by Sears and Roebuck
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ART OF BOULDER
BOY AND GIRL KNITTING ⎔ HORSE AND TRAIN ⎔ MYSTERIES ⎔ NAPOLITANO POSTCARD ⎔ NEIL THE FROG ⎔ OLD RALPH POSTCARD ⎔ WOMAN AND TERRIER
APPEARANCE
Appears first in the cut to Wendy’s more attentive conversation at the first lunch. But exists in the background of all three Boulder living room scenes.
SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE
Sitting cross-legged in a lotus flower, Neil the Frog (of the “The Frog Family” line of Sears and Roebuck kitchenware) bears a certain resemblance to the buddha. I don’t know if that’s the point of the inclusion, and I don’t think it goes much deeper than the elephant figurine in Susie’s office being a possible allusion to Ganesha.
What intrigues me more is the name “Neil”, which, given all the moon imagery in the film, could be meant as a Neil Armstrong reference. The cooking timer, seen only beside Wendy’s head, has a certain moon shape, and connects the notions I’ve explored elsewhere of going to the moon being like a way of going “home”. When Danny’s lured into 237 with his Apollo 11 shirt, he thinks it’s Wendy who’s thrown the ball. It’s her he’s ostensibly trying to get back to, as he ventures forward into technically unfamiliar terrain.
Actually, on that note, the Ganesha figurine is right beside a painting called The Great Earth Mother, so having two Eastern mythological figures associate to “mother” energy is perhaps the point.
As for them being a Sears and Roebuck product: in the novel, Hallorann is described as having teeth too perfect and white to be anything other than Sears and Roebuck dentures (pg. 71).
For the record, there’s also a sand pail in Danny’s bedroom with a little frog cartoon character on it, but it’s obscured by its own handle, and I can’t find a Neil the Frog sand pail from online searching.
In any event, the Boulder apartment seems to be a good place for frogs, who don’t, to my knowledge, appear anywhere else in the film. There do happen to be a great many French-Canadian painters whose works appear throughout the Overlook hotel, but I’m not sure what the connection would be (in case you’re somehow unaware, we French are sometimes called “frogs” by the international community). Although it is true that the French painters I’ve discovered so far (Louise-Amélie Panet-Berczy, Clarence Gagnon, Cornelius Krieghoff, AY Jackson, and Nicholas de Grandmaison) do all have something to do with Hallorann’s murder. So maybe “The Frog Family” is the family that supports the killing of Hallorann, which is essentially what the Torrances do, however understandable and unwitting the involvement of Wendy and Danny may seem.
MIRRORFORM MOMENTS
Neil the Frog appears in conjunction first with Danny’s entire escape sequence from the maze…
…then over the start of Jack looking for Danny to begin the maze chase…
…and finally over the sequence that starts with Jack busting through into the Suite 3 bathroom…
…and finishes when Hallorann arrives and crosses through the door that gets him inside the hotel. A period that includes Danny racing to his hidey hole, Wendy busting out of hers, and Jack stalking through the kitchen.
I also like how the cooking timer counts time counterclockwise. That feels like a soft reference to both the mirrorform, and the story’s obsession with the past.
Next art reference: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World – The Americas)
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OTHER MAIN PAGES FOR SHINING ANALYSIS
THE MIRRORFORM ⎔ THE BEATLES ⎔ THE RUM AND THE RED
BACKGROUND ART ⎔ OVERLOOK PHOTOGRAPHS ⎔ GOLDEN SPIRALS
PHI GRIDS ⎔ PATTERNS ⎔ VIOLENCE AND INDIGENA ⎔ ABSURDITIES
THE STORY ROOM ⎔ ANIMAL SYMBOLS ⎔ THE ANNOTATED SHINING
EYE SCREAM 