I first saw Stanley Kubrick’s, 2001-A Space Odyssey when a was a child. I’ve seen it probably nearly twenty times since, but I clearly remember the first time that I saw it that it had affected me on some deep level that I was not even remotely able to communicate. I felt like this movie was important somehow. I felt as if somehow whoever had made this movie had pulled some sort of magic trick, and through some “space movie”, it had given me a glimpse into God, into who I am, and into who and what humanity may even be. It left me with goose bumps, and it stuck with me for days or weeks after each viewing. I was too young and uninformed to have even heard of Nietzsche, much less read him, and Strauss’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra was, “the 2001 song” to me. I didn’t understand, but even then, I did understand it on some level. That is the genius of Stanley Kubrick. He wanted this film to bypass the conscious and to affect the viewer emotionally and philosophically on many levels. As I grew older, more informed, exposed, and as my own personal search led to various ideas and philosophies, my viewings of this film have become even more enriched and infused with meaning. I am in awe of this film, because I truly believe that with each additional viewing, I will endlessly continue to take more from it on some personal, spiritual, level. I know this is common among many other forms of art, but I know of no other film that does this for me. I am in awe of the genius of this film.
In Eric Nordern’s 1968 Playboy interview with Kubrick, he proposes that 2001 was the first “Nietzschean Film”, and that the essential theme of the film was taken from Nietzsche’s concept of man’s evolution from ape to man to superman. Kubrick refused to define any particular meaning to the film, but he encouraged that particular speculation. For me, personally, after deeper observation and after actually reading Nietzsche’s, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, I am absolutely convinced that although there are other allegorical ideas in the film, such as from Homer’s Odyssey, as well as a man-machine allegory, I think this is a profoundly Nietzschean film, and in this paper I will attempt to briefly describe why.
Zarathustra begins in the cave. He rises with the dawn of the sun. The film begins with the dawn of man. It is literally dawn. It is the beginning, and man is a beast. He is an ape who lives in the dark, but he does have a certain Dionysian vitally. He is alive, courageous, and inventive. The monolith appears to the apes, and they have the courage and initiative to reach out to it and touch it. A new dawn begins. The sun it at high noon in perfect alignment with the monolith. The ape begin to use tools and technology. They learn to use weapons, and they kill the weaker apes who have not risen up to the challenge. The have a will to power. The apes begin their evolution toward man. Technology and evolution are interdependent. This moment is emphasized by the music of Strauss’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, to make an extra point.
The film leaps ahead along with the evolutionary leap we have just witnessed, to the current evolutionary state of man. Man is at his technological and evolutionary peak. He is Apollonian in nature, and is hyper rational, unemotional, and scientific. That which is vital and alive in his nature has been repressed. Nietzsche was deeply influenced by the philosophy of the ancient Greeks (Zarathustra was Zoroaster in the Greek language), and one of Nietzsche key ideas was to reinvigorate the Dionysian spirit in mankind. In other words, the spirit of breaking social constraints and taboos which limits the individual’s freedom, and holds back the breaking free and rising above of man in the overman, or superman; that which is the final and superior stage of the evolution of man. Through the Dionysian spirit, and the will to power, human beings can break through into the third and final stage of our evolution into the overman. To Nietzsche, man in his present condition is only a bridge, or a tightrope between the beast and the overman state. Man is something in between the two stages of evolution, and between the two is an abyss. “I teach you the overman. Man is something that must be overcome”, said Nietzsche. Nietzsche wrote in, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” that symbolically, man will evolve in three stages, from the beast of burden (camel), to the fighting symbol of freedom (the lion) who fights religion, culture, and God (the dragon) for ultimate freedom, and thus is transformed into the highest state, the overman (the child). The camel is burdened with culture and is in the dark. The lion rises up with the will to power, and fights the dragon of “shoulds” and “though shalts”. The dragon is the symbol of all the crutches that we depend on, but that also enslave us. Through the will to power, the lion defeats the dragon, and is thus transformed in the overman, the child. The child not only overcomes ancient and burdensome values, the child is a CREATOR. “Zarathustra has changed. Zarathustra has become a child, Zarathustra is the awakened one.”
So, returning to the leap from ape to man. Man has evolved through his technology. The apes through their Dionysian courage and curiosity reached out and touched the monolith. Modern man is hyper-rational and Apollonian in nature. When he discovers the monolith on the moon, he is more concerned with taking pictures of it with his technology, and studying it rather than experiencing it directly. Man’s technology doesn’t work all that well in space, though. His pen floats around uselessly in the zero gravity. He has to learn to walk again. He has to learn how to use the toilet all over again. He eats baby food in space out of straws. He IS a baby. Man is an infant in space. Man is a fish out of water in space. Space is the abyss. Mankind then creates a spaceship and a supercomputer, HAL, as a God formed in man’s image. HAL knows all, and HAL does everything. Man no longer really even needs to think. Man and his individual power has become homogenized and nearly useless. Humans have to be in a near state of death (hibernation) just to travel. Man almost has to purpose or meaning to even exist at this point, and he has made technology his God. HAL rules over man, and begins to see man as a bunch of boring apes that serve little purpose at all. HAL then decides to get rid of these useless humans, and in doing so, does not take into consideration the Dionysian element of courage and initiative that the apes had that still resides somewhere within mankind. Bowman finds a creative and daring way back into the shape after HAL has sealed him outside. Bowman then uses the most simple of tools, a screwdriver, (not much more advanced than the sticks and stones that the apes first used) to kill HAL. Bowman uses his will to power to kill God. God is dead. Bowman (man) is now left with God dead, and without meaning, as he knows it. Bowman is left absolutely alone in the existential abyss of space, and he is sent across time and space to face his own death. Bowman sees himself and his own mortality, and he embraces it. He has his own final supper, and he topples and breaks a glass of wine. The glass container is broken, but the wine is still there, only free of the constraints of it’s former container. It is free, as the spirit or light within the body is not destroyed when the body is destroyed. It continues on in ultimate freedom and with constraint of any kind. When the time of his death comes, he affirms it. The monolith again reappears. Bowman reaches out to it, and is transformed. The first image we see afterwards is the light of the sun. Like Zarathustra, we stare right into the light of the sun, and are free from the darkness. Bowman (man) is the overman, the child, and the creator of self. All of this happens while the symbolic three levels of Strauss’s Zarathustra plays victoriously.
“The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred, “Yes”. For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred, “Yes” is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world.” –Nietzsche