What is that strange Bear scene in The Shining about (and is it a bear)?
The “bear scene” is a brief moment in The Shining when Wendy, beginning to see the same “1920’s Party” events that Jack’s been seeing, is wandering through the halls of the hotel. As she looks around a corner, she sees two shapes huddled over the edge of a bed. As she looks, they are revealed to be two men, possibly engaged in oral sex. One is wearing what looks to be a bear (1) costume. The scene is taken directly from Stephen King’s novel. In one of the novel’s scenes set in the 1920’s party, Jack is dancing with a beautiful woman. He notices that at one table, there is a young man behaving like a pet dog for the amusement of others, including a tall, bald man. The bald man is Horace Derwent, a Howard Hughes-like figure who poured millions into restoring the Overlook Hotel in the 1920’s. (Jack has learned this by reading a mysterious scrapbook earlier in the novel.) The younger man has a romantic crush on the bisexual Derwent, and Derwent has said that ‘maybe’, if the man dresses lik
The “bear scene” is a brief moment in The Shining when Wendy, beginning to see the same “1920’s Party” events that Jack’s been seeing, is wandering through the halls of the hotel. As she looks around a corner, she sees two shapes huddled over the edge of a bed. As she looks, they are revealed to be two men, possibly engaged in oral sex. One is wearing what looks to be a bear (1) costume.
