2001 - A Prophecy About US Foreign Policy and the Need to Change It?

Rating: 5/10 (2 October 2013)

Former liberal Democrat US Congressman Dennis Kucinich has tied the significance of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" to the aftermath of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. (If you want read it in his own words, google, 'Dennis Kucinich Restoring Hope for America's Future Through Developing a Culture of Peace" )
Kucinich suggests that the frenzied celebration of the ape-men victors after the battle over the rights to the water hole at the start of the film is not dissimilar to the feelings of national pride by US citizens after the President George W Bush "Iraq mission accomplished" speech. Kucinich goes on to suggest some more highly evolved response, such as an examination of mind set behind American foreign policy, would have been more appropriate. His sentiments are admirable, but he seems to ignore the significance of the recurring monolith of the film. His speech encompasses the reality of the destruction of two monoliths that actually occurred in 9/11/2001. But he seems to ignore the significance of the film's monolith, that appears to ape-men, the astronauts on the moon, and Dave, the astronaut seeking it on Jupiter but finding it in his own memories and life experience.
The people at IMDb have done a stirling job in coalescing the various contributions of their reviewers and the reluctant explanations by Kubrick into a workable explanation of what the film is all about, but I am not totally satisfied in what they have come up with. The conclusion seems to be that higher beings have placed a monolithic receiver on earth, an amplifier on the moon and a signal transmitter on Jupiter, to enable mankind to become more like them. Or, as Kubrick put it..."the hero is taken into a stargate - another dimension - into the presence of godlike entities - creatures of pure energy...his life passes before him... And he's reborn...(in a) room made of his own memories
Sounds like all those tired old UFO theories.
I find the Kucinich explication more satisfying, but the problem of the missing monolith remains.
So I sought my own interpretation in the life experience of Kubrick. I visited with Wikipedia to get some grist for the mill of my own heretical concoction.
Kubrick's agent, Sam Jaffe, fled the madness of the 1950's McCarthy House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and settled in London in 1959. Three years later, in 1962, Kubrick moved to England to film Lolita "because of easier financing and freedom from censorship".
He found a very pleasant working environment, moved into a castle and never left the place
...In 1964 he transformed a novel about nuclear war ( Red Alert) into the satirical film Dr. Strangelove According to his biographer, LoBrutto and others, "Kubrick was taking a bold and dangerous leap", as the topic at that time was "considered taboo" and "hardly socially acceptable"...The film stirred up much controversy and mixed opinions- a "discredit and even contempt for our whole defense establishment . . . the most shattering sick joke I've ever come across"...Historian and philosopher Lewis Mumford, decades later, "saluted" Kubrick for "having successfully utilized the only method capable of evading our national censor—relentless but hilarious satire" Kubrick himself once stated: "A satirist is someone who has a very skeptical view of human nature, but who still has the optimism to make some sort of a joke out of it. However brutal that joke might be."
Could "2001: A Space Odyssey" be a prophetic but similarly black exposition of the way in which the USA has degraded the admirable ideas of its founding fathers into the ape-man like violent aggression of its modern day rulers?
Could HAL, the computer, be acting in accordance with its programmers and their masters at the US Pentagon and State Department along with unpleasant cast of sociopaths Oliver Stone depicted in his film "JFK"?
"In the recorded message which plays after Dave has "lobotomized" HAL, Dr. Floyd reveals the computer has known the nature of the mission all along"
Was HAL's error a programmed precondition to killing the crew?
Could the 'powers that be' have decreed that people who seek some higher, better way of organizing society - the Kucinich quest if you will - should be blasted off into deep space and disposed of quietly, beyond the prying eyes of social/political critics and other malcontents?.
Could the black monolith be a symbolic depiction of being "born again", not in the debauched meaning given to that term by evangelical "Christians", but in some purer, more aesthetic , more ethical way.
" Kubrick and Clarke studied Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in order to find inspiration. From this mythological perspective, the hotel room (On Jupiter at the film's conclusion) can be seen as a symbolic womb where the hero goes through the process of death and rebirth - an essential part of the hero myth "
The post-production of the film obviously influenced George Lucas in manufacturing his Star Wars trilogy and in the Joseph Campbell thesis that the human stories deal with...
1 The hero's departure from home on a spiritual quest, in the company of a mentor, and often with a brief stopover "room" to gain extra powers. Think of the first Star Wars film
2 A death-rebirth atoning experience of reconciliation with a father figure. Think "The Empire Strikes Back"
3 The return of the enlightened hero to the world. Think "The Return of the Jedi"
I would like to expand upon this thesis, but IMDb space restrictions prohibit me from doing so. If you are interested google, "star wars peter henderson"