Jacob Goldberg: The Narcissistic Nexus and the Apollonian Epidemic Of Man In Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Reflexive Shards: The Narcissistic Nexus and the Apollonian Epidemic Of Man In Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey



General Electric, in its infinite wisdom, once decreed unto its masses, “Progress is our most important product” (Vonnegut 298). As the aroused rabbles of contentious naming, six-billion strong, would have it drawn, the idea of what constitutes progress is subject to infinite variances, views, and tastes (for “[a]ll of life is a dispute over taste and tasting” (Nietzsche)). In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), an accepted standard of progress is presented; and though its proponents declare this progressive era their copestone, Kubrick connotes such a vain fallacy as an Apollonian rut and utilizes the sounds, sights, and symbols of humanity’s grasp on space at the new millennium to illustrate its arrogant narcissism under the umbrageous, over-shadowing, philosophical majesty of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Übermensch ideal: “For [their] Snark was a Boojum, you see” (Carroll, par. 140).

Developing his discourse on human narcissism, Kubrick lumps all human progress, from moon-watching, bone-slinging ape-men to cookie cutter, anhedonic space-men (Miller, par. 15), within the sequence dubbed “The Dawn of Man”: “even in the year 2001, we remain simply at “the dawn of man,” still tossing our technology, albeit of a more complicated sort, into the sky” (Telotte 102). The comparisons of space-men to ape-men are numerous: the “deadly” alabaster bone-shaft’s likeness to the floating space notion (in color and form) that matches its cut, both of which descending in flight (Miller, par. 4); the bewildering reactions to the monolith’s discovery by both the ape-men (on the Earth) and the space-men (on the moon) poignantly punctuated by György Ligeti’s “Requiem” whose “music is almost too profound for the clumsy and trepid kinaesthetic response of the hominids to the irresistible black surfaces of the monolith […] the music is an expression of the inexpressible” (Roberte, par. 8): “The astronauts respond just as the apes did 4 million years before” (Roberte, par. 15), meaning that neither man-beast nor man could sum up or surmise the monolith’s presence: it is beyond instinctual and rational comprehension, beyond the instinctual programs of pre-historical ape-men, and beyond the rational edifice of modern humanity. Comparison even ventures beyond “The Dawn of Man”, with the prologue of Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (“Thus Spake Zoroaster”, Nietzsche’s dithyrambic, extolling introduction of the Übermensch ideal, for “man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman […] he is a bridge and not a goal” (Nietzsche)), playing both during the ape-men’s discovery of the bone as a weapon, and at the film’s end, when astronaut Bowman is transmogrified into the “star-child”, or Übermensch, allegedly the next evolution of man (Booker 87). In comparing the space-men to the ape-men, Kubrick shatters any measure of pride goaded by humanity’s “current” and future status: it is not a plateau or fountainhead upon the mountainous trek to civilized advancement and achievement; it is, at best, a speed bump on the road to the Übermensch.

Even further debasing humanity’s accomplished arrogance, Kubrick depicts future society as dystopic, deferential, impotent, bland, and vicarious: an almost anomic fleet of anhedonic Snark-hunters proudly questing for false progress:

“They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.” (Carroll, par. 132)

The characters in the film are beyond mundane in their tepidity: “The first time I saw 2001, I couldn’t tell the astronauts apart” (Venturini, par. 1); they are prefabricated, cookie-cutter characters that immediately spark the inquiry, “in the future, will the birth canal be modified into a die-cast mold of Jack Kingston?” But the banality is burrowed deep beneath mere appearances of “blank composure” and “uniform boyish-smoothness” (Miller, par. 28). A perpetual, frozen equanimity, perdured by the obstinate propriety that dominates the social fabric, seems to degrade any colloquy to crass cant banter and “meaningless reflexive courtesies” (Miller, par. 19). The sheer “general linguistic poverty of the denizens of 2001” (Booker 84) illustrates not only the shriveling need and near-negation of basic human social needs, but as well reflects on the routinization of a societal cog’s very existence. All relationships become impersonal, and not merely the simple hat-tips, nods, waves, winks, and how-are-yous, but even the social bonds between a father and his daughter and a husband and his wife. Mark Crispin Miller avers that “Floyd’s home is merely one more empty module” (par. 23); his $1.70 Bell brand telescreen-mediated conversation with his daughter, who is sufficiently titled “Squirt”, is something far from meaningful, endearing communication: “Every human need is […] indirectly and laboriously served by a vast complex of arrangements […] that not only takes up everybody's time, but also takes us all away from one another, even as it seems to keep us all ‘communicating’” (Miller, par. 24), for “even the most personal of relationships in this future society have been reduced to the status of mere economic commodities” (Booker 85). Space-man Poole experiences a similar “interpersonal” situation when contacted on the Discovery by his parents via recorded message, which he merely shrugs off, for mediated communication can never satisfy physical proximity. One can see such today with the swarms of cell-phone producers and consumers and the overwhelming use of e-mail that drives certain curmudgeonly traditionalists mad. Where as the ape-men utilized abstract thought to serve necessity (to procure meat, protect water holes, and defend against pre-historic leopard beasts), modern humanity utilizes abstract thought to distance itself further from necessity, almost as if to separate itself from nature entirely, what Eiseley names as, “his march is away from his origins, and even his art is increasingly abstract and self-centered” (148).

Even sex in 2001: A Space Odyssey has become “self-centered”, with only a “quickie” being permitted in the daunting, ceaseless mechanizations of men married to their jobs (Miller, par. 20). According to Miller, sex is relegated to the mechanized marvels of man’s abstract acuity, the spaceships and space stations that swirl, swing, and pirouette with Johann Strauss’s “The Blue Danube”, the archetypal, ubiquitous ballroom-dancing number, which fervidly elates these machines to intercourse, “[who] […] interpenetrate as freely as Miltonic angels” (par. 20). Machines, indeed, emerge to seem more human than humans.

Throughout the film, humanity is outclassed, “out-stripped”, and enslaved by its Frankensteinian mechanical contrivances (Booker 87), objects (if one could call them that) that echo Moloch more than Robbie the Robot. Mark Martel concurs, offering edacious observations of the lunar docking bay being “a great esophagus/cave, it’s outer dome the predator’s teeth”, the space station seats resembling “red tongues” (though perhaps this is merely Kubrick’s standard use of red and white color combinations; of course, the two ideas can be reconciled), the Discovery’s pod doors being “mouths, with teeth like design rampant”, etc (par. 37). Humanity is being eaten by its own creations; it has oppressed itself in ignorance now dependent on the machines, without much of any logical independence. When Floyd asks “Squirt” what she would like for her birthday, she demands the very thing before her at that moment, “a telephone”: her imagination has been warped by the stupefying advances of technology; when Floyd himself is traveling across the scenic horizons of the moon, planted in a monolithic mystery of the past, present, and future that would confound and confine any mind into the rending realm of ponderous depth and reflection, he lacks any contemplative or reflective function, a commodity superseded by the baffling existential conundrum of what form of meat-synthetic did they put into my sandwich (though, is he even thinking about that) (Miller, par. 28); when a problem erupts on the Discovery’s mission to Jupiter over the possibility of a dysfunctional HAL 9000 computer, mission control checks in with its own HAL 9000 for a speedy resolution. HAL merely responds with testaments to his perfection: computers are flawless; if there is any flaw, it is a human flaw. HAL can even sing, a song brimming with sentimentality (the first thing he was taught to do/the first function it was programmed to execute) (Booker 86); no other creature in the film does that, or probably can do that either. Bowman crafts sketches, which HAL, upon requesting to see, finds quite impressive; though the sketches seem more like replicates than imaginative recreations (Toulouse Lautrec would have a schizophrenic breakdown). Only when Bowman disconnects HAL, a scene in which the character begs for its life, relinquishing the Faustian bargain he was subsumed in by his inculcated ideal of Snarky progress and the whoring of his fore-fathers to that technological progress, can Bowman swallow his ambiguous human arrogance and decide to take the burden of thought and logic (and emotion) upon his own swollen cord tip (Telotte 102), and thus remedy humanity from its Apollonian epidemic.

Before this remedy, before he is unplugged, HAL, cinematographically, represents the only subjective P.O.V. throughout the film (aside from certain perspective shots during short lived flights of passion: meeting the moon monolith; unplugging HAL/Bowman) (Martel, par. 30), he is the only creature with a conscious. He tints his universe in a passionate red; his visual scope is an all-encompassing (wide-angle lens) 180 degrees, identical to a human’s proper perspective; his gazes bear the standard Kubrickian “glare” (evident in Alex at the beginning of A Clockwork Orange (1971), Leonard Lawrence/Gomer Pile in Full Metal Jacket (1987), Jack Torrance in The Shining (1980): a physiognomy almost bestial in its inference) (Martel, par. 30), though all of this distorts HAL’s perfection (Martel, par. 33), debunking both humanity’s faith in technology as well as humanity’s faith in its power to create a perfect technology, or, by itself, evolve beyond its human limitations. Capitalizing on and exacerbating HAL’s technological terror, Martel proclaims that Hal is symbolic of the camera, a concept that both colligates his existence to that of a media-controlled dystopia in the future (an oppression further enervating humanity, for “the camera can lie and kill” (Martel, par. 34)), and criticizes the limits of the camera and thus the limits of a mediated projection (just as limited as any Bell telescreen communication). Yet, in being a symbolic camera, HAL as well participates in one action dead-head modern man can hardly fathom, the act of self-reflection. In filming HAL, Kubrick illustrates HAL’s own reflections upon his being (Martel, par. 28-32), a quality also elucidated in HAL’s verbal reflections, inquiring of Poole and Bowman whether he has feelings, and capping it all off as he lay dying with, “I can feel it” (Booker 86). Machine proceeds and rules man.

Humanity’s ocular aperture is simple and depleted in comparison to HAL. Where HAL owns a full 180 degrees of vision, the space pods that Bowman and Poole utilize on the Discovery are narrow tunnels of obstinate pertinacity, a singular manifestation on right and wrong, or, more befitting, correct and incorrect. Humanity’s views are callose where HAL’s are, though monochromatically jaded, vast and manifold, provided by a console-controlled phalanx of eight cameras skulking about the Discovery: omniscient, however still a distorted construct of man (Martel, par. 33).

Humanity’s callose world-view is merely a product of its ideology: a system obsessed with limitations. Everything must be pushed to its limit. The human being must be its most efficient. The human being must be the superior consumer in the planet’s epic taxonomic hierarchy. The human being must be able to own itself and all before and beyond it. The human being must be the best. Yet, while being so bent on the best, the human superlative refuses to acknowledge its bestial limitation. The best, though be it the apical Olympus of accomplishments, is still just another brick in the wall, just as much the tortuous bends of cantankerous Cocytus as it is the illustrious release of elysian Empyrean. Humanity is but a bridge from the vermiculate vex of inability to the superlative, flexing thews of supreme, tangible acuity.

Crossing the bridge is an essential step in the evolution of humanity. On one plateau, there are throngs of impotent ape-men, too torn by hunger and the talons of leopard beasts to ponder pleasure, and in a noetic Nod where as to find any means of advancement. Ape-men are all action, but not a drop of thought. Their one redeeming quality however is their instinctual fervor, through which they eventually, once the monolith has secured their survival with humanity’s ever-treasured ace-in-the-hole abstract thought, may merit some form of pleasure. On the opposite plateau, there is a being endowed with the Dionysian bliss brimming from latent ape-men and with a perfect abstract acuity, and pleasing, apposite concoction that may merit the ultimate, or at least a penultimate bliss: such a beast is the Star-Child/Übermensch. Strung between to two plateaus, over an Apollonian abyss of a precipice, is humanity feeling out its thoughtful fortitude and attempting to push it to a superlative. Unfortunately, humanity falls off, and seems to coldly descent into an insensate, recondite, oblivious disposition. Such is the state of humanity in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Miller, par. 13): a bridge not a goal, and thus undeserving of its self-inculcated pomp and prestige as such.

Kubrick treats humanity for what it is, just another link in the change. Though as a species it seems to dominate the modern world, humanity is not the pinnacle of evolution and its ideas of progress are illusory and arrogant. 2001: A Space Odyssey is beyond the idea of space travel and technological advancement; its themes blossom differently then Destination Moon (1950) and Conquest of Space (1955) (Telotte 100), movies that act to mesmerize with the marvels of technology and hopefully ambitious tag-lines as “See how it will happen – in your lifetime!” (Conquest of Space). Rather than glorifying technology, Kubrick ventures to catechize it in a harsher light, revealing the pains to come from progress “in your lifetime!” and how they are nothing with which to be pleased. Humanity is enamored with its technology, which inebriates it into accepting its own disconnection and desensitization, as well as figuring the Apollonian epidemic that has ascribed its Earthly domination to be the absolute fountainhead of its existence. Yet,

“In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He softly and suddenly vanished away—
For [their] Snark was a Boojum, you see.” (Carroll, par. 140)

According to Nietzsche, according to Kubrick, such self-aggrandizement is trite, narcissistic none-sense.

Author’s Comments: It is all rather regurgitated; but, this is 2006.

Works Cited

Booker, M. Keith. Alternate Americas: Science Fiction Film and American Culture. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006.

Carroll, Lewis. The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits. 1876. 2 Dec. 2006

Conquest of Space. Internet Movie Database. 11 Dec. 2006

Eiseley, Loren. The Unexpected Universe. Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1969.

Martel, Mark. Another Odyssey: Design and Meaning in 2001. The Kubrick Site. 4 Dec. 2006

Miller, Mark Crispin. “2001: A Cold Descent.” Sight & Sound. 4.1 (1994). The Kubrick Site. 22 Nov, 2006

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Brainy Quote. 3 Dec. 2006

Roberte, Dariusz. 2001: A critical analysis of the film score. The Kubrick Site. 20 Nov. 2006

Telotte, J. P. Science Fiction Film. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Venturini, Sandra. A Progressive Analysis of 2001. The Kubrick Site. 3 Dec. 2006

Vonnegut, Kurt. Breakfast of Champions. New York: Random House, 1999.