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Here's a very long thing I wrote interpretting 2001. It still comes from the basic Zarathustra, next step in evolution point of view, but I did it all in terms of Leary's neurological circuits. I think it's a good read, and it's a little bit different than the usual take on 2001.
2001: A Space Odyssey and the Evolution of Consciousness
2001: A Space Odyssey is director Stanley Kubrick’s classic, epic meditation on humanity’s history and place in the universe. Another reading of the film, however, is that it is an unraveling of neurological circuits, an explanation of human behavior and thought offered as an alternative to psychology by late 20th century writers and philosophers such as Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson. Like Leary and Wilson, Kubrick is fascinated in 2001 with the influence of evolution on human neurology and the possibilities for where our minds are headed in the future. 2001, light on plot and character development, depicts these concepts primarily with mise-en-scene and sound.
The main titles of the film appear beneath what is undoubtedly the most oft-repeated image in the film, a dawn, along with “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” composed by Richard Strauss and inspired by the book of the same name by Friedrich Nietzsche. Zarathustra the book and by extension the song are concerned with similar themes of the evolution of consciousness, but from the perspective of more primitive Freudian psychology, and the song’s appearance in the film marks the introduction of neurological circuits recognized by Nietzsche into the nervous system of the human organism. The image of the sun rising over the earth from afar, indeed from beyond the moon, suggests the distant past, and after the music rings out and the image of dawn fades away, the film details the harsh landscape of “The Dawn of Man,” and then the habits of early human ancestors, very far into what Wilson and Leary consider the oldest aspect of human neurology. In his book Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche develops a psychology of the artist, and names this aspect of human neurology the “Dionysian” aesthetic (519). However, whereas Nietzsche imagined this as an unrestrained period for our ancestors, Wilson and Leary propose the evolution of extremely rigid instinctual behaviors to protect the organism from the threats of harsh environments like those shown in the desert habitat in 2001. In the film, humanity’s ape ancestors forage for sparse food they must share with other mammals and band together in caves at night to protect themselves against predators that they are far too weak, individually and out in the open, to defend themselves against. Wilson (as well as Leary) calls this the bio-survival circuit, and claims that imprinting on this circuit is responsible for the group dependence like that of the apes huddled together in 2001 and the familial compassion human beings feel for one another at this current stage in evolution. According to Wilson, this circuit manifests itself as the retreat to whatever substitute a person has “imprinted” for motherly protection in reaction to fear of physical harm or insufficient resources, and believes its origin was motivated by the environment (47-50). The apes in 2001 are dominated by the landscape, which implies its influence over them: parts of their bodies very infrequently are filmed above the horizon, and then only very briefly. This segment of the film also dramatizes the origin of what Leary calls the emotional-locomotion circuit, and what Wilson calls the emotional-territorial circuit. The apes fight against each other in groups for a water hole, a type of behavior Wilson theorizes developed as populations of single species grew too high and members had to fight with each other for resources, and which manifests itself now as nationalism, a more complex form of the tribal behaviors like those of the apes in the film (63-69).
2001 next introduces its most thought provoking image: the rectangular black monolith. For now, speculation about the monolith will be put aside, except that in its appearance of design and its unexplained presence is extremely jarring, and that effect, when considered along with Gyorgy Ligeti’s eerie, dissonant vocal music that always accompanies it, undeniably signifies a significant moment in the film. Indeed, after contact with the monolith, which disappears as mysteriously as it arrives, an ape, inspired by its memory of the monolith, picks up a bone, idly lets it fall, and discovers that it can be used to augment his physical strength. This is accompanied by Strauss’s “Zarathustra,” and signifies the development of the “Apollinian” aspect of the Nietzsche’s artistic psyche, the creative capacity of planning and ordered thought (519), and passage from ape to human. Kubrick depicts our ancestors gaining within a single generation what Leary calls the laryngeal-manual symbolic circuit and Wilson the time-binding semantic circuit, the ability to think abstractly and symbolically, to reason, and to create (95-103). Armed with bone weapons, the recent humans retake the waterhole from their rivals. In celebration of victory, their leader tosses his weapon into the air, above the horizon and the restrictions of the environment. With the advent of the semantic circuit, it would seem that human beings no longer need the behaviors associated with the first two circuits.
However, the bone transforms mid-air into a futuristic satellite as the film flashes forward to 2001, and the new central character, Heywood Floyd, is constantly shown behaving as dictated by the bio-survival and emotional- territorial circuits: eating and sleeping, both of which are infrequently shown in main-stream narrative films; ingratiating himself with his family (his bio-survival group), all the while set against the backdrop of the earth and the landscape that imprisoned the neurology of his ancestors, and with another American (a member of his emotional-territorial group); and competing passive- aggressively with a group of Russians (his emotional- territorial enemies). The implication of all this, clearly, is that despite changes in physiology and complexity of tool usage, the human characters in the year 2001 are no different neurologically than their ancestors 4 million years ago. They are, as Wilson puts it, “domesticated primates” (63). The fact that they now wear clothes is de-emphasized by dressing every character in relatively unadorned, solid colors. For instance, Floyd wears a suit entirely of the same shade of brown, Mr. Miller and Dr. Smyslov suits entirely grey, the stewardesses either white or pink, and so on (the on interesting exception is Floyd’s daughter, who wears a dress printed with a pattern of five-pointed stars and who was played by Kubrick’s real-life daughter). The dialogue during this part of the film might as well be the grunts of the apes, as we learn virtually nothing from it. In one particularly ironic scene, Floyd gives a speech before a mission briefing about the importance of keeping the mission a secret, and then the briefing itself is not shown, and no information is provided about what Floyd wants to be kept a secret. Additionally, written language is denigrated to tool status through a scene in which Floyd’s pen is spinning in air much like the bone tool and through the limitation of all on-screen writing to a functional purpose, such as flight monitors, phone booth instructions, and toilet instructions.
Eventually it is revealed that Floyd’s secret is a monolith just like that which appeared to his ape ancestors, and once again contact with it signals a change, this time in the film itself rather than in Floyd or other humans. We are flashed-forward once again across the considerably shorter distance through time of 18 months and on to the Discovery, a vehicle, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the bone used as a club by the leader of the ape-men, being used in an expedition to Jupiter. A title card reading “Jupiter Mission: 18 Months Later” enforces that this is a new chapter in the film and to expect different means of development. This mission’s relationship to Floyd’s trip to the moon is only revealed much later in the film, and so at this point, for all that is made known, the two might as well have nothing to do with one another, a suggestion that the film is not about the motives of a single individual or small group, but the record of the history of an entire species. Also, in contrast to Floyd’s journey, which is shown in several stages, the Jupiter mission is shown for most of the movie in its middle, with no explicit beginning, creating a sense of timelessness. This portion of the film, it could be argued, is an externalization of human neurology, in which individual characters are emblematic of attributes of individual circuits. The image of the pod rising over the main part of the Discovery is similar to the dawn imagery at the beginning of the movie, indicating that this is not only the internal being externalized, but at the same time a microcosm of the movements of planets and the workings of the entire universe.
Although we are shown both Frank and Dave engaging in bio-survival behaviors such as eating and sleeping, Frank’s bio-survival circuitry is particularly emphasized by the reminder, in the form of a birthday video transmission from his parents, that he has a family. During this scene he is more nearly naked than any other character since the apes, emphasizing that he is a material organism. It’s also interesting to note that he wears the yellow space suit, reminiscent of the bio-survival threat of the leopard during the first part of the film. Hal is clearly representative of the left-brain functions of the semantic circuit. He performs all of the mathematical calculations and is a winner at chess. The film itself raises the question of whether or not Hal has emotions, which undermines the assumption that he can be thought of like a human being and therefore as symbolic of their neurology like the human characters. However, the film also seems to be suggesting that human beings are “programmed” by their surroundings much like Hal was programmed, thus answering that Hal’s neurology, which only “mimics” human neurology according to experts that the newscaster cites, is really no different. Hal is especially defensible as symbolic of the left-brain, semantic circuit, which Wilson calls “linear, analytical, [and] computer-like” (93), and in an open letter to Oxford mathematics professor Roger Penrose, Hans Moravec of the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University suggests that an imitation of human thought and emotion operates on the same principles and can be thought of in identical terms. Dave, an artist, represents the functions of the right brain, which both Leary and Wilson (98-99) place in a separate circuit, the collective neurogenetic circuit, but which Kubrick, by putting Dave in red, like the illuminated domes that serve as Hal’s eyes, seems to be collapsing it into the semantic circuit, suggesting that linear, mathematical creation and artistic or musical creation result from the same neurological processes. Whenever Dave and one of Hal’s red domes are in the frame together, Dave is almost always on the right and Hal on the left. Interestingly, the blue space suit is left empty. Floyd and his colleagues, preoccupied with security and divided along national lines, are undoubtedly heavily imprinted on the emotional- territorial circuit, and are also lit heavily in blue during an important scene in which they talk about the monolith in a shuttle on their way to it. That the blue suit is left unused indicates that the emotional- territorial circuit concerns aren’t an issue during this part of the film. It’s also interesting that the important colors in the Floyd scenes are blue and red (the cockpits and control rooms are all lit in red), almost universal used on the flags of Democratic/Capitalist nations; and the important colors during the Jupiter mission are yellow and red, commonly used on the flags of Communist countries. Perhaps this is Kubrick making a very subtle endorsement of Communism as a panacea for all international aggression. However, the blue suit is probably intended for one of the crew members in hibernation, so the emotional-territorial circuit is potentially at least dormant, but still not involved in the conflict among the circuits.
From a purely literal interpretation, Hal’s killing of Frank and the hibernation crew and his attempt to kill Dave doesn’t make much sense, but from the interpretation of neurological circuits it becomes clear. Wilson points out that “Third Circuit [semantic circuit] types ignore or are hostile to their first and second circuit functions” (100) and are often hostile to right-brain intuition (102). The left-brain thinks of itself as the one truth, but the right- brain is more holistic, and so Dave tries to save Frank and the bio-survival circuit. In the end, Hal’s math fails, and Dave is able to do what Hal presumes to be impossible: re-enter the ship without his helmet. After he accomplishes this, Dave, to protect himself, wears a spare helmet that is green, the negative of red, and destroys Hal in the “Logic Memory Center.”
The intuitive, artistic, and illogical right-brain function of the semantic circuit is thus victorious, and it is this aspect of human neurology which is able to move on to new unknown neurological circuits, heralded by a gigantic monolith in orbit around Jupiter and Ligeti’s composition. Some of the images after the infamous “corridor” sequence are evocative of circuits proposed by Leary and Wilson. Several of the images look much like cellular organisms, suggesting the genetic “memory” of the holistic neurogenetic circuit, and others look like the cosmos expanding and stars being born, suggesting the sub-atomic universal memory of Leary’s neuro- atomic metaphysiological circuit and Wilson’s non-local quantum circuit (41). The sequence of Dave seeing himself at several stages of life are much like the out-of-body and near-death experiences which Wilson attributes to the quantum circuit. This special-effects-heavy 20 minute sequence is filled with colorful images, but it’s difficult if not impossible to attach any additional meaning to the colors. However, many of the important colors return in the out-of-body sequence at the end. That the color symbolism is broken down and then the colors re-introduced perhaps indicates that the individual circuits for which the colors initially stood have been “boiled down” to their basic ingredients. In the presence of the monolith, accompanied by Strauss’s “Zarathustra” rather than by Ligeti, they are re-assembled as the star-child and re- introduced to the world we know. The star-child is what Nietzsche calls the “overman” in his Zarathustra (124, repeatedly thereafter) and the “architect” in his psychology in Twilight of the Idols (520): that which is beyond the needs and instincts of man in his current state.
The monolith remains the most compelling image in 2001. Amidst so much complex design work, its startling geometric simplicity makes it, in the larger context of the entire work, one of the most mysterious and awe-inspiring images ever to appear on film. That it eludes explanation and understanding from a literal interpretation is part of its effect, and that’s why I resent the usual interpretation that it was all the work of aliens. Although the concept of extra-terrestrials is brought up repeatedly in Arthur C. Clarke’s disappointing novelization of the screenplay, they’re never once mentioned in the film. It occurred to me what the monolith really is after the credits were done and “The Blue Danube” continued for 10 minutes over a black screen. I thought back to the overture and the entr’acte, in the original version also set to a completely black screen, and realized that the monolith is the art of filmmaking itself. Every single video monitor in 2001 is bordered by black, and Dave’s green helmet, in the red-lit room of Hal’s Logic Memory Center, appears black. It was deliberately buried by Stanley Kubrick, its origin is in the creative potential of the semantic circuit, and its purpose is to motivate the symbolism and meaning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Works Cited
2001: A Space Odyssey. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester. Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer, 1968. 148 mins.
Clarke, Arthur C. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mass Market Paperback, 2000.
Leary, Timothy. “Table of Contents Part II.” Exo- Psychology. http://leary.com/archives/text/books/exo_psych/contents2.htm l (1977).
Ligeti, Gyorgi. “Atmospheres.” 2001: A Space Odyssey - The Music. Perf. Sudwesfunk Orchestra. Cond. Ernest Bour. Turner Entertainment Co., 2001.
Ligeti, Gyorgi. “Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs, & Orchestra.” 2001: A Space Odyssey - The Music. Perf. Bavarian Radio Orchestra. Cond. Francis Travis. Turner Entertainment Co., 2001.
Moravec, Hans. “Dear Roger.”
http://www.cni.org/pub/LITA/Think/Moravec2.html (9 February
1990).
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Portable Nietzsche. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books, 1976.
Strauss, Johann. “The Blue Danube.” 2001: A Space Odyssey - The Music. Perf. Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Cond. Herbert Von Karajan. Turner Entertainment Co., 2001.
Strauss, Richard. “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” 2001: A Space Odyssey - The Music. Perf. Vienna Philharmonic. Cond. Herbert Von Karajan. Turner Entertainment Co., 2001.
Wilson, Robert Anton. Prometheus Rising. Tempe, AZ: New Falcon Publications, 2001.
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