Okay, the Monolith, the thing from Space Odyssey 2001 – was it merely a harbinger of turning points in evolution, or was it an instigator?
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March 20, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Bob
I’d say it’s open to interpretation, but the way I see it, the slab, which was placed by an alien race, put off some sort of vibe that made those apes discover tools then realize that tools could be used to kill — for better or worse. It’s all about the downside of technology.
March 20, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Anonymous
In the Arthur C. Clarke book, the slab is clear, like crystal, rather than black, and it is set there by aliens (or at least the pre-humans hear the sound of footsteps the night before.) It definitely plays the role of instigator, teaching the pre-humans how to kill, so that their race may survive. The transitional scene when the ape throws the bone club into the air and it changes into a space ship is brilliant; commentary that all of our advanced toys are merely extensions of that same primitive weapon.
I much prefer the movie, as it leaves so much to the imagination. It is one of those rare few movies that does not spell things out for the audience, leaving one to wonder just what it is that they have just witnessed, and to ponder its significance days, or even years, later.
Erik, I assume that you didn’t just see the movie for the first time. Given that, your uncertainly as to the significance and meaning of the monolith speaks volumes about the film’s thought-provoking nature.
Now you need to do a thread on Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
March 21, 2009 at 12:42 am
trotsky
Instigator.
March 21, 2009 at 6:16 am
bubba t. briarhopper
I read a book version when I was a kid and it describes the monolith as totally the instigator, down to the point that it selects a certain monkey-dude as the recipient and implants images in his mind.
March 21, 2009 at 7:14 am
milt
It was Kubrick’s clever way of pre-empting the impact ofPlanet of the Apes, which came out at the same time. They only give one Oscar for BP, you know.
March 21, 2009 at 7:43 am
Ed
Arthur C. Clark once said it was like a swiss army knife and had multiple uses. I particularly liked it’s ability to reproduce and implode and ignite Jupiter in the sequel creating a new sun with moons becoming planets. That would put the monolith into a kind of guiding overlord category, definately an instigator.
March 21, 2009 at 7:47 am
Deane
It was both… but mostly it’s how our brains grow and thrive on newness, uniqueness, novelty… In much the same way seeing something we’ve never seen before causes us to process it, understand it, create from it, so too did the monolith show up at the right place /right time to witness a new event!
March 21, 2009 at 7:55 am
Anonymous
What brought this up? Having trouble sleeping Eric?
March 21, 2009 at 8:03 am
brian
It’s a Headstone.
March 21, 2009 at 8:23 am
Anonymous
Instigator
March 21, 2009 at 8:51 am
boymstlikely2
Eric, it is an argument that can have no settlement. Kubrick left the entire movie’s meaning up to the viewer. I do not recall a time when he gave insight into what he tired to symbolize.
It’s a headache!
-boy
March 21, 2009 at 9:04 am
PG
I always sorta viewed the monolith as a visual metaphor for the Missing Link. That would make it an instigator, no?
March 21, 2009 at 9:08 am
Eric Kirk
What brought this up? Having trouble sleeping Eric?
An argument with my kid brother. We also argued about Camus’ The Stranger, over whether the character was convicted for his disbelief in God, or his failure to cry at his mother’s funeral (ie., not showing the proper emotional manifestations of grief). I feel that the first sentence of the novel overwhelmingly supports my conclusion.
Anyway, I know that Clarke’s novel laid it all out where Kubrick kept it ambiguous. Is it Aliens or some Jungian God-force? But I think the implication is that it was just a marker which knew when to appear, not an active participant.
March 21, 2009 at 10:04 am
ED Denson
Instigator.
Re Camus. Just heard a lecture in which the idea was that he was a Stranger because he was isolated from the human community – as we see in his reaction to his mother’s death – but by the end he becomes reconciled. I have a copy I bought recently but haven’t had the leisure to read it and form an opinon.
March 21, 2009 at 10:32 am
Ernie's Place
Arthur C. Clark was a great thinker and a very scientifically precise man. He wrote the book, and made it clear that the monolith was the tool of salvation, designed to teach human beings to save themselves from more technologically advanced oppressors by giving them the necessary means to protect themselves, or to become so fearful that nobody would bother them. (or at least that is my vague recollection)
Stanley Kubrick left the meaning of the Monolith obscure. The film “2001 a Space Odyssey” was produced back in the sixties when we were first experimenting with, what we thought were, mind expanding drugs. We thought that all we had to do was drop a little acid, or smoke a joint, and contemplate some deep thought, like what came first the chicken or the egg, and the answer would be revealed to us. We worried about whether or not an unobserved tree falling in the forest really made a noise. If you dropped enough acid or smoked enough dope those things seemed really important.
Having seen society before the onset of drug popularity, I can tell you that they changed who we are dramatically. Since drugs, people will contemplate the answers to these seemingly unanswerable conundrums endlessly. Therefore, the meaning of the monolith was placed in the movie to be one of those conundrums that we so much enjoyed back in the psychedelic age.
If you clear your head long enough to really think about these things you will know things like; the chicken and the egg occurred simultaneously as a single-celled animal that reproduced itself by cell division and it evolved into a egg laying chicken. The concept is not inconsistent with the theory of “God” but is entirely inconstant with religion… But, that’s another “unanswerable problem” to worry about. Maybe someday they will have good enough drugs that all this stuff will be answered for us.
March 21, 2009 at 11:01 am
Eric Kirk
Stanley Kubrick left the meaning of the Monolith obscure. The film “2001 a Space Odyssey” was produced back in the sixties when we were first experimenting with, what we thought were, mind expanding drugs. We thought that all we had to do was drop a little acid, or smoke a joint, and contemplate some deep thought, like what came first the chicken or the egg, and the answer would be revealed to us. We worried about whether or not an unobserved tree falling in the forest really made a noise. If you dropped enough acid or smoked enough dope those things seemed really important.
I’ll tell you though, 2001 is a horrible movie to see when stoned. It’s very slow on it’s own, and the time dilation on marijuana only makes it slower. Long tedious treks from one end of the space ship to the other just to show us that they’re technically proficient in great detail. Even the fast parts are slow when you’re high.
Or… you know… so I’ve heard.
March 21, 2009 at 11:09 am
Ernie's Place
That’s the proper conclusion Eric, but I’ve been told that traveling down the vertical crack of light and having it change to horizontal is much easier to understand when your on acid. Marijuana is much better applied to music.
Or so I’ve been told…
March 21, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Ernie's Place
I understand that the during the premier showing of the movie, a great amount of the viewers walked out. Subsequently they edited 17 minutes of redundancy out.
To be honest, I have never been able to watch the whole movie all of the way through. I’m a big science fiction fan, and an “Idea junky”. I’ve always liked Arthur C. Clark, so needles to say the movie was a real drag for me. I like complex ideas, but the movie to me was more of a light show that tried to leave you with the thought that there was some deep and hidden meaning there. If there were truly a hidden meaning, it should be apparent by now. To me it’s not worth the time to worry about. I could build a refrigerator in the time that it would take to understand the movie. At least a refrigerator is something that can be used. The film goes down in my book as one of the worst sci-fi films of all time. Sorry.
March 21, 2009 at 1:51 pm
olmanriver
One irony of our times is just how mainstream hallucinations have become via the TV. What we brave and intrepid ‘psycho-nauts’ saught after through endless experimentation sacrificing body and mind on the altar of altered consciousness with pot and the hallucinogens is now doled out freely in HD…advertising in particular has swiped ‘our’ hallucinations… for their special effects. All those pretty special effects and fantasies and visuals are the stuff of everyday boob tube, as well as the boo pipe. A classic example was the fancy car ad a year or two ago with the couple in white running in slow motion with major traces aftereffects!
Go back to the realism on commercials of decades yore and you will see just how the media has gotten stoned, along with ‘merica.
March 21, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Ernie's Place
I agree with Olmanriver. It is amazing the change that drugs have brought about on all of America.
March 21, 2009 at 3:18 pm
olmanriver
back to topic… Here is a learned view on the different obelisks:
“The monoliths are tools of a highly advanced alien civilization. They are placed to observe and, in Kubrick’s words, “influence” the “evolutionary progression” of humanity. Each of the three monoliths have a different purpose. The hominids’ contact with the first, in the ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence, sparked the discovery of tools/weapons. The second, found on the moon, emitted a powerful radio signal directed at Jupiter. While the monolith is activated by sunlight in the novel, it is completely lit by artificial lighting in the film when it emits its signal. The lunar night is too long for the sun to rise during the short time Floyd is at the site. The confusion arises due to an edit (what may be a time cut) to the sun appearing above the monolith. The third, located at the Lagrange point between Io and Jupiter, either leads to and opens or is itself the door to the stargate transporting Bowman to his destiny. A monolith appears at the foot of Bowman’s bed immediately before his transformation and it sends him, as the Starchild, back to Earth. Whether this is the same monolith that sent him through the Stargate, as Kubrick’s own comments suggest, or a different monolith, as certain interpreters believe, remains a question open to debate.
Not pointed out in the movie: The monoliths are 1 x 4 x 9 in dimension–1 squared by 2 squared by 3 squared, as stated in Clarke’s novel and also in the film’s sequel, 2010.
The “Odyssey” books by Arthur C. Clarke reveal that the monoliths are alien supercomputers capable of self replication. Whilst this may or may not be the answer imagined by Kubrick, it is a significant part of Clarke’s vision that helps explain the plot to some extent.
In one interview, Kubrick refers to the monoliths as “Jungian archetypes.” “
March 21, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Ernie's Place
A. C. Clark made sense, and the monoliths were part of the story. Not only were they understandable, they were a major part of the story.
I don’t think Kubrick understood the story, or he hoped that enough people that had read the books would show up to tell the others what he was trying to say. To artsy, and not enough content for me. Did anybody enjoy the movie???
March 21, 2009 at 4:56 pm
olmanriver
“Arthur C. Clarke’s and Kubrick’s novel, written by Clarke but in close collaboration with Kubrick (mostly between May 1964 and December 1965, and published shortly after the film’s release), deals with the same subject matter in quite a straightforward manner. However, understand that despite the constant contact between Clarke and Kubrick during its gestation (see Clarke’s 1972 book, “Lost Worlds of 2001″ for his diary of the process), there is no guarantee that their visions were identical, and either may well have had further or modified thoughts as time progressed. ”
and..
“Clarke has also gone on record to say that the film intentionally raises more questions than it answers… and if anyone completely understands it, then [he and Kubrick] have failed to deliver.” ibid-link
March 21, 2009 at 4:58 pm
olmanriver
better answer:
“Why is the movie so different from the novel?
According to Kubrick: The novel, for example, attempts to explain things much more explicitly than the film does, which is inevitable in a verbal medium. The novel came about after we did a 130-page prose treatment of the film at the very out-set. This initial treatment was subsequently changed in the screenplay, and the screenplay in turn was altered during the making of the film. But Arthur took all the existing material, plus an impression of some of the rushes, and wrote the novel. As a result, there’s a difference between the novel and the film. (Gelmis, The Film Director as Superstar, 1970, p. 308.)” ibid-link
March 21, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Ernie's Place (Branscomb)
“Dune” was my all time favorite sci-fi film. Something for everybody, and no monolith obelisks.
Gee, I hope we answered Eric’s question…
March 21, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Eric Kirk
I didn’t really like it when I first saw it, but years later I really enjoyed it. It does convey a sense of awe about evolution, the universe, and potentials. I think we were going through a renaissance at the time of its release so it was easy for viewers to fill in blanks. For me I’d read more of Clarke’s books, including Childhood’s End, so I may have been able to fill in the blanks myself. I’ve already posted my list of the top 10 Science Fiction movies and it came up as 2. It’s really the only movie which I think really conveys close to what it would be like in outer space, and I may be influenced by the astronauts who’ve said the same.
Personal note, the star actor, Keir Dulleah (not sure if I’m spelling that right) was my father’s roommate when they were in their twenties, shortly before he met my mother and learned that diaphragms weren’t a sure thing. Like my father, Dulleah is a red diaper baby.
March 21, 2009 at 7:07 pm
olmanriver
i liked it but didnt love it. and i missed alot of what was going on as i found out when read that link i have overquoted from.
dune was great! you didnt have to see it a number of time to try and get its meanings.
at the time zardoz (with a hirsute sean connery as the savage) impressed me. maybe it was the diaphanously clad mindmelding bubble babes. maybe i was young.
March 21, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Ben
Eric… You are third generation? A rarity.
Instigator, definitely.
March 22, 2009 at 8:42 am
suzy blah blah
herbinger..
March 22, 2009 at 9:29 am
Anonymous
“Mother died today. Or was it yesterday?”
March 22, 2009 at 10:27 am
Jen
I’m with Ernie. I love “Dune”.
And it’s a big Hershey Bar isn’t it? That would make it an instigator.
March 22, 2009 at 2:54 pm
suzy blah blah
“…or was it tomorrow, or waz it just the end of time?”
john and paul sartre
March 22, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Eric Kirk
Which version of Dune? The David Lynch version or the more recent one?
March 23, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Anonymous
I liked the music.
March 23, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Unk John
Eric, it’s Keir Dullea, no “h” on the end. Yes, he and your father were roommates for a while and it may be of interest for you to know that yo papa scared the bejeezus out of young Mr. Dullea on a motorcycle going down the hill on, I believe, Gough St. in San Francisco. Ask him about it.
Keir Dullea never really made it to stardom, but I remember him in a Movie in the early sixties called, “The Hoodlum Priest.” That was a pretty good movie, as I recall. Dullea played a young kid who had killed someone in a robbery and the scene when they came to take him to be executed is truly gut-wrenching. The star of that film was Don Murray. Like I said, a good movie.
By the way, “2001″ was the first and still one of the few that paid attention to physics. That scene when he gets back into the spaceship is outstanding. If you watch it again, notice that there is absolutely no sound until the airlock fills with air.
March 23, 2009 at 9:52 pm
olmanriver
How scientifically accurate is the movie?
” All in all, the technical details of the technology in the film are highly accurate. Two experienced engineers, Dr. Fred Ordway and Harry Lange of Marshall Spaceflight Center, spent three years working with Kubrick on everything from spaceship and interior design to spacesuit design. However, while Kubrick and Clarke strove for accuracy in making the movie, a number of errors have been noted. (1) When the shuttle synchronizes its rotation with the space station, the angle of the sun shining on the station does not change. (2) During the sequence where Floyd’s ship to the moon is landing at Clavius, the gases at the pad swirl as they would on Earth, rather than stream out in straight-line ballistic trajectories. This became startlingly obvious only on July 20, 1969, a year after the film was released, as Apollo 11 transmitted live TV of the landing on the moon. (3) During scenes on the moon, gravity seems to be normal, instead of the 1/6th g that would be prevalent. (4) When Bowman sets off the explosive bolts to jump from the pod to the airlock, the pod should have moved away from the ship (although if the pod were particularly heavy, its movement could have been minimal). It could be argued, however, that Bowman might have set the reaction control system to compensate for the POD’s motion.”
March 24, 2009 at 7:28 am
Eric Kirk
Eric, it’s Keir Dullea, no “h” on the end. Yes, he and your father were roommates for a while and it may be of interest for you to know that yo papa scared the bejeezus out of young Mr. Dullea on a motorcycle going down the hill on, I believe, Gough St. in San Francisco. Ask him about it.
I’ve never heard about that one. One of those stories which reminds me of how lucky I am to have been born.
March 24, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Anonymous
Do they even allow motorcycles in San Francisco anymore?
December 31, 2009 at 11:30 pm
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