SOURCE: “Kubrick's 2001 and the Possibility of a Science-Fiction Cinema,” in Science-Fiction Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, July, 1998, pp. 300-18.

In the following essay, Freedman situates The Shining within the tradition of science-fiction films and addresses the ways Kubrick challenges the genre of science fiction.

If Stanley Kubrick enjoys an artistic authority unmatched, perhaps, by any other English-language filmmaker, not the least reason is his unique generic mastery of film as an aesthetic form. What is crucial here is not merely Kubrick's versatility, though his capacity to craft major films across a wide range of different genres is certainly impressive in itself. The further point, however, is that the typical Kubrick film tends to remake or redefine the genre to which it belongs, taking apart the inherited conventions of the particular filmic kind in order to display their formal and ideological complexity, but also in order to put them back together...