by David Runyon
MAIN PAGE ⎔ SECTION PAGE ⎔ SITE MAP ⎔ GLOSSARY
ART OF THE GAMES ROOM
1976 OLYMPICS ⎔ COWBOY ⎔ DENVER FLOOD ⎔ JACKSON HOLE ⎔ MYSTERIES ⎔ NATIONAL WESTERN STOCK SHOW ⎔ SKI BROADMOOR ⎔ STEAMBOAT SKI POSTER ⎔ STEAMBOAT SPRINGS ⎔ VAIL LAST RUN
APPEARANCE
Seen behind the twins in the games room, in two shots, across 23 seconds (21:47-21:53 + 21:57-22:10).
IDENTITY
This isn’t the same poster, obviously, but there is no SKI MONARCH poster with anything approaching this design (a fact first noticed by the brilliant theorist Juli Kearns), and this photo looks very close to the illustration in the film, but backwards. So I agree with Kearns that there’s a strong possibility this photo informed the design that made it to the film, especially given the nature of the other images in this shot, with all the mirroring and copying.
David Runyon worked from 1970-1981 as the Vail Resort photographer.
MYTHOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE
It was Kearns, in the documentary Room 237, who posited that the reason this poster was made special was to get the shadowy skier looking more like a giant minotaur man, with the tiny crooked legs and the hulking torso. The raised hand with the light glinting behind it makes it look like a man with a raised knife in his hand, ready to stab a terrified victim. This is, of course, what Jack becomes, whether or not you would go in for the minotaur part. So, just as there are two Steamboat Springs posters to either side of the room here. We’ve got a bullman figure across from a cowboy figure. With a figure in the middle commemorating the 1912 Denver flood. So, if those posters about floods and boats are meant to bring to mind the Noah’s Ark quality of the film’s story, it’s interesting that they would be interposed with these bullman/cowboy images. These are the two things it’s possible to be in the face of ultimate calamity: a man who lets his animal side take over his higher reasoning (bullman), or a man who masters his animal nature to enhance his abilities (cowboy).
Next art reference: 1912 Denver Flood Commemorative Poster
MAIN PAGE ⎔ SECTION PAGE ⎔ SITE MAP ⎔ GLOSSARY
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 