SOURCE: “‘Real Horrorshow’: The Juxtaposition of Subtext, Satire, and Audience Implication in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, in Literature and Film Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4, 1997, pp. 300-06.

In the following essay, Smith views The Shining as an indictment of American values and culture.

It may not be too much of a stretch to claim that Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) is the most underappreciated film of his career. This neglect is undoubtedly attributable to the fact that as the cinematic adaptation of a Stephen King novel which is equally under-rated, The Shining may be categorized as a horror film—and it is, but it is also one which exists on a much more profound level than the garden-variety pulp flicks that give the genre its widespread disrepute. Interestingly, popular film critics in America tended to rake The Shining over the coals upon its release because it did not adequately fulfill expectations...