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2001 Book Author Responds
This is Len Wheat, author of Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory, speaking. I'm here to point out some errors, misrepresentations, out-of-context quotations, and other problems with Cliff Lampe's review. I do appreciate Cliff's saying that, although "this book goes too far at times," it "is worth reading." Still, the general tone of the review -- the basic notion that my analysis is "pretty topsy-turvy" and "loony" -- is negative. The negativism rests on dubious ideas.
Let's begin with Cliff's statement that "[Wheat] uses scripts, director's notes, and some interviews to provide evidence for some of his claims." The source of this "information" is Cliff's imagination. I saw no scripts, read no director's notes, and interviewed nobody. Nowhere in the book is there any such "evidence," except that I do refer at two points to script evidence seen by other writers (Walker and Bizony). These facts tell you something about the level of accuracy to expect in the rest of the review.
That said, let's examine (1) Cliff's misguided quest for literalism in symbols, (2) his failure to grasp the subtle nature of most symbolism, (3) his misrepresentation of the TMA-1 anagram was being the basis for my saying the moon monolith symbolizes the wooden Trojan Horse, and (4) his out-of-context presentation of my assertion that the three hexagons surrounding Discovery's three pairs of rear-end excretory orifices represent bathroom tiles.
Cliff's implicit demand for literalism in symbols A basic problem with the review is that Cliff refuses to recognize as genuine any symbols that don't come pretty close to being literal-symbols that don't reach out and slap you in the face. He doesn't seem to realize that many symbols, Kubrick's especially, are subtle. Recognizing them requires seeing analogies and paying attention to narrative and physical contexts. Cliff accepts Bowman's name as symbolizing Odysseus, because Odysseus was literally a bowman (user of the Great Bow). And he accepts the well established idea that Bowman's space voyage symbolizes Odysseus's sea od yssey, because (a) the movie's subtitle literally says "Space Odyssey," (b) Bowman literally "goes on a long voyage," and (c) Bowman, like Odysseus, literally "loses all his crew."
But Cliff can't point to any other Kubrick symbols-nonliteral symbols-identified by me that he will accept. Indeed, Cliff can't bring himself to recognize even some fairly literal symbols, including the ones representing hexagonal bothroom tiles. I'll give four examples of fairly literal symbols that Cliff implicitly rejects when he calls my interpretations "loony."
First, the Laestrygonian rock attack. Odysseus goes to the land of the Laestrygonians. All the ships in his fleet except his own anchor in a harbor. The harbor is ringed by cliffs (no pun intended). The Laestrygonians are nasty-and strong. They stand on the cliffs and throw down huge rocks, splintering the ships in the harbor and killing the crews. Odysseus's ship, outside the harbor, barely escapes under a hail of rocks. Cut to the movie. Just before Bowman goes out on his first space walk, we see an exterior shot of Discovery. Two huge meteroids come hurtling past. Kubrick is symbolizing Odysseus's escape from the Laestrygonian rock attack. But Cliff doesn't believe it. Not literal enough. Sure, the rock symbols are literally rocks, and they literally come close to hitting the ship; but the space rocks are not literally thrown, so I guess the overall symbolism is not literal enough for Cliff to accept. The idea that the meteoriods could be symbolic is, to him, just another "loony" interpretation.
Second, the three disabled survey crewman. Odysseus visits the land of the Lotus-eaters. He sends three crewman inland to survey the territory, so to speak. The three eat lotus, lose the desire to return, and have to be dragged back to the ship and put in irons, unable to perform their duties. Cut to the movie. During the BBC interview near the beginning of the space odyssey, Bowman says (a) his three hibernating crewman are (b) "the survey team." And the three are, for the time being, (c) disabled-unable to perform duties. Isn't that literal enough?
Third, the Movie's Title. Cliff focuses on the Odysseus allegory, giving short-shrift to the main allegory, which depicts Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra (TSZ). This misdirected emphasis is strange, because (a) the Zarathustra allegory has at least 160 symbols, compared to 55 for the Odysseus allegory, (b) I devote two chapters to the Zarathustra allegory but only one to the Odysseus allegory, and (c) the Zarathustra allegory is alluded to in the movie's title, whereas Odysseus's odyssey is mentioned in the secondary spot-the subtitle. Where does the title allude to TSZ? Nietzsche bases TSZ's title character, Zarathustra, on the Persian prophet Zarathustra (a.k.a. Zoroaster), founder of the ancient Persian religion Zoroastrianism. In Zoroastrian mythology, Zarathustra arrives after 9,000 years of history, at the beginning of the tenth millennium. The year is 9001. In the Zarathustra allegory, Bowman symbolizes Zarathustra. So he must arrive at the beginning of a new millennium. The movie's title year, 2001, symbolizes 9001, the year Zarathustra arrives. One millennial year symbolizes another. But Cliff, I gather, thinks my interpretation is "loony," because "2001" isn't literal enough: Kubrick seemingly (to Cliff) would have named his film 9001 if he wanted to symbolize Zarathustra's millennium. Well, Cliff, if you look hard enough you can find the 9000 years that expire before Zarathustra arrives. Hal, who arrives at the same time as Bowman, has as his full name HAL-9000: he is arriving after 9000 years.
Fourth, God's Sticking Out His Tongue and Blowing a Bubble. TSZ tells the story of man's evolution from (1) ape to (2) lower man, the believer, who creates God, to (3) higher man, the nonbeliever, who figuratively kills God by ceasing to believe, to (4) overman, a mentally and morally superior being. Young Zarathustra, representing lower man, creates God ("I created him"), and the God he creates is the image of man ("A man he was"): Nietzsche is turning the Bible upside down by saying that man created God in is own image. Later, the mature prophet (now a higher man) kills God, declaring "God is dead!"
In the Zarathustra allegory, Dave Bowman is the mature Zarathustra. The image-of-man God he kills is symbolized by Hal-Discovery-the spaceship and its computer brain. To be a good symbol, Hal-Discovery must have some image-of-man attributes. I'll describe these characteristics in some detail when I get to the hexagons. But for now, just recognize that Hal-Discovery has a head (with a brain inside) and three mouths, arranged in a row resemble a human mouth. In one scene Discovery opens his mouth (pod bay door), sticks out his tongue (pod launching ramp), blows a spherical bubble (space pod), and watches it rise over his head. Alas, the "tongue" isn't literally a tongue, just a pod launching ramp; and the "bubble" isn't literally a bubble, just a metal sphere. Besides, Kubrick would never resort to humor, subtle humor at that. (The pun in the name Bat Guano, from Dr. Strangelove, must have been unintentional.) So Cliff rejects my tongue-and-bubble interpretation. Indeed, he seems to reject the whole idea that Hal-Discovery, created by man and then killed by man during man's ascent from ape to overman (the star-child), could symbolize God. I wonder who, or what, he thinks the real God symbol is, or if he even thinks there is one. (He seems to acknowledge that there is a Zarathustra allegory.)
The subtle nature of most symbolism: Most allegorical symbolism and other literary and film symbolism is not as literal as the symbolism described above. It is subtle, resting on analogy, word play, and other hidden-or at least hard to see-characteristics. Let's examine two closely related examples: (1) Nietzsche's rope dancer parable and (2) Frank Poole's anagrammatic name.
Nietzsche's Rope Dancer Parable. Early in TSZ, Nietzsche presents his parable of the rope dancer. "Rope dancer" is an archaic name for a tightrope walker. The rope dancer symbolizes mankind. He is walking on a rope stretched between two towers. The tower he comes out of symbolizes the ape (the first stage in ape-lower man-higher man-overman), and the tower he is trying to reach symbolizes overman (the last stage). When the rope dancer is part way across, a buffoon-a symbol for God-steps onto the rope from the first tower, comes up behind the rope dancer, leaps over him, and proceeds in triumph to the far tower, thereby achieving supremacy. Frightened, the rope dancer falls to his death. Zarathustra, standing below, picks up the rope dancer's body and later disposes of it.
In this parable, almost all of the symbolism is subtle, not literal. The only thing approaching literalism is Nietzsche's use of a man, the rope dancer, to symbolize mankind. But how can a tower symbolize either the ape or overman, let alone both? A tower isn't even alive. Well, the first tower is where man's journey from ape to overman begins (at ape), and the second tower is where the journey ends (at overman). Beginning and end are the first two subtleties-analogical relationships-you must grasp. But how can the buffoon symbolize God? Nietzsche says man creates God: man, not God, is the creator. So God comes after man, just as the buffoon comes after the rope dancer (both temporally and spatially)-another analogy. And God, to Nietzsche, is an idiotic concept, hence "buffoon." Also, the God man creates is himself a man ("A man he was"), so a man-the buffoon-is a good symbol for God. Fear causes the rope dancer to fall: man's fear of God dooms man's chances of becoming the supreme being, overman. Only one being can be supreme. When man makes God the Supreme Being, man dooms his own chances of evolving into a supreme being (overman). That is the parable's symbolic message.
Frank Poole's Anagrammatic Name. In 2001, Frank Poole is the character who symbolizes the rope dancer. How can this be, given that he does not literally walk on a rope? The answer is easy to deduce. Hal-Discovery, we have already seen, symbolizes God, and Frank's space pod is a detachable part of God's body-God's shoulders, arms, and hands. Now observe six subtle clues. (1) The pod-view it either as a part of Hal-Discovery or a weapon used by Hal-Discovery-comes up behind Frank, just as the buffoon came up behind the rope dancer. (2) The pod kills Frank, just as the buffoon killed the rope dancer. (3) Frank is taking a spacewalk-a figurative walk-when he is killed. (4) Dave Bowman, symbolizing Zarathustra, picks up Franks body, just as Zarathustra picked up the rope dancer's body. (5) Bowman later releases Frank's body, figuratively disposing of it, just as Zarathustra disposed of the rope dancer's body. (6) Bowman, verifying that he really does symbolize Zarathustra, later kills Hal, just as Zarathustra "kills" God by ceasing to believe and declaring, "God is dead!" Cliff considers interpretations like this "loony." But that is because he fails to recognize that most symbolism involves subtlety, and he finds subtlety hard to grasp.
Now we come to Frank's name. Cliff quotes me out of context when he quotes me as writing, "These letters [TMA-ONE], like the last nine in Frank Poole, can be rearranged to form an anagram." Cliff doesn't even bother to say what the anagram is. Naturally, many Slashdot readers have taken Cliff's word for it-"loony"-and have ridiculed the idea that Frank Poole is an anagram. But we know Kubrick uses anagrams. A Slashdot commentator named Babbage, in comments #224 and #225-points out that, "in Kubrick's version of 'Lolita,' he has a character named Vivian Darkbloom, an anagram for Vladimir Nabokov-the author that wrote the original book." (Babbage also gives five other examples of Kubrick's "anagrams, puns, and general word play." His comments-the most intelligent I have read in this Kubrick's 2001 forum-deserve your consideration. What they don't deserve is the score of only 2 given them by Slashdot's Comment Rating Bureau.) Also, I have already mentioned the punnish name Bat Guano-another type of word play-from Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. (If you don't know what guano is, use your dictionary.)
Frank Poole is what I call a 90 percent anagram. The last 9 of the 10 letters of "[F]rank Poole" can be rearranged to form "[W]alk on Rope." I figured that one out by starting out with the knowledge that Frank Poole symbolized the rope dancer. Then I looked for phrases like "Rope Dancer," "Rope Walker," "Dance on Rope," and "Walk on Rope." I didn't have to look far. Cliff seems to consider the whole idea that Kubrick uses anagrams -- Frank Poole, TMA-ONE, Vivian Darkbloom -- "just a skoach over the top." But I consider Cliff's refusal to judge these anagrams in context as something akin to burying one's head in the sand. In the case of "Frank Poole," the context is the six points of evidence showing that Frank Poole symbolizes the rope dancer.
The TMA-1 anagram: I wrote that, when you spell out the figure 1, TMA-1 becomes TMA-ONE. These letters can be rearranged to form the anagram "No Meat." The phrase humorously alludes to the Trojan Horse's being made of wood rather than flesh and blood. Cliff presents the TMA-1 anagram in an out-of-context way that invites challenges to the anagram's validity. The moon monoliths name, TMA-1, comes before the monolith itself in 2001, so I discuss the name first. But in doing so I write, "In the next scene, . . . it becomes evident that TMA-1 [the monolith] symbolizes the wooden Trojan Horse." In other words, the evidence of the monolith's identity is in my discussion of the next scene, where the astronauts examine the monolith.In this discussion I present evidence (1) from the scene itself and (2) from surrounding scenes that establish the sequential context of the symbolism.
Evidence from the Monolith Scene: In Homer's The Odyssey, Troy falls to the Greeks immediately before Odysseus begins his odyssey, his homeward voyage back from Troy. The Greeks build a huge, hollow wooden horse, the Trojan Horse. Greek warriors hide inside. A clever ruse tricks the Trojans (residents of Troy) into bringing the Trojan Horse (1) inside the walls of Troy. After dark, (2) something-a bunch of Greek warriors-comes out of the horse. The warriors open the city gates, allowing the Greek army to enter and (3) inflict pain-actually death-on the people of Troy. Thus does Troy fall. Observe the 1-2-3 parallelism in 2001's moon monolith scene. (1) The monolith is inside the walls of a pit, walls that symbolize the walls of Troy. (2) Something-a loud signal-comes out of the monolith. (3) The astronauts, symbolizing the Trojans, fall back in pain. A fourth symbolic element, word play again, is also present. Kubrick-or more likely Clarke-scoured the list of the hundreds of named craters on the moon and put the monolith in the crater whose name most nearly resembles the name Troy. (4) The chosen crater was one named Tycho. It has the same initial letter as Troy, T, and it also has two of Troy's other three letters-o and y. Given the knowledge that The Odyssey is being allegorized, we find in these four pieces of evidence ample reason to infer that the monolith symbolizes the Trojan Horse.
Evidence from the Story's Sequential Context: But the above evidence is just the beginning. More evidence of the monolith's symbolic identity comes from the sequence of events. Troy's fall and the events immediately preceding and following it display this sequence: (1) Menelaus, a Greek king, returns from a trip and is briefed on something that has happened: his wife, Helen (now known as Helen of Troy), has been seduced by Paris and taken to Troy. (2) Menelaus embarks for Troy with an army on 1,000 ships (whence Helen's moniker, "the face that launched a thousand ships"). (3) Using the Trojan Horse, the Greeks conquer Troy. (4) Odysseus, in the first episode on his odyssey, attacks the city of Ismarus. This episode has four features: (a) crewmen running through the streets of Ismarus and (b) fighting the inhabitants, after which Odysseus (c) loots the city and then (d) gets figuratively burned in a counterattack that kills 72 of his men. (5) Odysseus goes to the land of the Lotus eaters and winds up with three disabled crewmen, shackled and unable to perform their duties.
The relevant events of 2001's surface story follow the same sequence. (1) Heywood R. Floyd, symbolizing Menelaus, is briefed on something. (2) A long, many-footed (two rows of landing feet), bug-eyed (front windows) moon bus travels to the crater Tycho-Troy. The bus symbolizes a millipede (mil = 1,000; ped = foot), whose figurative 1,000 feet symbolize the thousand ships sailing for Troy. (3) The moon monolith performs in its walled enclosure. (4) The space odyssey begins. Its first four events are (a) Frank Poole's-Bowman's only active crewman's-jogging, which symbolizes Odysseus's crewmen running through the streets of Ismarus, (b) Poole's shadowboxing, symbolizing the fighting, (c) Bowman's "looting" the food dispensing machine, and (d) Bowman's burning his fingers on the food, symbolizing Odysseus' getting burned in the counterattack. (5) The BBC interview comes up on the TV, and we hear Bowman say that his three-man "survey team" is in hibernation-disabled, just like the men on Odysseus' three-man survey team.
Back to the Anagram. It is in this double context-the context of the moon monolith scene and the sequential context of before-and-after events-that the anagram (TMA-1 = TMA-ONE = NO MEAT) must be interpreted. Once you deduce by other means that the monolith symbolizes the meatless (wooden) Trojan Horse, the anagram's validity is obvious. Sure, somebody said that two other anagrams-NO TEAM and NO MATE-could be formed from the six letters, but they don't fit the context. Only NO MEAT describes the Trojan Horse. Note, by the way, how subtle Kubrick can get. In the other anagram he omitted the first letter of both [F]rank Poole and "[W]alk on rope." In the TMA-1 anagram he makes you discover that "1" must be spelled out before the anagram can be found.
The hexagon symbolism: Cliff also rejects my claim that the three hexagons at Discovery's rear end -- we all have rear ends, don't we? --symbolize bathroom tiles and are part of a scatological joke about God's going to the bathroom. Earlier in this reply I noted that Hal-Discovery symbolizes Nietzsche's version of God, the God created by man in his (man's) own image. As part of Kubrick's God symbol, Discovery must be the image of man. So Kubrick gives him a huge bulbous head, wide-band mod sunglasses (the high-on-the-head windows), three mouths (pod bay doors) arranged in a horizontal row to resemble a single mouth, a tongue (pod launching ramp) for each mouth, a tapered neck behind the head, a segmented spine, a sacrum (tailbone) at the base of the spine, three pairs of excretory orifices (rocket nozzles)-one pair for each mouth-below the sacrum (same place as in humans), and a bathroom (hexagonal bathroom tile) for each pair of excretory orifices. Hal-Discovery, again like humans, can see, hear, and talk; he has human emotions, such as enthusiasm and fear; he is mortal; and he becomes senile before dying ("Daisy, Daisy").
Note that part of this physical-mental context is the three pairs of excretory orifices. If that's too scatological for you to accept, you probably don't think the Dr. Strangelove puns in Colonel Bat Guano's name are anything but accidental. But if you recognize Kubrick's penchant for humor, including scatological humor, it should not surprise you that the rocket nozzles symbolize the orifices God uses to excrete his waste. And if you are familiar with the small hexagonal white bathroom floor tiles that were commonplace in the 1930s, it again should not surprise you that Kubrick has God doing his excreting where it should be done-in the bathroom. Bury your head in the sand if you must, Cliff, but those three hexagons do symbolize bathroom tiles. There are jokes in this movie.
If you're still unconvinced that the hexagons are part of a Kubrick joke, consider a related joke. The Bible says woman was made from a bone, Adam's rib. Kubrick, who turns the Bible upside down in several places, makes a counterclaim: God, a man, was made from a bone. Begin by noting that Kubrick's God is a bony God, essentially an abstracted skull and spine. Now ask: how did we get to this bony God? We got there in an eight-stage, 41-minute evolutionary process, to wit: (1) A prehuman ape picks up animal bone-we start with a bone-and converts it into a primitive weapon, a club. (2) The primitive weapon, tossed into the air, morphs into a space-age weapon, an orbiting nuclear bomb. (3) The orbiting bomb evolves into an elongated, self-propelled, phallic space shuttle. (4) In sexual symbolism that Roger Ebert was the first to point out-I wasn't the first to recognize this-the phallus penetrates the slot in the rotating female space station: coitus. (5) A spherical moon lander symbolizing a sperm cell-Ebert missed this part-travels to the moon, a larger sphere that symbolizes the ovum, which is larger than the sperm. (6) Hangar doors on the moon open up, allowing the lander-sperm to enter and fertilize the moon: conception. (7) The fetus gestates: Part 2's subtitle, "18 Months Later," informs us that God, who is twice as smart as humans, has a gestation period twice as long as that of humans. (8) The bony male God is born slowly, horizontally from offscreen into the starry universe.
I hate to say this, Cliff, but those long hours you're putting in on your dissertation have dulled your senses. You no longer catch onto subtle jokes when you hear them.
Many years ago, when the world was young and there was no Internet, I wrote a short story called "Seven Days at Camp Cocaine."
It was a simple, 4000 word piece that made a simple point. It got published in a local (Baltimore) rag, and later ended up in a "literary" short story anthology, even though I had intended it to be nothing but a moment's reading pleasure with a small political message built into it. IMO, it was *not* literature.
Anyway, readers and critics (some with many academic-type letters after their names) went on and on about this or that "piece of imagery" and my "veiled symbolism" and so on.
We're talking about something I knocked out in an afternoon, probably after I'd had a fair amount to drink, and got maybe $400 or $500 for, tops; not great art, just a piece I cranked out to help pay the mortgage that month.
I swear, there must have been 40 *thousand* words written about "Seven Days in Camp Cocaine" by all those critics and professors and students. Most of them found all kinds of deepness in the story that I, the author, sure as hell didn't put in it.
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
- S. Freud
Sometimes a story is just a story and a movie is just a movie. Or perhaps I'm just too shallow to recognize Art when I see it, even if I'm the one who produced it. Geh.
- Robin 'roblimo' Miller
(The real Roblimo, UID #357, is sitting in the cabin of his sailboat, posting this through his Ricochet wireless modem, and may cast off and go for a short sail if the sky stays clear, having turned out over 2000 words of "pay copy" today -- which is more than enough, thank you.)
--Bud
Let me get this straight: I'm replying to an author's response to a reader's review of that author's analysis of a filmmaker's interpretation of another author's creative statement about the human condition?
Please dear god someone reply to this, just to tell me I'm wrong!
Kevin Fox
--
Kevin Fox
Yeow, Mr Wheat has put a lot of thought into his writing, but I feel he may be overdoing it. If you try you can read what you want into most things.
A couple of examples:
1. The bathroom tiles.
Lets assume our space ship needs exhaust ports (it does - it must - no allegory there). Leonard says the hexagonal shape represents bathroom tiles, therefore excretion in the bathroom etc. Maybe.... But, what other shapes could Kubrik (or the model's designer have chosen)? Square - bathroom tiles, rectangular - bathroom tiles, circular - toilet bowl, triangular - starts with a T (toilet) and could be bathroom tiles too (I've seen triangular ones). Hmm, it's hard to escape the conclusion that whatever shape the excretory orifices were made, we could see bathroom tiles!
2. The final 8-step Bone allegory.
(1) ape picks up bone & uses it for a weapon, OK. (2) Bone, tossed into air morphs into nuclear bomb - a common cinematic artifice (conversion) and nuclear weapons were a key topic when the film was made. (3) Orbiting bomb morphs to phallic space ship - this elongated shape is VERY logical for a space ship, and coincidentally is similar to a phallus shape. (4) The ship penetrates the space station; coitus - what else would it do? It is logical for the ship to dock in the space station if the crew wish to enter it. (5) Sperm-like lander lands on bigger ovum shaped moon - Duh! it would be pretty silly if the lander was bigger than the moon, if the moon was not round and the lander was a long thin (phallus), with limited mechanical stability, unlike a more squat more circular shape, no?? (6) Hanger doors open allowing the lander to fertilize the moon - this seems like a sensible way for any lander to get into a hanger (7) The fetus gestates over 18 months, a god-like gestation period because God is twice as smart as us - please!!, God is generally credited with being more than twice as smart as humans. (8) The bony god is borne horizontally into a starry universe - same effect if he was borne vertically, silly if there were no stars in the universe, babies are bony..... this is not a strange thing tio show either.
I can't go on! A lot happens in the movie. Some of it may be symbolism, but Mr Wheat's determination to find symbols is bound to succeed because if one looks hard enough one can find symbols in many things.
I enjoyed the read, though.
Yeah, but you're trying to talk sense to an academic. Once they get their mind wrapped around something, no matter how crazy, they cannot be budged. (I mean, there's grant money riding on it!)
Cripes, I've seen academics argue that real rockets - as in, the ones we use today - are shaped the way they are, not by engineering constraints, but because they were originally built by male weaponeers, who wanted them to look as phallic as possible.
They're serious about this - as though somehow rockets would somehow be shaped like giant flabby Earth-Mother Gaia-Figure tits if they'd been invented by women instead of men.
(Reading this article was a great reminder why I left University to work in the private sector... the day I got my degree, I was fuckin' gone, man, I couldn't get away fast enough ;-)
Cynical answer: The author is likely an academic - perhaps a Ph.D. in English Literature - pettiness and endless squabbling over mind-pummelingly insignificant crap is part of his job description.
Insightful answer: he's a geek - like you and me - except that he's a geek of English-Lit. In the same way that you and I can bitch for hours about the merits of vi vs. EMACS, or GNOME vs. KDE, he can bitch for hours about how Discovery was more about a man with cool shades and bathroom tiles up his ass than it was a really neat-looking model of what a spaceship to Jupiter might look like.
Take whichever answer you like. I still kinda prefer the cynical version myself. Because even though the insightful version is more likely a reflection of the truth, I refuse to believe that the emacs-vs-vi debate is petty. I mean, eight megs and constantly swapping, how could anyone use emacs over the wonder that is vi, and how could anyone fail to realize that the debate is hardly petty, I mean, you watch 2001, but you live within your text editor!
After reading one of the longest responses to a review that I have EVER read -- and I am no slouch when it comes to such things -- I feel compelled to respond to the author.
t he-roaring-twenties-that-kills-man-and-has-an-18-m onth-gestation?
First, any author should be comfortable with criticism of their work, fair or not. By publishing the work, you accept that as not a possibility, but a true expectation.
The author clearly does not feel comfortable with the criticism. That to me pretty much ends the conversation. It is seriously immature, and highly improfessional.
However, to do some justice to this book of a response, let me quickly hit a few points:
1. The author stretches SO far with "no meat" and tma-one, as to be silly. Yes, I said silly. I am intimately familiar with Kubrick's humor, with Clarke's style, and this just doesn't fit it. It is almost without a doubt taking something from the movie to fit an agenda.
In what context has the Trojan horse EVER been mentioned as having no meat? Or any emphasis of such? Is there any need to emphasize that? no? Kubrick was no slouch at choosing anagrams and subtle humor, the author admits, but the author seems to give him almost god-like credit for subtlety.
He didnt mean for anyone to 'find' TMA-1.. it didn't mean ANYTHING.
2. The bathroom tiles. Oh please. What silly rubbish. The author makes NO strong linking except nice guessing like "do you know about bathroom tiles of the 20's".. With such strong evidence, why did Cliff ever doubt him?
In short, I wont go on, but the author isnt using strong logic. Looking after the fact, with no input from the authors, or directors clearly doesnt lead to alot of insight. Instead, it leads to alot of inductive reasoning, and logic jumps.
Jumps right off the short side of silly.
Dont even get me started with the "18 months instead of 9 cause god is twice man". WHAAAA?? Where else did that come from but your mind?
Some of the author's analysis is DEAD-ON. Approximately the first half of this response, in my mind. However as it goes on, it gets less and less beleivable, and more and more a stretch of any logical mind to accept.
Subtle? Yes. Humor? Sure. overman-twice-god-three-anus-bathroom-tiles-from-
I dont think so.
I find alot to agree with from Cliff's original posting, and very little here to agree to.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Clack can only be attributed to the original short story "The Sentinel". It was this short story that inspired Kubrick to go to Clark and ask him to help him in writing the "Good science fiction movie".
The novel was written first becuase writing a screenplay is very tedious compared to writing a novel. Both Kubrick and Clark worked on the novel together and although Kubrick moved on to make the movie before the novel was in it's final draft, Clark often went to Kubrick for his approval various aspects of it. (Clark in the past has voiced his frustration in this as he felt that Kubrick was intentionally delaying his responces to have the move released before the book was published, and he succeeded).
Clark actually wanted to credit Kubrick as a co-author, but for reasons I cannot remember, Clark didn't give it to him.
So although Clark did originally create the story, he did so along with Kubrick.
The problem here is that Wheat's rebuttal is suffused in the realm of the English literature academe. He _brags_ that he hasn't read script notes, etc. He is just interpreting symbolism in his own way and getting hot and bothered about it.
This jibes poorly with the practical minded (read: engineers, programmers, and general tech geeks) Slashdot audience, which says collectively: "Go read the fucking notes from Kubrick and Clarke". While I can't claim to have read those notes on the creation of 2001, a couple of points are obvious.
For one thing, these basic allegorical connections that Wheat is referring to are clearly not just the perception of a wacko reader. They are pretty obvious (both the Odyssey and the Also Sprach Zarathustra connections). The problem is that Wheat carries things too far for this audience and thereby discredits himself to the /. crowd. He also gets so hung up on attacking Cliff over a couple of detailed points that seem far fetched to us or aren't mentioned or connected to in any way in the supporting literature.
But let's face it: whether the three rocket jets are the collective anus of the spaceship or not is not a question to be resolved in the realm of the factual. To Wheat, it's a symbol supporting a basic theme (2001 -> TSZ). To us, it sounds silly and unsupported by fact. Neither side could possibly disprove the other side, and thus people get hot and bothered. It's a silly and narrow point.
As for some of the other symbols TMA-1, Bowman, Tycho - are they "real"? I don't know, what is real? To an English major or literary theorist they are real. To an engineer looking at this story and how it was constructed they are not real. Was Discovery supposed to look vaguely human? Well, it had an AI in it, a brain, it "died" at the end of the movie. Nobody denies these plot elements. I don't personally think Kubrick said "let's give Discovery a big ole anus and we'll all get a scatological chuckle over it", but does it matter to me?
Symbolism provides a useful way to understand and interpret a story. Wheat is too caught up in proving every symbolic connection is absolute, true and intended by Kubrick, and most of you are too caught up with "proving" Wheat is a moron to draw those conclusions.
Frank Poole is what I call a 90 percent anagram. The last 9 of the 10 letters of "[F]rank Poole" can be rearranged to form "[W]alk on Rope." I figured that one out by starting out with the knowledge that Frank Poole symbolized the rope dancer. Then I looked for phrases like "Rope Dancer," "Rope Walker," "Dance on Rope," and "Walk on Rope."
Here the author is committing a logical fallacy called the Texas Sharpshooter. A very short description of this fallacy: it is when you know the result before you begin the search for evidence. You then find evidence which matches your result, interpreting it favorably toward that result.
This fallacy got its name with a story. A man wants to prove he is a great sharpshooter, so he shoots at the unpainted side of the barn. He then draws a target around the bullethole. It is meaningless because the order is important. The target must be drawn before the bullet is fired, or the evidence must be gathered before the result is found.
Try something. Pick some element of mythology...any element of mythology. Think of short phrases that are related to it in some way. Then look 2001 (or any book/movie/play/whatever) for at least one of those phrases. You will find it. There are lots of anagrams of the character's names already without doing weird substitutions like cutting out the first letter of his name (why?!?) or changing "1" to "ONE". By the time you get to doing something like that, you are certain to find what you are looking for.
This proves nothing. You can say "[phrase]" is present, therefore [predecided conclusion]. That does not make it so.
(Disclaimer: I have not read the book. What I am saying here is based only on the review and the rebuttal.)
If one were to actually study the production, history, and words of those who worked on 2001, there is more than enough anecdotal evidence to purport that consistently throughout the production Kubrick made decisions with the pretense of engendering ambiguity, discussion, and interpretation.
I recently had the chance to see a new 70mm print of 2001 in London, and apart from being completely enraptured and shocked at how much power this film still has... I was ultimately stunned by how unconventional the film is in its sense of ambiguity. For instance, upon its release no explanation was offered for HAL's insanity. Thanks to Clarke, we have an explanation, but as the original film runs and was released no explanation was ever offered.
Instead of searching for semiotic signals in the ether, one must realize that Kubrick set out in pre production with initial solid ideas. For example, that cut that proceeds from the bone to the first object floating in space - that object is an orbital nuclear weapons platform. The original ending for 2001 would have the Starchild detonating all the satellites. As for the alien presence in the film, Kubrick shot several tests using all manner of visualization (to the exasperation of the crew) to attempt to film "aliens", but ultimately settled on never showing them.
The greatest proof I can give is the following statement, made by Kubrick himself, and I think it pretty much says it all, and the author of the aforementioned book should, as well.
."I would not think of quarreling with your interpretation nor offering any other, as I have found it always the best policy to allow the film to speak for itself."
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
Have you never come across the concept of scholarly debate before?
Mr. Wheat wrote a work of scholarship. Mr. Lampe questioned some of that work. Mr. Wheat has defended his premise.
That's the way it works, even in such empirical fields as the hard sciences.
A logical construct was put forward. A criticism of that construct was put forward, and a defense of the logical construct was then, again, put forward. All in all a good exchange. Advantage Wheat. Lampe to serve.
I was not entirely convinced by Mr. Wheat's work. I was not entirely convinced by Mr. Lampe's critque of Mr. Wheat's work. I have not been entirely convinced Mr. Wheat's rebutal to Mr. Lampe's critique.
What I *have* been is given a deeper understanding by the interchange between the two, and the corallary comments and exchanges here in the forum.
There's a good chance that both Mr. Wheat AND Mr. Lampe may have each gained some further enlightenment as well.
This is good. This is as it should be.
At the risk of appearing snide I might also point out that Mr. Wheat's original work was itself a critique of Kubrick/Clarke. Applying your own standards Mr. Lampe rebuted someone else's critique. How lame is that?
KFG
I'm going to quote the whole of the Lotus-eaters bit since it is quite short (Robert Fagles trans, Penguin 1996):
The similarities with 2001 are indeed there but the real issue is the differences.
One of the crewmen is picked out as a scout with a particular skill (running). All the crew return to the ship and more to the point they are specifically rescued by Odysseus. The fact that they are not mentioned again indicates to me that the crewmembers recovered (which is needed if their "rescue" is to be worth anything). The lotus are not fatal either.
What this tells us is not that 2001 isn't based on the Odyssey but that it is loosely inspired by it.
Unfortunately Wheat needs the trailing of events in what might be called the "source material" to be very close-to the point where Dave's buring his hand on the food is symbolic for events in the sacking of Ismarus (figurative events at that) and a space pod having a passing resembance to an insect is a parallel to the launching of 1000 ships to reclaim Helen of Troy!
What we have here is a classic example of the fact that if you pick, choose, and stretch your evidence you can find parallels of all sorts of things in a story. Particularly if the story does actually draw some elements or make references to the material inquestion.
The wooden horse anagram (not subtle, just weak) is the work of a mind overly devoted to a theory as is Frank Poole's non-anagram where Wheat actually admits that he started off looking for an anagram which meant something like "rope dancer" and that he never found one ("Frank Poole is what I call a 90 percent anagram". Yeah - and what the rest of us call "not an anagram") .
The Nietzsche stuff is mindless. Once more we're required to believe that 2001's following of TSZ is so close that the reason the pod sneaks up behind Frank is not so that he can't see it but because we're following a detailed piece of symbolism. Well, if it were that close, why does the pod not jump over Frank and the knock him off?
Wheat happily chooses when the symbolism is tight and when it is "subtle" to match his line. The Nietzsche parallel in 2001, like the Odyssey parallel, is there in the journey of Dave from man to superman but the details are in Wheat's head.
If who have seen Kubrick at work you will know how often he changed his mind about things and their meanings (that's why AI didn't get made while he was alive). The possibility that he constructed this complex and subtle web of symbolism and carried it through to completion simply isn't like him.
Plus, of course, we ignore the contribution of everyone else: Clarke, obviously, but also Wally Veevers and Douglas Trumbull who's input into the phyical aspects of the Discovery were huge and generally unrelated to bathroom floors. Were they all symbol-nuts too?
Next on the list of "things to ignore" are the physics: where exactly should a rocket have it's exhausts? Probably at the back. If you wanted to spin a space station to get artificial gravity how would ships dock? In the middle where there is no gravity and it's a lot easier generally (assuming the docking craft wears a condom, I suppose!).
And finally, because I need to go to bed, why 2001? Well, it could be that it's a reference to Zoraster returning in 9001 but it seems more likely that it's because in 1968 that seemed a looong way in the future but within the audience's possible life times and Clarke is intelligent to know that the new millenium started in 2001, not in 2000. So the connection with Zoraster is simply that both knew that milleniums start on the '01.
This sort of thing is fun to play with but given enough effort I imagine someone like Wheat could find more similarities between The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T and TSZ than he has for 2001.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
It's democracy after all...
Dave
Last year, I wrote a paper for a mythology class arguing that the mythological aspects of 2001 (the movie) were impossible to get across in the book. I did a fair amount of research and, while I understood that Kubrick and Clarke each had their own explanations for the details of their works, it was impossible for me to write this paper without bringing in my own 'reading' of the film. It was then that I modified the thesis statement of the paper - namely that the film was more effective than the movie because it left itself open to so many personal interpretations; the film allows us to project our own motives, views, and needs into the story. Because of this, the movie works as a mythology (whereas the book has to be more concrete, it is less able to be 'modified' later - it suffers the problems that mythologies which have been written down (e.g. The Bible) - they aren't allowed to change as people's needs change. The film, due to its vagueness, lack of dialogue, and (unlike nearly all major movies) lack of explanation, allows the viewer to come back to the movie time after time and read what they need to into the film.
I haven't read Wheat's book and I don't currently have any desire to do so. For me, the film is an effective mythology. Everytime I view it, it changes in meaning for me - it becomes a means for me to evaluate myself and the world around me. I guess the point I'm trying to make (if there is one), is that Wheat's book is essentially harmless and, because it is trying to say (like I said I haven't read it, so maybe I'm mistaken) that there are definitive explanations for the details in the movie, it is, by my estimation a mistaken reading. Regardless of what Kubrick wanted me to think of his film, it isn't up to him anymore - the film has been made and viewed by me and is now mine, in the sense that I have the freedom to interpret it any way I choose to. To me, this is the beauty of the film and the reason that any definitive interpretation of 2001 is nothing more than the viewer's reading of it.
However, I think that Wheat is simply wrong in a lot of what he says, both in his analysis of the film and in his response to the criticism.
Largely he defends his analysis on the grounds of his being able to see the "non-literal" symbolism of elements from the film, whereas Lampe is demanding a "literal" symbolism. I think that this is a mis-representation.
It is of course true that in literature we cannot take everything literally - to do so would make most great works meaningless, especially all poetic language. The human mind works in an associational manner, not a literal one; and great works of art are great precisely because they communicate with us on levels other than the literal.
This being said, I still think that a lot of the symbols Wheat chooses to see in 2001 are really just as Loony as Lampe points them out to be. How can I be so certain though, given that we want to look at the non-literal associational aspects of this work. Well quite simply. A symbol in a work of art has to be well-known enough that it is generally understandable by the audience, otherwise it ceases to be an element of the art, and merely the idiosyncratic associations of one individual.
A work of art, particularly something narative like a book or movie, must communicate, otherwise it is meaningless. This is true of both literal meanings and non-literal symbolism. If an artist puts elements into a work that are personally meanningful to him/herself but which aren't generally known to others than they can't reasonably expect anyone to understand or appreciate or even notice that these things exist. Therefore as a general rule artists don't do this, because it defeats the purpose of the art which is to express and communicate a meaning or message. It is true that some meanings and symbols might be visible only to people versed in a select culture or education, and their maybe hidden meanings that are only to be noticed by those with a special knowledge. But even in these circumstances it should be apparent that someone educated in field X will generally recognize references to X when they appear. If not than the art has failed.
So to say that something as obscure as a correlation between the year 2001, the number 9000 in the name Hal-9000 and the year related to Nietzche's Zarathustra ( 9001 ) are all a solid symbol is truly absurd. Even someone versed well in Nietzche would probably not notice this correlation, and therefore it seems very unlikely that this is intentional on the part of the film's creators. To say that any conceivable millenial year is a symbol for any other millenial year is absurd, not because it fundamentally can't be such a symbol, but that an audience isn't going to think that way unless the association is explicitly suggested to them by some other aspect of the film, which it isn't. Likewise to associate a hexagonal jet with bathroom tiles takes such an idiosyncratically unique perspective on such forms that it is pointless to work it into a film in a meaningful way.
Basically we see a lot of idiosyncratic personal association of Wheat's to these various elements, but to believe that because he has such an association therefore it must have been intentional on the part of Kubrick & Clarke is absurd. Given such criteria for literary analysis you can make up anything you like and have it be true.
One must have a literary criticism that is based on criteria that examines the art and the intentions the artist has to communicate through it. An expose of one man's personal associations to a piece of art might be interesting, but it has no claims to be anything more than that. This is not because of the nature of symbolism, but because of how we can realisticly attribute intention to a thing. If I had a personal association between a stop-sign and the death of my mother, it would be natural for me to feel sad when looking at a stop sign, but it would be psychosis for me to claim that the person who put the sign there wanted me to feel sad.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Obviously so. Despite the fact that there have been many, many interviews with Kubrick and Clarke about how they made the movie, and that Clarke wrote a very informative book The Lost Worlds of 2001 which was specifically about the process of how the movie and book emerged, you used none of that information.
The core criticism is not that some of your interpolations are fanciful or over-the-top, but that they are demonstrably wrong. Clarke and Kubrick have documented much of the process by which 2001 achieved its final form.
To take the only metaphor which Cliff accepted: Dave Bowman's name most definitely is not a reference to Odysseus. How do I know this? Because I read the damn source material and know that Clarke and Kubrick chose Bowman's name at a stage of the project when they expected the crew to survive and return to Earth.
Indeed, Cliff can't bring himself to recognize even some fairly literal symbols, including the ones representing hexagonal bothroom tiles.
And no duh, becuase the engine arrangement in Discovery most certainly isn't meant to harken to bathroom tiles; it is a sensible engineering solution which was probably approved by Kubrick after it originated with a model-maker or engineer (or combination thereof). Kubrick had a large staff of people making props for 2001 and they were largely out of the loop with Kubrick and Clarke, except for vague instructions that "we need a ship that could get to Jupiter" and "we need lunar excavation equipment." As the final form of the book and script continued to morph, there was a race to produce script fast enough to pace production, and also not to over-produce and trip over the evolving script.
Kubrick and Clarke did not sit around thinking up names that were anagrams of Meaningful Phrases or adding up Meaningful Numbers to get patterns. They were too busy to play games like that. That leaves us with the assertion deconstructionists always reach, which is that authors and artists don't do this stuff deliberately -- that these coincidences work themselves into artworks through some subconscious mechanism.
I might even buy that in some cases. But not 2001. The process of creating 2001 has been documented by its creators. To speculate on their hidden motives without taking that documentation into account (even if to refute it) is the height of irresponsibility. Imagine, we are supposed to accept that these poor authors were smart enough to make one of the most influential movies of all time but were too dumb to see these Very Important Symbols which are only visible to someone who has your advanced training in picking them apart! What chutzpah!
This screed reminds me a lot of the people who pore over Roulette and Baccarat scorecards looking for the hidden pattern that will reveal how to bet next. They find patterns, these people do. They find patterns all the time. Humans seem to excel at perceiving patterns in random noise. And I think you've just posted another excellent example of the phenomenon.
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