2001: A Postmodern Odyssey

On average, Stanley Kubrick made probably two to three movies per decade during his career as a screenwriter. Yet, the few he did make are classics. My two favorite are from the 60s; they are (1) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and (2) 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I was well into adulthood before the Cold War ended, so as a kid, I always lived under the fear of complete nuclear holocaust. Being a satiric look at America’s fears following the Cuban missile crisis, Strangelove is one of my favorites because it allows me to laugh at the fear that always seemed to be in the back of my mind as a kid.

However, of all the Kubrick movies, my all-time favorite is 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Kubrick could’ve easily digressed into the nihilism of his 1960s, progressive contemporaries. Some may mistake 2001 as having a nihilistic flavor, but it does not. We may NOT know what Dave found when he reached Jupiter aboard the S.S. Discovery guided by the Hal-9000 computer, but he found something. Following the movie's Los Angeles premiere, on April 4, 1968, Rock Hudson left the theatre saying, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?” Hudson’s remark is exactly the kind of result for which Kubrick aims in his movies. In fact, Kubrick’s co-writer, Arthur Clarke, once said, “If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered.”

The movie begins with the discovery of an artificial monolith by a group of prehistoric apes. This mysterious black slab supposedly conveys a measure of intelligence to these prehistoric creatures that eventually evolve into modern humans (the intelligence behind the intelligence). In the next scene, we fast forward a few million years to the end of the twentieth century when a similar monolith is discovered on the moon. Remember, in 1968, the year of 2001’s release, the U.S. space program was only a year away from landing a man on the moon, so the excavation scene that takes place on the moon in the movie is understood as a natural progression of moon exploration. Of course, moon missions fizzled out just a few years after they began, so 2001 turns out to be a not-so-realistic look at the future of space exploration.

The monoliths create a problem for humanity. They’re not man-made, but they’re not natural either. Thus, something is out there, so a mission to Jupiter is to be carried out in search of the unknown “something”. Other movies from this era include The Graduate (1967) and Easy Rider (1969); both are classic examples of the nihilism found in that era’s movies because nothing is resolved in the end making “nothingness” itself the theme. However, 2001 is refreshingly different. I am certain that nothing is resolved in the end, but when the movie ends we are still keenly aware that “something” (the opposite of nothing) is still out there. Unlike the nihilistic movies of the era, 2001 has as its theme “somethingness”.

A worthless sequel to 2001 was made in 1984 entitled, 2010. The sequel supposedly answered the questions left from 2001. This is very unfortunate because 2010 is NOT a Kubrick film. Thus, 2010 is counterfeit; a fake; a perfect example of 1980s excess... wanting everything now including concrete answers to the art that we were too shallow to understand or appreciate.

Because 2001 doesn’t resolve anything but does leave us with the idea of “somethingness”, I am going to go out on a limb and declare 2001 to be the first popular postmodern movie. I haven’t read this about 2001 anywhere although others may have reached the same conclusion without my knowing them or coming across them. Now, having read my bold declaration concerning 2001, you all are probably laughing out loud right now. After all, postmodernism wasn’t officially launched until after the hippie movement... right? Well, I’m convinced that Kubrick was ahead of his time.

In the 1960s (as well as the entire modern era), our savior was suppose to be technology. If anything could find the answers to the questions created by the monoliths in 2001, it would be technology and technological advancement. Therefore, in the movie, we are introduced to the HAL-9000 computer; this is the instrument that will allow man to carrying out his mission and find the answers to life’s ultimate questions. HAL stands for Heuristic ALgorithmic computer, but if you increment each letter of "HAL", you end up with "IBM". This connection with IBM seems purposeful given all the explicit references to other corporate brands in the movie such as TWA (offering non-stop service to the moon), Whirlpool, RCA, and the Bell System (pre-AT&T days) to name a few.

Unfortunately, HAL doesn’t get the job done. HAL doesn’t just fail; rather, he/she/it actually sabotages the mission. Kubrick teaches us that technology is not only incapable of providing answers to life’s ultimate questions but it actually becomes our own undoing. I find such thinking to be rather “postmodern” even though the movie premieres in 1968 (the pre-postmodern years). And isn’t it interesting that when the real year, 2001, came around, our own aeronautical technology was used as a weapon against us on 9/11 (and don’t forget that decades after we reached the moon, we can’t even keep our space shuttles in orbit here at home). I believe Kubrick pegged us long before the term, postmodern, was used to describe us.

Despite HAL’s meltdown, Dave, the lone surviving astronaut, manages to disconnect HAL and press onward. The last we hear of HAL, he/she/it is singing the song, “Daisy Bell”, as a slow death comes at the hands of Dave.

Whatever it is that is out there, Dave finds it, and we have no clue as to what it is, and Kubrick makes no attempt to explain it. At the end of the movie, most of us are frustrated, and we echo the words of Rock Hudson: “What the heck (Baptist version) was that?” But this is NOT nihilism because something is out there.

The “somethingness” that is unexplainable and to some extent unreachable fits postmodern thought perfectly. The movie’s message conveys that there is something, but we don’t know what it is, and we can’t know what it is. Yes, Dave seems to have reached it, but there was still nothing resolved in the end, and we weren’t even given the courtesy of seeing the connection between the ending and the monoliths that we see in the beginning.

Fortunately, the postmodern dilemma illustrated in Stanly Kubrick’s 2001, isn’t a dilemma for Christianity. We are not only aware of “somethingness” but we know who He is and we know the way to Him... I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6).

Oh! By the way, there is another Stanly Kubrick film, Full Metal Jacket, which probably serves as the single most reason why I’m not down at Parris Island with my blogger teammate, Capt. Wells. I bet that movie was a recruiter’s nightmare.