Wednesday, January 29, 2025

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

 



PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *superior*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, metaphysical, psychological*                                                                                                                                                                                                    I don't remember what year I saw this landmark SF film. It might have been a year or two after its initial 1968 release, since I would have been thirteen that year and I might have seen ODYSSEY in an ancillary release to a "neighborhood" movie theater. But I'm sure that I was in high school at the time, because in one class I was given information about how ODYSSEY had been inspired by the "superman" philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. I didn't know enough about Nietzsche then-- or probably for the next forty years-- to say much of anything about how the German philosopher influenced director/co-writer Stanley Kubrick's interpretation of stories by Arthur C. Clarke. (Clarke is billed as the co-writer of the screenplay with Kubrick, but without even checking histories of the collaboration, I think it axiomatic that Kubrick called the shots.)       
     
So, from my current standpoint of having read lots of Nietzsche, I can now ask, "what about the ODYSSEY screenplay resembles Nietzsche, or at least whatever Kubrick took from Nietzsche?" In the film as we have it, there are no direct references to the philosopher or his works, and only one indirect reference, in that the music that bookends the film's principal events is from Richard Strauss's 1896 ALSO SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, whose title is itself a callback to Nietzsche's 1883 work THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. This was one of the books in which the philosopher argued for the potential of his "overmen" to succeed ordinary human beings, represented at one point in the book by "the conscientious man." I don't think my high-school class managed to expatiate on how Nietzsche said that the overmen would bring this about, but my own reading of ZARATHUSTRA and other Nietzsche works indicated that the overmen would practice "self-overcoming." What this means in the corpus of Nietzsche is not important here; it's what Kubrick made of it in ODYSSEY. And in the prelude to the main story, "The Dawn of Man," we see primitive ape-men overcoming their animal natures in order to advance to more-than-animals. The mysterious monolith encourages one of the ape-men to make the evolutionary leap to the use of tools, which the Ancestor of Man uses to kill both an unlucky tapir and one of his fellows. Then, in ODYSSEY's most famous (and most parodied) metaphor, the ape casts his murder weapon in the air, and the instrument, used to conquer an enemy, transitions into an instrument used to conquer space.                                                                                  
So, with the accompaniment of symphonic music, the audience is propelled into a world where humankind has made space travel almost routine, and one particular mission is scheduled to make its first foray to Jupiter. But in contrast to dozens of other films about the future of space travel-- to say nothing of hundreds of prose narratives-- Kubrick may not think that this is the end of man's story-- or, if it is, that it may be the dawn of something else. Not the first time, I noticed that all of the characters speak in a very emotionless, blandly descriptive manner. In some ways, this makes perfect sense. People dwelling in the hostile terrain of outer space would know that everything they do from moment to moment depends on following the rules for existence in that terrain. Here there are no cranky Doctor McCoys who are out of sync with the demands of interplanetary flight, and the nature of their spoken dialogue falls under the verbal strategy Philip Wheelwright called "stheno-language." I explained this category in my post A PAGE RIGHT OUT OF PREHISTORY:                                                                                                                                                                        'Wheelwright sees the two "strategeies" of language as not only complementary, but necessarily intertwined throughout history. "Steno-language" (the language of plain sense) is, he tells us, the "negative limit" of language in its more expansive form, "expressive" or "poeto-language."'                                                         

 In space no one can hear you being expressive. Every dwelling-space, every corridor, every vehicle, must be used for the purpose of staying alive in space, and in part Kubrick expresses this through his use of man-made geometrical shapes that have no real counterpart in the nature in which humans were born. And the most consequential of those geometrical shapes is Hal-9000, the computer programmed to help shepherd astronauts Bowman and Poole to Jupiter. Hal is represented by three concentric circles, more geometrically perfect than any human eye, and in theory capable of acting without human error.                                                                                                                     
But of course it's a contradiction in terms to imagine fallible humans making an infallible instrument, and so Hal-9000 proves just as dangerous as the tool with which the ape-man slays his prey. The computer, told since its creation that it must be infallible, makes a mistake and then fears that the mistake threatens the machine's very existence-- which indeed it does, since the astronauts cannot risk their lives on a flawed guide. So Hal, the Cain of computers, kills one of the men it was meant to serve, and almost kills Bowman as well. Ironically, only as Hal is deactivated does Bowman learn that his superiors entrusted the computer with information to which neither astronaut was privy: that they are expected to investigate evidence of alien contact in the vicinity of Jupiter.                             

 Thanks to a monolith waiting for the advent of humanity to this alien sphere, Bowman does make contact, though it's a form of contact that he wouldn't be able to report to his fellow Earthmen even if given the chance. After a dazzling transition through what some sources call a "stargate"-- one in which, BTW, the logic of pure geometry is thrown to the winds-- Bowman ends up spending the rest of his life in an "alien zoo," fed and maintained by masters who never interact him in any way. At the end of Bowman's life as an old man, a monolith appears to him once more. He morphs into a fetus-like "Star Child," and apparently teleports himself across the void of space to what was formerly his homeworld-- and there Kubrick ends the film.                                                                             

  Since Kubrick eschews almost all exposition in ODYSSEY, one can only guess as to why Bowman transforms, since he doesn't do anything but "go with the flow." In Nietzsche's writings, the overman only exceeds commonplace humanity thanks to what the philosopher called a "delight in the uncertain." Does Bowman, whose mental processes remain inscrutable, find some such delight at the end of his mortal existence, and thus win the transformation from his perceptors? There's no evidence of such a transformation, though. The unknown ETs seem to have no particular reason for bringing about the metamorphosis, since they have scrutinized Earth's inhabitants for centuries with only the most minimal interference, and their intent doesn't seem to be outwardly destructive. At the end of Clarke's novelization of the screenplay, Clarke simply asserts that though the Star Child's powers dwarf those of his former kindred, he isn't sure what he will do next-- "but he would think of something." Perhaps that's all Kubrick wanted to convey in the puzzling conclusion of ODYSSEY: the embrace of all things uncertain.                                     

5 comments:

  1. I think I read the Jack Kirby Treasury Edition adaptation before I saw the movie (on TV), but I can't recall whether I watched it all or maybe caught a bit of it before turning over. I bought the soundtrack cassette (which I still have) and recently purchased the extended CD version, which I quite enjoyed. Just the sort of thing to listen to when you're not really listening, if you know what I mean.

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  2. Thanks for the reminder. I haven't read Kirby's 2001 or the spinoff comic for years, so both are due for a revisit. You will probably recall that the spinoff spawned "Machine Man," who was originally called "Mister Machine." He might've had to change his name because of a pre-existing toy that sported that brand, but I've never been sure.

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    1. Yeah, I've got all 10 issues of the regular 2001 mag, though I didn't get them 'til many years later as back issues. I've also got a collected edition of the Machine Man series, but it wasn't really up to much. If you type 2001 A Space Odyssey into my blog's search box, you'll see the two part cover gallery I did nearly 11 years back.

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  3. I'll look for that too. It's almost impossible to do a bad cover gallery of any Kirby run, right?

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    1. Well, some are better than others I'd say, but there's usually always something interesting to see.

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