories, and this, along with traumatic experiences and her already fragile mental state, could have deeply messed with her perception of the world around her.
Jack becomes obsessed enough with the hotel's sordid past that he wants to write a book about it. He makes a long-distance call to the hotel's manager, Stuart Ullmann, and antagonizes him with this knowledge. Eventually, he goes mad thanks to the influence of the hotel's ghosts and attempts to kill Wendy and Danny.
Jack tells Danny to run and remember how much he loves him, before the hotel's power takes over again and forces Jack to bash in his own face with the mallet. Jack had forgotten to dump the boiler, which grows too hot and causes the hotel to explode. Jack is killed, but Danny, Wendy and Hallorann get out just in time.
Soon, after a winter storm leaves the family snowbound, the supernatural forces inhabiting the hotel influence Jack's sanity, leaving his wife and son in grave danger.
Why does Jack stick his tongue out in The Shining?
Jack's sticking his tongue out here at the mirror foreshadows the later scenes of crazy Jack, for this tends to be a tick with crazy Jack, he having a habit of sticking his tongue out in a grotesque manner.
He isn't stressed out or angry, yet he is still craving alcohol. Again, it seems that something about spending time at the Overlook worsens Jack's feelings of addiction, and his nervous habit of wiping his lips (a sign that he wants a drink) begins to manifest more and more.
