2001

[solipsistnation]

toddalcott has recently posted what I consider one of the most interesting writeups of 2001: A Space Odyssey that I've ever read. Even if you didn't like the movie (and I'm not saying you SHOULD, just that you shouldn't underestimate it just because it's so fantastically banal), this is worth reading.

Comments

[eccles.livejournal.com]

Saw 2010 on tv the other day, tis a pale shadow of 2001 and good reaosn for not filming 2062 and 3001 which were pale shadows of the original story, by which I mean Sentinel.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I liked 2062 plenty, but 3001 was just sad.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

I liked the article a lot, but the big mis-step is where he says that HAL is more bloodless and cold than anyone on the ship. I personally think Dave managed to beat HAL by being even more emotionally cold than HAL.

And the article itself I think was dead-on, and although I thought the point was a little obvious it may be because I had also read 2010, 2062, and 3001. From the comments, it's clear that most people who see the movie don't draw the same conclusion, and I can totally understand why.

[archdukechocula.livejournal.com]

I'm with him except for a couple parts (bearing in mind I never read any of the books). Firstly, while I can see the argument for the slab granting intelligence, particularly in the case of the apes, I don't necessarily buy it. For one, the whole cutscene between the original apes throwing up the bone weapon, and humans hanging out in space implies that, once you have tools, everything else about human history is inevitable. Which makes me wonder, why would humanity need another boost of intelligence to go from moon exploring humans to AI using Jupiter exploring humans? To me that seems an unecessary narrative device, and an unecessary explanation for what happens.

Personally, I've alway read the Monolith as being exactly what it looks like, a literal tabula rasa. It is a big black symbol saying "what happens once you give intelligent creatures operating with a blank slate the use of tools?". The fact that it skips from one blank slate to another is only marking the different relevant stages of human development. First, humans as early tool users. Second, humans as pace farers. Third, the inevitable replacement of humans by machines. And in each stage, what we discover is that, we can't escape our nature, not because we are humans, but because reason is a dead end. I think this distinction is key, because HAL, being a creature of pure reason (albeit programmed to appear friendly), ultimately makes decisions which are rational given an objective. But those choices are ultimately violent and destructive. This is the inevitable outcome of evolution, not humanity specifically.

In the final scene, what we see is Dave running into the final monolith, and coming to this realization, in my opinion, on his own. He acknowledges his mortality, acknowledges the nature of death, acknowledges that despite all human achievement and technological evolution, we are still just jumbles of random particles.

So, he mentally reverts to a purer unevolved state. Hence the image of a giant human fetus descending towards earth (an image which to me doesn't gel at all with Todd's reading). The only way to escape the destiny inherent in evolution (which is, in this movie, basically cold, sterile and destructive) is to reject it totally, in a semi-daoist and/or existentialist fashion.

I think extrapolating all this stuff about aliens giving us all the intelligence in the world and Dave living in an alien hotel and so forth were really somehow important to what we take away from the movie, we wouldn't have to be fabricating these ideas out of thin air. It's certainly a plausible explanation to say alien extra terrestrials planted these monoliths around the universe, but given what Kubrick actually shows us in the movie, we could extapolate any number of explanations. The fact is, he doesn't show is, because I don't think he thought it was relevant. If anything, I think the slabs are meant to be blank because they are representative of what we project onto a blank slate to explain who we are and where we are going. We desperately want to attribute some outside force to guiding our destiny (whether it is god or IETs), but all we ever really see is a blank slate. Ultimately, it's up to us where we are going, and unless we rest control of our destiny from these external boogeymen, we will continue marching to our logical doom.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

The problem with your interpretation is that if you read the book (singular, since the sequels are mostly crap and mostly irrelevant), you'll find that the purpose of the monoliths is explicitly stated. Since the movie and the book were written together and conceived as a unit, that implies that while Kubrick was showing what he wanted, he and Clarke expected that people would both read the book and watch the movie and synthesize meaning from the combination.

Otherwise, yours is as good an interpretation as any of the movie in the absence of the book.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

You would think - and I'm not disagreeing with you here, just making an observation, possibly to do with the differences in the literary and cinematic creative processes - you would think that if Kubrick and Clarke expected people to "synthesize meaning from the combination," they would have taken slightly greater pains to make the little, insignificant details like what planet Discovery was bound for line up. :)

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Hush, you. They're GENIUSES.

...

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Oh, no doubt. (At least in Clarke's case, but don't go by me - my favorite of his books is still The Ghost from the Grand Banks, which is not something you'll often hear, I suspect.)