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SF-LIT  December 1996

SF-LIT December 1996

Subject:

2001 (among other topics)

From:

Richard Collier <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Science Fiction and Fantasy Listserv <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 4 Dec 1996 13:34:35 -0700

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (120 lines)

Well, I guess my comments on "2001" pushed a few buttons again -- which
is good, I suppose, since it sparks discussion.  I'd like to respond to
a few of the comments made recently on the list; I only hope Colleen
will permit this to occur -- I'll try to build bridges between "2001"
and other SF interpretive concepts.

1. I emphatically did not say that the "concept of a savior" is ridiculous,
only that the idea that someone/thing will save us from our own collective
self-destructive urges is facile wishful thinking.  Humanity is in a
tough spot historically -- if we keep on trashing our planet, we can't
possibly survive for more than fifty years without major changes in
our sociology.  Another and perhaps likely possibility is extinction.
The only beings who are going to get us out of this jam are ouselves --
to think otherwise is to fail to take responsibility for making serious
changes in our social and economic behaviour, and to hope for a miracle
-- or for a paradisical afterlife.  Such notions are precisely why Karl
Marx labelled most religions of his time as "the opiate of the masses."
Today, sadly, there are people -- lots of them -- who pin their hopes
for a future on "The Rapture", a sort of second coming at the Millennium.
Many of these people fervently pray for nuclear war to purify the planet
of its filth.   It's this kind of "Cargo Cult" thinking that frightens
me.

Remember, too, that I asserted this was Clarke's view, not necessarily
Kubrick's (although, given the nature of the film, he seems to buy
into this point) -- Clarke is especially visible in this regard in
"Childhood's End" with the absorption of the elect of humanity (its
children) into the Overmind while the rest of us perish in fire.

And if all this is a satire, well, then I missed it, and so did most
viewers of the film.  Sorry, but satire has to have more clues of
exaggeration in order to be recognized as such.

2. Sterility & slowness -- certainly this is a personal judgment, but
one that is (and was) reflected by critical opinion.  One commentator
ca. 1970 said that 2001 was a particularly good film if viewed while
stoned, but then (he continued) one would probably feel similarly
about Dr. Doolittle and detergent ads.  For me, if a film doesn't
develop character, then it should develop something else, even slam-
bam action.  And "2001" doesn't.  Oh sure, there's some fear and
surprise in some of the characters at odd intervals, but no interesting
character portrayal or psychological insight or even a sense that
these people can establish significant relationships with each other.
I know, of course, that Kubrick can deal effectively with character,
but in this film he doesn't.  And if "2001 embodies too cosmic
a vision to be concerned with individuals", then we've hit the nail
of my dislike for the film squarely on the head:  sacrificing
individuals and individuality for any sort of grand design is, frankly,
the essence of fascism, and it scares the hell out of me.
"Childhood's End", for example, has many dark, fascist impulses in it,
which is one of the reasons I teach it...but only to disambiguate
the implications, not to endorse them.

3. Social Darwinism:  I'm not terribly concerned with the precise
line of demarcation between Social and Biological Darwinism simply
because the line between the social and the biological is very
fuzzy and difficult to define (i.e. we keep hearing about the
identification of genes for obsessive/compulsive behaviour and
of twins separated at birth who have identical politcal beliefs).
And this is perhaps the point Kubrick/Clarke is making in the
ape-war vignette.

More importantly, it is the monolith that sparks this evolutionary
leap, not something innate in the apes.  True, the tool use does
lead to rational thought which leads to technology; however, the
intervening variable is the tool as weapon.  The apes could have,
for example, been stimulated to use the tools to dig the waterhole
deeper and release more water so that both tribes might survive.
But Kubrick chose not to interpret the tools in that fashion; in
fact, he and Clarke again bought in to a pervasive right-wing
assumption about evolution, survival, and social development:
that it is collective violence (war, in other words) that produces
advancement (interestingly enough this idea is reflected currently
in "Babylon 5"'s portrayal of the Shadows' ideology).

Given this assumption, I'm not at all sure how benign the ending
of the film is supposed to be taken.  After all, it's the same
bloody monoliths that act as evolutionary jumpstarters in each
of the three vignettes and all three monoliths were put in place
simultaneously; since they are identical in form, why should they
not be identical in function?

4. Rocket design:  certainly Kubrick was influenced by the actual
constraints placed on the architecture of rockets by the physics
of the environment they were to travel through.  And there is good
reason for rockets that travel through the atmosphere to appear
sleek and phallic.  But art does not necessarily have to reflect
reality, especially when we are dealing with SF and SF of the
future.  In films of the '50s there was an overwhelming adherence
to a very standard design for rockets, and this design was
concerned with imaging for the audience far more than what might
have been the understood reality of rocketry at that time.

This is especially important when a film/book deals with space
travel in the future:  much of what we might take for granted about
the physical restraints on rocket design today may not necessarily
apply in the future, particularly in regard to rockets built
and flown only in outer space.  In these cases, authors and film
directors make choices (and I assume that because they are masters
of their craft that these are conscious, deliberate, and clearly
thought out choices) about design, and much of what goes into
making these choices will be ruminations about what that design
will suggest to viewers on symbolic, subliminal, and even metaphys-
ical levels.

Let me suggest a little experiment:  watch the film again, and view
the spaceships as morphologically related to the apes' bone-weapons;
what does that do to one's understanding of the film?  Now watch
closely all the docking sequences, keeping in mind that, yes, there
is no human sexuality in the film.  Note that with just a slight
shift of vision, these docking sequences become machine mating
rituals.  Remember that these machines are more sophisticated
and just slightly tamer forms of the hominids' bone-weapons, and
then ask, "I wonder what is going on here to influence how I
interpret this film at a less than conscious level?"  And remember,
too, that Kubrick et al. made deliberate choices that resulted
both in what you see and what you don't see in the film.

rick c.

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