This is the first depiction of furry con type activity in any media. It was in a horror movie about a haunted hotel with such a sordid history of murder, suicide and depravity that the ghosts of it causes the caretaker to murder their families. The act of a guy in a fursuit giving a BJ was considered a horrific crime against the natural order enough to haunt a room forever just like a suicide in a bathtub. This scene was considered shocking and disturbing in the 1970's.
Little did 1970's Stephen King know that 30+ years later real life hotels would have a floor dedicated to diaperfurs with shit fetishes and a special room on the convention floor for dog and horse cock dildo vendors.
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I know you’re just shitposting, but this moment is actually far more insidious and says a lot more about furry conventions if you’re familiar with the original novel.
DISCLAIMER: I’m gonna sperg a bit, so if none of you want to see an incredibly autistic analysis about how this scene in The Shining still holds (but not in the way you’re expecting), consider this your warning to bail out.
Anyways: in the original novelization of The Shining, it’s not just a random “lol furry” scene. It’s a very specific part of the Overlook Hotel’s fucked up social history that Jack uncovers through the hotel’s old papers and later “sees” in supernatural visions.
To summarize it: the man in the suit is supposed to be the hotel’s former owner, Horace (Harry) Derwent. He’s depicted as rich, powerful, and cruel. The man in the animal costume is Roger, someone who was interested in Horace romantically. Horace doesn’t feel the same way, so he manipulates Roger into doing increasingly humiliating things to feed his ego.
At one of the Overlook’s lavish costume parties, Derwent essentially forces Roger to show up as a “cute doggy,” then treats him like an actual dog in front of other guests, hinting that maybe he’ll reconsider their relationship if Roger goes along with it. The point isn’t “kink” or “identity.” It’s dominance, degradation, and entertainment for the people with power.
So the “costume” isn’t presented as cosplay or identifying as an animal. It’s presented as a humiliation ritual where a rich man uses his influence to turn another person into a prop. The novel doesn’t make it clear whether Roger is secretly into dressing up as a dog or enjoys being dominated, but it very clearly paints the dynamic as Derwent using money and status to make someone submit and be publicly humiliated.
As for why the movie uses a bear costume and not a dog: Kubrick never explicitly said why he changed it, but it’s very clearly a reference to the dog scene in the novel, compressed into a single, nasty visual shock. Roger being reduced to an animal isn’t just symbolic; it’s control through role and situation.
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Now, as interesting as that all is, you might be wondering what the hell any of this has to do with Furry Conventions in 2026. Well, think about it for a minute. The closest modern furry convention analog isn’t "bear suit equals sex thing." It’s the power imbalance and public humiliation while dressed up, where the costume turns a person into a prop, and the social setting of a crowded convention makes it harder to say no.
You see echoes of this in handler and pet play dynamics that encourage similar roleplay (albeit usually way more consensual), but you also see parallels to Derwent’s abuse of power. That includes staff blatantly abusing their positions of authority, or on a smaller scale, a room host forcing their own rules on the friends they're rooming with. And this isn’t even touching the fact that if you’re a fursuiter, it can be hard to set boundaries when strangers get grabby, especially when you can’t easily speak or react.
To the furries who lurk this thread: are you seriously saying you’ve never seen a wealthy or popular room host pressure a friend into doing something weird or degrading while everyone cheers? And when you think about it, that friend was probably uncomfortable but went along with it anyway, smiling through it because they didn’t want to lose the room, their social circle, or their ride home.
Have you seen something like that? Then congrats: you basically saw this exact moment from the novel in real life. Status plus audience plus costume equals degradation that reads "consensual" from the outside, but isn’t freely chosen. A future "consent accident", if you will.
TL;DR: Stephen King didn’t predict degeneracy at future furry conventions. He predicted the abuse of power and the kind of rot that can perforate scenes like that for decades. The dog or bear costume is just a bonus on top of it.