Who Is HAL？
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 6 minutes
Words per Minute
144.24881
Summary
1968's Dr. Strangelove is considered by many to be one of the most influential films of the 20th century, but is there a deeper meaning behind it? In this episode of The Dark Side Of, I discuss the story behind the making of this classic film, and the influence it has had on the world.
Transcript
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yeah 1968 uh this movie still is monumentally influential um and it's perhaps most influential
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through parody or reference to it uh it is usually up there on these various lists you might find
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from bfi or american movie classics or something as it's usually somewhere in the top 10 of the
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greatest films ever made sometimes in the top five i i do think that there is serious messaging going on
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but as with a lot of things with kubrick that messaging is layered and obscured really by
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the nature of the film itself so kubrick had basically two hits on his hands by the 1960s
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and that is lolita and dr strangelove lolita was actually nominated for best picture dr strangelove
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was putting kubrick in a place of a a modern auteur but also someone who could create box office hits
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i think he was originally given about four million dollars um in 1964 1965 this this was a long
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process of filmmaking uh most of it was filmed in 1966 there was a law long post-production
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and that budget ballooned to 11 million or so and it produced 150 million so this was a highly
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successful movie there were certainly people who claimed you know i don't get it where's the story
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etc but overwhelmingly it became legendary pretty quickly kubrick also as you probably know did have
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a foot in the kind of 1950s biblical epics let's say and i think that actually does tell us a little
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bit about what this movie might very well really be about um he of course was hired to direct uh spartacus
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starring kirk douglas and uh he came on late in the game it wasn't really his film but you can see a lot
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of kubrick in that movie and it and it is a classic you can tell that kubrick came from the hollywood
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that was creating these massive biblical epics like the ten commandments ben-hur etc and i actually
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would suggest that thinking about 2001 in that way might help to unlock it as you also might know
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2001 was a different film in many ways i mean it's it's obviously hugely different than any film ever
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made i mean uh watching it i am kind of amazed at his confidence to do what he did he was around 35 to
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40 when this film was produced if i was a relatively young guy and i was working in hollywood the thought
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of just doing this having a film in which the first 20 minutes i believe is silent there's no dialogue
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and then repeat that again with you know the final lines are again haywood floyd he opens and closes the
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dialogue uh basically announcing that you know the purpose of this monolith is still a mystery and then
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going on for another 20 to 30 minutes of uninterrupted visuals it is remarkable there obviously is no love
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interest although i guess maybe there is on some deep level there are there are women in this movie but
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um they play very side roles there's certainly no traditional romance there even the action
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is often off screen um and again the level of confidence to produce a movie like this and then show
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it to the american public and for them to overall like it it made 10 times its budget or something like
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that is just shows a level of confidence and mastery that we should all aspire to um as you might know
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this was filmed in cinerama so it was i guess the the best comparison to it is imax so it is a
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massive screen um it is not a domed screen um but it is a massive screen that basically takes up the
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entirety of your vision um also in many theaters where it was played and i i do think this is
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significant there was actually the use of a curtain in the overture uh people might very well have been
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um getting seated um getting seated excuse me having a bite of popcorn and then the curtains would
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actually part and reveal the mgm logo with the lion um it the logo itself might actually very well be
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significant another major aspect of this is the use of music which is interesting and heady
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but i think also might give us a sense of what kubrick is trying to do so there was a man i believe
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his name was peter north who was a composer who was hired to write a read the original score for the
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film and he in fact did write a score for the film and kubrick cut every note of it and instead he used
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famous recordings um perhaps significantly um including from herbert von karian boom was another
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one who was a very famous um uh member of the national socialist party uh maybe that has nothing to do
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with it kubrick creates movies that are so layered i think it does have something to do with it but
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now ligetti is a um postmodern conductor uh worked with the schoenberg's 12 tone method although just
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as you can tell um worked in a way that he's creating that kind of music that people
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you know joke about you know having to plug their ears or it's dissonant you don't know where it's going
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it's chaotic and i think kubrick was using it for that effect so you hear ligetti at the beginning
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um with what i think what i would suggest represents um chaos before creation um and i think the music
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is perfect for that you hear also these kind of choral music and with the the monolith and there's a
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haunting but almost you know it's it's dissonant and chaotic but almost religious like in its sound
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and then um you in the final moments of the this what's called the stargate moment that's what
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usually people call it that's not anywhere in the text or in the script or anything beyond the infinite
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that piece is actually entitled requiem and that might very well be significant there are two other
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famous pieces now there there's a um cacciatorian ballet suite that is played and it's very kind of
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melancholic it's played when after we meet haywood floyd um dave bowman and frank pool ship is traveling
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from left to right across the screen and you have this kind of melancholic ballet and it kind of sets
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the mood for life on that ship which is lifeless and emotionless and you know hal is the only one
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there with personality and things like that so there's that the the two most famous are of course a
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first off the very famous piece also sprock zarathustra by rickhard strauss famous for the you know
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so one five one and then three three flat so it's spelling out the basic language of music basically
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the tonic and the dominant or c and g or it's it's like if you were to try to get to a root
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of harmony it would be the perfect fifth and he he starts out with that and it is kind of the beginning
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of the world richard strauss also evokes nietzsche and this and not just nietzsche but thus spoke zarathustra
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at the end of the film were of course greeted with the star child who is a kind of evolution of of
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bowman or maybe reincarnation of bowman or something i i think that you can even see bowman's face in the
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child in the in the fetus so i think it is bowman i don't think this is an alien i think it's an
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advancement of mankind by using that music specifically he is evoking he's he's evoking
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strauss obviously he's evoking nietzsche and not just nietzsche but zarathustra and not just zarathustra
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but one of zarathustra's key images in also spoke zarathustra which is the the child as part of the
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three metamorphoses so he has the metamorphoses of the camel uh who in effect bears the burden
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and you could i i think nietzsche is mostly thinking about a kind of monk like person a religious person
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who's maintaining this order and bearing the burden of life and morality and continuing it but
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in a completely uncreative fashion a camel can walk across the desert of course
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then he evokes a lion that is basically the power of negation uh in in a dialectic so
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the lion has claws and it fiercely attacks the um what he imagines as the ultimate immorality which is a
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serpent or dragon with scales and he's slashing away at it it's he's he's engaging in just extreme
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pure criticism but even the lion can't quite be creative this is why i mentioned a little bit
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earlier that that mgm logo might actually be extremely significant if we know kubrick as
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straight you know usually forget about the logos you're just paying respects to the people who put
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up the money for these movies but i with someone like kubrick i don't think it's too much to suggest
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that that was an artistic choice it comes after the overture and then finally nietzsche imagines
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of the metamorphosis after all this criticism has been done and in a way the old morality has been
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torn apart a child will arise and this is a child in many ways without memory without any sort of burden
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of the past or existing morality who can think for his or herself in a way and be creative and see the
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world as kind of free play and you know i i i think kubrick could have evoked this was simply the image
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of the fetus the star child but with that image um superimposed over rickhard strauss's zarathustra
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piece tone poem it hammers at home i mean clearly kubrick is evoking this very strongly uh there's also
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the johann strauss waltz which is it's interesting that rickhard and johann share a surname and that
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also might be significant but strauss there's that kind of lightness of the three four time waltz
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and it's it's the blue danube is the um very famous piece that is being played and there's a kind of
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frivolity and uh irony also i would say um that piece also plays over the end credits and this is
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what i'm what i would suggest with this film is that there are many layers to it and there are many
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collaborators who joined with kubrick but ultimately he was playing his own game it's a very similar thing
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with the shining where he adapts this stephen king novel and very early on stephen king just loathes it
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you've betrayed the novel you've turned it into your own thing well this is how what kubrick does he
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needs some sort of source material and and actually there are multiple source materials that he's trying to
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to reference and integrate and he takes these as his own vehicle and pushes them forward into some
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place that i think his collaborators aren't even quite aware of um so almost just as famous as the movie
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is the book here's my copy actually 2001 by arthur c clark and it actually was released a few months
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after the movie um kubrick hired and paid arthur c clark himself before getting funding from mgm so arthur c clark
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was kubrick's employee as it were now arthur c clark is a um monumentally famous and important person in his
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own right um he might um he might perhaps his greatest impact if not this film was the fact that he wrote an article
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speculating about linking the planet through satellite communications where every single person on the planet
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would be instantaneously connected to another um you know you have to imagine these things before you can implement
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implement them and he did that so he is a a genius and a a technologist futurist of the highest order
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um he also wrote many many um short stories and novels and novellas uh in which he explored many of
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these themes and so kubrick's idea was that there's never been a great science fiction movie we want to
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create the first good science fiction movie so we might almost need to create our own source material
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and so he hired uh clark to write this novel and that of course took place over the over a few years
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um the novel does divert from the movie in some very significant and important ways most notably
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in the monolith itself which is depicted as a crystal in the novel it is a large monolith but it's a crystal
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and it's actually transparent um kubrick went in a very different way which is to have this black
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monolith which is effectively stone and thus reminds us also of some prehistoric monoliths
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like um stonehenge perhaps most famously but there there are many other many other examples of this
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around the world where hunter-gatherer situations you want to call them that we're kind of emerging
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into what we would understand as civilization and we're able to manipulate stone actually in ways that
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it's still incredible to this day um the uh giza pyramids and so on are other examples of this um
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so it evokes the past in that way it evokes stone and i think it might very well evoke other things as
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well uh so kubrick is his own person kubrick is also a rather cagey and esoteric type artist and
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reading the novel although it is a good novel and really interesting i i think might actually be
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rather deceptive in terms of what kubrick is trying to do um another one of these deceptive facts
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is that arthur c clark in his way kind of wants to explain everything um and i think kubrick thinks
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more metaphorically and allows something to be ambiguous so it both is this thing and is something
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much bigger than that i mean an excellent example of this is how the computer um so this is from
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chapter 16 of of 2001 the sixth member of the crew cared for none of these things for it was not human
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it was the highly advanced howl 9000 computer the brain and nervous system of the ship howl for
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heuristically programmed algorithmic computer no less was a masterwork of the third computer breakthrough
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um and he goes on talking about the development the early developments of computers with um vacuum tubes
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and then the you know move towards silicon and the creation of an intelligence that was almost human
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well i don't i i think something like the heuristically programmed algorithmic computer is
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uh a euphemism or or cover story as it were about what this film is actually about and i think there's also
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some layers to who howl actually is and i think there's an interesting debate to be had about his relationship
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to the monolith his relationship to humanity as well um perhaps one of the most famous
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ideas is howl is ibm so if you it's h a l if you move the letters up one letter h becomes i a becomes b um l
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becomes m so it's ibm uh ibm also does appear in the film um when bowman is searching for frank pool who's
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who's you know flowing out into deep space uh he actually moves and touches a panel on his um arm
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and you can see an ibm logo there there's some other references so i i definitely think
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kubrick might be telling you this is ibm but i think even that is kind of a cover story and
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that is kind of an exoteric layer to what howl represents um i do think the names are very significant
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um so you can see here the cast list there's dr dave bowman none of these actors had
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huge careers and and as you could see there there is a kind of minimalist acting style that kubrick
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is promoting in this film um emotionless uh very realistic in some ways uh but stylized in others so
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his name is david bowman david we know what that represents that name one of the most famous jews maybe
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the uh second most famous jews to jesus christ um bowman is also very interesting um the uh key to
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unlocking that might be the very title itself in odyssey so the is the archer that he is referencing
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odysseus uh uh likely although you could take this even further um frank pool frank as that word is
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used is also very interesting uh very kind of informative um to be frank as we say but of course
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that references the franks and france um and german peoples pool is also interesting
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um i uh there might be some components to that i i do think that there's a an important water pool
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um that the ape men are gathering by i think that perhaps is what the reference is uh haywood floyd
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i'm not as sure about that one um i've already discussed how and then it is interesting that
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the one ape who is able to communicate with the monolith and basically has some kind of knowledge
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implanted in him is named moon watcher uh and this is explained in the book as well of you know this
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ape man who doesn't really have our our memory and doesn't quite have our consciousness but you know
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they're the way he's described by clark like he has a certain awareness of things and there's a
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touching scene even where is his father dies as you know these apes do uh and he ultimately takes
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his father outside of the cave to be eaten by um leopards or you know some kind of primitive beast
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and yet he feels something he actually mourns for a little bit so you can see in this ape man
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as he's depicted by clark a kind of awakening towards some kind of humanity um but it's curious
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that he's called moon watcher so he's always staring up at the moon and he'll sometimes reach
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out and try to touch the moon but he seems to communicate with the moon and i also think that
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that is highly significant um one more thing before i pass the baton and also before we start kind of
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watching some selections so a lot of times with kubrick one film will lead to the next one and
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there will be some kind of idea that gets raised in a film and he wants to further develop it in
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another one and of course all of his films are kind of referencing each other they they all of his films
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kind of exist in the same cinematic universe as it were uh stylistically symbolically and in even with
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references in terms of scenes and things like that there there's certain looks there's certain
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aesthetic choices and symbols that seem to recur one i'll just throw this out there you know after
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after the ape men communicate with monolith they of course you know understand how to use weapons and
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they start beating up the other tribe and slapping him there's this weird scene in full metal jacket
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where um sergeant pile is being beaten by uh pillowcases filled with soap and the the reminiscence
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is kind of uncanny now you could say oh it's it's the same director so he kind of does things in a certain
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way sure but i i think he might actually be kind of interlocking his movies and um that is uh very
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interesting but anyway why i mentioned this was that uh dr strange love was you know maybe kubrick's
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first big artistic triumph where he used satire and and irony and horror and political commentary to
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create a sensation of a film and understandably kubrick along with clark were intensely concerned
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with nuclear warfare in fact both of them thought that a nuclear war war between the soviet union and
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the united states would likely occur in their lifetimes and they were certainly not alone in having this fear
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and that of course is what dr strange love is about there was one interview with kubrick where he says
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well it's not even just warfare itself it's the this weapon is so terrible that even an accident or a
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sabotage could set off the end of humanity a chain of a domino that would chain that would lead to the end
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of humanity and he said even if there's a 99.9 percent chance that won't happen that actually means there's
00:26:34.200
a hundred percent chance of the course of 20 years so again very understandable fears but i think
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also some of these things might kind of unlock what 2001 is ultimately about ultimately about so
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this is actually a discarded voiceover from the the script of dr strange love the full consequences of
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nuclear weapons seem to escape all governments and their people when the primitive organization of
00:27:01.900
sovereign nation state still flourished and the archaic institution of war had not yet been forbidden by law
00:27:08.580
what do you imagine this was a again a discarded voiceover what he imagined was that
00:27:16.240
they were at the either beginning or the end of dr strange love they would show an image of a desert very much
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like the dawn of man image and they you would have this alien narrate this these lines so he was like an
00:27:34.120
enlightened alien looking upon the folly of humanity and lamenting the fact that they had they still
00:27:41.640
were engaged in the primitive superstitions of nation states and war almost like we we would look on the
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middle ages and lament that they were still engaging in bloodletting or um burning witches or something
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like that just as this primitive formation um again this was discarded i think kubrick does have a tendency
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to as opposed to just telling you what something's about he'll instead engage in a certain kind of
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irony so instead of this heavy-handed voiceover that's almost sanctimonious you instead have this ironic
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light touch of the we you meet again with nuclear weapons going on um and i i think kubrick always makes
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those choices and i and he allows the visual to tell the story um very similarly with arthur c clark in 2001
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kubrick was in charge he was the director of this picture he had final say arthur c clark was writing
00:28:49.140
many voiceovers that would effectively explain all of these situations kubrick ultimately discarded them
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and he created a film that's visual and mystical and is asking you to interpret things
00:29:05.940
and i think also is a way to visually convey messages that would have been lost perhaps if arthur c clark's
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narration had simply told you what the movie is about
00:29:20.600
but i do think that the movie is about human evolution and enlightenment but it's also about human
00:29:30.060
extinction it is a sci-fi almost atheistic fantasy but i also think that it has one foot in the
00:29:50.760
this tension is actually very important in understanding that i think your reading is correct
00:29:59.180
i think that the um i think that there is a kind of i don't know that this film is atheistic though i
00:30:05.860
think i would take it is yeah i think it's atheistic on the surface yeah yeah i mean it seems like a kind
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of uh frivolous comparison but there are similarities to um a seagull superman actually um it's evident that
00:30:24.400
kubrick is referencing nietzsche in this film i think that that's you know kind of without question
00:30:29.800
but he it's kind of he but i think in in some ways he's he's returning symbols to jews or he's kind of
00:30:36.860
like taking ownership of symbols again from nietzsche um and and so in that way it's similar to uh
00:30:45.280
seagull superman which is also an effort to take a symbol from nietzsche or kind of redefine the
00:30:53.120
superman and with seagull he makes the superman jewish um famously um so i think similar there's a
00:31:03.240
kind of similar dynamic occurring here as well um i think that i mean kubrick is a master filmmaker
00:31:09.720
there's no question about it and this is a great film but i think so the the it's much less obvious
00:31:17.900
that it's occurring with 2001 uh than when you look at uh seagull superman it where it seems pretty
00:31:25.880
obvious uh i think the film itself in my view um the monolith is is definitely a reference to yahweh or
00:31:36.300
the jewish god um so now you could say well uh that's reductive or it's not giving the film enough
00:31:44.300
credit or but i think that that's i mean i i would i would strongly assert that that's the symbol that
00:31:51.320
uh this uh black monolith represents and there's a number of reasons in the film itself um ends up
00:31:58.180
kind of revealing or confirming a lot of uh my a lot of my thesis regarding proto-jews for example so in
00:32:05.400
other words it's not just referencing the bible though it is doing that i think that that's in um
00:32:11.940
you mentioned this water source that becomes a kind of symbol at the beginning of the film
00:32:16.300
uh there's also in the in the hebrew bible isaac and abraham are also battling with philistines over
00:32:24.480
wells right ownership of wells uh in i think it's genesis 26 or thereabouts um so there's a
00:32:35.220
or that's when isaac is is kind of renewing this battle uh for ownership of wells in um you know
00:32:42.960
what will become ancient israel um against these philistines um and there i think that i i have the
00:32:51.600
reading that the wells also represent sexual resource right so that they there's a kind of
00:32:56.340
vaginal significance to the wells as well um but i think that that's what's occurring in the beginning
00:33:01.660
of the film with these uh cavemen uh battling over this water resource now you can read it as just a
00:33:08.920
water resource or whatever the case might be but inherently of course if you're gaining resources
00:33:14.240
you're gaining sexual access um yeah it's you know with resources come brides or women so it's it's almost
00:33:22.480
even unnecessary it's almost even unnecessary to point to the well as a vaginal symbol in that regard
00:33:28.720
but what what is conveyed in the film though is that these apes get gain an advantage uh by
00:33:37.080
uh through religion effectively or through their connection to yahweh or this this symbol this stone
00:33:44.480
that represents a divine power so religion becomes a way it becomes a kind of technology that allows them
00:33:51.440
to wage warfare against other other otherwise equal tribes right so in other words there's no
00:33:58.520
there's no way to distinguish between these two ape tribes except that one's basically got this god
00:34:03.760
force on its side that's giving it a kind of intelligence but represents a kind of technology
00:34:09.320
that makes it invincible against this other tribe of um apes uh and so i think that that's the message
00:34:17.340
um that kubrick is conveying is that religion represents a technology that allows dominance and success
00:34:25.720
against other you know human or primate groups um human groups of course right is the metaphor
00:34:31.920
um and you know and but you know there are other and you could go a little deeper with some of this
00:34:38.940
stuff like the bone even could uh have a phallic significance as opposed to uh just representing a
00:34:44.760
weapon for example do you do you think that the murder is a kind of cain and abel reference as well
00:34:52.240
um because i felt that this whole thing was like you know the ligetti music at the beginning was
00:34:59.440
the the chaos and the primal you know notes of of rickhard strauss were kind of like bringing form
00:35:11.520
you know you bring music you have the the the tonic and dominant note the the basis of all harmony and
00:35:19.020
music and so it's it's kind of like a creation story um and then yahweh appears to these primitive men
00:35:30.120
um so i guess i guess they're in the they're in the garden to some extent i guess and and and i think
00:35:36.220
see i think there might just be a lot of kind of conflation here but it's all it's all biblical i mean
00:35:40.820
in some ways moon watcher is less innocent after committing a murder you know there there's a kind of
00:35:47.500
innocence of living among the animals and then you you learn something you gain a certain consciousness
00:35:54.280
and you're ultimately the one that's going to kill them and this is expressed in the novel as well how
00:36:00.620
at the beginning the apes might just kind of fight a little bit but they really didn't have the time
00:36:05.920
or energy to engage in in all-out warfare they were desperately trying to survive
00:36:12.280
well but then now you're a murderer well what i would say is that um the distinction of course or
00:36:19.160
the important distinction is that cain um loses the favor of yahweh through his murder right um whereas
00:36:27.000
i don't think that that occurs in this instance true very very important yes yeah and uh so um i mean
00:36:34.940
i think it's it does have that feel though and but in i think that in in that's actually sort of
00:36:40.840
helpful for the kind of esotericism of the film because someone could very easily kind of come to
00:36:45.100
the conclusion that that it's a reference to cain and abel but then from there they might sort of lose
00:36:50.840
the thread right because uh cain in cain i read as a gentile figure um uh even though in the middle
00:36:59.600
ages he would be associated with the wandering jew but i think i think a kind of better reading of
00:37:04.860
cain who's the firstborn of adam um is that he's a gentile figure and he's a kind of marshal he's a
00:37:10.940
farmer he's he's like mars um the farmer he's like adam too adam was also a farmer um and abel is a
00:37:19.000
shepherd uh and seth as well as a shepherd and seth kind of replaces abel after he's killed in in fact
00:37:25.420
my reading is that both cain and abel are gentile figures ultimately and that seth and yahweh are sort
00:37:32.660
of the jewish figures in that um in that story of the story of essentially four figures um but that
00:37:42.360
abel in fact in that abel is a gentile figure just briefly is kind of revealed by his name which means
00:37:48.260
idol or vanity and uh vapor as well so he's he's evidently not indicated as a figure of permanence
00:37:57.320
or or a figure um um a jewish figure essentially right because there is this idea of abidance with
00:38:05.980
jews um the symbol of the stone for example uh would be one of those symbols that indicates
00:38:11.020
abidance right so abel represents something that kind of opposite or contrary to that
00:38:16.760
um and also there is uh some language in the hebrew bible that suggests that it might actually be
00:38:23.640
you know because there are making uh the the hebrew in the hebrew bible i argue um and it's most obvious
00:38:30.380
with seth because seth the name seth is also found with the egyptian god seth or seth um but their
00:38:37.540
reference is being made to cults in um egypt with these names but abel in particular is understood as
00:38:46.100
raw which is raw is um means shepherd so his his name is not um raw but he's called raw like he's
00:38:55.320
the first one who's called raw i believe which means shepherd but it also means seer and it has a
00:39:00.660
connection to um eyesight um and all these symbols are attached to raw who is you know represented by
00:39:08.160
the eye of raw for example and that word even means may mean falcon and raw was a falcon headed uh god
00:39:16.660
you know i mean so i think that there's indications that abel is a reference to raw um and raw is a kind
00:39:25.420
of solar celestial god um if he's not airing invention in invention right this is another question if he's not
00:39:34.320
airing in invention he is an airing symbol so he represents airing nobility or the pharaohs he
00:39:40.760
represents a uh ruling nobility you know i mean um and he's a kind of shepherd that is killed by this
00:39:48.560
other i argues a gentile figure in cain and but that opens the door for seth who is you know and also
00:39:56.580
yahweh is kind of orchestrating these things because yahweh's favoring abel but then abel dies and
00:40:02.440
yahweh favors seth and i argue he may even be the father of seth some of the hoop seems to indicate
00:40:08.180
that i think you understand my point but yeah we're off let's focus let's focus on the monolith
00:40:13.160
itself i mean so well so the stone is a symbol becomes one of these symbols of yahweh right so
00:40:22.040
there are symbols that we can associate with yahweh and probably the most salient i would say that if i
00:40:27.960
had to pick two it's fire and the stone are kind of the most salient symbols that you could associate
00:40:33.340
with yahweh uh yahweh is the consuming fire um and part of this is a metaphor about sacrifices being
00:40:42.020
given to yahweh you know whether sheep or grain uh these different um sacrifices given to yahweh um
00:40:50.040
and then uh the stone is the other symbol he's an abiding stone um so on that level the monolith
00:40:59.200
we can associate with yahweh right now the fact that it's black
00:41:03.680
may also be this uh may also be uh yahweh can also be associated with black i argue as well
00:41:12.500
in um the song of solo uh the song of solomon uh for example in the first six lines
00:41:18.760
the song of solomon is a love poem uh that features yahweh in an unnamed uh fair mistress
00:41:28.200
uh and she's described as fair in uh this poem but in the first six lines people dispute who is
00:41:37.160
speaking during those lines and christians indicate that it's a um it's the female speaking but that
00:41:43.940
doesn't make sense of course that it's a female speaking and there are a couple of reasons for that
00:41:47.580
um uh the uh the person the speaker says you know um is a shame that they're black or dark
00:41:56.020
don't look at me because i'm black or dark i'm paraphrasing here um and he claims and i'm gonna say
00:42:02.440
he because i i'm confident it's the male speaking uh that he's been cast out by his brothers and to
00:42:09.800
become a um you know a person working in the vineyard uh so uh in in this way we see him as
00:42:16.700
similar to bacchus who is also this figure of vineyards in in a um uh figure associated with
00:42:24.240
the vine and with winemaking in this sort of thing um and also uh and that's also we see with judah
00:42:30.800
judah is also kind of indicated as a bacchanal figure uh during jacob's blessing where he's got a wine
00:42:37.940
stained uh vestment and he's uh he's got a donkey that's under a vine right so he's associated with
00:42:45.000
these kind of bacchanal symbols um and i argue that he's kind of he's essentially indicated as
00:42:50.960
bacchus and bacchus is also associated with the donkey and i argue the donkey represents a you know
00:42:56.600
gentile or something that uh bacchus this kind of jewish uh yahweh bacchus is astride in um dominating
00:43:05.180
effectively through degeneracy through you know the bacchanal arts or whatever as it were um so
00:43:12.880
um but not to go too far afield uh yeah so the stone but the stone itself uh we can associate with
00:43:22.620
yahweh um but also um and this is something that young points out and i i i think that uh you know
00:43:29.980
kubrick is obviously working at a very high level as a symbolist and so i think he's aware of these
00:43:35.840
things and it's in the work itself is a sophisticated symbolist work but young uh points out that um
00:43:42.900
you know i i mean in there young points out there are thinkers that think that the israelites were
00:43:50.260
worshiping saturn right um and then we have tacitus saying that um jews uh uh the saturn cult is a
00:43:58.460
proto-jewish cult effectively uh he points to the saturn cult and creed in particular um but uh
00:44:05.300
the sabians also are known to have worshiped saturn and i argued that they're also a proto-jewish
00:44:11.440
group the sabians they had a uh kingdom in uh south arabia um an important kingdom the most
00:44:19.260
important kingdom apparently in south arabia uh in the ancient world uh and they i again i argue
00:44:25.900
proto-jewish group but they also worship saturn in the form of a black rock right and so when we
00:44:33.380
think of the um the kaba that's worshiped uh uh by the muslims right in mecca they they do seven
00:44:42.220
circulations that's that's the ritual they go seven times around this um kaba and in the kaba is the
00:44:50.240
black stone contained in the kaba and it's kind of featured in there in this sort of like vaginal
00:44:57.280
appearing hole in the kaba there's this black stone inserted in there and they kiss it as they go
00:45:02.780
around but they do uh seven uh ambulations around um this kaba and seven of course is also a reference
00:45:12.040
to saturn right seven which i've said before i'm sure in this uh class seven is a reference to saturn
00:45:20.160
in the ancient astrology uh the number seven identifies the planet saturn right and the number
00:45:26.880
in seven also becomes a symbol in this film as well um especially with these sort of weird diamonds
00:45:33.480
that we see at the end in that very like trippy uh sequence at the end of the film i think that
00:45:39.620
that also becomes a reference to saturn but so i think that these references are being made uh you
00:45:47.120
know so both the color black and the stone independently we can associate with jews or yahweh
00:45:53.780
but then again we see the sabians worshiping saturn and of course yahweh can also be associated with
00:45:59.640
saturn um we see them the sabians worshiping a stone a black stone as well and uh the sabians
00:46:08.800
actually make an appearance in the hebrew bible just to finish up this one point where queen sheba
00:46:13.760
queen sheba has this famous uh very friendly court uh visit with um uh king solomon right who's
00:46:25.540
understood as the wisest of the jews queen sheba in it might be insinuated there's a kind of a
00:46:31.160
romantic relationship there but uh she tests him basically with riddles or puzzles
00:46:36.880
and he proves that he's the wisest right and i mean he literally could be describing gem on some
00:46:43.280
level in the sense that she's a kind of proto-jewish figure coming from this proto-jewish kingdom
00:46:49.900
and and basically meeting with another jew right she's part of a diaspora of these proto-jews in the
00:46:57.760
ancient world of which solomon is is also uh so that they're kin ultimately and that's kind of strongly
00:47:04.800
kind of conveyed in this parable where they understand each other on a kind of esoteric level
00:47:09.460
where he's she's a he's able to kind of solve her riddles in this sort of thing um so that's
00:47:17.160
just one of the gods that's being referenced um one of the ancient proto-jewish gods that's being
00:47:23.700
referenced uh by kubrick you know one of the currently most famous analyses on youtube is i
00:47:35.760
think a good one but i think it only gets at the surface level of all this so it's this man named
00:47:43.580
rob ager who i've um talked about before very interesting guy really does very close detailed
00:47:51.780
work i think he even uses like 4k prints of the films and like goes way in there and he's a bit
00:47:59.800
of a filmmaker himself so kind of like mark he kind of knows the craft um but his interpretation is that
00:48:08.540
the black monolith is the cinerama screen itself and so basically kubrick is saying that there's this
00:48:21.380
because you know it's very interesting how exact references to alien life are kind of removed from
00:48:29.720
the film so at no point does someone say we're going to go visit the aliens now in the novel it's made
00:48:37.800
explicit and it's described well as well as it could be done and in fact kubrick um filmed some
00:48:47.200
deleted scenes i don't know if they've ever been published in any way i don't think so and but they
00:48:54.080
have been mentioned in memoirs so he even filmed some scenes of alien life and so on and all of that
00:49:01.100
is cut you you could interpret that in a few ways like oh it wasn't visually spectacular enough or it
00:49:08.060
wasn't working and kubrick got got rid of it but you can also see like kubrick enters into the
00:49:15.060
filmmaking process and over the course of four to five years and he he developed something and he
00:49:22.040
might very well be saying something very different than what he kind of what was kind of the motive
00:49:27.040
for the film uh so again azure believes that the monolith is a movie screen in effect and there are
00:49:35.440
he he makes good arguments about this there's this constant theme of something turning vertical to
00:49:42.020
horizontal you you see that even within the stargate sequence where they're they're looking
00:49:47.580
at jupiter you're first looking at it as we imagine jupiter like we've seen in charts or things like
00:49:52.780
that and then it then you start to get to this alignment where you you've turned you're turned
00:49:57.900
around very much very similar to the opening shots of the film where you're on the plant on on the moon
00:50:04.080
and then you're looking kind of horizontally at the alignment of the sun earth and moon similar in in
00:50:11.280
jupiter and what he's saying is that he wants you to turn the monolith over to its side and see it as
00:50:16.780
a movie screen and that the move the film medium will be a way of communicating enlightenment to the
00:50:25.280
masses so there's almost a sinister element to that there could be layers i think there's layers to i i think
00:50:32.840
you know is he right i don't quite know but is he does he make a really compelling argument yes
00:50:38.880
would kubrick be the type of person to do that also yes so i think there's reason to believe that
00:50:44.840
age is right but i think that's that's kind of avoiding like the deeper things i mean the movie
00:50:50.820
screen is just the next stage in media and it's actually kind of been surpassed by another monolith
00:51:02.080
that we hold in our pockets uh this thing you know and there's all there's many monoliths in here so
00:51:13.340
how how himself is a monolith with a red you know eye um the even when haywood floyd is going to the
00:51:24.060
bathroom on his trip to the moon uh there is a black monolith rectangle that has the instructions
00:51:31.780
for a zero gravity toilet and he's reading it so it's a it's a reference to media itself and
00:51:38.740
sure maybe kubrick did see the movie screen and in particularly even the cinerama he might have kind
00:51:45.060
of overestimated its power but you know he saw that as like this is the next stage of evolution of media
00:51:50.800
how we enlighten and convey messages to the public but it's also deeper than that i mean the the tablet
00:51:58.320
the monolith is also the tablets on which the 10 commandments are inscribed um it is basically a
00:52:07.820
medium of communication and in that way directly references yahweh again i would take a stronger
00:52:18.180
reading which i think is what you're suggesting is that the monolith is yahweh himself yeah in i but
00:52:25.340
again i i it's not too like because there also could be a kind of youngian significance to his
00:52:30.520
reading as well which i don't think we should discount in other words he could be picking up on
00:52:34.400
something that may not have even been intended or maybe it wasn't intended as a kind of layer of
00:52:40.540
symbolism uh but i think that the point is though is that often gem is layered and the reason why this
00:52:49.300
is meaningful uh because often you'll be right you'll be making esoteric references to things that
00:52:54.640
are contemporary for example political things that are contemporary but then it'll have a deeper
00:52:58.800
biblical significance for just to use one example but it could be it could be layered in many ways
00:53:04.660
right and a name could for example could be a double entendre it could have two meanings
00:53:08.640
in two intended meanings right um but i think that uh this is a important aspect of gem because it
00:53:19.860
allows gem uh it allows people to kind of feel like they've decoded something when they haven't
00:53:26.460
like sort of reached the final level you know what i'm saying so they'll say okay well that's solved
00:53:31.680
that mystery is solved and i'll move on it doesn't have any greater significance than that or even
00:53:37.220
a kind of more ominous ominous meaning or significance right so i think that that's a kind of a virtue
00:53:43.420
of gem if we look at it as a kind of um human technology uh and it contributes to to sort of the
00:53:51.800
survivability of works of gem or rem is because they can't you know some people will not necessarily
00:54:00.720
have false readings but they'll have shallow readings or not even in not even necessarily that
00:54:06.140
shallow they'll have relatively deep readings but they're not reaching sort of the bottom of it
00:54:10.400
yeah you know i mean so i think that that's a kind of remarkable aspect of gem which again is is uh
00:54:18.040
is one of the reasons that we should be deploying this technology ourselves in art one remark though
00:54:24.400
i would make though is i think that the eye of how and this is my reading may have a kind of solar
00:54:30.280
significance probably this is obvious based on what we've said already but i don't read how as a kind of
00:54:35.980
jewish force that he represents more kind of gentile competitor uh you know that's a kind of that's the
00:54:44.040
most basic reading of it but um yeah so he also represents a kind of servant and he also represents
00:54:50.940
a vessel right um and both i think are important the and i you know i think that there's a and there's a
00:54:58.840
kind of um and i think this is intended to there's a numerology in here uh we we've seen it already with
00:55:06.740
the seven and when we look at the number of people on the ship it's six but hal is actually referred to
00:55:14.560
as the sixth member of the crew it's made explicit yeah uh i think the number six would suggest that
00:55:21.400
he's a gentile figure let's do this let's watch two scenes i i chose one scene with hal where i think
00:55:28.500
the ambiguity is suggested but um let's actually watch this this is a very famous scene of the apes
00:56:17.560
and I think the music choice here is incredible.
00:56:29.580
it's almost like there's this holy choir band of angels
00:56:34.340
inside the monolith, and you're hearing echoes from it.
00:56:48.720
Definitely. That's one of our clues too, right?
00:56:55.780
in the sense that he's using this modern music,
00:56:58.500
which is just evoking a kind of choir of angels or something.
00:57:09.840
that we remember from the opening scene of 2001
00:57:27.200
and we're almost at midday kind of peaking above the monolith.
00:57:32.000
So it's an amazing image just in itself, of course.
00:57:44.980
so another deity that I think that's being referenced,
00:57:47.800
another proto-Jewish deity that's being referenced,
00:58:09.840
versus a solar, an Arian solar identity, right?
00:58:21.780
And the sun is also giving a kind of eye significance
00:58:57.960
they discover it on the moon, of course, right?
00:59:12.080
when David Bowman is looking in to the monolith,
00:59:21.100
the camera tracks into the blackness of the monolith.
00:59:44.020
this crescent moon becomes a symbol in the film.