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Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory
Wheat is a retired economist, who has a doctorate in political economy and government from Harvard. That in itself does not qualify him to review old movies, but it does say he's used to pretty rigorous analysis. His book is an examination of the movie rather than the book. He points out that the movie was based on a Clarke short story, and the book came after the film. This being the case, Wheat is very centered on Kubrick's vision of the story rather than Clarke's. He uses scripts, director's notes, and some interviews to provide evidence for some of his claims.
So what are those claims? Alot of it makes good sense. For instance, Dave Bowman relates to Ulysses (a reknowned bowman in the myths). He goes on a long voyage and loses all his crew. Pretty neat so far, but Wheat tends to go to far in some oif his claims. Here's an example:
"In the next scene, the moon monolith scene, it becomes evident that TMA-1 symbolizes the wooden Trojan Horse: hence, we are looking for hidden meaning that refers or alludes to the Trojan Horse. And that meaning can be found in TMA-1. Spell out the figure '1' and you get TMA-ONE. These letters, like the last nine in Frank Poole, can be rearranged to form an anagram. In this case, the anagram is "No Meat." A wooden horse has no meat on its skeletal framework."
You had me at "Bowman". *sniff* But the whole "No Meat" thing is just a skoach over the top. It stays pretty topsy-turvy. For example, in the discussion of the man-machine symbiosis allegory, Wheat claims that HAL represents a new type of human called homo-machinus. I don't usually quote this much in a review, but you need to hear this from the horse's mouth. In this next passage, he is showing the anthropomorphism of the HAL-Discovery by claiming the six rockets at the back of the ship, encased in three hexagonal casings, have meaning.
"But why the hexagons? Why not circles or squares or nothing? When I was growing up in the 1930's, which is the same time Kubrick was growing up, most reasonably modern houses had white tile bathroom floors. The tile, in vogue from the turn of the century through World War II, were hexagons, one inch across and fitted together in a honeycomb pattern. The rear-end hexagons are bathroom tiles! They symbolize bathrooms. Hal-Discovery has three bathrooms, one for each mouth. And what is the only being that uses bathrooms to answer the call of nature? Homo sapiens. Once more we see that the intelligent spaceship is a humanoid." Yeah, I know.
There's much, much more where that came from. The thing is, these allegorical statements do make sense. I can see 2001 on a level as being a retelling of the Odysseus myth, and on another level being a moralistic story about the dangers of increasingly blurred lines between the mechanical and the biological. Hell, science fiction is littered with similar stories, and Kubrick is not usually without some sort of moral framework. The Zarathustra allegory obviously fits as well. The death of God, the realization that all humans could become god (or Star Children) as well, the whole schmeal. The problem is that one gets so caught up in the loony evidence like that presented above that it becomes easy to lose track on how cool the idea really is.
It reminds us how good human minds, especially smart ones, are at finding patterns in crazy shit. Reading this book you are impressed with two minds: Kubrick's and Wheat's. Wheat has the premise that Kubrick was so wicked smart that these long strings of meaning are not only possible, they are a sure thing. You also come away with the sense that Wheat is a pretty smart man himself. This book goes too far at times, but is worth reading. One thing's for sure, you'll never watch 2001 again in the same way.
Note: There is a very nice Post-It on the book I was sent saying the cover showing the HAL2000 red eye is a cover designer's screw up. I believe that, since after having read the book I doubt Wheat could have ever missed something as simple as Hal's name. Must kill him every time he looks at the cover in fact.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
The book did not come after the movie...it was written during the movie, and was finished before the movie was finally finished, that is why there is a difference between Jupiter and Saturn.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I have this overwhelming desire to pay you for your post...
There does seem to be an element to this review - when he's talking about how science fiction is littered with stories about "science gone wrong" stuff like that.
About the earliest example of science fiction literature that I can think of is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. If you think of it, that story is THE basis for all science fiction.
In essence, science fiction is about humanity, and it's "progress" from the dark ages to some futuristic point, via technological innovation, and how that technological innovation impacts humanity, and humanity's way of thinking.
Obviously, Frankenstien talks about how this one doctor, way ahead of his time in the field of medicine, devising a method to bring people back to life, but he could not just leave it at that - because if he brought one person back to life, then things would be great and all, but he could not be a "creator" of life. So he built one out of spare parts. It was human pride that screwed Dr. Frankenstein up, because there were aspects to life that he didn't understand, the soul, etc. And as it turned out, the creature had the mind of a deranged madman, murderer, who didn't even know who or what he was, because he was made of parts of many different people. Now, I'm not saying that "it's all about mankind messing with things we do not understand - " it's more along the lines of the tradition of the great Greek tragedy, man falling before his pride.
Pretty much every AI story out there is basically a rip off of Frankenstein. Yes, including the Matrix.
Even when science fiction appears to be about some other topic, like alien invasions, etc. it's still about humanity's advancement. Now that our great thinkers have discovered other stars, and other planets, and have theorized what life on these other planets could be like - and thus, have created new life, have become the creators. And in most cases, this whole alien mythology stems from that concept.
Star Wars, of course, does not fall under the category of "Science Fiction" when you think about it. It's really not at all about "the impact of technological advancement on humanity". It's a new genre, well, not new, it's Flash Gordon warmed over. Fantasy in a Sci Fi setting.
My point is, after Frankenstein, it's pretty much all been done before.
I, for one, cannot wait, for the well-done movie version of "Ender's Game".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
While I haven't seen any comments from Pink Floyd members about this, according to Alan Parsons, the recording engineer on Dark Side of the Moon, the "Wizard of Oz" thing is utter nonsense--they never talked about it during the recording.
(And, yes, that's Alan Parsons of the Alan Parsons Project.)
Or maybe Kubrick was referring to his frequent soundtrack composer, Walter Carlos, who went to to have a successful new age career as Wendy Carlos...
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
Exactly. I can't understand how anyone can miss the Nietzsche references. Rambling about bathroom tiles is crazy -- noticing obvious references that Kubrick included is not. BTW, besides the music and the general theme of evolution to higher forms, there is also the idea of being "beyond good and evil" -- the newly created ape-men use their intelligence in a way that is not very nice but which increases their power -- they attack the less developed apes.
If Kubrick had made 2010, I bet Bowman wouldn't have beeen standing around saying "Something wonderful is about to happen" -- he would be making himself the leader of Earth or something.
So you think ACC was the main person responsible for 2001? Then why did 2001 so resemble the other films of Kubrick in theme -- i.e. what does it mean to be "human", do we rule technology or does it rule us, etc. Certainly the short story "The Sentinel" was ACC's but that was just a small part of 2001.
Now 2010 was all ACC's -- and guess what -- none of the higher themes were there -- it was just a 1950ish pulp science fiction story more or less ripped off from "The Day the Earth Stood Still".
Using this equation, it's been proven that Abraham Lincoln never existed historically, that in fact he was a mythological construct.
And they are right, if they mean the "Honest Abe" fellow who supposedly fought the South out of righteous anger over slavery, rather than a typical scheming politician who professed whatever beliefs he thought would get him elected. Even "historical" figures tend to become mythological constructs in time.
Doesn't this sort of... meditative for lack of a better word, art ever happen to anyone else?
Yes, of course, I would wager that the best pieces of art usually happen this way. In music especially, for me. It's when I'm not even thinking of the key changes and my fingers seem to take on a life of their own that the best sounding riffs flow forth. Just tapping into the Universal Mind, man. ;-)
Oh this is right up there with dissections of Shakespeare (wrote some rip roaring yarns with lots of bawdy lines and the odd car chase/murder to keep the scum interested. OK I lied about the car chases but you get the point - he didn;t sit down and think "hmm time for another classic peice of fine literature" - he just wanted another hit play!) And those archeologists who find a body next to a bronze axe head and off the back of that decide he had 4 kids, his last meal was ground sparrow and he shaved every 3 days...
:)
Stonehenge is a similar story - people ooing and ahing and scratching their heads over why the stones are arrmaged like that - til they realise some guys with big ropes and a lot of time on their hands put them like that in the 19th century.
Kubrick was making a film - not starting a religion - even though the story has western religious overtones. The hexagons were hexagons becuase they tesselate nicley to form a strong structure (and the model designer probably thought it looked nice).
As for all that winamp screensaver stuff at the end - I often wonder if film makers and authors just invent this stuff and let the auidience invent the meaning afterwards. Imagine the script meetings:- "hey lets put in some wierd lights and stuff with some footage of a unborn baby - that'll really throw them"
I wouldn't be suprised if bronze age man didn't randomly distribute axe heads just to confound Time Team.
I'm off to bury 4 elephants and a karaoke machine in my back yard. Let's see the Wheats of the far future figure THAT one out
I just prefer to think of 2001 as a joke at IBM's expense myself. The whole trojan horse thing, or the homo-machinus is just something that happens when one over analyzes a piece of work/literature/art. One can draw any number of parralels between 2001 and Greek Myths as long as look hard enough. Why, Arthur C. Clarke lives on top/close to the top of Sri Lanka right? Well obviously he equates himself with some sort of greek god.
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Insert Witty Sig Here
What do you mean he swears it off? He says specifically in a preface or something in one of the books I read where he talked about writing the book, and how hard it was with little money, and that he couldn't think of names for characters, and just happened to be using a Fabercastle (i think that's it) pencil and Montag paper. Ray Bradbury right out said that's where the names came from.
What?
Oh, you're absolutely 100% right that Kubrick filled his movies with symbols. He was very concerned about having non-literal meaning in his work.
:P
What i was trying to say was that while, yes, absolutely, artists use symbols and allegory (both consciously and unconsciously) in their work, its not ridiculously vague and disassociated the way the bathroom tile thing would be. Or the anagrams. Unless it's a pattern with that particular artist, I wouldn't buy an anagram. And there would be far more effective ways to call forth the image of a bathroom than through the shape of tiles in a certain demographics' homes at a certain time. To an artist, such a solution would be inelegant because it wouldn't trigger any subconscious response in the audience -- you can make people think of hell and the devil without being direct, but to think of a bathroom, you need more than the shape of a single tile. A PATTERN of tiles might do it -- and that would be interesting as a device, to make HAL vaguely resemble a bathroom wall. It would be something the audience would never quite put their finger on, but would bring out the idea.
But, as a rule, few artists would be so vague unless it was a private joke (and private jokes are usually the first "hidden" things to ever get found!)
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Hate to say it, but your art teacher was full of crapola. If the creator of a work didn't place a meaning or reference in their creation, then it isn't there, period
That's why i was specifically speaking as an artist, not as a viewer. It's not at all uncommon to look at a piece I did years ago and see things that i put in them without realizing consciously at the time I had done so. I don't know any writers or artists who don't have similar experiences with their own works.
There's just too much going in to be aware of it all -- that;s part of why even the most talented creator needs experience, because you have to be able to do a lot of it without thinking, so you can focus on the things you need to consciously.
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
As an artist, I hate to admit that my high school english teacher was right -- there are often meanings hidden in works that even the creator didn't realize were there.
Its not at all unusual for another artist to look at some work and point out something to me that, once it is said out load, is obvious I put in there subconciously/unconsciously.
Once you've been doing it long enough, every writer and artist is doing half of their work without conscious thought -- its only afterwards that they realize they were subconsciously running a parallel to the Iliad or the Bible (at which point they will usually go through and clean up the references or eliminate them).
That said, its usually easy to tell what is REALLY there vs being coincidental.
For example, Mark twain, despite his protestations to the contrary, clearly wrote with meaning, and had social allegory and commentary, it was never simply "a tale".
I find anagrams HIGHLY unlikely to be meaningful unless the author is in the habit of doing them, as most writers pick names from people they know or from historical/literary sources. If you showed me that EVERY name in a story had an anagram, and that as a group the anagrams were meaningful, I'd buy it. One or two out of many characters? coincidence, especially when it comes up with something dorky like "no meat".
Show me another story by Clark or Kubrick with many meaningful anagrams and I'd be willing to believe they were hiding them here.
As for the hexagonal tile, geez, don't get me started. I don't know how much this Harvard guy has ever done creatively, but there are about a million hexagonal symbols that would be pulled up before bathroom tiles. If Kubrick had a meaningful story in his life with a bathroom tile, maybe I'd buy it, but without that evidence, I'd be much more likely to attribute the shape to a carbon atom (foundation of life!) or a honeycomb (bees) -- a hive mind, nature's workers, collectively peaceful and necessary for life, but with a surprising sting when riled! That's a lot closer to HAL in the story then a third-generation bathroom metaphor.
Geodesic domes are based on hexagons, and are usually the basis of sci-fi colony designs. The shape itself seems very "sci-fi" just because of this history, so maybe that's the only association. Compare that to round shapes (as the head of the Discovery), which are associated with Russian spacecraft. having both shapes might just be a visual way of showing the ship comes from more than one design sensibility, a collaboration between nations.
But I'd want to see something to indicate Kubrick was involved in that production design decision to even worry about meaning behind the arrangement of engines.
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
In the X-Files, for instance, they love to have clocks pointing to 10:13 because Chris Carter's production company is named Ten Thirteen. They'll also name minor characters after regular posters on the X-Files newsgroup. That kind of thing is actually comparatively common, a kind of insider's joke.
;-).
The Star Trek series' do this too. For instance, on the TNG Enterprise's bridge, the names of the writers and directors and so forth are on the dedication plaque.
Or in a Deep Space Nine episode, there were two agents from Starfleet who were investigating a time travel incident. Their names were Dulmer and Lucsley. (Anagrams for Mulder and Sculley, of X-Files fame of couse
My journal has hot
I think this author's style of analysis is commonly called "blush lit".
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You're right. This happens regardless of the medium that's been reviewed, analyzed, folded, spindled or mutilated. The only person who will ever know what was meant was the creator of said piece of work. Even then, sometimes he or she may not even know, and it'll just be what it is.
I think sometimes things take on a life of their own, and our input into the work is just a means to the end, where we really had no idea that the end would turn up as it did.
Sometimes when drawing or painting my mind will be a complete blank. I'm not always thinking that "this X needs to be more like N because of Y". Even when writing. The words sometimes flow out without my thinking much about them. I can look back at things I wrote 10 years ago and be uncertain whether that was really me who wrote that or someone else.
Doesn't this sort of... meditative for lack of a better word, art ever happen to anyone else?
WARNING: 3001 SPOILER BELOW.
While I think that the "NO MEAT" anagram probably takes it too far, there is reason to believe that the Monolith might symbolize a Trojan Horse. Anyone who has read 3001: The Final Odyssey might remember that the monolith was ultimately destroyed by introducing a Trojan Horse (the computer program variety) into its system. A lot of people are saying that the author is reading too far into 2001 -- but given the fact that "Odyssey" is included in the title, not to mention the "Bowman" name and the plot parallels, it's perfectly reasonable to draw Odyssean parallels. Writers don't do these things by accident, folks.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Anyone care to fill me in on the secret?
Thanks, Timothy! I might have been intrigued by the title and content of this book. Perhaps enough to actually buy it. Your short review, though, tells me everything I need to know...
For an author as "educated" as he seems to be (on paper), your review shows him pretty much inventing a lot of history, and on the thinest foundation.
So this fellow is an expert in economics and government, eh? If that is truly the case, that explains a lot about the state of our government and economy...
A dingo ate my sig...
Kubrick used them all the time! Just to give a few after a few minutes of Googling:
You might not accept all of these examples. Fair enough. I know many of them aren't anagrams per se, but puns, allusions, and so on. So be it. I hope the pattern is clear enough all the same. Kubrick infused his movies with a lot of word play, and this all contributes to the larger meaning of each film. Did he do it deliberatey? I don't doubt that at least some of it was deliberate, but I also accept that a lot of it was probably done unconsciously -- the meaning may be there but perhaps not deliberately so. That's fine with me. But it's there all the same. That's what makes his films great.
As for the hexagonal exhaust thing, well, I can't really comment much on that one. It's worth noting though that, as the movie's FAQ page notes, food is a big symbol in 2001. The early apes feast on raw meat, while the early space travellers have increasingly bland foods, up through the pastey goo that Discovery's crew gets. It's not unreasonable to take that thread a bit burther & comment on how the 2nd monolith had "no meat", or about Discovery's "anus". Certainly our overreliance on technology is a big theme, and the fact that space travellers need machines even to eat & defecate is a very potent symbol to work into a movie like this.
Cut the guy some slack. I haven't read the critique in question, but this review & these comments are being way too harsh. Kubrick's films in general, and 2001 in particular, are a rich source of allegory. Just because you only wanna dwell on the techno-nerd aspects doesn't mean that the larger themes aren't there. Come out of your cubicle & look at the bigger picture. One of the articles on the Kubrick FAQ draws comparisons between the director and James Joyce, and they seem to be about spot on to me. Among other parallels, it cites a common use of puns (cf. examples above et al), encoded meanings (POE from Strangelove, "NO MEAT" from 2001, etc), portmanteau words (compound or layered meaning), and of course both of them set their masterpieces against the Homerian epics.
Is it too easy to find these kinds of patterns everywhere? I dunno, maybe, but who cares? Patterns are fun! Whether or not they were "deliberately placed", like the lunar monolith (a ha! another one!), they exist and are being found. Deny them if you want to, but it's much more fun to try to figure out what they mean.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Kubrick used them all the time! Just to give a few after a bit of Googling:
You might not accept all of these examples. Fair enough. I know many of them aren't anagrams per se, but puns, allusions, and so on. So be it. I hope the pattern is clear enough all the same. Kubrick infused his movies with a lot of word play, and this all contributes to the larger meaning of each film. Did he do it deliberatey? I don't doubt that at least some of it was deliberate, but I also accept that a lot of it was probably done unconsciously -- the meaning may be there but perhaps not deliberately so. That's fine with me. But it's there all the same. That's what makes his films great.
As for the hexagonal exhaust thing, well, I can't really comment much on that one. It's worth noting though that, as the movie's FAQ page notes, food is a big symbol in 2001. The early apes feast on raw meat, while the early space travellers have increasingly bland foods, up through the pastey goo that Discovery's crew gets. It's not unreasonable to take that thread a bit burther & comment on how the 2nd monolith had "no meat", or about Discovery's "anus". Certainly our overreliance on technology is a big theme, and the fact that space travellers need machines even to eat & defecate is a very potent symbol to work into a movie like this.
Cut the guy some slack. I haven't read the critique in question, but this review & these comments are being way too harsh. Kubrick's films in general, and 2001 in particular, are a rich source of allegory. Just because you only wanna dwell on the techno-nerd aspects doesn't mean that the larger themes aren't there. Come out of your cubicle & look at the bigger picture. One of the articles on the Kubrick FAQ draws comparisons between the director and James Joyce, and they seem to be about spot on to me. Among other parallels, it cites a common use of puns (cf. examples above et al), encoded meanings (POE from Strangelove, "NO MEAT" from 2001, etc), portmanteau words (compound or layered meaning), and of course both of them set their masterpieces against the Homerian epic poem.
Is it too easy to find these kinds of patterns everywhere? I dunno, maybe, but who cares? Patterns are fun! Whether or not they were "deliberately placed", like the lunar monolith (a ha! another one!), they exist and are being found. Deny them if you want to, but it's much more fun to try to figure out what they mean. I'd be willing to give this book a shot, if it could go any deeper than the critical interpretations I've already read on Kubrick & 2001.
Hell, the Slashdot groupthink crowd has dismissed it, so it must be good! ;)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Ah! If "allegory" means "making bizarre comparisons using three different abstractions", then I can do that too!
Ready? The reader's expected response to the author's "NO MEAT" hypothesis would be "GET REAL". The letters in "GET REAL" can be rearranged to spell "LARGE ET". This obviously signifies the subconscious expression that the author is, in fact, an oversized being from outer space.
Maybe I should publish a book called "Leonard F. Wheat's "Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey": A Triple Allegory": A Space Allegory".
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Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Hard to trust a review of a review that has "the public's disinterest in science" adorning the third sentence.
All together now: "uninterested" == a lack of fascination; "disinterested" == a lack of personal motive.
For example: "The public's uninterest in science is caused, not by disinterest -- since science affects it deeply -- but by a lack of understanding..."
"A lot" is two words. I guess Hooked On Phonics didn't work for you?
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Lord Nimon
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Popeye was definitely vegetarian-oriented. Popeye the sailor - girlfriend's name is Olive Oyl. Eats spinach and gets strong. Popeye, if I'm not mistaken, is a kind of bean as well. Then there's Sweetpea, and ultimately, there was Wimpy, who eats hamburgers (a guy who eats hamburgers is called Wimpy, is fat, and constantly have financial problems, hmmm....)
Dark Side of the Moon, not The Wall, sucka. I pity the foo who's never watched Wizard of Oz timed to Dark Side. It's nothing at all like these whacky theories discussed in the review. Also, the song Echoes, on Pink Floyd's Meddle, is specifically timed to the Jupiter and Beyond The Inifinite sequence in 2001. No coincidence there.
I find that a good rule of thumb is that most of the time when the author is thinking about something wacky like making names into anagrams, he tends to do it compulsively rather than just once or twice. If names are significant, for instance, he'll use a group of names that have related significance- all names of saints, or characters from some other work, or the like. If you wind up finding one interesting anagram, one name that's a biblical reference, and one odd similarity to some other work, the chances are that it's just the analyst looking too deep. And, quite honestly, most authors aren't going to bury this stuff too deep in the first place. They put it in there to be, after all, so making it so obscure that it takes ages and ages to notice pretty much defeats the point.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Of course some time these things are most certainly conscious. In the X-Files, for instance, they love to have clocks pointing to 10:13 because Chris Carter's production company is named Ten Thirteen. They'll also name minor characters after regular posters on the X-Files newsgroup. That kind of thing is actually comparatively common, a kind of insider's joke.
What is even more wild is that once in a while a TV show will do something even more radical deliberately. I saw a very, very interesting art exhibit at the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. A group of artists had convinced Aaron Spelling to let them insert various symbolically significant props into the show. There was a pillow that showed up in some bedroom scenes, for instance, that had pictures of condoms all over it. Every container of alcohol that appeared in the season when they were doing this was redone to make it symbollically linked to its role in the plot. When somebody did something stupid after drinking, for instance, their beer cans were of "Be Wiser" rather than "Budweiser". After appearing there, they were moved to the top shelf of the bar that served as a hangout for the characters. More amazingly, the height of stacked glasses and pitchers on the middle shelf of the bar formed a bar graph (and the pun was deliberate) of average per-capital alcohol consumption in the U.S. since the revolution, and the bottles on the bottom shelf were matched with the next shelf up and had labels relevant to public perceptions and attitudes toward drinking at that time. It was pretty amazing, especially considering that the viewers had pretty much no chance of figuring all that stuff out.
The take home lesson, though, is that sometimes people really do hide things in TV shows.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Actually everyone in the band has denied it, EXCEPT for Roger Waters.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Maybe Kubrick was thinking about a sex-change operation?!
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Similarly, if we find a man named Balthazar in a novel and later on meet his two buddies Melchior and Gaspar, then we're more likely to flag it as a biblical reference; if the Balthazar is isolated it could more likely be that the author pulled it out of a baby book or telephone book. Sometimes the opposite happens: Fahrenheit 451, a novel about a society without books, has two characters named Montag (a paper manufacturer) and Faber (a pencil manufacturer). Bradbury swears it off as a coincidence! But how do we know for sure...?
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
This sounds suspiciously like the people that watch The Wizard of Oz timed to music with Pink Floyd's The Wall.
Coincidence? Probably. You can find hidden meaning in anything, if you spend enough time looking for it. This post is no exception.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
NO CARRIER
Let's all keep in mind that kubrick can't be attributed for the creation of the name "Frank Poole" or the label "TMA-1". Sure, perhaps he came up with the hexagonal shape for part of the ship, but the author here is making half-assed 'connections' about a man who only made the filmed version itself, not the darn book. So not only are his connections half-assed, they're being pointed at the genius behind a man who didn't even come up with them.
C++ programmers do it with class.
Perl hackers do it quick and dirty.
C++ programmers do it with class.
Perl hackers do it quick and dirty.
I've gotta learn perl.
Nietzsche once said that the human was a bridge between God and animal. That would explain our schizoid reality to a T. In "Also Sprach Zarathustra", Nietzsche created the myth of the "superman", but never really described him in detail. Somehow we humans would slave away at life until we reached some threshold, then magically, some border would be crossed by some individual to The Next Great Thing. This is what I read into the film after reading Kubrick interviews. Dave Bowman was that superman who finally crossed into the next state of being, the first human to get off that damned bridge to the other side. The confusing ending was symbolic of this Unknown. Rock Hudson supposedly left the film disgusted saying, "will somebody please tell me what that film is about!? Rock, just like you showing your dog your wedding pictures, Kubrick is "showing" us this Great Beyond. IMHO, Clarke screws everything up with his absolutist/literalist overcooking and overexplaining. The hotel scene at the end of the film is ruined by Clarke in his book version. To me the scene is a genial symbolistic dreamscape. The human mind, when given information beyond its comprehension does exactly what a computer does when it mis-calculates some math problem: vaguely recognizable, but totally unreliable stuff comes out. Koans, baby, do your koans! The Nietzsche-man asked Big Questions, probably the biggest ever asked. Seeing a film based on some of the N-man's biggest issues has made me a better person....
--- WWSD? What Would Strider Do?
A few other things in the movie about this.
1. The child travelling down the road to hell (the long hallway sceens on the tricycle)
2. Multiple murders in differnt time frames.
3. Pictures on the walls: Both having images of previous caretakers and in the end with the picture of Jack.
4. Many of the cut scenes in the end. Particularly the man in a yellow dog suit giving a blowjob. According to kubrick the dog was very symbolic but I think it coulda been cut and I never woulda known.
Just a little evidence that Krubrick was a crazy enough guy to do something like what the book is saying. After typeing all this out I still gotta agree that the bathroom tile thing is a little bit off.
Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!
Every container of alcohol that appeared in the season when they were doing this was redone to make it symbollically linked to its role in the plot.
$ ln -s alcohol plot ;-)
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Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
1. The book is not based on the film. It was released later, but both projects were developed at the same time, with lots of cooperation between the two.
2. Kubrick was reading a lot of Jung at the time, so a lot of the shapes did matter... just not the ones that this reviewer seems to be focused on. The Pod looks like an egg because Bowen is soon to be "born" as the Star Child. (Hence, the stargate scene, which is essentially passage into the "womb".)
3. HAL was, by far, the most human personality on board the ship. This was to show that man had become more machine-like as machines began to seem more human.
4. Yes, the voyage was based somewhat on Homer's Oddessey. All I can say to that observation is, "duh!"
5. No Trojan Horses were anywhere to be found in the story. The astronauts were not Greeks trying to invate the Trojan moon... They were primates, mirroring the experience of the monkeys during the first chapter of the film: discovering the monolith (during a period of isolation and exile, brought about by conflict with another tribe... the monkeys were kicked out of the watering hole; the astronauts were quarentined in order to keep their project a secret from the Russians), not knowing what to make of it, and finally, deriving inspiration from it to move on to their next phase of evolution.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
All good art, i.e., art that stands the test of time, has a large degree of ambiguity in it to allow for various forms of interpretation and meaning. That is part of what gives it value.
I think the book says more about the author than the subject. Boy is he deep and intelligent. I can't wait for his brainy analysis of Brittany Spears lyrics and how they are derived from Greek Philosophy AND quantum physics. You can PROVE this by rearranging the letters in the words to Baby Hit Me One More Time. It's soo obvious.....
On the other hand, I wonder what "Bluto" means. Why not "Brutus"?
Happens when you analyze any book/movie/creative work. Where do you draw the line between what the author might have been thinking and your own twisted imagination? -Rahul
Genebrew
I like the clever "send me money" gimick. But what do you mean about "this post?" One of the main points in the post is that the author of the 2001 book often grasps at straws. But I don't see where the post does so.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
2001 is NOT a "Kubrick" story.
2001 was mainly written by Arthur C Clarke, in conjunction with Kubrick when they decided to make "the proverbial good Sci Fi film".
The book was written at the same time as the screenplay (although as the film was developed, certain limitations meant some changes to the script which were not reflected in the book. For example, in the book, they visit Saturn not Jupiter, purely because Kubrick didn't feel his special effects team could make a convincing Saturn backdrop. As ACC hilself says later, he was glad that turned out to be the case because of Europa).
I wish people would get their facts straight and not go round claiming 2001 was Kubrick's story! It was a collaboration (sp?), with the main story coming from ACC.
--
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Yes, the bathroom-tile man-machine argument sounds pretty 'out there'; however, there is a long tradition of books attempting to connect-up seemingly dispirate myths, legends, stories and poems. Taken in abstract, Robert Graves's claim that the stories of Jesus and Hercules are different versions of the same myth, sounds mad. Perhaps it is, but Graves's justification takes a few hundred pages and is pretty convincing. By the time he goes into how theories of accretion can pollute oral narratives and the effect of the written-word in making particular versions of stories more canonical than others, he's made a point.
Fact is, Wheat wasn't the first nor will he be the last. Sir James Frazer's 'The Golden Bough', Joseph Campbell's 'The Hero With a Thousand Faces', etc, etc, etc, are all equally mad. But each of them is attempting to do something very human and touching: they are attempting to detect some order, sanity, ration and reason in an otherwise pretty random and chaotic world -- just as Kubrick was doing, just as Homer was doing...
This dude missed a few TMA-ONE interpretations:
NATO ME - the monolith is discovered in the Cold War posturing between the West and the Iron Curtain, and this is Kubrick's way of downing Communism
A MONTE - referring to a popular game show at the time, and that the monolith was at various times in the movie under a curtain marked number two, and behind a door marked number three
OAT MEN - Quaker paid Kubrick for subliminal advertizing
Check all the others here
Anybody want a peanut?
A few things. HAL isn't IBM moved down one letter each. It's Hueristic ALgorithim. (yeah, I probably spelled it wrong). Clarke even states that in one of his books. Also, even though the book came out AFTER the movie, doesn't mean the book is based on the movie. Clarke and Kubric worked together on alot of it. The reason that Kubric used Jupiter instead of Clarke's Saturn is because the Special Effects department couldn't come up with a convicing Saturn in Kubric's mind. So there. TMA-ONE = NO MEAT? um. yeah, sure. Tycho Magnetic Anomoly. The first one, actually. There's a TMA-0 in his later books, on earth! hah! Read the books. Good books.
I used to be really into Twin Peaks and spent lotsa time on USEnet (or was it FIDOnet?) to discuss meanings of the episodes. Well, it got pretty far out, to say the least. For example, someone noticed that all the 3 digit hotel room numbers which were ever shown, added up to 12. Since David Lynch is a ment, it made perfect sense that he did this on purpose. Then there were all the anagrams, like 'Agent Cooper' == 'One Great Cop'.
And this never ended. The more people looked into it, the more strange shit came out. Some (me included) started speculating wether this all happened subconsciously for David Lynch. That maybe he didn't even know, but somehow he couldn't help adding twistedness to the script. And just like Mr. Lampe says here, I really got caught up in the looney evindence and lost perspective completely.
I guess that paterns and similarities are all over the place, you just gotta look hard enough. Just like adding the ASCII values of the letters in Bill Gates name and it equals 666. It just doesn't prove anything.
-Kraft
-Kraft
Live and let live
Reminds me of an anecdote from one of my critical theory classes: A prominent Folklorist designed a mathematical equation to determine whether folk-stories represented actual events or reflected mythological archetypes. A character in a folk story would "score points" for things like military prowess, greater than human stature, etc. It was a very complex equation, subtley and pains-takingly crafted.
Using this equation, it's been proven that Abraham Lincoln never existed historically, that in fact he was a mythological construct.
And then there's the Douglas Adams thing about the guy who proved that God ddin't exist . . . .
Your facts on the Illiad are right. Also, "ankle poor" reminds one of Oedipus, whose name after all translates as "swollen foot." (Although my greek isn't flawless.) "Frank Poole" yields many potentially meaningful anagrams:
Flop one ark: clearly refers to the potential danger to the ship in the movie
Freak'n' Polo!: Odysseus was noted for hating water-polo.
Porno Flake: Obviously refering to HAL's voyeuristic tendencies.
Lo! Fake porn!: Foreshadowing Kubrick's final movie.
OK elf apron: It was rumoured widely at the time that Santa Claus' elves were hired to work as gaffers and key grips for 2001.
No rape folk: The real reason all the scientists were locked up and frozen, to keep Dave from going buggy on their booties.
Lake of porn: the real reason the the obelisks were protecting Jupiters moon -- their grrrly magazines were hidden under its frozen surface.
I could keep going indefinately, but I've probably already made my point and made everybody who's read this permanantly dumber already. Might as well quit while we're ahead . . . .
This reminds me quite a lot of Erich von Daniken. He did things like take the different measurements of pyramids, multiply them together, take square and cube roots wildly until he got a number that could be construed as similar to some astronomical measurement, and then claim that as proof that the "ancients" had an incredibly advanced knowledge of astronomy. No, it's just proof that one set of numbers can be transformed into something similar to another (arbitrary) set by using lots of mathematical operations.
Same thing here. If you try hard enough, you can find connections between just about anything. That proves nothing, however, beyond the creativity of the person coming up with the "connections".
--
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
I would say that the article in Cinefex pretty well debunks most of the symbolism that is being attributed to the movie. The special effects crew involved in the film recount how many of the "symbols" planted in the movie were accidents or experimentation. That Kubrick would not be involved in the creation of most of the effects elements except in a "I like it" or "I hate it" final approval.
For those interested in movie special effects this article is a goldmine. They invented techniques never before seen on the big screen for this movie. Computer displays and wireframe models before you could just whip it out in a few hours on a graphical workstation. Thousands of hours spend using a photographic animation stand to create the classic computer monitors on the Discovery. A technical description of how they created the stargate light show at the end of the film using a variation of time lapse photography.
Obviously 2001 has alagorical elements built into it, but lets not go overboard. Sometime a cigar is just a cigar people.
*****
Just think of it as evolution in action.
"So what are those claims? Alot of it makes good sense. For instance, Dave Bowman relates to Ulysses (a reknowned bowman in the myths)."
While I agree that there is a lot in common between A Space Odyssey and Homer's original (just look at the title!), I think this is taking it a little too far. If Clarke really wanted to do what this author is suggesting, why not call him "Dave Archer?"
"These letters, like the last nine in Frank Poole, can be rearranged to form an anagram. In this case, the anagram is "No Meat." A wooden horse has no meat on its skeletal framework."
Yeah, so? It also spells "toe man" and "no team" and "M... neato." Besides, the Trojan Horse had a lot of meat (in the form of the Greeks inside of it).
"But why the hexagons? Why not circles or squares or nothing?"
Because curved surfaces aren't justified, while using a cube would result in something that looks a little too much like a Tinker Toy.
"The rear-end hexagons are bathroom tiles! They symbolize bathrooms."
Exactly how far up his own ass did he have to reach to pull this one out? This makes those goat sex pics look tame in comparison!
"Hal-Discovery has three bathrooms, one for each mouth"
Um... how do you figure three? Is this "the new math?" And HAL is no more Discovery than Windows is my computer.
"It reminds us how good human minds, especially smart ones, are at finding patterns in crazy shit."
So, what you're saying is that this book is an example of how far computing needs to go before it catches up with human pattern-recognition skills?
"Wheat has the premise that Kubrick was so wicked smart that these long strings of meaning are not only possible, they are a sure thing."
Then perhaps he should sit down and write his next few books on "Dr. Strangelove," "Full Metal Jacket," and "Eyes Wide Shut." If Kubrik was half as smart as the author suggests, then he might be able to find the meaning of life in these movies.
"You also come away with the sense that Wheat is a pretty smart man himself."
Using big words makes you smart. Right. Or should I say "Utilizing unwieldy verbage demonstrates one's superior intellect?"
Spell out the figure '1' and you get TMA-ONE. These letters, like the last nine in Frank Poole, can be rearranged to form an anagram. In this case, the anagram is "No Meat." A wooden horse has no meat on its skeletal framework."
There's as much truth to that as your average psycic reading. One can make hundreds of true, but random statements about an object, such as a horse, and surely find that some of them are anagrams toward some related idea.
Firstly, there is no justification for spelling 1 as "One". 1 means 1, and if if Mr. Kubrik really meant "one", he should have spelled it out himself.
Secondly, the Trojan Horse was NOT a skeletal framework. I suppose its wooden walls could be viewed as "meat", in fact, but this is all just nonsense... The guy's a Quack.
This reminds me of decoding Paul is dead messages on Beatles covers in college. None of the general thrust of 2001 is less than 31 years old, although the anagrams and hexagons may be new. It's like Homer's Odessey, and it says so in the title. (But let's not forget Leopold Bloom! Maybe Kubrick was a Joyce nut too). Zarathustra? Gee, ya think? Also Sprach Zarathustra is only the overpowering theme music, played over and over again. Man/machine symbiosis, is again, as plain as the nose on Jimmy Durante's face. It's Frankenstein, Prometheus etc. all over again. All of this is so plainly obvious that it can't possibly be news to nerds. Everyone who paid the slightest attention knew all this three decades ago. 2001 is one of the top movies ever made not because of these out front allegories, but because it uses these allegories to draw a picture that is a contemplation of consciousness, and it means just what you can get out of it, and unquestionably it means different things to different people. HAL is the murdering child/frankenstein. The sequels kinda cheapen the impact of HAL by explaining why he went nuts. Wasn't it a lot better as a Rorasch test to speculate why HAL went bad. (Star Trek TNG did a cute send up of this with Data/Lor) What does the aging of Bowman as he watches himself Buddah-like, evoke?