2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

directed by Stanley Kubrick

Susannah Clark

I.

My father cried during my sister’s college graduation ceremony, but not when she walked across the stage. We were sitting in the nosebleeds of the Colonial Center arena in Colombia, South Carolina, one doting family in a crowd of 18,000. The marching band kicked off the pomp with the ascending chords of Richard Strauss’s “Sunrise,” and with the climatic DUN DUH, a spotlight emerged from the heavens. Cocky, the University of South Carolina’s mascot, stood proud, roosting to the charging drums. The crowd erupted. My dad was was cracking up, but the tears in his eyes weren’t just from laughter. He’d seen this bit before—it’s a mainstay at Gamecocks football games. It was the pride of the collective that moved him—a milestone reached not only by his firstborn, but an entire community draped in garnet. Layered in that familiar DUN DUH is both the comfort of a shared experience and the exhilaration of the unknown. It is simultaneously uplifting and foreboding. Cocky took a bow.

“Sunrise” is best known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It punctuates the film, enhancing its most triumphant and terrifying moments. But you might know it from The Simpsons. Or Zoolander. Or a late Elvis concert. Its ubiquity as a pop culture reference is one of the reasons why I never felt any particular desire to watch 2001. I felt like I’d already absorbed its cultural relevance, and I’ve never been one for sci-fi anyway. I can’t stand Star Wars or Star Trek. Too many new planets, too many close calls, too many pew pew pews.

But when I finally watched it in 2019, I was surprised to find that 2001 is not an action movie. It is remarkably slow paced. And profoundly psychedelic. And brilliantly ambiguous. And maybe the best movie I’ve ever seen.

II. 

We recently rescued a little black kitten off the streets of Brooklyn. Eustace is wiry and intrepid, and he tracks litter all over the place. After bending over to sweep up dusty pawprints for the fifth time one day, I thought to myself, I wish I had a robot that would follow him around and clean up after him. Then I realized that this had been invented. A Roomba arrived at our door the next day. My wish was its command. And Eustace had a new friend.

We don’t meet the HAL 9000 series until the third movement of 2001, nearly an hour into the film. AFI listed the artificial intelligence system as the 13th greatest film villain of all time in 2003, but a man-made robot is a flimsy scapegoat. Is Alexa to blame for Jeff Bezos’s misdeeds? What’s horrifying about HAL is not that he is a robot that goes rogue, but that he ultimately becomes so human.

When asked how he feels about working with humans to complete the mission at hand, HAL responds: “I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.” I’ve been wondering about my fullest possible use lately. I work from home as a technical editor, deploying commas and destroying the passive voice. And really, I love it. It’s fun to play with words. But I am charged with a task that many are starting to believe can and should be done by a computer. It is the Dawn of Grammarly, and I am looking for another bone to catch. I am looking for my next DUH DUN.

This existential crisis is conveyed more succinctly in this Rick and Morty clip—Rick the mad scientist builds a robot to pass the butter from across the table so he doesn’t have to rely on his family members. At birth, the robot asks: “What is my purpose?”

“You pass butter.”

The robot slumps in despair. “Oh my god.”

I’ve never considered sweeping the floor to be my purpose in life, so our robot vacuum hasn’t sucked up any part of my identity. Our Roomba is less of a HAL and more of a Rosie from The Jetsons. But every task I hand over to automation creates more day for me to fill, more aimless energy to orient. I spend most of my idle time scrolling through the internet in an attempt to absorb as much knowledge as possible, hoping to come across another black monolith that will advance me through the next stargate. But the more I find out, the less I feel like I can do anything about it. Like David Bowman, I am stalled in my space pod, information continually projecting across my face.

III. 

As I sit on my couch shifting verb tenses and contemplating the Meaning of Life, Eustace haunches at my feet, batting a tin foil ball. Before we took him in, he had one purpose: survive. He doesn’t have to hunt for rats or rummage through trash cans to feed himself anymore, and yet, his instincts are programmed. Necessity is irrelevant. I’ve imagined his journey from the streets to our apartment to look something like the final 23 minutes of 2001: “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.” His carrier is a tiny vessel gliding through the expanse, and all he can see through the airholes are darting lights of all colors. He emerges on the other side of time and space only to be observed in a living room for the rest of his life.

Eustace and the Roomba haven’t figured each other out yet. Sometimes Eustace chases the Roomba, other times the Roomba chases Eustace. The Roomba hums around our apartment collecting data about the layout; it cannot detect whether Eustace is a sentient being like me or a piece of furniture like our coffee table. I don’t know how Eustace sees the Roomba—as a friend, a foe, or just a particularly fancy toy. But when the green light flashes and the Roomba beeps hello, Eustace’s ears perk up, his pupils dilate. His wonder is useful to me; it reminds me to process my immediate surroundings rather than keep craning my neck toward the heavens. We give each other a purpose. 

IV.

The phrase “a space odyssey” is misleading. I was expecting a Homerian epic, but there’s no hero in 2001; the protagonist switches halfway through the film. David Bowman—who doesn’t appear until the third movement, after we’ve spent an hour following Dr. Heywood Floyd—is usually considered the main character because he undergoes a transformation, an extremely literal one. But Bowman is not Odysseus. He is pointedly unemotional, like a robot. I think Stanley Kubrick purposefully wrote Bowman to be an empty vessel. As a viewer I am not invested in his character; I am invested in the mystery of the universe that his character helps uncover, a marvel so much bigger than any single soul.

I want to end this essay with a DUH DUN, a grand revelation that I’ve harmonically built up to. But I am not the hero. Everyone has to find their own DUH DUN—in the sky or on the sidewalk or during a graduation ceremony. I can’t tell you where to look, but I can tell you there’s another one out there. That’s all any conscious entity can hope for.

Susannah Clark is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. Her work has been published in Inside Higher Ed, PopMatters, under the gum tree, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for the Best of the Net anthology and the Pushcart Prize, and has a Notable essay listed in the 2016 Best American Essays anthology.