On this site will be posted analyses of popular media productions. These analyses will have to do with determining the underlying meanings of various movies, songs, and certain novels. Methods used to analyze a given production will include exploration of the creators' use of symbolism, allegory, metaphor, etc., and deciphering any arcane or obscure references that it may contain.
Above left: Heywood Floyd sleeps during part of his trip on the lunar lander. Above right:We are provided with a hint that Floyd is dreaming this scene: A stewardess would not normally be serving another stewardess a meal. This hint has the purpose of characterizing this part of Floyd's trip as having a certain unreality, and based on this, we conclude that Floyd is dreaming.
Top left: David Bowman sleeps while Poole is on duty. Top right: Poole sleeps while Bowman has the 'watch'. Dave is sketching pictures of the hibernating astronauts, indicating that he has an artistic impulse. The white coloring of the Discovery One centrifuge symbolizes the idea of confinement. Above left: This room contains items which are visually and intellectually stimulating, and thus represents the fulfillment of Bowman's wish that he be in a stimulating environment, to compensate for the sterile surroundings he experienced while on Discovery One. The aliens have constructed this environment (the room) based on their knowledge of Bowman's unconscious contents. The 'clinical white' coloring of the room suggests that Bowman is being 'held under observation' by the alien race, as if he is part of an 'experiment'. Above right: Another wish of Bowman fulfilled: real food, as opposed to the machine-dispensed fare eaten during the Jupiter mission. The aliens have carefully constructed Bowman's dream environment here, in part for the purpose of in some way 'testing' him, to see if he will 'qualify' as a suitable being with which the alien can combine.
In Lynch's Mulholland Drive, Adam (on the left, wearing black clothing), together with the Cowboy, represent the masculine component within Diane Selwyn's psyche, i.e., together they represent her animus. Thus, Diane has a 'split' animus. The Cowboy represents the more ('conventionally') masculine component of her animus, and Adam represents that part of Diane's animus which is 'intellectual'. Her intellect has, in turn, been cross-contaminated with contents from her psychological shadow.
To find out more about what's going on between David Bowman and the alien in A Space Odyssey, we need to look in more detail at the conversation between Adam and the Cowboy in Mulholland Drive.
As suggested by the caption to the above screencap, the Cowboy, in speaking to Adam, is actually interacting with Diane's shadow-contaminated intellect. When Adam agrees with the Cowboy by saying that "a man's attitude determines to a large extent how his life will go" (this being Adam's interpretation of what the Cowboy has told him), the Cowboy says to Adam, "Then, you must be a man who does not care about the good life." A little later in the conversation, the Cowboy tells Adam that he will have done good if he sees the Cowboy once more, and he will have done badly if he sees him twice more. Adam's statement about a man's attitude, and the Cowboy telling Adam that he must be a man who doesn't care about the good life, are both references to certain parts of a philosophical text from Hindu religion, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. In a part of this Upanishad, the sage, Yajnavalkya, says to his wife (Maitreyi), "As a person acts, so he becomes in life. Those who do good become good; those who do harm become bad. Good deeds make one pure; bad deeds make one impure. You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny." In another part of the conversation between Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi, Maitreyi asks her husband, "My lord, if I could get all the wealth in the world, would it help me to go beyond death?" Her husband responds, "Not at all. You would live and die like any other rich person. No one can buy immortality with money." Maitreyi then says, "Of what use then are money and material possessions to me? Please tell me, my lord, of the way that leads to immortality."[a]
Although she is a woman, Mulholland Drive's Diane Selwyn (shown) corresponds, to a degree, to 2001's David Bowman.
The correspondence of the Mulholland Drive scenario with 2001, is that David Bowman has a 'split' anima (the anima being the feminine component within a man's psyche), and he corresponds to Diane (note the gender reversal), with the alien corresponding, to some extent, to the Cowboy. The alien is to 'usurp' Bowman's own anima - it takes over the role of mediator between Bowman's unconscious and his conscious mind. In the long run, the alien is trying to make Bowman believe that he can achieve immortality, by uniting first with HAL, and then with the combined entity uniting with the alien.
Poole represents that part of Bowman's anima that is more intellectual in nature (Poole is a chess player), and that has been cross-contaminated with contents from his (Bowman's) shadow; for recall that in the chess game, Poole gave in to HAL without verifying that he'd been check-mated, symbolizing the fact that Bowman's intellect tends to 'give in' to his own shadow (note that Poole corresponds to Adam in Mulholland Drive). Bowman's shadow contents are, in turn, bound up with some sort of 'evil Jewishness' within him (recall the HAL/bad (i.e., evil) Jew correspondence). The alien, which as we said, has usurped the position of mediator between Bowman's unconscious and conscious, knows that it can achieve its plan for Bowman by communicating with that part of Bowman's psyche that is contaminated, or 'weakened', by evil Jewishness.
Above left: Frank Poole represents that part of Dave Bowman's anima that has been cross-contaminated with contents from his shadow. Above right: HAL, a 'Satan figure', represents an evil Jew.
The alien is communicating with Bowman in order to manipulate his psyche, such that he will eventually come to see a certain solution to the problem (his own internal contradictions, i.e., the tension of opposites within himself) raised by the confrontation between opposites brought about as a result of the events at TMA-1. This solution is to consist of Bowman's own internal reconciliation of opposites, combined with his 'merging' with the alien, to achieve psychological wholeness. This process will ultimately result not only in the Bowman-alien combination becoming Mercurius (the union of all opposites), but will also result in the combined entity having achieved its own atman and having fused with the brahman, as described below.
Brahman and atman are two words that are of paramount importance in grasping the Upanishads.[b] The brahman is the supreme existence or absolute reality. The etymology of the word, which is derived from Sanskrit, is uncertain. Though a variety of views are expressed in the Upanishads, they concur in the definition of brahman as eternal, conscious, irreducible, infinite, omnipresent, and the spiritual core of the universe of finiteness and change.[c] Atman (Sanskrit: "self," "breath") is the universal self, identical with the eternal core of the personality that after death either transmigrates to a new life or attains release (moksha) from the bonds of existence. Atman is part of the universal brahman, with which it can commune or even fuse.[d]
Jung tells us that "Brahman is the union and dissolution of all opposites, and at the same time stands outside them as an irrational factor...Deliverance from...the tension of opposites, is synonymous with the way of redemption that gradually leads to Brahman."[e] Bowman is to see the dissolution of opposites, as the solution to the tension of these opposites within himself. He is thus to see the achieving of 'self-hood' (in both the Jungian and the Hindu senses, the latter represented by atman), followed by his 'merging' with the alien to become fused with the brahman, as beneficial to himself. This specific scenario within Bowman's psyche, by which he is to achieve wholeness, has been placed there by the alien, so that the alien itself can become a kind of ultimate being.
Finishing up with the scenario of Diane's dream of the Cowboy and Adam, Diane goes on to see the Cowboy twice more, implying that she has done badly. The correspondence with 2001 is that Bowman sees the alien twice more (after he sees Heywood Floyd, i.e., the alien, at TMA-1): first, by seeing Floyd on the video monitor on Discovery One after disconnecting HAL, and then he sees it a second time when he sees, in his 'mind's eye', the fetus approaching Earth (the fetus consists of a Bowman-HAL-alien combination). Bowman has not achieved immortality in 'human terms', which corresponds with the fact that he physically dies from his head injury. The alien-Bowman-HAL combination, however, is obviously a living entity.
a. The Upanishads. Introduction and Trans. Eknath Easwaran. Berkeley: Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, 2007. pp. 47, 54.
b. Wikipedia, 'Upanishads'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads.
c. 'brahman'. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 04 Sep. 2015. URL = http://www.britannica.com/topic/brahman-Hindu-concept.
d. 'atman'. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 04 Sep. 2015. URL = http://www.britannica.com/topic/atman.
e. Jung, C.G. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 6. Princeton University Press, 1976. para. 330.
Far left: Serial killer Jame Gumb (Buffalo Bill) from The Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal Lecter tells FBI trainee Clarice Starling that Bill is the product of years of abuse. Gumb deviates from his normal aloofness toward his captives (he holds each victim hostage for several days prior to killing them), when he begins to empathize, to some degree, with his latest captive, Catherine Martin. Second from left: Serial murderer Francis Dollarhyde ('The Tooth Fairy') from Michael Mann's Manhunter (based on Thomas Harris's novel, Red Dragon). Dollarhyde deviates from his normal pattern of carefully thinking over and planning each of his killings, when he gets romantically involved with a coworker, Reba. Third from left: Hit man Vincent from Mann's Collateral. In the audio commentary to the movie DVD, Mann says that Vincent was raised in foster homes and was physically abused as a child. Mann also suggests a parallel between Vincent and 2001's HAL 9000 computer, when he says that Vincent operates with a "machine-like" efficiency. However, Vincent demonstrates an anomaly, i.e., he deviates from his normally careful routine, when he goes with cab driver Max Durocher to visit Max's mother in the hospital. Far right: HAL's camera 'eye'. HAL behaves somewhat like a hit 'man', when he calmly maneuvers an EVA pod so as to sever Frank Poole's air hose and send him careening off into space, and then later, when he shuts off life support to the three astronauts who are in hibernation. HAL exhibits an anomaly in his normally error-free behavior when he misstates a chess move. Since HAL has control over almost all aspects of Discovery One's operations, and since the (feminine) alien has been storing itself in the ship's circuits during the mission, as described earlier, HAL and the alien have effectively gotten 'close' to one another. This explains HAL's deviation from his error-free behavior: He has begun to develop feelings for the alien, and thus, he is a little distracted. Near the end of the movie, while his 'brain' is being disconnected, HAL seems to regress to childhood, singing his first program, Daisy Bell.
Since HAL represents a golem/'bad Jew', one thing Kubrick is saying is that Israel is an abused child who has become the abuser.
HAL is effectively schizophrenic, due to his 'conflicted' programming: It's logical to assume that his basic programming includes the imperative to be completely honest with human beings, which would of course imply that he would normally fully disclose information to people; but at the same time, he has been programmed for the Jupiter mission to hide the true nature of the mission from some or all of the astronauts on board. He is also being portrayed as paranoid in a sense, by virtue of his 'assumption' (based on lip-reading) that Bowman and Poole planned to disconnect him; of course, he turned out to be right, but nevertheless, this is a hint from Kubrick that HAL is in fact paranoid.
Prophet Mani. [Image from the Wikipedia 'Mani (prophet)' page, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]
By giving the showdown between David Bowman and HAL the appearance of a final, universal battle between good and evil, Stanley Kubrick would seem, on the face of it, to hold a Manichaean point of view. Manichaeism was a major gnostic religion, originating in Sassanid era Babylonia. Although most of the original writings of the founding prophet Mani (c. 216–276 CE) have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived.
Manichaeism taught an elaborate cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process which takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light from which it came. Its beliefs, based on local Mesopotamian gnostic and religious movements, contained elements of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism.
Manichaeism thrived between the third and seventh centuries, and at its height was one of the most widespread religions in the world. Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire. It was widespread among the legions of the Roman Empire, who considered it a soldier's religion, and it was briefly the main rival to Christianity in the competition to replace classical paganism. Manichaeism survived longer in the East than in the West, and it appears to have finally faded away after the 14th century in southern China, contemporary to the decline in China of the Church of the East.
Manichaeism is also referred to as Manicheanism (or Manichaeanism) and its adherents as Manicheans (or Manichaeans). By extension, the term "manichean" is widely applied (often disparagingly) as an adjective to a philosophy or attitude of moral dualism, according to which a moral course of action involves a clear (or simplistic) choice between good and evil, or as a noun to people who hold such a view.[a]
Augustine of Hippo by Philippe de Champaigne, 17th century. [Image from the Wikipedia 'Augustine of Hippo' page, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]
As opposed to Manichaeism, Thomas Harris, author of the Hannibal Lecter novels (on which the movies, such as The Silence of the Lambs, are based), could be considered to be in agreement with St. Augustine, in that Augustine held a more complex view of good and evil than the Manichaeans. Augustine of Hippo (November 13, 354 – August 28, 430), also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius (present-day Annaba, Algeria). He was a Latin philosopher and theologian from Roman Africa. His writings were very influential in the development of Western Christianity.
According to his contemporary, Jerome, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith." In his early years he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism and afterward by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. After his conversion to Christianity and baptism in AD 387, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and different perspectives. He believed that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, and he framed the concepts of original sin and just war. He became a famous preacher (more than 350 preserved sermons are believed to be authentic), and was noted for combating the Manichaean religion, to which he had formerly adhered.
When the Western Roman Empire was starting to disintegrate, Augustine developed the concept of the Catholic Church as a spiritual City of God (in a book of the same name), distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. Augustine's City of God was closely identified with the Church, the community that worshiped God.[b]
Thomas Harris. [Image from the Wikipedia 'Thomas Harris' page, licensed under fair use via Wikipedia.]
The analyses of some of the Hannibal Lecter movies on this blog, turned up many references and allusions to Augustine in these movies. This implies that Thomas Harris was a not a follower of Manichaeism, and that by making allusions to Augustine (these allusions being present in some of the films based on Harris's novels, as stated), Harris and the makers of certain Lecter movies are giving us a hint that the supposed 'final showdown' in 2001 mentioned above (the one between Bowman and HAL) has a 'red herring' aspect to it, within the context that it is designed to 'trick' audiences into believing that 2001 portrays a Manichaean point of view; whereas, deep analysis of the film shows that this is not really true.
a. Wikipedia, 'Manichaeism'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism.
b. Wikipedia, 'Augustine of Hippo'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_hippo.
From Mulholland Drive: Top left: Adam Kesher's car approaches the top of Beachwood Canyon in Los Angeles. Note that the light patterns coming from the car's headlights, are shaped like (equal-armed) crosses; in Jung, an equal-armed cross is a type of mandala, thus indicating that the scenario which is about to transpire has something to do with attaining psychic totality,[a] i.e., with attaining psychological wholeness.[b] Top right: Adam's view while his car pulls up to the corral at the top of the canyon. The fact that the upcoming scenario is to take place in a corral, is a reference to the historical Gunfight at the OK Corral. This is a hint from Lynch that the upcoming scene in Mulholland Drive has to do with the confrontation, the 'shootout' among the six astronauts, which we said takes place in A Space Odyssey at TMA-1, after the monolith starts making a high-pitched noise. Above left: While Adam is walking through the entrance gate to the corral, a light above the gate, which had been off prior to Adam's entry, begins to flicker on and off for no apparent physical reason. This suggests that the entire scene is a dream of Diane Selwyn, the main character in Lynch's movie. Above right: The Cowboy confronts Adam inside the corral. As discussed in the analysis of Mulholland Drive, the Cowboy represents the mediator between Diane's unconscious and conscious mind, and in speaking to Adam, who represents Diane's intellect, he is trying to get Diane to listen (to her unconscious). The point as far as 2001 is that that which takes place at TMA-1 (the 'shootout' that we, the audience of Kubrick's movie, don't see), represents a confrontation between the unconscious and the conscious, a fact that we've already observed. (Recall that we are 'set up' for this confrontation by the two men walking around the Clavius lecture room in opposite directions).
a. Jung, C.G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffé. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston. Vintage Books, 1989. Glossary, "Mandala". Google Books. URL = https://books.google.com.
b. "Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is:...[T]he wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deceptions." (--Jung, C.G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Google Books, p. 212, URL = https://books.google.com.)
In David Lynch's 2001 film, Mulholland Drive, there is a numerical clue about an important idea in A Space Odyssey. This clue has to do with the idea of 'five of eight' persons, being significant in certain scenes. In the 'Club Silencio' scenario in Lynch's movie (some screenshots of which are shown below), only five of the eight persons involved in the scenario are portrayed as being very significant. "Significant" here means that there are only five people involved in the Club Silencio scenario who actually speak. Rita and Betty speak while at home (the scenario begins when Rita starts saying "silencio" in her sleep), and the emcee, the magician, and Rebekah Del Rio speak while in the club. The other three persons (a trumpet player, a blue-haired lady, and a man who helps the emcee carry Del Rio off the stage after she has fainted), do not speak during the scenario itself (the blue-haired lady only comes into play at the very end of the movie). Note that the grouping of five significant persons consists of three women and two men.
From Mulholland Drive - only five of eight persons in the Club Silencio scenario are significant: Top left: Rita (left) and Betty. Top right: The magician. Above left: The singer, Rebekah Del Rio. Above right: The emcee.
Above left and right: Heywood Floyd meets with his friend, Elena (blond hair), and some of her fellow employees, in the space station. Lynch's 'five of eight' clue from Mulholland Drive, described above, is a hint having to do with the fact that there are five persons in the group at the meeting, which we note consists of three women and two men, just like the grouping of five in Mulholland Drive described above. The round meeting table, representing a mandala, indicates that the persons at the meeting have, symbolically speaking, been brought together as part of something to do with psychological wholeness (but see below).[a] Also, the 'eight' in Lynch's 'five of eight', is a reference to the idea of an ogdoad, the Greek word for which is translated as 'the eightfold'. The Egyptian Ogdoad consisted of eight deities worshiped in ancient Egypt. Lynch is giving us a hint that in the space station meeting scene, Kubrick was suggesting the idea of a '5 + 3' ogdoadal system. (Note that one implication of this is that the meeting is 'missing' three persons or entities).
In terms of the discussion in part 19 of the Mulholland Drive analysis on this blog, about the number 4 (and its multiples) representing mandalas (and thus, psychological wholeness), and about 'disturbed' mandalas in Lynch's movie being represented by the numbers 3 and 5 (both of which are 'off by 1' from the number 4), the '5 + 3' ogdoad in A Space Odyssey can be realized to be a 'union' of disturbed mandalas. Since 5 + 3 = 8, and 8 is a multiple of 4, the '5 + 3' ogdoad therefore represents a kind of 'disturbed wholeness', or 'improper wholeness'.
Another numerical clue in A Space Odyssey, is that Heywood Floyd uses kiosk number 17 to get through space station security prior to the meeting; also, his call to his daughter from the space station costs him $1.70. According to the Dictionary of Symbols, "The ancient Romans seem to have regarded the number seventeen as unlucky since an anagram of the letters of which it is composed (XVII) gives the word VIXI, 'I have lived'."[b]
Above left: Heywood Floyd (brown suit), and the man escorting him through the space station, head for voice print identification kiosk number 17, so that Floyd's identity can be verified by space station security. Above right: Floyd's call to his daughter from the station cost him $1.70.
a. "Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is:...[T]he wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deceptions." (--Jung, C.G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Google Books, p. 212, URL = https://books.google.com.)
b. Dictionary of Symbols. Ed. Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, Trans. John Buchanan-Brown. London: Penguin Group, 1996. p. 867.
Top left: The communications antenna mechanism (the single large round dish with a smaller dish on each side) is normally pointed roughly opposite the direction Discovery One is traveling in, which is consistent with its being pointed toward Earth, since the ship is headed from Earth to Jupiter. Top right: We note that the antenna is rotating about its vertical axis, while Bowman is removing the (supposedly) faulty AE-35 unit. The antenna, which normally only rotates by small increments as necessary to remain pointed to Earth, due to slight deviations in the spaceship's course, must be continuously rotating while the unit is being replaced. Note that we're never actually shown Bowman installing the new unit. Above left: The antenna is again rotating when Poole goes to re-install the (again, supposedly) faulty unit. Above right: When Bowman leaves the ship in his pod to retrieve Poole's body, the antenna has stopped rotating and is again pointed opposite the direction of travel (click image to enlarge). HAL doesn't want the mission film or broadcast being transmitted to Earth, to show any evidence of the attack on Poole; and, he doesn't want any further communication to be possible between Bowman and ground control after the attack. HAL therefore severs all communication with Earth at some point before the attack. As mentioned previously in the analysis, it must be the case that the alien and HAL are working together at this point in the movie, with HAL initiating the chain of events by falsely stating that the installed AE-35 unit will completely fail within 72 hours; then later, the alien makes Bowman forget to put on his space helmet when he goes out to retrieve Poole. Therefore, since the alien represents the 'evil feminine', Kubrick is, in fact, depicting the 'evil female component' in our society (e.g., radical feminists) as being one of the parties responsible, for the way things have turned out insofar as the 'perpetual doom' cycle within which mankind has been trapped.
[Note: Recall that in part 11 of the analysis, it was observed that the aliens in the movie can influence the thoughts of human beings; this is why the alien is able to make Bowman forget to put on his space helmet. The aliens are non-material in nature, consisting of pure energy, and thus, as mentioned previously in the analysis, an alien individual has been able to store itself in Discovery One's circuitry. It has been 'hiding' there during the Jupiter mission, which explains how it knows what's happening on the ship. A clue about the aliens' non-material nature is obtained by expanding out the spelling for "TMA-1" to get "TMA-One", one anagram of which is "no meat".]
From The Silence of the Lambs: Top left and right: FBI trainee Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster) communicates with her boss, Agent Jack Crawford, while Crawford is on an airplane on his way to Calumet City, Illinois. Above left: Communication between Starling and Crawford is lost when Crawford's plane banks hard left and accelerates to change its heading. Above right: Hannibal Lecter standing in his Memphis cell, with Officer Boyle of the Memphis police lying dead on the cell floor. Lecter has killed Boyle, and while doing so he spattered Boyle's blood on the cell floor, in a symbolic re-enactment of the Jewish Passover, to protect the serial killer, Jame Gumb, in his basement 'underworld', from the angel of death, Clarice Starling. All along it appears to the movie audience that Lecter is helping Starling to catch Gumb, but Lecter is in reality attempting to lead Starling to her death at Gumb's hands. Lecter has 'set up' a situation within Starling's psyche such that if she defeats Gumb, who represents a 'pupil' of Satan, then she will have 'assimilated' Gumb, her opposite. Lecter is then to become Mercurius (whom as we've mentioned, is a union of all opposites), when he assimilates his Jungian opposite, Clarice Starling, in the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal.[a]
The makers of The Silence of the Lambs have provided us not only with a hint about Discovery One losing communication with Earth, but they've given us one big clue about the alien's overall plan, the setting up of the situation within Bowman's psyche, etc. Just as Lecter, who represents the evil Jew (i.e., 'bad Jew') in The Silence of the Lambs, hopes Gumb will defeat Starling, so the alien hopes Bowman will lose to HAL. And, just as Lecter has set himself up to become Mercurius if things should turn out that Starling defeats Gumb, so also the alien has set itself up to become Mercurius if Bowman defeats HAL: If he defeats HAL, Bowman will have assimilated HAL, his 'opposite' ('good Jew' assimilates 'bad Jew'); then, the alien is to unite with Bowman. Note that there are not one-to-one correspondences between representations in the two movies: Lecter represents the 'bad Jew', a personification of Satan, and the Greek god, Hermes (in that he is a psychopomp); Gumb represents Satan's (Lecter's) pupil (i.e., the Freemasons); and Starling represents not only Melusina, the feminine aspect of Mercurius, but as indicated above, she is also an angel of death, sent by God to destroy Gumb. In Kubrick's movie, the scenario is that HAL represents a combination of the evil Jews and the evil Freemasons, Bowman is the 'good Jew' and the active, masculine half of Mercurius, and the alien is Melusina.
a. The novel, Hannibal, ends with Lecter assimilating Starling; however, the movie has a different ending in which Clarice escapes from Lecter. It was felt by the movie-makers that audiences would not buy the idea of Lecter and Starling running off together.
Above left: As mentioned earlier in the analysis, the two men piloting the moonbus are hit men sent by Satan, and the three men in back of the bus are aliens, or more properly, they are aliens occupying men's bodies. One of the three (but not Heywood Floyd) is working 'undercover' as an informant for Satan. What the audience of 2001 hears being said by the three men, and in particular, by the man sitting to Floyd's right, seems to have a straightforward meaning: An area with an intense magnetic field has been discovered on the moon, it is not simply due to an outcropping of magnetic rock, its source is an object (the monolith) that appears to have been deliberately buried four million years ago, etc. However, there is actually a hidden narrative at work here: What the men are saying to each other takes place within a context that is different from what the audience of A Space Odyssey believes it to be. Before the men start talking about the monolith, Floyd notes that the sandwich he has just been handed "looks pretty good." The man standing (it's actually this man who's the informant) says in reply, "They're getting better at it all the time." When he says this, he's not saying that it's specifically the packagers of the food who are getting better at preparing items for use in space; instead, he's speaking as an alien, and he's saying that humans in general are getting better at doing this. When the men begin to look at the photos of TMA-1 and start discussing the monolith, the man seated to Floyd's right gives Floyd a rundown on the 'discovered' object as if it is something that has just been discovered, but what he's really doing is giving Floyd the pre-planned false scenario that has been created by himself and his co-workers, which will be used to explain the object to the viewers of the film or broadcast being made within 2001 (the same partially-faked film as that mentioned earlier in the analysis, i.e., shots of the excavation at TMA-1 are to be part of the same faked movie as the recorded portions of the Jupiter mission). When Floyd ends the conversation by saying, "You guys have certainly come up with something", the "something" is the false scenario that's been created: The monolith is not really a recent discovery, but is instead the 'container' for something that has been stolen from Earth by the aliens, and that has recently been placed on the moon on its way to Jupiter. Above right: In this view of the six astronauts (the five men who were in the moonbus, plus David Bowman), the men are holding their hands at their sides in such a manner as to suggest that they are about to draw guns, as if there's an element of 'wild West' here. This foretells what is about to happen when the men descend into the excavation.
Above left: The monolith inside the excavation is being viewed by a television or movie audience on Earth, and this is the same audience that is to view the recorded portion of the Jupiter mission (along with all its feigned aspects, as discussed earlier in the analysis). However, neither that audience nor ourselves are to see the subsequent 'show-down' among the six men, which begins after the monolith starts making its high-pitched noise, as the men fight each other to gain control over that which is contained within the monolith. During this fight, some of the men are killed (by having their air hoses disconnected). However, the actual alien entities inhabiting some of the men's bodies are not killed; they merely 'leave' the bodies they were occupying in their natural form, as pure, sentient energy. As an aside, if you click on the image to enlarge it, you'll notice that the floodlights near the back of the excavation are arranged in rectangular arrays of 3 x 4. As stated earlier, the confrontation at TMA-1 is to be one between the conscious (masculine) and the unconscious (feminine), and this is further confirmed by the arrangement of the lights in these arrays, since, according to Jung, 3 is a masculine number, and 4 is a feminine number.[a] Above right: David Bowman sees seven octahedral objects during the stargate sequence. Natural crystals of diamond are commonly octahedral;[b] therefore, this is one clue that what the aliens are after is diamonds, and in specific, the diamonds that are contained within the monolith. The red coloring under the objects is a reference to Hell, and serves as an indication that when the diamonds were dug up from within the Earth, they were in some sense 'stolen' from Satan. One or more of the six men at TMA-1 somehow makes off with, or in some other way obtains control of, the diamonds in the monolith, after the 'shoot-out' at TMA-1. One question raised by all of this is, why would the aliens want diamonds in the first place? Also, why would they enlist the help of human beings (i.e., men's bodies) to obtain them? We will answer these questions later.
a. Jung, C.G. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 12. Princeton University Press, 1968. para. 31.
b. Wikipedia, 'Octahedron'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octahedron.
Above left: A stewardess is served a meal while viewing a judo match, on a video monitor in the lunar lander lounge. Above right: A close-up of the match being watched. Left: 'The Bride' (played by Uma Thurman, wearing gold outfit) fights off eighty-eight sword-wielding men in Tarantino's Kill Bill Volume I. The wild, pretentious, in some cases almost ridiculous, violence portrayed in some of Tarantino's films, for example, the martial-arts type violence such as that in Kill Bill, is Tarantino's way of sending us the same message that Kubrick was: We as a society have gotten to the point where we too casually accept violence, not only that in movies, but real-life violence as well.
Jung tells us that the feminine aspect of Mercurius is represented by Melusina, here shown in 'Melusine's secret discovered', from Le Roman de Mélusine by Jean d'Arras, ca 1450-1500. She corresponds to the female Nous, and to the Edem of the Gnostics.[a] [Image from the Wikipedia 'Melusine' page, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]
As quoted from Jung's Psychology and Alchemy in part 36 of this analysis, it is Mercurius who "stands at the beginning and end of the [alchemical] work."[b] (Note that this implies that in Mercurius, we have a link between the rubedo, the end of work, and the nigredo, its beginning.) Jung dedicates an entire section of his Alchemical Studies to explaining the nature of Mercurius. Jung associates Mercurius with quicksilver and/or water, fire, and spirit and soul. To the alchemist, he is the transformative substance itself; as such, he is "obviously a projection of the unconscious." He "consists of all conceivable opposites", and is thus a duality; but, he is also a unity, and he has a triadic nature as well. He is also the prima materia itself. He "represents on the one hand the self and on the other hand the individuation process and, because of the limitless number of his names, also the collective unconscious."[c]
The foregoing is by no means an exhaustive description of Mercurius, but it's enough for our purposes at the moment. Mercurius is alluded to in 2001 symbolically by, for example, the black monolith, which is associated with the nigredo (the beginning of the alchemical work). Speaking more generally, since A Space Odyssey depicts the Magnum Opus itself (as described earlier in the analysis), and since Mercurius represents this (the alchemical process), the entire movie could be said to suggest the 'presence' of Mercurius.
Basically, the alien individual, consisting of pure energy, has been storing itself in Discovery One's electrical/electronic circuitry during the Jupiter mission. This individual (the same one which previously occupied Heywood Floyd's body), wants to unite its femininity (recall the blue symbolism), Melusina (also called Melusine), with Bowman, who in turn represents the active and masculine half of Mercurius.[d] It is necessary for the alien's becoming Mercurius, who is a union of all opposites, that the 'good' Jew, Bowman, unite with the 'bad' Jew, HAL. (In Jungian terms, when Bowman does this, he will have assimilated his own psychological shadow.) Bowman's assimilation of evil when he defeats HAL, is to be followed by the alien infusing Bowman's body while he's watching Floyd speak on Discovery One's video monitor (in HAL's logic/memory compartment) near the end of the movie. This is then to be followed by Bowman's return to Earth, then his death, so that the alien/Bowman combination can be reborn as Mercurius When the alien accomplishes this, the resultant being (i.e., the being that constitutes the fetus shown at the end of the film) is the aforementioned union of all opposites: feminine and masculine/yin and yang, good and evil, man and machine, pure energy as well as physical body, etc.
The alien intentionally planted the monolith on Earth such that it is 'distorted', for as previously explained, it is rectangular instead of square, symbolizing its incorporation of an over-emphasis on the unconscious, which is feminine in character. The (distorted) monolith is planted so that man's ancestors, under the influence of the alien race 'via' the presence of the monolith, will discover how to use weapons, and thus, humanity will be put on the path to its own self-destruction. Humanity's history is to include a 'weeding-out' process by which a suitable specimen is to be found, with whom the alien can unite to achieve its perfect being. It turns out that Bowman is this specimen.
The alien, which has been storing itself in Discovery One's circuitry during the Jupiter mission, begins to combine with Bowman (above left) while he is viewing a prerecorded briefing from Heywood Floyd (above right) after he has disconnected HAL (recall that the alien had earlier occupied Floyd's body).
The alien's becoming Mercurius is its 'plan B' of sorts. The original plan was for the alien and HAL, to share in the benefit which was to be obtained by defeating Bowman and Poole, and fooling everyone on Earth with the faked mission broadcast. As will be explained later in the analysis, this benefit was to be the ruling over of a kind of evil kingdom by the entities that HAL and the alien represent, respectively. The original plan for the three astronauts who were in hibernation, was for them to be revived by HAL, and to then aid HAL and the alien by providing the physical means to move the monolith to its final destination. The alien starts out abetting HAL, by helping with the events surrounding the attack on Poole: The alien makes Bowman forget to put on his space helmet when he leaves the ship to retrieve Poole; and, as will be explained later in the analysis, the alien makes things so that Bowman and Poole do not notice anything unusual when Discovery one is steered off course by HAL.
Originally, the death of Poole was to be followed by Bowman being unable to re-enter Discovery One. When the alien realized that HAL killed the three astronauts who were in hibernation aboard the ship, while Bowman was out in his EVA pod, it knew HAL was trying to cheat it out of sharing in the aforementioned evil kingdom, so it ensured that Bowman decided to enter the ship (through the emergency airlock), so that he could defeat (and assimilate) HAL.
The being shown (in the fetal stage) at the film's ending, is a union of all opposites.
a. Jung, C.G. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 12. Princeton University Press, 1968. para. 404.
b. Jung, C.G. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 13. Princeton University Press, 1970. para. 427.
c. Ibid., paras. 259, 284.
d. As we will see later in the analysis, the alien has actually 'set up' a 'situation' within Bowman's psyche, such that he will see the need to unite with the alien.
For the majority of Christians, the Holy Spirit (prior English language usage: the Holy Ghost from Old English gast, "spirit") is the third person of the Holy Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and is Almighty God. The Holy Spirit is seen by mainstream Christians as one person of the Triune God, who revealed his holy name YHWH ("I am who am") to his people Israel, sent his eternally only-begotten Son Jesus to save them, and sent the Holy Spirit to sanctify and give life to his Church. The Triune God manifests as three divine persons, in one divine Being, called the Godhead (from Old English: Godhood), the divine essence of God.[a] Death of the Holy Spirit is being depicted in A Space Odyssey, as described below.
From Mann's Thief: Top left: Frank (left) and a fisherman sit on a jetty in a lake. This view is meant to portray the idea of the Holy Spirit moving over the waters at the beginning of creation, as told in the biblical book of Genesis, chapter 1, verse 2: Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. [New International Version] Top right: Okla (left) is visited by Frank while in prison. As discussed in the analysis of Thief on this blog, Okla represents Frank's guardian angel, which is a kind of spirit. Later, Okla dies from angina. The full name for angina is angina pectoris, which, translated from the Latin, means "a strangling feeling in the chest." In the bible's Gospel of John, chapter 20, verses 20-23, a correspondence is drawn between breath, and the Holy Spirit: 20. [T]hen the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." 22. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit." 23. "If you received the sins of any, they are forgiven them..." [New Revised Standard Version; emphasis not in original.] Above left: In the audio commentary for Mann's Heat, Mann says that he wanted to show a dead bird in the swimming pool (lower left of screencap) in this scene. Certain birds, such as doves, are sometimes used to represent the Holy Spirit. Above right: The last time we hear Bowman's breathing in 2001, he is pointing at the monolith just before he dies. The cessation of his breathing is meant to represent death of the Holy Spirit.
a. Wikipedia, 'Holy Spirit in Christianity'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Spirit_in_Christianity.
Disclaimers 1) In certain instances it has been determined that the creators of some of the productions analyzed on this blog, and/or the creators of source material(s) used in the making of these productions, may be making negative statements about certain segments of society in their productions. These statements should be taken as expressing the opinions of no one other than the creators.
2) This blog is not associated with any of the studios, creators, authors, publishers, directors, actors, musicians, writers, editors, crew, staff, agents, or any other persons or entities involved at any stage in the making of any of the media productions or source materials that are analyzed, mentioned, or referenced herein.
3) In keeping with the policies of the filmmakers, authors, studios, writers, publishers, and musicians, that have created the productions (and their source materials) that are analyzed, mentioned, or referenced on this blog, any similarity of the characters in these films or source materials to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Saint Augustine's Confessions andCity of God from Wikisource (except where otherwise noted); portions from Wikisource used on this blog are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica from the 'Logos Virtual Library' website (except where otherwise noted), compiled and edited by Darren L. Slider; believed to be in public domain.
