2001: A Clockwork Space Oddity?
Kubrick's iconic film is a metaphor for our current state of social division
Remember Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking movie 2001: A Space Odyssey? Unless you are a Baby Boomer, you may not even know about the film. It was released during the Summer of Love in 1968. But it was way ahead of its time. In fact, so much so that it was a critical failure. People walked out during the Hollywood premier, because the film was so abstract.
Kubrick, teaming with science fiction author and icon Arthur C. Clarke and special effects guru Douglas Trumbull, produced a visual odyssey unlike any film ever made to that point in history. Some of the special effects had to be invented to fulfill Kubrick’s vision.
After a very slow start, and some blistering criticism, the film eventually became the year’s biggest movie, garnering four Academy Awards. As the 60s led to the expanded use of psychoactive drugs and the growing collusion of video with music, Kubrick’s extended MTV-like musical video captured the imagination of hippies, film students and scientists as well.
The story is essentially about man’s obsession with space travel and the interface between technology and humanity, and the constraints of mortality and time.
But Kubrick made the movie an orgy of conflict, a crazy montage of color, light, sound and image. The dialogue is sparse and obtuse. Much of it is the conflict between Dave, the lead astronaut and his computer companion HAL.
Recent advances in digital technology and computer enhanced compositions should make any space film over fifty years old look silly. Not 2001: A Space Odyssey! Kubrick used every trick in the available book of film science to project future advances in telemetry, gravity suits, communications and computerization.
To me, the film is a metaphor for our current state of social division, of rejection of authority and subjugation of humanity to technology. The long trip into space reflects our country’s 275 year struggle to create a new form of self-government, to free ourselves from the restraints of British colonialism, and our current state of civil political upheaval and inner conflict.
Dave and his noble crew, knowing they have little chance of returning alive, confront the challenge of interstellar space travel, just as our founding fathers confronted the challenge of inventing an entirely new and untried form of self government. They do it with honor and commitment. The everpresent HAL, who represents the all-knowing aristocracy, the authority of knowledge, and the interests of the state, realizes that the humans cannot get along without him, so he decides he can get along without them.
To HAL, humans are just an obstacle to efficiency.
They demand consensus, failsafe mechanisms and protocols. HAL realizes he is the smartest thing onboard, so he sets out to cleanse the project before it falls short of its intended mission. HAL decides he is going to eliminate the weak links to success, the mortal humans.
HAL is the Progressive Leader, always thinking about the outcome, dispatching the inconvenience of humanity, and blaming any shortcomings on the operators (the people) because they don’t know any better.
Deep into the journey through outer space, Captain Dave is forced to disable HAL, the onboard computer that directs all of the technology. He has to choose who will be the beneficiary of the odyssey, humans or robots?
This is a metaphor for the clash between progressives and conservatives. The former thinks they are the smart ones and can better steer the ship, so they struggle to disarm the opposition. Conservatives are Captain Dave, who initially respected HAL for his quick and creative suggestions, but soon realizes the artificial intelligence is a deadly threat to his existence and the success of the project. Conservatives trust history and though they are eager to explore the future, they are not willing to go charging into it based solely on scientific theory.
When HAL pleads with the Captain Dave, who is gradually disassembling his intelligence modules, “Just what do you think you are doing, Dave?” I found it haunting, because it so closely parallels our cultural dilemma: When we watch terrorists slaughter innocent civilians, or psychopathic young men gun down school children with high powered assault rifles, we have to ask ourselves, with all of our wealth and technology why are we so helpless to stop random carnage coming from our children. When we see progressive solutions implimented, only to collapse under their own weight, we have to ask, “Just what do you think you are doing, Dave?”
When I see politicians declaring American cities as sanctuary for illegal immigrant criminals, I have to ask, “Just what do you think you are doing Dave?”
As a culture we argue about policy, about budgets, about protocols, and inevitably make little or no progress. We are conflicted with competing solutions: should we ban guns or fight guns with more guns? Should people use the same bathroom so as to avoid making others feel uncomfortable? Is it discriminatory to suggest people should refrain from sex with minors? Is it wrong to execute people who execute people? Is all of our wealth and convenience really good, or is there some underlying cultural disease that is killing us slowly?
Who is good and who is evil?
Are we the Captain Dave? Or are we the omniscient computer?
Kubrick went on to release A Clockwork Orange just a few years later. It also challenged our notions of humanity and authority. Nearly five decades after its release, the film feels recent. He accurately predicted current trends toward extreme nihilism, tribalism and dehumanization, of physical disfigurement and self-degradation as expressions of individualism, and mass tranquilization as a law enforcement tool, for social stabilization and for recreation. Themes he broached in the early seventies are everyday news stories in 2018. In the film, he used Russians as a foil to Western social progress, extreme sex as a weapon, and popular entertainment as a propaganda tool.
Kubrick touches all of the bases in his dystopian hell: the roving gangs of zombie-like psychopaths (Islamic terrorists and inner city gangs), the gender confusion and psychological conflict and disaffection of feminized men, and extreme anger and turmoil generated by broken and disengaged families, or of veterans of war or of football, and the tendency of government to resort to authoritarianism and brutality to homogenize society.
The overall mood of A Clockwork Orange is that elitists will always want to perfect humanity. They will forsake religion, because it is considered an illusion and is in direct competition for the souls of the population. Government will instead turn to science to find solutions to mankind’s restless and dangerous tendencies. People like Alex (the lead character in the film) starts out as a brute, nearly finds redemption, then returns to his violent and abusive character, will never be cured, so he must be managed by high tech police forces.
Kubrick, who was viewed as an Orwellian libertine, reflects my current view of society: our eyes are too big for our stomachs.
We bite off more than we can chew and invest too much trust in government to fix everything. Then when it disappoints us, we turn to government again, to try another tactic to fix it. It is an abusive relationship of interdependence and self-inflicted pain. We keep hitting our collective heads against the wall, then wonder why society keeps struggling to keep the peace and provide equanimity.
Where we once used family discipline and self-restraint, community churches, social pressures and shame, to influence and enforce community standards, we now have laws for everything. We enforce them with financial pressures, fines and fees, or through threats of litigation, or in many cases incarceration. Where A Clockwork Orange described forced viewing of indoctrination videos, we send our kids to expensive colleges where they are trained in the finer points of politically correct behavior through years of groupthink collaborations.
Kubrick will always be remembered as one of America’s most iconic movie making geniuses, but he was also considered a brute and an enigma; no one really understood his politics or his motivations, other than he wanted to break filmmaking ground and entertain people.
On both counts, he succeeded, but beyond that, he projected some disturbing ideas about where our society was headed just a half century ago.