2001: A Space Odyssey

By Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clark

Thus Spake Clarke and Kubrick

Satire or prophecy; a manifesto for the future, or a Frankenstein-esque cautionary tale; karmic imagery of peace and lover, or a tale of the eternal capacity for destruction; monstrous machines or human error? People have found many meanings, from both book and film. Some have found none. Rock Hudson fumed as he stormed out of the cinema, "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about!" The film, as mentioned is particularly open to subjective analysis: each and image has been seen as significant in some way or another, and the endless interpretations could not possibly be contained in this Guide. However, whilst Kubrick was very much allowing for the subjectivity of audience response, there is a clear central narrative arc that is sign-posted in both book and film - albeit often subtextually. As Kubrick said, "If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed", but sometimes the only way to film a message is symbolically, as a trail of visual and audio clues. For the movie-goer, clue number one comes in the opening sequence, and the solution to the conundrum of 2001 is the work of Friedrich Nietzsche.

The film opens with the sun rising above the crescent earth, accompanied by the opening fanfare from Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spake Zarathustra", 1896). The work is a tone poem homage to the philosophy of Nietzsche. The music represents the wise man Zarathustra stepping "into the presence of the Sun" one morning and descending from a mountain where he has been for many years to teach his philosophy to the people. And in 2001, the sun rises above the Earth (as it does above the monolith before each instance of transformation), and aliens descend from space to teach the beginnings of their intelligence to the man-apes.

The book Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85) by Nietzsche presents the idea that one day mankind will be surpassed by the "ubermench", (the superman or "beyond-man"): "I teach you beyond-man. Man is something that shall be surpassed... Beyond-man is the significance of earth." This is in fact a preoccupation of Kubrick's that can also be found in his films Dr Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange, but it is never clearer than in 2001. The Nietzschean idea grew from the Darwin's discoveries and theories of the mid-nineteenth century. Nietzsche, like many after Darwin, perceived life as a struggle for existence in which the fittest survive, strength is the only virtue, and weakness the only failing. He believed that the evolution of man would pass ultimately through three stages: that of primitive man or ape, modern man, and ultimately superman. "What with man is the ape?" he writes. "A joke or a sore shame. Man shall be the same for the superman, a joke or a sore shame. Ye have made your way from worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once ye were apes, even now man is ape in a higher degree than any ape." Or as Douglas Adams once put it, "Earth-men are not proud of their ancestors, and never invite them round to dinner." Man is but a bridge between ape and superman: "Man is a rope connecting animal and beyond-man - a rope over a precipice... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in man is that he is a transition and a destruction." However, to achieve the status of superman, man must exert his will "a will to procreate or a drive to an end, to something higher and further."

According to Nietzsche, the spirit of man is derived from the essence of two gods: Dionysus and Apollo. Dionysus, known also as Bacchus, is the god of wine and revelry, of vegatation and nature, who according to tradition, died each winter and was reborn in the spring. He is connected with the joy of action, of ecstatic emotion and inspiration, of instinct and adventure, of song, dance and drama. Apollo on the other hand, whilst a gifted musician and athlete, was represented as a god of peace and leisure, of aesthetic emotion and intellectual contemplation. Apollonian is taken to mean 'harmonious, measured, ordered, or balanced in character'. He is connected with logic and philosophy, painting, sculpture and epic poetry.

With this in mind, primitive man is seen as Dionysian in spirit: led by instincts and living in the moment, but lacking intellectual abilities. Modern man of Apollo, however, has his instincts suppressed by progress, religion, socialism, democracy and so on. Nietzsche was harshly critical of such things, and had contempt for sluggish, subdued modern man. And despite modern man's supposed wisdom, he is forever at the mercy of human error. The ageing Bowman who smashes the glass is still "human, all too human". Incidentally, Apollo was a master archer, or bowman. And the name of the rockets that took men to the moon: Apollo.

For Nietzsche, the superman would be a move back to the Dionysian spirit: "A return to nature, although it is not really a going back but an ascent - up into the high, free, even terrible nature and naturalness." The Dionysian spirit that has died in the winter of modern man will be reborn in the spring of the superman. The parallels between Moon-Watcher and the Star-Child have already been mentioned: the matching sentiments of "he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something" suggest creatures of the moment, of action and of impulse. Whilst Moon- Watcher is only able to utilise the power of a bone-weapon, Star-Child is able to detonate a nuclear weapon: "He put forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief, false dawn to half the sleeping globe." Nietzsche writes, "The spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world." Bowman the astronaut lost to the world on his many million mile voyage, returns to earth with new powers. A title of another Nietzsche book, The Will to Power, also springs to mind, a will that the philosopher believed mankind lacked, a deficiency masked by traditional philosophies, religion and morality.

But man must will the superman into being before he can exert that will. Whether or not Bowman wills the Star-Child into existence is open for debate. Clarke's novel tells of Bowman crossing vast interstellar distances through the Star Gate (Nietzsche: "In the mountains the shortest way is from summit to summit: but for that thou needest long legs.") and of a teaching process by the monolith. The aliens appear to be willing a rather more passive Bowman on to the next stage and "when he needed guidance in his first faltering steps, it would be there." However Kubrick's Bowman, with the final breaths of his old life, reaches out his hand towards the monolith as the sun rises above it. "Even as one David Bowman ceased to exist, another became immortal." (Clarke). Or as Zarathustra says to his disciples: "I love him who willeth the creation of something beyond himself and then perishes." Nietzsche also says the superman will be like a child, begotten of a Dionysian rebirth, because "the child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning." To Nietzsche, the human child was nearer to the superman than the grown man, as it was of a Dionysian spirit, before societal conditioning softens it out of him.

Nietzsche talks of man giving "birth to a dancing star", and Star-Child Bowman is now able to travel at will throughout the universe: "With the instincts of three million years, he now perceived that there were more ways than one behind the back of space. The ancient mechanisms of the Star Gate had served him well, but he would not need them again." He is now a god-like being of seemingly limitless power and capacity. As Nietzsche writes, "I learned to walk: now I let myself run. I learned to fly: now I need no pushing to move me from the spot. Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself, now a God danceth through me. Thus spake Zarathustra."

And of the Monolith-aliens themselves: though they were briefly technology - products of the triumph of that Apollonian spirit - "the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter... Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves... Now they were lords of the Galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could rove at will among the stars, and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space." They are the ultimate supermen.

Kubrick was said to be initially "confused and puzzled" by the perplexed reaction that early screenings of his film generated (before the removal of nineteen minutes of footage, and the addition of title cards "Jupiter Mission - 18 months later" and "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.") He said in an interview not long after the film's release that "man is the missing link between primitive ape and civilized human beings," and has commented that the ending represents man reborn as a superman, "returning to Earth prepared for the next leap forward in man's evolutionary destiny." Perhaps the message in 2001 was clear all along.