{"id":734,"date":"2012-10-25T10:26:31","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T17:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=734"},"modified":"2021-02-23T10:42:16","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T17:42:16","slug":"2001-a-space-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=734","title":{"rendered":"2001: A Space Odyssey Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve all probably seen Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001<\/a>.\u00a0 Its use of symphonic music, mesmerizingly slow expositions, fantastic futuristic sets, and what-the-heck-did-I-just watch ending are part of movie history.\u00a0 I dare say, however, that most people don’t know what the ending, nor the movie itself, was trying to communicate.\u00a0 I certainly didn’t the first few times I watched it in my college years.\u00a0 Rampant speculation and wild claims<\/a>\u00a0about it’s meaning have been made for years. I personally adhere to a much more practical and straightforward interpretation given by Kubrick himself, but there is even an official website <\/a>devoted to answering these questions.<\/p>\n

So, to help me understand better, I went and read Arthur C Clarke’s book version.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Working Together<\/strong>
\nThe history behind 2001 is interesting.\u00a0 Kubrick wanted to make an epic space movie after pondering the idea of extra-terrestrial life; but didn’t have any source material or direction.\u00a0 Kubrick was searching for the best way to make a movie about Man’s relation to the universe, and was, in Clarke’s words, “determined to create a work of art which would arouse the emotions of wonder, awe,…even, if appropriate, terror”.\u00a0 Kubrick met with Clarke, and hit off a relationship.\u00a0 According to the book’s opening notes, the book and the movie were written nearly side-by-side; and is based of Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel”.\u00a0 Towards the end, Clarke’s writing wasn’t much ahead of Kubrick’s filming.\u00a0 Kubrick would even come over to Clarke’s place for dinners to talk while Clarke was finishing the book, and Kubrick was filming right behind him.\u00a0 Consequentially, the book and movie parallel each other quite well.<\/p>\n

The Story<\/strong>
\nWhile the movie follows the book very closely, we get a LOT more helpful details and explanation in the book than the movie version.\u00a0 We start with our early simian ‘ancestors’ not doing so well.\u00a0 They’re barely scraping by and in a constantly daily struggle for basic survival.\u00a0 They then encounter the monolith; which mysteriously just appears outside their camp one day. It is presented as an entity\/machine actively wishing to changing them.\u00a0 The simians start making huge, evolutionary leaps forward in capabilities as the monolith ‘grabs them’ with an invisible force each day.\u00a0 One by one it teaches them to use their hands, perform dexterity tricks, and even bits of thinking, etc.\u00a0 The monolith isn’t perfect though – one of it’s experiments accidentally kills one of he simians.\u00a0 Yet, the changing takes place better with some than others and we soon see the simians start to thrive and use the first tools.\u00a0 It marks the first great turning point for man.\u00a0 The monolith has clearly changed the course of evolution of these primitive creatures.
\nFast-forward to the near future.\u00a0 We encounter a team of men flying to the moon. There is a fake quarantine in effect to keep a the discovery of a monolith (called TMA-1) a secret.\u00a0 In the book, we get a clear picture that this monolith is designed to be a cosmic ‘trip-wire’.\u00a0 It is described as having been deliberately buried; but emitting a huge magnetic field that made it almost impossible to miss by surveying crews.\u00a0 After it’s dug up, the first sunrays of a new dawn on the moon touch the monolith’s surface and activate it.\u00a0 The tripwire of digging it up has been cut.\u00a0 The monolith sends a massive signal towards Saturn while deafening those around it posed for pictures.
\nFast-forward a bit further to the Discovery on it’s way to Saturn (in the book).\u00a0 In the movie, the special effects guys apparently couldn’t get a facsimile of Saturn done well enough for Kubrick, so he decided to use Jupiter instead.\u00a0 HAL the computer then does what he does best – go crazy and kill everyone but Bowman.\u00a0 Bowman shuts HAL down and is finally told by Earth that his mission is really to go to the moon of Saturn where the signal of the monolith from the moon was sent and find out what is there.\u00a0 We get the first clues that HAL went crazy because it was told conflicting information about the true nature of the mission, was forced to ‘lie’, and hence killed the crew in order to protect the real mission which they were in danger of discovering.\u00a0 It’s an interesting side thread of how man can easily do this sort of mental gymnastics, while computers do not.\u00a0 Symbology with man’s own evolutionary pains abound.
\nIn the movie, this is where everything goes crazy – and we get no dialog for a long time.\u00a0 Bowman descends to the surface of the Saturnine\/Jovian moon and discovers a gigantic monolith.\u00a0 It appears exactly the same as the one of the moon – but hundreds of times bigger.\u00a0 Bowman utters his famous phrase “My God, it’s full of stars” and disappears.\u00a0 In the movie, this is where a psychedelic trip down the rabbit hole commences.\u00a0 In the book, it’s because Bowman sees that the monolith is actually a stargate, or wormhole entrance.\u00a0 He is seeing the stars of the place where the other end lets out.\u00a0 He enters, and is taken on a fantastic voyage across the galaxy.\u00a0 He makes a stop at a cosmic ‘switchboard’ planet which is bathed in completely inverted light – implying a hyperspace of some sort.\u00a0 He pops out again to pass great fleets of dead ships all floating lifeless next to a large dying star.\u00a0 He is pulled in and sees a smaller white star orbiting the larger and is pulled into some sort of energy field where he awakes.
\nHe is now in the famous white apartment of the movie.\u00a0 Everything there has the appearance of reality; but is all fabricated as if looked at through TV.\u00a0 Books open but have no real words in them.\u00a0 The food is packed in all kinds of familiar containers but every one contains the same blue, edible paste.\u00a0 Everything is a kind of ‘set’ piece.\u00a0 His TV actually works, and broadcasts shows from several years back.\u00a0 In one show, however, he sees a program in which he’s in the exact same hotel room as he is now.\u00a0 Clearly his ‘keepers’ modeled it on what they saw on our television.
\nBowman is then stretched and twisted, just like his earlier simian ancestors.\u00a0 But this time, the evolution is on a whole new scale.\u00a0 He can travel across the galaxy with a though.\u00a0 His corporal form becomes mutable in age\/time until he finally realizes he no longer needs it and transitions from his form to a higher form.\u00a0 He travels back to earth where he destroys all the orbiting nuclear missile platforms with a thought.\u00a0 He knows he is now to help his earth-bound brethren reach his new state of evolution. The book ends with him pondering how, but knowing “He’ll think of something”.\u00a0 In this state, he is a star child.\u00a0 A new being.\u00a0 Capable of traveling infinity of space and time and change things with the force of his will alone.\u00a0 It is our next evolutionary step.<\/p>\n

The summary of the symbols:<\/strong>
\nSo, we see the monolith is the active ‘force’ of evolution – the thing that facilitates a dramatic shift of our being to something higher.\u00a0 We see two clear evolutionary steps of man.\u00a0 From animal -> man -> star child.\u00a0 Clarke indicates the monoliths have come from alien intelligence and origin; but the aliens nor their motivations and purpose are ever revealed.
\nIn a broader sense, the monoliths are a symbol.\u00a0 They stand for a key moment, a key input, a flip of a chromosome, a flash of …something… that sparks transformation and evolution of a species.\u00a0 Kubrick\/Clarke made that symbol a black box in the dimensions of 1x4x9. It indicates intelligence, form, and perfection instead of randomness and chaos.<\/p>\n

The monolith is a symbol of something we do not know; but caused man to become something more than the other animals around him.\u00a0 In many ways, this symbol is mutable.\u00a0 One could even posit that while Clarke choose to attribute the step to higher alien intervention, theists might attribute it to God.\u00a0 As a symbol, both of these could work.<\/p>\n

Recommend:<\/strong>
\nBecause of all this, 2001 is a great movie – but only once you get a much better picture of what is going on.\u00a0 Reading the book is a huge step in that direction.\u00a0 I give this book a solid A- since it helps one understand the movie so much better.\u00a0 It is near required reading, however, for those that wish to understand and read the first exposition of this often-reoccurring theme of alien intervention in human evolution that is so prevalent in modern sci-fi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve all probably seen Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001.\u00a0 Its use of symphonic music, mesmerizingly slow expositions, fantastic futuristic sets, and what-the-heck-did-I-just watch ending are part of movie history.\u00a0 I dare say, however, that most people don’t know what the ending, nor the movie itself, was trying to communicate.\u00a0 I certainly didn’t the first few times I watched it in my college years.\u00a0 Rampant speculation and wild claims\u00a0about it’s meaning have been made for years. I personally adhere to a much…<\/p>\n

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