Rob Ager talking about The Shining for almost an hour? Hell yeah.

I think the hag represents Jack's own childhood abuse

what i find staggering is- the film is SO clearly SO obviously about an abusive alcoholic husband / father committing domestic violence upon his wife and r upon his own child, the hotel is a family home, and yet apart from Ager here, somehow almost nobody else even gets it, they fall for all the red herrings / subterfuge nonsense, wtf? danny is playing with his toys, then the tennis rolls up, next thing hes traumatised, it happens in room 237, and wendy even literally says 'you did this to him' to jack, as jack is having a breakdown / episode and staring blankly, it could not be more clear.

I am a therapist and I have suffered abuse myself - that abuse theory is SPOT ON!!  It makes people uncomfortable because it’s so on the money.
Wendy is in total denial and typical person who is covering up the abuse. That moment was Wendy internally realizing what has been happening - her shaking her head is her not wanting to believe what she knows. There are lots of little things in their behavior too. Jack doesn’t want Wendy to take Danny to a doctor because he knows the doctor would see the injuries and know what happened.
I have not suffered sexual abuse - but I have suffered physical abuse by my father - I have worked with victims of sexual abuse tho. The scene with the therapist and Danny with no pants and covering himself - that struck me as odd even as a kid. Why does he have no pants on and why is he covering himself like that. It’s a pose of shame and hiding yourself. Victims of abuse react with shame and guilt as well as fear.
The “play girl” magazine sealed it - that was NOT an accident. That magazine doesn’t just lay around - and the title of “why do parents sleep with their children” - why would someone choose that? That’s not an accident. Good analysis.
The movie always made me think it was more than a ghost story and I got this sixth sense - the parents arguing while Danny listens and it’s horrifying to listen as Jack is convincing Wendy that Danny injured himself - the fear of the abuser getting away with it and convincing people that YOU are really the issue not them.
Great analysis.

I think Kubrick has suffered abuse - I have suffered abuse (not sexual but physical and emotional) as a kid and I am a therapist now who works with kids for over 15 years.
Anyone who knows what abuse and abusive families look like knows that this is spot on and is true. I felt this when I watched this movie as a kid but I couldn’t articulate what I was seeing and why it resonated so much with me. But your analysis here is so spot on.

Props and shoutout to the Patrons for letting this get released for free.

Edit: Wrote this before realizing it was a podcast.

When I saw this film at the theater in 1980, I came home after wards and my mom was listening to the music written and recorded before this film was made, and used in the film titled, "Polymorphia".. My mom was a jazz vocalist and listened to music that many other people had no knowledge or appreciation for. IT SCARED the HELL out of me. Also, "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (Movement III)" Kubrick used this music that had been made decades prior to the film being made. He was a great listener of music, and could feel what he saw in his ideas for this film.. I love it!!!

Ohh, what a treat. The Shining's one of those films that never loses its lustre. It is always scary!

Thank goodness Kubrick read that essay by "the great master H.P. Lovecraft" where he said that you should never attempt to explain what happens, as long as what happens stimulates people’s imagination, their sense of the uncanny, their sense of anxiety and fear. "And as long as it doesn’t, within itself, have any obvious inner contradictions, it is just a matter of, as it were, building on the imagination (imaginary ideas, surprises, etc.), working in this area of feeling."

Stephen King says H.P. Lovecraft "opened the way" for him, as Lovecraft had done for others before him.... "it is his shadow, so long and gaunt, and his eyes, so dark and puritanical, which overlie almost all of the important horror fiction that has come since.” Arthur C Clarke, who called Lovecraft "one of the twentieth century's most original writers", would most likely have agreed.

I agree with John Carpenter that Lovecraft's "vision of darkness, of evil, of cosmic horror, of elder beings from beyond is unparalleled”; and with Dan O'Bannon, who said H.P. Lovecraft was "the greatest horror writer who ever lived."

It should be no wonder why Lovecraft aficionado H.R. Giger chose to call his 1977 art book his "Necronomicon"

For the Abuse Theory, i wonder if the Hag scene was really about the history of abuse of Jack as a child himself by the hands of a relative or possibly his own mother or grandmother. With Kubrick hinting at cycles of violence like with the native american genocide theme it seems like it could also be referencing the origins of most of these types of abusers. I've heard that people that harm or abuse others were once abused themselves in their formative years in the same manner & replicate the same actions as a way of reestablishing control over themselves, inflicting the abuse as a way of avoiding their fears of feeling like they are still the victims themselves. Would be interesting to ask Leon Vitali to confirm or deny.

As a child of the 80's, I gotta say Rob is completely right when he talks about kids watching really graphic or scary films at a young age. I saw Robocop when I was 8 or 9, I think, and to this day the scene of Weller getting tortured and torn apart with gunshots near the beginning are firmly lodged in my brain. I still even remember how it made me feel, utterly horrified and shocked by what I had just seen.

My younger sister and I used to watch the shining over and over on a vhs I'd taped off the telly (paused for the adverts) Even though she was about 10 she used to point out how creepy Jack looked in that scene,  he gives off this nasty vibe in his facial expressions which doesn't match the reassuring words he's saying to Danny. The whole scene is just really off, but we were probably a bit young to really get why

I still think the most impactful 'hidden thing' in the film is that almost every character shown in the film has the Shining, the piece of dialogue that unlocked it for me is when Jack is meeting with Ullman and Jack tells him that Wendy is a huge fan of horror films. Later at the moment she is at peak terror,  she sees the Overlook as a haunted hotel full of cobwebs and skeletons. She Shined it that way,  because while she has the Shining,  she can't easily access it and has to be terrified to use it at all. I assure you there is not a SINGLE line of dialogue in this film that doesn't have a part is the layering of hidden ideas.

My parents took me to the shining at the drive in when I was 5. Maybe not the best movie choice for a kid to also see. It gave me nightmares for weeks. It's funny, I can still picture my nightmares,but they don't perfectly match up with what I see when I now watch the movie. I now find it an incredible movie.

What's also very interesting is that right after the scene where Danny is brushing his teeth we see him laying on his bed with his legs closed and his hands covering his genitals.

Rob's thoughts on Film are always an interesting and compelling listen..
Good stuff !!

Jack’s bed rest also has what looks like a bear head etched on the wood

Perfect content for my divorced, drunk and sorry ass.  God bless you, prodigious professors

I just noticed that breadcrumb sounds a bit like redrum.

Growing up in 1970''s Liverpool was a crash course in mental health.