"Thinking Eternally, Acting Locally." - Neal August
I have had a theory in mind for many moons now that I think answers the question of why SUVs are so popular.
Many on the left who are concerned about the impact of the internal combustion on the environment have direct their ire in recent years toward America’s most popular vehicle, the SUV. In trying to ascertain the popularity of these vehicles by the buying public, many on the left have speculated that the sheer size of these vehicles is its consumer drawing power. Such speculation has eventually led to modern critiques of American bravado and our population’s obsession with “bigness” or even our consumer consciousness of having the “it” thing, in this case, the SUV.
In response, the right, in an urge to defend consumer culture and the individual American’s right to purchase the vehicle of their choice, has defended the SUV and ridiculed the environmental movement’s obsession cars and American consumerism. Thy have postulated that the popularity of SUVs has much to do with its safety. In this sense the right has argued that the popularity of the SUV is do to its relative safeness for its occupants in comparison with other cars.
Bravado or safety?
Well, I have thought long and hard about this issue. I really do not care about the outcome in the least sense. I do not believe in global warming any more than I believe in dooms-day scenarios (I’ve never liked disaster films). Also, I really do not care for SUVs. I prefer smaller cars. Give me a Pontiac Vibe or a Toyota Matrix any day. Nevertheless, my curiousness about this particular cars popularity did strike me. More to the point, I am always interested in finding out why anything is popular. What makes something popular? Why do people like reality television? I have no idea. Learning why anything is popular is, I think, a worthwhile venture; it tells you much about human nature. Sometimes the answer is merely buzz. How else does one explain why Tickle-Me Elmo and Cabbage Patch Kids were popular. Because kids wanted them? I doubt that. If something is popular simply because it is popular then this does tell you something about human nature (it’s the if-everyone-was-jumping-off-a-bridge argument that parents use). But sometimes the answers to why certain things are popular are more subtle and more practical. Why are SUVs so popular?
I finally came to a pretty good conclusion that I think answers this question. I think that the people buying these cars are families. I think, in particular, young families are buying these cars. More to the point, I think young fathers are opting for these vehicles because 1) they can haul a family and 2) most importantly, its cool to drive one.
Think about it. Families in the fifties and sixties once drove station wagons. Not cool. Then families in the 80s drove big vans. Even less cool. In the nineties, mini-vans were the vehicles of choice for young families. Not cool, but better than vans and wagons.
In the late nineties and into this decade (by the way, what do we call this decade?), the SUV came into existence. Here was a vehicle that looks like a truck but could carry a family. Here was a car that a young father could carry junior to soccer practice but still take out with the guys on the weekends to Hooters or what have you.
Instead of buying a van for the family and a car for cruising, a young father who wants to still look cool can buy and an SUV.
So the answer is not really safety nor popularity, though these reasons could be accompanying factors. The answer is not necessarily bravado, though I think the left is closer in this answer than the right is with theirs.
Yes, the answer is “coolness”. People want to look cool but still be practical. The SUV combines both practicality and coolness.
Therefore, the left should not worry too much. Coolness like anything is a matter of trend and, like all trends, this one will eventually subside. The SUV will go the way of the dodo soon enough and then there will be a new vehicle with which to concern yourselves.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Thursday, January 27, 2005
New Beck Album out March 29th
:::::: 01.20.05: Guero Out March 29 ::::::
The new Beck studio album, titled Guero will finally drop March 29th 2005. Here is the tracklisting.
E-Pro
Que Onda Guero
Girl
Missing
Black Tambourine
Earthquake Weather
Hell Yes
Broken Drum
Scarecrow
Go It Alone
Farewell Ride
Rental Car
Emergency Exit
The first single, E-Pro, will arrive at radio stations next month.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
"a 'true' church"
Check this website out!
Here is a site that offers a brief glimpse into the extremities of “right-wing” Christendom. I dare not call the viewpoint offered as conservative.
This guy believes that almost every well-known preacher is an anti-Christ. Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, Tony Evans, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, even John MacArthur, are all wolves and false prophets.
And check out his essay topics! Polygamy is okay, Slavery is okay, and executing homosexuals is okay. But drinking alcohol is bad.
Also something else is okay… uh, … I want use the word but it involves “fiddling”. This may explain a lot of the website’s contents. In fact, all those who say that one shouldn’t “fiddle”, according to this bloke, is a Pharisee. Yes, THOSE are Pharisees!
Normally I would not post a link to such a website, let alone make such a notice of it, but I felt that a casual perusal of such a site would be beneficial to all. Yes, I would normally be quite hesitant to highlight such a brand of Christianity. A good number of non-believers visit my site and I would certainly not want them to confuse such “ravings” as authentic Christianity or as part of the mainstream of conservative orthodoxy. But I will risk such a potentiality in this one case for four reasons.
1) To those of you who are non-believers, let it be known that the website linked to is not a reflection of authentic Christianity as it is experienced by the overwhelming majority of Christian believers. The fact that I should highlight such a website as a focus of disapproval should prove that what I say is so.
2) To those of you who are more towards the liberal or moderate side of Christendom, let it be known that the majority of conservative Christians are in no such way people who approve of such things. May you thank God that the SBC leaders are not as bad as they could be.
3) To those of you who are more towards the conservative side of Christendom, please be aware that you should not slip in such a direction as the linked-to website. It would be a terrible thing if conservative Christianity would slide so far to the right that the majority of conservative parishioners isolated themselves from the rest of Christendom and the world.
4) And to those who agree with much of the arguments of the highlighted website, well … I do not think you at all mind isolating yourselves from the rest of Christendom and the world. So good luck.
You know, coming out of conservative Christianity, one is occasionally confronted with legalistic believers who, well, never seem to think anything is okay or fun. I am sure that those from liberal Christianity must sometimes deal with libertine Christians who think everything is okay and everything is fun. I am sure that is the case, but I am not from that side of Christendom and I do not want to discuss it anyway. Rather, I’d like to make mention of legalistic believers.
I mean, to some believers everything is evil. Science fiction/fantasy is evil, all non-Christian music is evil, alcohol is evil, TV is evil, public education is evil, vegetarianism is evil, interracial dating is evil, dancing is evil, bands leading worship instead of pianos and organs is evil, casual dress is evil, any translation other than the King James Version is evil, ecumenicalism is evil, Catholics are evil, non-Baptists are evil, neo-orthodoxy is evil, non-inerrancy is evil, liberal Christians are evil … well, I may be moving away from the fringe and more towards the mainstream but I hope I have given a brief example of what I am talking about.
My question is this: Do these people ever have any fun?
Now don’t think this is a slight question. It is very serious. As I moved from more conservative, legalistic churches to conservative, non-legalistic churches, I began to notice that those believers who advocated a more legalistic approach to the faith always seemed unhappy and devoid of joy. To them, all secular culture was evil and all moderate to liberal Christians needed to be shut up. Not argued with or defeated in the realm of ideas but silenced. You know, you can always get a good glimpse into the certainty of another movement’s position and how much the adherents of the movement trust their ideas by how they deal with those who disagree with them. If they welcome debate, then they are pretty secure in their beliefs. If they rather silence their opponents and squash all debate, then one starts to suspect that they do not feel too secure with their position.
Here is an example. In many liberal colleges, the administration does not provide their students with a balance of conservative and liberal professors. Many of the liberal professors claim that they want a free exchange of ideas but do not want conservative professors offering students a different, conservative interpretation. If they were so secure in their beliefs one would think they would not mind another position being spoken.
Here is another example. In most conservative seminaries and colleges, the administration does not provide their students with a balance of conservative and liberal professors. When the conservatives are on the outside looking in, they claim to only want balance. But when the conservatives become the majority they shut out their ideological opponents just the same as the liberals. When I was on the outside looking in I advocated the balanced approach and supported conservative leaders who claimed only to want balance at Christian colleges and seminaries. Well, that now appears to not have been the case. Today they want to push out other beliefs just as much as the liberals wanted. If they were so secure in their beliefs one would think they would not mind another position being spoken.
These people are always fighting against liberals and other straw men that they concoct to answer why their ministries suffer. These people seem to be against more than they are for. I heard Rick Warren say something similar to this recently, he said, “The world knows what Christians are against, but they don’t know what we are for.” True words. Needless to say, on the linked to website, he is regarded as a wolf.
I mean really. No alcohol, no rock music, no neo-orthodoxy – how do these people have fun? I’ll tell you. I think they get their kicks getting mad at others. I think they have fun being upset about liberals and modern culture. They are miserably happy. These guys do not walk around with happy expressions of Christian joy and peace. Rather, there is always something to be upset about. So they must then speak about against modern culture and modern liberals and keep modern culture and modern liberals away from the children. And certainly keep them out of our colleges.
You know, somewhere there is a child who is growing up to think that Billy Graham is a liberal and false prophet and must be silenced. My God!
Here are a five Biblical lessons that I hope will help all those out there who feel that life is not worth living unless you are attacking the latest Harry Potter book.
1) Have faith. God is in control and all things work toward good. So if you see another person or group out there whether liberal or conservative or just wacko claiming the name of Jesus: LEAVE THEM ALONE! It is not your business. As long as they are not persecuting others then don’t try to stop them from proclaiming the name of Jesus. Trust God to deal with them.
2) Have peace. It’s not your mission to wage the culture wars. Your waging it wrong anyway.
3) Have joy. This life is a wonderful gift and we need to have joy in it. Fantasy fiction is just that: fantasy and fiction. Leave Rowling and Lucas and Spielberg alone. They have enough problems of their own than to have to deal with whiny Christians. And alcohol is for our joy [Editorial note: the writer of Panis Circenses is not currently imbibing alcohol while he is in seminary].
4) Have patience. God will deal with those whom He wishes to deal with, including you.
5) Don’t try to separate the wheat from the tares. It is not your responsibility, it is God’s. Leave the tares there and let God deal with them. He may want them there so he can turn the tares into wheat. Who knows, you might be a tare.
With these points in mind, go out and have a beer [preferably a Guinness so I can enjoy it vicariously], watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and read Rick Warren’s 40 Days of Community.
If not, at least watch Are You Being Served? this weekend and lighten up.
Here is a site that offers a brief glimpse into the extremities of “right-wing” Christendom. I dare not call the viewpoint offered as conservative.
This guy believes that almost every well-known preacher is an anti-Christ. Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, Tony Evans, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, even John MacArthur, are all wolves and false prophets.
And check out his essay topics! Polygamy is okay, Slavery is okay, and executing homosexuals is okay. But drinking alcohol is bad.
Also something else is okay… uh, … I want use the word but it involves “fiddling”. This may explain a lot of the website’s contents. In fact, all those who say that one shouldn’t “fiddle”, according to this bloke, is a Pharisee. Yes, THOSE are Pharisees!
Normally I would not post a link to such a website, let alone make such a notice of it, but I felt that a casual perusal of such a site would be beneficial to all. Yes, I would normally be quite hesitant to highlight such a brand of Christianity. A good number of non-believers visit my site and I would certainly not want them to confuse such “ravings” as authentic Christianity or as part of the mainstream of conservative orthodoxy. But I will risk such a potentiality in this one case for four reasons.
1) To those of you who are non-believers, let it be known that the website linked to is not a reflection of authentic Christianity as it is experienced by the overwhelming majority of Christian believers. The fact that I should highlight such a website as a focus of disapproval should prove that what I say is so.
2) To those of you who are more towards the liberal or moderate side of Christendom, let it be known that the majority of conservative Christians are in no such way people who approve of such things. May you thank God that the SBC leaders are not as bad as they could be.
3) To those of you who are more towards the conservative side of Christendom, please be aware that you should not slip in such a direction as the linked-to website. It would be a terrible thing if conservative Christianity would slide so far to the right that the majority of conservative parishioners isolated themselves from the rest of Christendom and the world.
4) And to those who agree with much of the arguments of the highlighted website, well … I do not think you at all mind isolating yourselves from the rest of Christendom and the world. So good luck.
You know, coming out of conservative Christianity, one is occasionally confronted with legalistic believers who, well, never seem to think anything is okay or fun. I am sure that those from liberal Christianity must sometimes deal with libertine Christians who think everything is okay and everything is fun. I am sure that is the case, but I am not from that side of Christendom and I do not want to discuss it anyway. Rather, I’d like to make mention of legalistic believers.
I mean, to some believers everything is evil. Science fiction/fantasy is evil, all non-Christian music is evil, alcohol is evil, TV is evil, public education is evil, vegetarianism is evil, interracial dating is evil, dancing is evil, bands leading worship instead of pianos and organs is evil, casual dress is evil, any translation other than the King James Version is evil, ecumenicalism is evil, Catholics are evil, non-Baptists are evil, neo-orthodoxy is evil, non-inerrancy is evil, liberal Christians are evil … well, I may be moving away from the fringe and more towards the mainstream but I hope I have given a brief example of what I am talking about.
My question is this: Do these people ever have any fun?
Now don’t think this is a slight question. It is very serious. As I moved from more conservative, legalistic churches to conservative, non-legalistic churches, I began to notice that those believers who advocated a more legalistic approach to the faith always seemed unhappy and devoid of joy. To them, all secular culture was evil and all moderate to liberal Christians needed to be shut up. Not argued with or defeated in the realm of ideas but silenced. You know, you can always get a good glimpse into the certainty of another movement’s position and how much the adherents of the movement trust their ideas by how they deal with those who disagree with them. If they welcome debate, then they are pretty secure in their beliefs. If they rather silence their opponents and squash all debate, then one starts to suspect that they do not feel too secure with their position.
Here is an example. In many liberal colleges, the administration does not provide their students with a balance of conservative and liberal professors. Many of the liberal professors claim that they want a free exchange of ideas but do not want conservative professors offering students a different, conservative interpretation. If they were so secure in their beliefs one would think they would not mind another position being spoken.
Here is another example. In most conservative seminaries and colleges, the administration does not provide their students with a balance of conservative and liberal professors. When the conservatives are on the outside looking in, they claim to only want balance. But when the conservatives become the majority they shut out their ideological opponents just the same as the liberals. When I was on the outside looking in I advocated the balanced approach and supported conservative leaders who claimed only to want balance at Christian colleges and seminaries. Well, that now appears to not have been the case. Today they want to push out other beliefs just as much as the liberals wanted. If they were so secure in their beliefs one would think they would not mind another position being spoken.
These people are always fighting against liberals and other straw men that they concoct to answer why their ministries suffer. These people seem to be against more than they are for. I heard Rick Warren say something similar to this recently, he said, “The world knows what Christians are against, but they don’t know what we are for.” True words. Needless to say, on the linked to website, he is regarded as a wolf.
I mean really. No alcohol, no rock music, no neo-orthodoxy – how do these people have fun? I’ll tell you. I think they get their kicks getting mad at others. I think they have fun being upset about liberals and modern culture. They are miserably happy. These guys do not walk around with happy expressions of Christian joy and peace. Rather, there is always something to be upset about. So they must then speak about against modern culture and modern liberals and keep modern culture and modern liberals away from the children. And certainly keep them out of our colleges.
You know, somewhere there is a child who is growing up to think that Billy Graham is a liberal and false prophet and must be silenced. My God!
Here are a five Biblical lessons that I hope will help all those out there who feel that life is not worth living unless you are attacking the latest Harry Potter book.
1) Have faith. God is in control and all things work toward good. So if you see another person or group out there whether liberal or conservative or just wacko claiming the name of Jesus: LEAVE THEM ALONE! It is not your business. As long as they are not persecuting others then don’t try to stop them from proclaiming the name of Jesus. Trust God to deal with them.
2) Have peace. It’s not your mission to wage the culture wars. Your waging it wrong anyway.
3) Have joy. This life is a wonderful gift and we need to have joy in it. Fantasy fiction is just that: fantasy and fiction. Leave Rowling and Lucas and Spielberg alone. They have enough problems of their own than to have to deal with whiny Christians. And alcohol is for our joy [Editorial note: the writer of Panis Circenses is not currently imbibing alcohol while he is in seminary].
4) Have patience. God will deal with those whom He wishes to deal with, including you.
5) Don’t try to separate the wheat from the tares. It is not your responsibility, it is God’s. Leave the tares there and let God deal with them. He may want them there so he can turn the tares into wheat. Who knows, you might be a tare.
With these points in mind, go out and have a beer [preferably a Guinness so I can enjoy it vicariously], watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and read Rick Warren’s 40 Days of Community.
If not, at least watch Are You Being Served? this weekend and lighten up.
Sunday, January 23, 2005
From The Silver Chair
"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things -- trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."
--Puddleglum,
To the Lady of the Green Kirtle, the Queen of Underland;
in The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Wilson ... Wilson
Yesterday, while I was waiting to get a tire repaired, I stepped into a used CD store on Hulen St. and found a few good CDs. I bought Live Phish Vol. 14: 10/31/95, Rosemont Horizon, Rosemont, Illinois. This is a really great show. I had first listened to a boot-leg of this show in college which was quite good. But this CD quality sound is a masterful improvement. Not only do they open the first set with a selection from Gamehenge but they cover The Who's Quadrophenia (it's a Halloween show of course). They also have a 40 minute rendition of "You Enjoy Myself" which is worth the price of admission. Yes, this is one of my favourite shows. The only thing that would have made it perfect would have been "Fee" and "Esther" but you can't have everything. Hi, Pat.
Also, I bought Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy. This is my favourite Zeppelin album. A really great set of songs. I had this album in high school and college, but a friend of a roommate's borrowed it and it was never returned. Baskets! (Not Pat. It was another roommate. Pat's friends always returned music and even let me borrow a few. That's how I got to listen to the boot-leg version of Live Phish, 10/31/95). Anyway, I never bought a replacement until recently. I prefered to download the songs and listen to them on the computer. Now do not give me any copyright lectures or Christian ethics; I bought the rights to listen to these songs long ago. I was just reclaiming my right to listen to what I had already purchased. And now I have bought the album once again and have deleted "The Song Remains the Same", "No Quarter", and "The Ocean" from my computer. But I gave my sister my lava lamp when she went to college, so "No Quarter" will not sound the same anyway.
"We've done four already but now we're steady
and then they went: One, two, three, four"
Singing in the sunshine, laughing in the rain
Hitting on the moonshine, rocking in the grain
Got no time to pack my bag, my foots outside the door
I Got a date, I can't be late, for the high hopes hailla ball.
Sing in to an ocean, I can hear the ocean's roar
Play for free, play for me and play a whole lot more, more!
Singing about good things and the sun that lights the day
I used to sing on the Mountains, has the ocean lost it's way.
i dont know
oh oh yeah
ooh yeah
Sitting round singing songs 'til the night turns into day
Used to sing on the mountains but the mountains washed away
Now I'm singing all my songs to the girl who won my heart
She is only three years old and it's a real fine way to start.
oh yeah...
the show is mine...
i'l blow my mind...
because it feels so good yeah yeah...
...
...
ohh so good
Sunday, January 16, 2005
panem et circenses ...
Recently, someone astutely acknowledged that the title of this blog, Panis Circenses, refers to the Latin phrase “panem et circenses”. Now this phrase comes from the Roman poet Juvenal who remarked in his Satires that the only thing that would placate or distract the discontented people of Rome from revolting were “panem et circenses”, bread and circuses, or food and entertainment.
Now I took this phrase removing the accusative singular and the conjunction to leave it as “panis circenses” for several reasons.
When I started my first blog in May of 2004 I perused all the other Christian blogs that I could find took look for a hidden niche. Most of the Christian blogs I saw dealt mainly with the faith and secular politics. These were the two interests of most Christian bloggers. However, my two interests were the faith and the arts. So I came up with a blog that dealt with faith and art with an appropriate title derived from a Hans Balthasar book.
After the demise of that blog for unmentionable factors, I devised a new blog that would continue my interests. Its name was to be Panis Circenses. Instead of “theology” and “drama” to represent “faith” and the “arts” I chose “panis” to represent the “faith”, Christ being the “bread of life” and “circenses” to represent the arts, because all art is ultimately entertainment.
But the meaning of the words did not stop there. No.
Panis.
The bread of life, which is Christ, the faith which is Christianity.
“Panis” is close in resemblance to “panic”. ‘Panic” is etymologically “terror caused by the god Pan.” The ancient Greeks believed that he lurked in lonely spots, and would frighten people by suddenly appearing, or making noises. He was evidently invoked to account for alarming but natural phenomena, and so the element of “irrantionality” in the English word was present from the beginning.
Circenses.
Circuses. Art entertainment in the form of literature, film, paintings, music, etc.
“Circenses” should really be pronounced “kir-ken-ses”. The Roman pronounced the Latin “C” as a “K”. Incidentally, the Romans pronounced their “V” as “W”. So we have Julius Caesar’s famous phrase Veni, vidi, vici pronounced as “wayny, weedy, weeky”. Not to mention “Wennus”, the goddess of Love.
So “Kirkenses”. When Odysseus was journeying home in book X of the Odyssey, he was only the Isle of Kirke not Circe. And it was Kirke who transformed his crew of men into swine. You will also remember in Matthew 8:28-34, that Jesus cured the demon-possessed men who were in a panic and sent the demons into a herd of swine that rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the waters, almost like the waters of the abyss.
Also, Kirke reminds me of Soren Kierkegaard, the great Danish theologian and philosopher. No one has affected me so theologically and philosophically positive as Kierkegaard. He was the second Socrates and the last of the great philosophers. His insights into Christianity ignited the neo-orthodox movement which brought down classic liberal theology and saved conservative theology. He was also a great individualist who wrote under many pseudonyms, whose opinions and insight did not always reflect Kierkegaard’s. Also, the name Kierkegaard is Danish for “church yard.” Interestingly, he spent much of the last years of his life attacking the stale and blasé Church that was standard in Copenhagen.
So basically I see this blog as focusing on faith and art and, in the metaphorical sense, exhibiting to distracted people “panicked” artists and churchmen as the swine that they are and sending them off into the watery abyss.
Now I took this phrase removing the accusative singular and the conjunction to leave it as “panis circenses” for several reasons.
When I started my first blog in May of 2004 I perused all the other Christian blogs that I could find took look for a hidden niche. Most of the Christian blogs I saw dealt mainly with the faith and secular politics. These were the two interests of most Christian bloggers. However, my two interests were the faith and the arts. So I came up with a blog that dealt with faith and art with an appropriate title derived from a Hans Balthasar book.
After the demise of that blog for unmentionable factors, I devised a new blog that would continue my interests. Its name was to be Panis Circenses. Instead of “theology” and “drama” to represent “faith” and the “arts” I chose “panis” to represent the “faith”, Christ being the “bread of life” and “circenses” to represent the arts, because all art is ultimately entertainment.
But the meaning of the words did not stop there. No.
Panis.
The bread of life, which is Christ, the faith which is Christianity.
“Panis” is close in resemblance to “panic”. ‘Panic” is etymologically “terror caused by the god Pan.” The ancient Greeks believed that he lurked in lonely spots, and would frighten people by suddenly appearing, or making noises. He was evidently invoked to account for alarming but natural phenomena, and so the element of “irrantionality” in the English word was present from the beginning.
Circenses.
Circuses. Art entertainment in the form of literature, film, paintings, music, etc.
“Circenses” should really be pronounced “kir-ken-ses”. The Roman pronounced the Latin “C” as a “K”. Incidentally, the Romans pronounced their “V” as “W”. So we have Julius Caesar’s famous phrase Veni, vidi, vici pronounced as “wayny, weedy, weeky”. Not to mention “Wennus”, the goddess of Love.
So “Kirkenses”. When Odysseus was journeying home in book X of the Odyssey, he was only the Isle of Kirke not Circe. And it was Kirke who transformed his crew of men into swine. You will also remember in Matthew 8:28-34, that Jesus cured the demon-possessed men who were in a panic and sent the demons into a herd of swine that rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the waters, almost like the waters of the abyss.
Also, Kirke reminds me of Soren Kierkegaard, the great Danish theologian and philosopher. No one has affected me so theologically and philosophically positive as Kierkegaard. He was the second Socrates and the last of the great philosophers. His insights into Christianity ignited the neo-orthodox movement which brought down classic liberal theology and saved conservative theology. He was also a great individualist who wrote under many pseudonyms, whose opinions and insight did not always reflect Kierkegaard’s. Also, the name Kierkegaard is Danish for “church yard.” Interestingly, he spent much of the last years of his life attacking the stale and blasé Church that was standard in Copenhagen.
So basically I see this blog as focusing on faith and art and, in the metaphorical sense, exhibiting to distracted people “panicked” artists and churchmen as the swine that they are and sending them off into the watery abyss.
Should Christians Sue Other Christians?
I began thinking about this issue recently and engaged in a debate with a few other believers. Since I think this is an important issue for these times I decided to post the results of the debate. I really do not think that my position was challenged enough. Furthermore, I did not find that others were really willing to engage the Scriptures in this discussion. It is somewhat odd that those conservatives who claim to venerate the Scriptures to such a degree that “inerrancy” becomes the mark of orthodoxy will not even weigh-in on what the Scripture says about this issue. And I am not just speaking about seminary students either.
I recently perused the text books required for my seminary’s ethics classes. Law suits among believers is not even mentioned, let alone defended. Furthermore, I perused the text book my wife used when she took ethics at Southern Seminary. The absence of this issue at Southern appears to be the same.
Now there are two possible reasons for this absence of dialogue on this issue. Both of which are not mutually exclusive.
First, it may be that this issue is such that all discussion has been resolved among evangelical conservatives and no one thinks that further debate is necessary. Discussion on abortion, euthanasia, birth control, homosexuality, divorce and remarriage needs to be discussed.
Of course, in the text book from Southern, the issue of alcohol is not mentioned either. Now most Southern Baptists decry the use of alcohol even while the Bible is completely okay with its consumption. This is an issue in which the God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, “Word of God” is completely okay with something but Southern Baptists seem to feel that the Biblical mandate is not “sufficient” in this area, so they create their own mandate. Interesting. [Editorial Note: the author of Panis Circenses is not currently imbibing alcoholic beverages as the Bible says while he is in seminary.]
After considering the issue of alcohol and the way conservatives ban something that is Scripturally okay, is it not then possible that they would okay something that is Scripturally banned? Why would they do this?
Well, the reason alcohol is banned despite its Scriptural affirmation is because of cultural reasons. Alcohol is not affirmed in our culture so the believers in our culture give the issue a pass. Now lawsuits are culturally encouraged in our culture. Think about it. How often do you hear a sermon against lawsuits? Well, we often hear about the evils of the ACLU suing a Christian group or a state entity over a religious matter. How often do you hear a conservative pastor preach against a Christian group suing another Christian group?
This is the second reason. We as Americans have become such a lawsuit culture that Christians, especially the conservative evangelical kind, do not believe they can properly function in our society without suing. We hear great expositions of passages about the incipient immorality of our culture, usually of the sexual kind, and we hear about Paul’s condemnation of sexual immorality in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6 but we never hear any sermons on what Paul sandwiched in between these discussions: lawsuits. It appears that Paul saw lawsuits in the same context as sexual immorality. So when you hear a well-known conservative Christian leader speak against sexual immorality and how we have to sue others to keep sexual immorality at bay, then think of “plank eye”.
Yes, it appears that it is too hard not to sue in America today. When a Christian college or agency won’t do as we wish, instead of leaving them to God, we spurn the Scriptures in order to get our way. Yes, we will break the Scriptures in order to save them.
Yes, I do not think that we as evangelical Christians are discussing this issue in any way because lawsuits have become our modus operandi of getting our way. We’d rather be successful than Scriptural. We will only take up the cross if we exhaust all legal options first. We’d rather sue the Kingdom of God into reality. The legally successful will inherit the earth.
Am I wrong on this?
Here is what Paul says:
1 Cor 6:1-8 (KJV) Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather [suffer yourselves to] be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that [your] brethren.
Here is what Jesus says:
Mat 5:40 (KJV) And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have [thy] cloke also.
I have tended to interpret these verses at "face value" and believed that believers should not sue other believers but, rather, should take their grievances to the church. If a believer is being sued by another believer (or by anyone for that matter) he should not "fight" back; he should leave the situation up to God.
I read in the Baptist news about state conventions suing Baptist state colleges and Christian groups suing the ACLU and each other over "evolution" and "school prayer."
I was interested in seeing some comments and alternative interpretations of these Scripture verses.
Panis 1:
The case of State Conventions suing Baptist State Colleges has occurred in recent months in Georgia and Missouri.
Here's why some think it's permissible:
These organizations are incorporated under State Law. If they violate any state code in the way they do business who will call them to task if not State Conventions or member churches or messengers of the convention?
Circenses:
These organizations are incorporated under State Law. If they violate any state code in the way they do business who will call them to task if not State Conventions or member churches or messengers of the convention?
I understand that they are accountable to no one but the conventions (et al) ... and God. But should the Christian conventions bring sue the Christian colleges? Or should they either assert their accountabiltiy perogative a different (more Biblical?) way or let God take care of them?
I would respond to those you make the assertion that suing is permissable when there isn't outside accountability that such scenarios do not negate Scriptural prohibitions. The question then is whether or not suing other Christians (or other Christian institutions) is prohibited by Scripture.
Panis 1:
Do you not subject yourself to State Law when you incorporate a religious organization?
I think YES. And if you do then you must follow the state's prescribed legal system for resolving legal matters.
In the Missouri Case the Missouri State Convention was open for Christian Arbitration but the agencies refused. In fact the trustees acted like they didn't even know what Christian Arbitration was.
Panis 2:
If someone, Christian or not, wrongs me, and the wrong is not righted via all civil methods in an equitable manner, then I will indeed seek remedies via the civil court system. To refrain from doing so will do one of two things:
1 - It will send the message that Christians are patsies and will allow you to walk all over them, and
2 - It will send the message that Christians who wrong other Christians are exempt from being held accountable for their actions legally.
If you're a Christian, and accidentally run your car through my living room window costing $2000 to repair, and you refuse to pay for it, you bet I'm going to sue you for damages. OTOH, if I run my car through another person's window, not only will I pay for your window, but I will probably give you a few extra bucks just for your trouble. Keep in mind that, like most people, I don't have that much money lying around.
Panis 3:
Speaking as a Missouri Baptist, people should know that the agencies involved were instituted, funded, and supported by the Missouri Baptist Convention from their very beginnings. In effect, although God owns all things, the MBC exercized the temporal rights of ownership.
Soon after the beginnings of the conservative takeover in the SBC, there came a point at which each of the agencies "hijacked" themselves (quite illegally, I assure you) from the control of the MBC. This is (as of two years ago) a total of 231 million dollars in material assets, put in place by God through the tithes and offerings of members of the Missouri Baptist Convention.
What else is there to do? Should we just release control of these godly institutions so they can pursue their more liberal agenda? Or do we take steps necessary to restore them back to their rightful stewards - the Missouri Baptist Convention?
Either way, in the eyes of both Christian and secular society, we come out as losers. It's a difficult situation to be sure. For my part, I believe the MBC is doing the right thing in our efforts to restore these agencies to the MBC.
Most people are stuck on the idea of suing, as if anyone is going to profit from this. The MBC, however, is suing to regain control over assets that we already legally own. There's a big difference.
Circenses:
Our attorney won't take a case to court if he knows the two parties involved are Christians. He advises them to take it to their deacon boards. But that has to do with individuals. When you are dealing with business entities, even "Christian" ones, things must be dealt with legally, in order to be valid in the world's reckoning. Besides, not everyone working for a "Christian" legal entity is necessarily a born-again Christian.
Well, whose reckoning are we more concerned about? the world’s or God’s? I understand what you are saying, though; but if I thought the Scriptures allowed for such a process, I would not mind lawsuits among Christian entities. I am just not sure the Scriptures allow lawsuits among any believers, even believing institutions. If we admit that the Scriptures do not allow individual believers to sue individual believers, is not a group of believers suing another group of believers just as bad or worse.
True, not everyone working for a Christian legal entity is a believer. But we do not know men’s hearts. If they have made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ we have to treat them as such.
With regards to the world, Paul appears to admonish believers from going to court because of unbelievers (1 Cor 6:6)
Do you not subject yourself to State Law when you incorporate a religious organization?
I think YES. And if you do then you must follow the state's prescribed legal system for resolving legal matters.
In the Missouri Case the Missouri State Convention was open for Christian Arbitration but the agencies refused. In fact the trustees acted like they didn't even know what Christian Arbitration was.
If a Christian group or any individual believer is breaking a state law then I think notifying secular authorities is fine. I think that falls under Romans 13.
But if the group is not breaking a state law and secular authorities do not get involved then I do not think we are only left with the option of a lawsuit. I think there are always other options. That is, if suing a Christian group is prohibited by Scripture.
If someone, Christian or not, wrongs me, and the wrong is not righted via all civil methods in an equitable manner, then I will indeed seek remedies via the civil court system. To refrain from doing so will do one of two things:
1 - It will send the message that Christians are patsies and will allow you to walk all over them, and
2 - It will send the message that Christians who wrong other Christians are exempt from being held accountable for their actions legally.
Well, we have to respond in a Christ-like manner. I look at Matt. 5:38-48 and cannot see how lawsuits agree with Christ’s teachings. I am not saying that this is easy or fair (it takes a lot of faith in God to refrain from such actions) but I do think we as believers are called to this high standard.
Speaking as a Missouri Baptist, people should know that the agencies involved were instituted, funded, and supported by the Missouri Baptist Convention from their very beginnings. In effect, although God owns all things, the MBC exercized the temporal rights of ownership.
Soon after the beginnings of the conservative takeover in the SBC, there came a point at which each of the agencies "hijacked" themselves (quite illegally, I assure you) from the control of the MBC. This is (as of two years ago) a total of 231 million dollars in material assets, put in place by God through the tithes and offerings of members of the Missouri Baptist Convention.
What else is there to do? Should we just release control of these godly institutions so they can pursue their more liberal agenda? Or do we take steps necessary to restore them back to their rightful stewards - the Missouri Baptist Convention?
Either way, in the eyes of both Christian and secular society, we come out as losers. It's a difficult situation to be sure. For my part, I believe the MBC is doing the right thing in our efforts to restore these agencies to the MBC.
Most people are stuck on the idea of suing, as if anyone is going to profit from this. The MBC, however, is suing to regain control over assets that we already legally own. There's a big difference.
If these institutions are breaking state laws then notify the state. If they are not breaking state laws or the state will not intervene, then I can’t see how one can Scriptural take them to the state courts.
Releasing the institutions is an option. There may be other options. But just because others harm us or don’t play fair do we then have the right to violate Scriptural prohibitions, if that is the case.
We cannot base our Christian duty on what the world or other believers think; we have to do what the Scriptures tell us.
Whether or not one group profits or even whether one group is in the right seems to be beyond the point. We can’t break Scriptural mandates just because we are a part of the right cause. That’s the end justifying the means. I go back to Matt. 5:38-48.
Before I am willing to change my position on this issue I think I will need to see Scriptural rather than anecdotal arguments.
Panis 1:
How about "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto the Lord that which is the Lord's"
If you obligate your church or religious institution with the laws of Caesar by incorporating your entity then you are bound by law and by God's Word to Obey the King.
Why do you think Paul appealed to Caesar? He obviously did not mind asserting his legal rights when it was necessary.
Circenses:
How about "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto the Lord that which is the Lord's"
If you obligate your church or religious institution with the laws of Caesar by incorporating your entity then you are bound by law and by God's Word to Obey the King.
Why do you think Paul appealed to Caesar? He obviously did not mind asserting his legal rights when it was necessary.
Jesus’ command to “render unto Caesar” neither supersedes nor negates other Scriptural commands. Submitting to secular authorities does not give us the obligation to do as the state says when the state asks us to violate other Scriptural commands. For instance, the state cannot make us stop witnessing. If the state ordered us to cease witnessing, we would not submit because we do not believe that the state is correct. So there are circumstances when we do not “render unto Caesar”, i.e., when “Caesar” orders us to break the commands of God.
“Appealing to Caesar”, or appealing to the government, is one thing; suing another believer is a far different matter. Again, if we think that a Christian or Christian group is violating state law then I think we can appeal to the state. But if no state law is being broken then we do not have the Scriptural mandate to break Paul’s command to not sue.
As usual, I find myself in agreement with your position. I think it would violate scriptural mandates on good stewardship to simply allow these things to happen without challenge.
I would not assert that those who are upset about the situation in the MBC allow unscriptural behaviour to continue. If you feel that something needs to be done then, by all means, do something. My position in this situation is not that something should or should not be done. Rather, I am questioning the way in which something is done. I question the method of “lawsuits” among believers.
Would it not violate the scriptural mandate of 1 Cor 6:1-8 to sue other believers? If not, why?
What many don't understand is that the MBC begged these agencies to submit to binding Christian arbitration - and they flat refused. Why? Because everyone knows they don't have a leg to stand on - scripturally or legally.
Again, even if these agencies are violating Scripture doesn’t give another carte blanche to violate Scripture in response.
Panis 1:
If I were a lawyer here's what I would say to you.
The scripture in 1 Cor 6 applies to the local church at Corinth and thus to all other local churches for all time. Christians in local churches are not to sue each other, period, they are to handle all their diffences through local church discipline.
Now you show me how this passage applies to all Christians who are not members of the same local church. Who would be the judge? How can you use Local Church Discipline when there is no church involved?
Circenses:
If I were a lawyer here's what I would say to you.
The scripture in 1 Cor 6 applies to the local church at Corinth and thus to all other local churches for all time. Christians in local churches are not to sue each other, period, they are to handle all their diffences through local church discipline.
Now you show me how this passage applies to all Christians who are not members of the same local church. Who would be the judge? How can you use Local Church Discipline when there is no church involved?
Excellent questions! I’ll do my best to answer.
Five points:
First, when two or more believers are involved then the church is always involved.
Second, Paul statements about lawsuits among believers comes in a whole passage about immorality and the body (individual and corporate), extending from 1 Cor 5 to 1 Cor 6:20.
Third, it would seem odd that Paul would put a prohibition against individuals believers but allow such action on the part of an aggregate of believers. Here is an extreme example: 1 Cor 6:9-10 gives a vice list following the prohibition against lawsuits among believers. It would seem odd for us to state that such behaviour is wrong among individual believers but alright among a body of individual believers, or this behaviour is wrong among those believers who attend church but alright among believers who do not attend church.
Fourth, while Paul is speaking to a local or regional church in the case of the Corinthian congregation, it is doubtful that the principles he is applying are just intended for the local church. If such were the case then associations and denominations that break fellowship with a church that has a homosexual pastor in accordance with 1 Cor 5:11-13 and 1 Cor 6:9 were applying a microcosmic discipline in an unscriptural macrocosmic manner.
Finally, Paul never seems to make a differentiation between the local church and the whole church. There is one body of Christ and that one body is the whole church in all of its local and regional manifestations (1 Cor 12). One could go so far as to say that the church exists wherever two or more are gathered in Jesus’ name. The church is not an institution, rather it is a composition of people united under the headship of Christ.
At least in 1 Cor, Paul speaks about the individual believers body (6:15-20) and the body of the church, whether local or in its entirety (12:12-31).
In 6:15-20 he speaks about the body of the individual believer associating with immorality. In 5:1-13, he speaks about the body of the aggregate of individual believers that makes up the local church associating with an individual believer who is associating with immorality: “a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough” (5:6). This is interesting logic on the part of Paul. The individual believer’s body is one of many individual bodies that makes up the whole body of Christ, i.e. the church. The same can be said of many local churches making up many associations making up many state conventions making up many denominations that makes up the entire church in all of its manifestations across the globe, across cultures, since its founding at Pentecost.
Paul speaks in 12:22-31 about the whole body of Christ and its many gifts. He speaks that there should not be any division in the body (v. 25). He speaks about the different spiritual gifts given to the many members of the body. He then speaks about apostles, prophets and teachers (v. 28). The reference to apostles in this verse about the church body seems to indicate that he is referring to the church as a whole and not just in its local manifestation in Corinth. There does not seem to be any apostles in Corinth at the time of this letter because if there had been then such church problems would have been dealt with by them and not by Paul via letter, but they are not. Thus, while Paul is speaking to a local congregation, he is speaking to the church as a whole, the whole body of Christ, to which he wishes no division, including lawsuits.
Now in terms of how church discipline should be carried out:
When a local association of local churches finds that one of its member churches is honoring immorality, those local churches break fellowship with that church. When a denominational body of believers finds that one of its member churches is honoring immorality, then those believers break fellowship with that church. This is appears to be the Scriptural method of discipline, the breaking of fellowship.
There are countless scenarios that one can submit for this discussion. Allow me to give a few.
Let’s say you have two believers from two different local churches in a dispute. Well, involve both churches in handling the dispute.
Let us take the MBC situation into account. If MBC agencies are refusing to abide by MBC standards then either remove the leaders of those agencies from their positions or, if either that fails or is not an option, then dissolve those agencies.
In the end it is God who is to ultimately handle disciplinary matters. If the methods stated in the Scriptures are not applicable and the only methods left available are contrary to Scripture, then shake the sand from the souls of your shoes and leave it up to God to handle the situation.
Panis 4:
Let us take the MBC situation into account. If MBC agencies are refusing to abide by MBC standards then either remove the leaders of those agencies from their positions or, if either that fails or is not an option, then dissolve those agencies.
Alright then, how do you go about dissolving those agencies. They were created according to state law, therefore they must dissolved the same way. And that involves a lawsuit.
While suing other Christians is distasteful, sometimes it is necessary.
Circenses:
While suing other Christians is distasteful, sometimes it is necessary.
The question is not whether it is distasteful, but, rather, whether it is Scriptural.
Panis 1:
Haven't had time to answer you point by point but wondered first of all about this paragraph.
You wrote - "Now in terms of how church discipline should be carried out:
When a local association of local churches finds that one of its member churches is honoring immorality, those local churches break fellowship with that church. When a denominational body of believers finds that one of its member churches is honoring immorality, then those believers break fellowship with that church. This is appears to be the Scriptural method of discipline, the breaking of fellowship."
In the case of the Missouri Baptist Convention who would we break fellowship with in the case of The Baptist Home?
Would we break fellowship with each church where a trustee holds membership?
Would we break fellowship with each church were Residents of the Baptist Home hold membership?
Would we break fellowship with each contributing church who donates mission dollars to the Baptist Home?
The only form of discipline available to the MBC in this case is legal in nature.
If you hold to your view that suing another Christian is not scriptural then you must also agree that incorporating a church or a nonprofit religious organization under the laws of a state is also unscriptural. If not then at the very least it would be unethical if you do not intend to abide by State Law which unfortunately includes prescribed legal processes for settling such disputes as the one we are discussing.
Interestingly enough the examples you present about Associations and State Conventions are written into their respective Constitutions and Bylaws which are regarded as legal and binding documents under the state law in the state where those said entities are incorporated.
It is my humble opinion we sacrificed the high Biblical Ground that you are alluding to years ago when the trend began to incorporate all Southern Baptist Churches and Agencies and Entities.
Panis 5:
I just wonder what all you folks think the MBC should do...I mean, there are many that would condemn the MBC for its actions - while offering no real solutions.
Are there any who would hold the 5 rebellious agencies to task? Or should they just "get away with it" in the name of peace - to do with these godly institutions as they see fit?
Panis 1:
Part of the problem goes back in Baptist History to the founding of schools, publishing houses, benevolent organizations and missionary societies - The good organizations that we have created have become more like their secular counterparts than they are like the church. In fact most of them are regulated by state and federal law.
Now we are faced with this dilemna.
How do two Christians or two different groups of Christians who are tied to one of these multi-million dollar religious or denominational organizations settle their differences?
We have no Baptist Bishop who can make a decision, like the Apostle Paul could have made.
All we have is the democratic process of a state convention meeting which is all bark and no bite until you hire a lawyer.
Circenses:
Haven't had time to answer you point by point but wondered first of all about this paragraph.
In the case of the Missouri Baptist Convention who would we break fellowship with in the case of The Baptist Home?
Would we break fellowship with each church where a trustee holds membership?
Would we break fellowship with each church were Residents of the Baptist Home hold membership?
Would we break fellowship with each contributing church who donates mission dollars to the Baptist Home?
The only form of discipline available to the MBC in this case is legal in nature.
Again, I do not think that when our options for a preferred outcome are lessened that we are only left with the option of disobeying Scriptural mandates, if that is in fact the case. It is difficult for me to answer the above questions because I am not that familiar with the MBC situation. Some of the above may be appropriate to the situation and some may not. I am less concerned with discussing the application of Biblical principles than with what the Biblical principle actually is. Your questions are definitely relevant; you appear to be presenting cases to test the relevancy of the application of church discipline, which is good. While these questions might or might not deny the relevancy of “breaking fellowship” as a form of church discipline, even if so it does not disqualify the assumed Scriptural prohibition against lawsuits among Christians.
Perhaps a better application of the above mentioned method would be to present cases to test the relevancy of my interpretation of the lawsuit prohibition. To some extent this has already been done.
If you hold to your view that suing another Christian is not scriptural then you must also agree that incorporating a church or a nonprofit religious organization under the laws of a state is also unscriptural. If not then at the very least it would be unethical if you do not intend to abide by State Law which unfortunately includes prescribed legal processes for settling such disputes as the one we are discussing.
It is quite probable that many Christian groups have worked their way into a corner where their options are so greatly decreased that they can only see lawsuits an appropriate action. It reminds me of the story of King David and his rape of Bathsheba. Now raping Bathsheba was wrong of course, but when Bathsheba became pregnant, instead of confessing his sins and repenting, he continued to dig himself a hole by trying to get Uriah to have relations with his wife at inappropriate times and then eventually murdering Uriah. It was only when he was convicted of his sin by the prophet Nathan that he began to right his wrongs. Basically what I am saying is that we do not right past wrongs by more wrongs, we only dig our graves deeper.
Interestingly enough the examples you present about Associations and State Conventions are written into their respective Constitutions and Bylaws which are regarded as legal and binding documents under the state law in the state where those said entities are incorporated.
I think we can hold to state laws as far as Scriptural principles are not violated. I am a bit concerned at the logical extension of the argument that we have to obey state laws with concern to legal matters even when they contradict Scripture just because we are involved in legal matters. I know this is not what you are advocating though.
It is my humble opinion we sacrificed the high Biblical Ground that you are alluding to years ago when the trend began to incorporate all Southern Baptist Churches and Agencies and Entities.
That may be the case. If so, we do not right ourselves by continuing to disobey the Scriptural mandates.
I just wonder what all you folks think the MBC should do...I mean, there are many that would condemn the MBC for its actions - while offering no real solutions.
Are there any who would hold the 5 rebellious agencies to task? Or should they just "get away with it" in the name of peace - to do with these godly institutions as they see fit?
I do not think anyone here is condemning anyone else. If the MBC is in error about how they are handling the situation, then they certainly are not the first and won’t be the last. All of us everyday mishandle situations. The important thing is to learn from our errors and learn from Scripture and from God about how we can better handle such situations.
If these agencies are in the wrong then God will deal with them as He sees fit. We should never think that anyone ever “gets away with it”. I have no problem with crying out like Job about the “wicked” (Job 21), but we all have to have faith that God will take care of the situation. Now this does not mean that those in the MBC shouldn’t do anything. Far from it! If you believe that you are in the right and need to do something, do it! My thoughts are not concerned about “what you do” not “that you do.”
But if they do “get away with it” because no lawsuit is applied then it will not be in the name of peace but rather in the name of Scripture.
One thing we have to be careful of is not blindly accepting the methods of a movement when we agree with the movement’s motives. Disagreeing with a movement’s methods does not mean we have to disagree with the movements motives. I am not saying that such is the case with the MBC situation but it is a stealth temptation in these times.
I recently perused the text books required for my seminary’s ethics classes. Law suits among believers is not even mentioned, let alone defended. Furthermore, I perused the text book my wife used when she took ethics at Southern Seminary. The absence of this issue at Southern appears to be the same.
Now there are two possible reasons for this absence of dialogue on this issue. Both of which are not mutually exclusive.
First, it may be that this issue is such that all discussion has been resolved among evangelical conservatives and no one thinks that further debate is necessary. Discussion on abortion, euthanasia, birth control, homosexuality, divorce and remarriage needs to be discussed.
Of course, in the text book from Southern, the issue of alcohol is not mentioned either. Now most Southern Baptists decry the use of alcohol even while the Bible is completely okay with its consumption. This is an issue in which the God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, “Word of God” is completely okay with something but Southern Baptists seem to feel that the Biblical mandate is not “sufficient” in this area, so they create their own mandate. Interesting. [Editorial Note: the author of Panis Circenses is not currently imbibing alcoholic beverages as the Bible says while he is in seminary.]
After considering the issue of alcohol and the way conservatives ban something that is Scripturally okay, is it not then possible that they would okay something that is Scripturally banned? Why would they do this?
Well, the reason alcohol is banned despite its Scriptural affirmation is because of cultural reasons. Alcohol is not affirmed in our culture so the believers in our culture give the issue a pass. Now lawsuits are culturally encouraged in our culture. Think about it. How often do you hear a sermon against lawsuits? Well, we often hear about the evils of the ACLU suing a Christian group or a state entity over a religious matter. How often do you hear a conservative pastor preach against a Christian group suing another Christian group?
This is the second reason. We as Americans have become such a lawsuit culture that Christians, especially the conservative evangelical kind, do not believe they can properly function in our society without suing. We hear great expositions of passages about the incipient immorality of our culture, usually of the sexual kind, and we hear about Paul’s condemnation of sexual immorality in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6 but we never hear any sermons on what Paul sandwiched in between these discussions: lawsuits. It appears that Paul saw lawsuits in the same context as sexual immorality. So when you hear a well-known conservative Christian leader speak against sexual immorality and how we have to sue others to keep sexual immorality at bay, then think of “plank eye”.
Yes, it appears that it is too hard not to sue in America today. When a Christian college or agency won’t do as we wish, instead of leaving them to God, we spurn the Scriptures in order to get our way. Yes, we will break the Scriptures in order to save them.
Yes, I do not think that we as evangelical Christians are discussing this issue in any way because lawsuits have become our modus operandi of getting our way. We’d rather be successful than Scriptural. We will only take up the cross if we exhaust all legal options first. We’d rather sue the Kingdom of God into reality. The legally successful will inherit the earth.
Am I wrong on this?
Here is what Paul says:
1 Cor 6:1-8 (KJV) Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather [suffer yourselves to] be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that [your] brethren.
Here is what Jesus says:
Mat 5:40 (KJV) And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have [thy] cloke also.
I have tended to interpret these verses at "face value" and believed that believers should not sue other believers but, rather, should take their grievances to the church. If a believer is being sued by another believer (or by anyone for that matter) he should not "fight" back; he should leave the situation up to God.
I read in the Baptist news about state conventions suing Baptist state colleges and Christian groups suing the ACLU and each other over "evolution" and "school prayer."
I was interested in seeing some comments and alternative interpretations of these Scripture verses.
Panis 1:
The case of State Conventions suing Baptist State Colleges has occurred in recent months in Georgia and Missouri.
Here's why some think it's permissible:
These organizations are incorporated under State Law. If they violate any state code in the way they do business who will call them to task if not State Conventions or member churches or messengers of the convention?
Circenses:
These organizations are incorporated under State Law. If they violate any state code in the way they do business who will call them to task if not State Conventions or member churches or messengers of the convention?
I understand that they are accountable to no one but the conventions (et al) ... and God. But should the Christian conventions bring sue the Christian colleges? Or should they either assert their accountabiltiy perogative a different (more Biblical?) way or let God take care of them?
I would respond to those you make the assertion that suing is permissable when there isn't outside accountability that such scenarios do not negate Scriptural prohibitions. The question then is whether or not suing other Christians (or other Christian institutions) is prohibited by Scripture.
Panis 1:
Do you not subject yourself to State Law when you incorporate a religious organization?
I think YES. And if you do then you must follow the state's prescribed legal system for resolving legal matters.
In the Missouri Case the Missouri State Convention was open for Christian Arbitration but the agencies refused. In fact the trustees acted like they didn't even know what Christian Arbitration was.
Panis 2:
If someone, Christian or not, wrongs me, and the wrong is not righted via all civil methods in an equitable manner, then I will indeed seek remedies via the civil court system. To refrain from doing so will do one of two things:
1 - It will send the message that Christians are patsies and will allow you to walk all over them, and
2 - It will send the message that Christians who wrong other Christians are exempt from being held accountable for their actions legally.
If you're a Christian, and accidentally run your car through my living room window costing $2000 to repair, and you refuse to pay for it, you bet I'm going to sue you for damages. OTOH, if I run my car through another person's window, not only will I pay for your window, but I will probably give you a few extra bucks just for your trouble. Keep in mind that, like most people, I don't have that much money lying around.
Panis 3:
Speaking as a Missouri Baptist, people should know that the agencies involved were instituted, funded, and supported by the Missouri Baptist Convention from their very beginnings. In effect, although God owns all things, the MBC exercized the temporal rights of ownership.
Soon after the beginnings of the conservative takeover in the SBC, there came a point at which each of the agencies "hijacked" themselves (quite illegally, I assure you) from the control of the MBC. This is (as of two years ago) a total of 231 million dollars in material assets, put in place by God through the tithes and offerings of members of the Missouri Baptist Convention.
What else is there to do? Should we just release control of these godly institutions so they can pursue their more liberal agenda? Or do we take steps necessary to restore them back to their rightful stewards - the Missouri Baptist Convention?
Either way, in the eyes of both Christian and secular society, we come out as losers. It's a difficult situation to be sure. For my part, I believe the MBC is doing the right thing in our efforts to restore these agencies to the MBC.
Most people are stuck on the idea of suing, as if anyone is going to profit from this. The MBC, however, is suing to regain control over assets that we already legally own. There's a big difference.
Circenses:
Our attorney won't take a case to court if he knows the two parties involved are Christians. He advises them to take it to their deacon boards. But that has to do with individuals. When you are dealing with business entities, even "Christian" ones, things must be dealt with legally, in order to be valid in the world's reckoning. Besides, not everyone working for a "Christian" legal entity is necessarily a born-again Christian.
Well, whose reckoning are we more concerned about? the world’s or God’s? I understand what you are saying, though; but if I thought the Scriptures allowed for such a process, I would not mind lawsuits among Christian entities. I am just not sure the Scriptures allow lawsuits among any believers, even believing institutions. If we admit that the Scriptures do not allow individual believers to sue individual believers, is not a group of believers suing another group of believers just as bad or worse.
True, not everyone working for a Christian legal entity is a believer. But we do not know men’s hearts. If they have made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ we have to treat them as such.
With regards to the world, Paul appears to admonish believers from going to court because of unbelievers (1 Cor 6:6)
Do you not subject yourself to State Law when you incorporate a religious organization?
I think YES. And if you do then you must follow the state's prescribed legal system for resolving legal matters.
In the Missouri Case the Missouri State Convention was open for Christian Arbitration but the agencies refused. In fact the trustees acted like they didn't even know what Christian Arbitration was.
If a Christian group or any individual believer is breaking a state law then I think notifying secular authorities is fine. I think that falls under Romans 13.
But if the group is not breaking a state law and secular authorities do not get involved then I do not think we are only left with the option of a lawsuit. I think there are always other options. That is, if suing a Christian group is prohibited by Scripture.
If someone, Christian or not, wrongs me, and the wrong is not righted via all civil methods in an equitable manner, then I will indeed seek remedies via the civil court system. To refrain from doing so will do one of two things:
1 - It will send the message that Christians are patsies and will allow you to walk all over them, and
2 - It will send the message that Christians who wrong other Christians are exempt from being held accountable for their actions legally.
Well, we have to respond in a Christ-like manner. I look at Matt. 5:38-48 and cannot see how lawsuits agree with Christ’s teachings. I am not saying that this is easy or fair (it takes a lot of faith in God to refrain from such actions) but I do think we as believers are called to this high standard.
Speaking as a Missouri Baptist, people should know that the agencies involved were instituted, funded, and supported by the Missouri Baptist Convention from their very beginnings. In effect, although God owns all things, the MBC exercized the temporal rights of ownership.
Soon after the beginnings of the conservative takeover in the SBC, there came a point at which each of the agencies "hijacked" themselves (quite illegally, I assure you) from the control of the MBC. This is (as of two years ago) a total of 231 million dollars in material assets, put in place by God through the tithes and offerings of members of the Missouri Baptist Convention.
What else is there to do? Should we just release control of these godly institutions so they can pursue their more liberal agenda? Or do we take steps necessary to restore them back to their rightful stewards - the Missouri Baptist Convention?
Either way, in the eyes of both Christian and secular society, we come out as losers. It's a difficult situation to be sure. For my part, I believe the MBC is doing the right thing in our efforts to restore these agencies to the MBC.
Most people are stuck on the idea of suing, as if anyone is going to profit from this. The MBC, however, is suing to regain control over assets that we already legally own. There's a big difference.
If these institutions are breaking state laws then notify the state. If they are not breaking state laws or the state will not intervene, then I can’t see how one can Scriptural take them to the state courts.
Releasing the institutions is an option. There may be other options. But just because others harm us or don’t play fair do we then have the right to violate Scriptural prohibitions, if that is the case.
We cannot base our Christian duty on what the world or other believers think; we have to do what the Scriptures tell us.
Whether or not one group profits or even whether one group is in the right seems to be beyond the point. We can’t break Scriptural mandates just because we are a part of the right cause. That’s the end justifying the means. I go back to Matt. 5:38-48.
Before I am willing to change my position on this issue I think I will need to see Scriptural rather than anecdotal arguments.
Panis 1:
How about "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto the Lord that which is the Lord's"
If you obligate your church or religious institution with the laws of Caesar by incorporating your entity then you are bound by law and by God's Word to Obey the King.
Why do you think Paul appealed to Caesar? He obviously did not mind asserting his legal rights when it was necessary.
Circenses:
How about "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto the Lord that which is the Lord's"
If you obligate your church or religious institution with the laws of Caesar by incorporating your entity then you are bound by law and by God's Word to Obey the King.
Why do you think Paul appealed to Caesar? He obviously did not mind asserting his legal rights when it was necessary.
Jesus’ command to “render unto Caesar” neither supersedes nor negates other Scriptural commands. Submitting to secular authorities does not give us the obligation to do as the state says when the state asks us to violate other Scriptural commands. For instance, the state cannot make us stop witnessing. If the state ordered us to cease witnessing, we would not submit because we do not believe that the state is correct. So there are circumstances when we do not “render unto Caesar”, i.e., when “Caesar” orders us to break the commands of God.
“Appealing to Caesar”, or appealing to the government, is one thing; suing another believer is a far different matter. Again, if we think that a Christian or Christian group is violating state law then I think we can appeal to the state. But if no state law is being broken then we do not have the Scriptural mandate to break Paul’s command to not sue.
As usual, I find myself in agreement with your position. I think it would violate scriptural mandates on good stewardship to simply allow these things to happen without challenge.
I would not assert that those who are upset about the situation in the MBC allow unscriptural behaviour to continue. If you feel that something needs to be done then, by all means, do something. My position in this situation is not that something should or should not be done. Rather, I am questioning the way in which something is done. I question the method of “lawsuits” among believers.
Would it not violate the scriptural mandate of 1 Cor 6:1-8 to sue other believers? If not, why?
What many don't understand is that the MBC begged these agencies to submit to binding Christian arbitration - and they flat refused. Why? Because everyone knows they don't have a leg to stand on - scripturally or legally.
Again, even if these agencies are violating Scripture doesn’t give another carte blanche to violate Scripture in response.
Panis 1:
If I were a lawyer here's what I would say to you.
The scripture in 1 Cor 6 applies to the local church at Corinth and thus to all other local churches for all time. Christians in local churches are not to sue each other, period, they are to handle all their diffences through local church discipline.
Now you show me how this passage applies to all Christians who are not members of the same local church. Who would be the judge? How can you use Local Church Discipline when there is no church involved?
Circenses:
If I were a lawyer here's what I would say to you.
The scripture in 1 Cor 6 applies to the local church at Corinth and thus to all other local churches for all time. Christians in local churches are not to sue each other, period, they are to handle all their diffences through local church discipline.
Now you show me how this passage applies to all Christians who are not members of the same local church. Who would be the judge? How can you use Local Church Discipline when there is no church involved?
Excellent questions! I’ll do my best to answer.
Five points:
First, when two or more believers are involved then the church is always involved.
Second, Paul statements about lawsuits among believers comes in a whole passage about immorality and the body (individual and corporate), extending from 1 Cor 5 to 1 Cor 6:20.
Third, it would seem odd that Paul would put a prohibition against individuals believers but allow such action on the part of an aggregate of believers. Here is an extreme example: 1 Cor 6:9-10 gives a vice list following the prohibition against lawsuits among believers. It would seem odd for us to state that such behaviour is wrong among individual believers but alright among a body of individual believers, or this behaviour is wrong among those believers who attend church but alright among believers who do not attend church.
Fourth, while Paul is speaking to a local or regional church in the case of the Corinthian congregation, it is doubtful that the principles he is applying are just intended for the local church. If such were the case then associations and denominations that break fellowship with a church that has a homosexual pastor in accordance with 1 Cor 5:11-13 and 1 Cor 6:9 were applying a microcosmic discipline in an unscriptural macrocosmic manner.
Finally, Paul never seems to make a differentiation between the local church and the whole church. There is one body of Christ and that one body is the whole church in all of its local and regional manifestations (1 Cor 12). One could go so far as to say that the church exists wherever two or more are gathered in Jesus’ name. The church is not an institution, rather it is a composition of people united under the headship of Christ.
At least in 1 Cor, Paul speaks about the individual believers body (6:15-20) and the body of the church, whether local or in its entirety (12:12-31).
In 6:15-20 he speaks about the body of the individual believer associating with immorality. In 5:1-13, he speaks about the body of the aggregate of individual believers that makes up the local church associating with an individual believer who is associating with immorality: “a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough” (5:6). This is interesting logic on the part of Paul. The individual believer’s body is one of many individual bodies that makes up the whole body of Christ, i.e. the church. The same can be said of many local churches making up many associations making up many state conventions making up many denominations that makes up the entire church in all of its manifestations across the globe, across cultures, since its founding at Pentecost.
Paul speaks in 12:22-31 about the whole body of Christ and its many gifts. He speaks that there should not be any division in the body (v. 25). He speaks about the different spiritual gifts given to the many members of the body. He then speaks about apostles, prophets and teachers (v. 28). The reference to apostles in this verse about the church body seems to indicate that he is referring to the church as a whole and not just in its local manifestation in Corinth. There does not seem to be any apostles in Corinth at the time of this letter because if there had been then such church problems would have been dealt with by them and not by Paul via letter, but they are not. Thus, while Paul is speaking to a local congregation, he is speaking to the church as a whole, the whole body of Christ, to which he wishes no division, including lawsuits.
Now in terms of how church discipline should be carried out:
When a local association of local churches finds that one of its member churches is honoring immorality, those local churches break fellowship with that church. When a denominational body of believers finds that one of its member churches is honoring immorality, then those believers break fellowship with that church. This is appears to be the Scriptural method of discipline, the breaking of fellowship.
There are countless scenarios that one can submit for this discussion. Allow me to give a few.
Let’s say you have two believers from two different local churches in a dispute. Well, involve both churches in handling the dispute.
Let us take the MBC situation into account. If MBC agencies are refusing to abide by MBC standards then either remove the leaders of those agencies from their positions or, if either that fails or is not an option, then dissolve those agencies.
In the end it is God who is to ultimately handle disciplinary matters. If the methods stated in the Scriptures are not applicable and the only methods left available are contrary to Scripture, then shake the sand from the souls of your shoes and leave it up to God to handle the situation.
Panis 4:
Let us take the MBC situation into account. If MBC agencies are refusing to abide by MBC standards then either remove the leaders of those agencies from their positions or, if either that fails or is not an option, then dissolve those agencies.
Alright then, how do you go about dissolving those agencies. They were created according to state law, therefore they must dissolved the same way. And that involves a lawsuit.
While suing other Christians is distasteful, sometimes it is necessary.
Circenses:
While suing other Christians is distasteful, sometimes it is necessary.
The question is not whether it is distasteful, but, rather, whether it is Scriptural.
Panis 1:
Haven't had time to answer you point by point but wondered first of all about this paragraph.
You wrote - "Now in terms of how church discipline should be carried out:
When a local association of local churches finds that one of its member churches is honoring immorality, those local churches break fellowship with that church. When a denominational body of believers finds that one of its member churches is honoring immorality, then those believers break fellowship with that church. This is appears to be the Scriptural method of discipline, the breaking of fellowship."
In the case of the Missouri Baptist Convention who would we break fellowship with in the case of The Baptist Home?
Would we break fellowship with each church where a trustee holds membership?
Would we break fellowship with each church were Residents of the Baptist Home hold membership?
Would we break fellowship with each contributing church who donates mission dollars to the Baptist Home?
The only form of discipline available to the MBC in this case is legal in nature.
If you hold to your view that suing another Christian is not scriptural then you must also agree that incorporating a church or a nonprofit religious organization under the laws of a state is also unscriptural. If not then at the very least it would be unethical if you do not intend to abide by State Law which unfortunately includes prescribed legal processes for settling such disputes as the one we are discussing.
Interestingly enough the examples you present about Associations and State Conventions are written into their respective Constitutions and Bylaws which are regarded as legal and binding documents under the state law in the state where those said entities are incorporated.
It is my humble opinion we sacrificed the high Biblical Ground that you are alluding to years ago when the trend began to incorporate all Southern Baptist Churches and Agencies and Entities.
Panis 5:
I just wonder what all you folks think the MBC should do...I mean, there are many that would condemn the MBC for its actions - while offering no real solutions.
Are there any who would hold the 5 rebellious agencies to task? Or should they just "get away with it" in the name of peace - to do with these godly institutions as they see fit?
Panis 1:
Part of the problem goes back in Baptist History to the founding of schools, publishing houses, benevolent organizations and missionary societies - The good organizations that we have created have become more like their secular counterparts than they are like the church. In fact most of them are regulated by state and federal law.
Now we are faced with this dilemna.
How do two Christians or two different groups of Christians who are tied to one of these multi-million dollar religious or denominational organizations settle their differences?
We have no Baptist Bishop who can make a decision, like the Apostle Paul could have made.
All we have is the democratic process of a state convention meeting which is all bark and no bite until you hire a lawyer.
Circenses:
Haven't had time to answer you point by point but wondered first of all about this paragraph.
In the case of the Missouri Baptist Convention who would we break fellowship with in the case of The Baptist Home?
Would we break fellowship with each church where a trustee holds membership?
Would we break fellowship with each church were Residents of the Baptist Home hold membership?
Would we break fellowship with each contributing church who donates mission dollars to the Baptist Home?
The only form of discipline available to the MBC in this case is legal in nature.
Again, I do not think that when our options for a preferred outcome are lessened that we are only left with the option of disobeying Scriptural mandates, if that is in fact the case. It is difficult for me to answer the above questions because I am not that familiar with the MBC situation. Some of the above may be appropriate to the situation and some may not. I am less concerned with discussing the application of Biblical principles than with what the Biblical principle actually is. Your questions are definitely relevant; you appear to be presenting cases to test the relevancy of the application of church discipline, which is good. While these questions might or might not deny the relevancy of “breaking fellowship” as a form of church discipline, even if so it does not disqualify the assumed Scriptural prohibition against lawsuits among Christians.
Perhaps a better application of the above mentioned method would be to present cases to test the relevancy of my interpretation of the lawsuit prohibition. To some extent this has already been done.
If you hold to your view that suing another Christian is not scriptural then you must also agree that incorporating a church or a nonprofit religious organization under the laws of a state is also unscriptural. If not then at the very least it would be unethical if you do not intend to abide by State Law which unfortunately includes prescribed legal processes for settling such disputes as the one we are discussing.
It is quite probable that many Christian groups have worked their way into a corner where their options are so greatly decreased that they can only see lawsuits an appropriate action. It reminds me of the story of King David and his rape of Bathsheba. Now raping Bathsheba was wrong of course, but when Bathsheba became pregnant, instead of confessing his sins and repenting, he continued to dig himself a hole by trying to get Uriah to have relations with his wife at inappropriate times and then eventually murdering Uriah. It was only when he was convicted of his sin by the prophet Nathan that he began to right his wrongs. Basically what I am saying is that we do not right past wrongs by more wrongs, we only dig our graves deeper.
Interestingly enough the examples you present about Associations and State Conventions are written into their respective Constitutions and Bylaws which are regarded as legal and binding documents under the state law in the state where those said entities are incorporated.
I think we can hold to state laws as far as Scriptural principles are not violated. I am a bit concerned at the logical extension of the argument that we have to obey state laws with concern to legal matters even when they contradict Scripture just because we are involved in legal matters. I know this is not what you are advocating though.
It is my humble opinion we sacrificed the high Biblical Ground that you are alluding to years ago when the trend began to incorporate all Southern Baptist Churches and Agencies and Entities.
That may be the case. If so, we do not right ourselves by continuing to disobey the Scriptural mandates.
I just wonder what all you folks think the MBC should do...I mean, there are many that would condemn the MBC for its actions - while offering no real solutions.
Are there any who would hold the 5 rebellious agencies to task? Or should they just "get away with it" in the name of peace - to do with these godly institutions as they see fit?
I do not think anyone here is condemning anyone else. If the MBC is in error about how they are handling the situation, then they certainly are not the first and won’t be the last. All of us everyday mishandle situations. The important thing is to learn from our errors and learn from Scripture and from God about how we can better handle such situations.
If these agencies are in the wrong then God will deal with them as He sees fit. We should never think that anyone ever “gets away with it”. I have no problem with crying out like Job about the “wicked” (Job 21), but we all have to have faith that God will take care of the situation. Now this does not mean that those in the MBC shouldn’t do anything. Far from it! If you believe that you are in the right and need to do something, do it! My thoughts are not concerned about “what you do” not “that you do.”
But if they do “get away with it” because no lawsuit is applied then it will not be in the name of peace but rather in the name of Scripture.
One thing we have to be careful of is not blindly accepting the methods of a movement when we agree with the movement’s motives. Disagreeing with a movement’s methods does not mean we have to disagree with the movements motives. I am not saying that such is the case with the MBC situation but it is a stealth temptation in these times.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
The Polar Express
I went to see this film on IMAX last weekend. I was impressed. Now I had alreayd seen this film on in the theatres and loved every minute of it. This is a great film and, in my opinion, the best film of the year. I wish everyone could see this film. I'll put it on my Christmas viewing list along with It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 31st Street, Rudolph, Charlie Brown, and Garfield.
Warner Bros. Pictures will release 'The Polar Express: An IMAX 3D Experience' in select IMAX® theatres beginning Wednesday, November 10th. This breakthrough in filmmaking combines innovative Performance Capture technology, state-of-the-art CGI and the magic of IMAX® 3D technology. The resulting 3D images enable audiences to experience the adventure, drama and emotion of 'The Polar Express' with the unparalleled image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience®. With IMAX 3D, images virtually leap off the IMAX screen with a blend of realism and fantasy unlike anything seen before. 'The Polar Express: An IMAX 3D Experience' is the first Hollywood full-length feature ever converted into IMAX 3D.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis and based on children's author Chris Van Allsburg's modern holiday classic of the same name, The Polar Express revolves around Billy (Hayden McFarland), who longs to believe in Santa Claus but finds it quite difficult to do so, what with his family's dogged insistence that all of it, from the North Pole, to the elves, to the man himself, is all just a myth. This all changes, however, on Christmas Eve, when a mysterious train visits Billy in the middle of the night, promising to take him and a group of other lucky children to the North Pole for a visit with Santa. The train's conductor (Tom Hanks) along with the other passengers help turn Billy's crisis in faith into a journey of self-discovery. A long-time fan of Van Allsburg's book, Hanks also helped produce the film. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
Monday, January 10, 2005
Russian Ark
I saw this film last week. It was extremely great. A masterpiece! I would highly recommend it to all. It is a treat and a fantastic achievement in cinema.
Russian master Alexander Sokurov has tapped into the very flow of history itself for this flabbergasting film. Thanks to the miracles of digital video, Sokurov (and cinematographer Tilman Buttner) uses a single, unbroken, 90-minute shot to wind his way through the Hermitage in St. Petersburg--the repository of Russian art and the former home to royalty. Gliding through time, we glimpse Catherine II, modern-day museumgoers, and the doomed family of Nicholas II. History collapses on itself, as the opulence of the past and the horrors of the 20th century collide, and each door that opens onto yet another breathtaking gallery is another century to be heard from. The movie climaxes with a grand ball and thousands of extras, prompting thoughts of just how crazy Sokurov had to be to try a technical challenge like this--and how far a distance we've traveled, both physically and spiritually, since the movie began. --Robert Horton
Description
A modern filmmaker magically finds himself transported to the 18th century, where he embarks on a time-traveling journey through 300 years of Russian history in Alexander Sokurov’s masterpiece. Filmed in HD with producer's commentary
Russian master Alexander Sokurov has tapped into the very flow of history itself for this flabbergasting film. Thanks to the miracles of digital video, Sokurov (and cinematographer Tilman Buttner) uses a single, unbroken, 90-minute shot to wind his way through the Hermitage in St. Petersburg--the repository of Russian art and the former home to royalty. Gliding through time, we glimpse Catherine II, modern-day museumgoers, and the doomed family of Nicholas II. History collapses on itself, as the opulence of the past and the horrors of the 20th century collide, and each door that opens onto yet another breathtaking gallery is another century to be heard from. The movie climaxes with a grand ball and thousands of extras, prompting thoughts of just how crazy Sokurov had to be to try a technical challenge like this--and how far a distance we've traveled, both physically and spiritually, since the movie began. --Robert Horton
Description
A modern filmmaker magically finds himself transported to the 18th century, where he embarks on a time-traveling journey through 300 years of Russian history in Alexander Sokurov’s masterpiece. Filmed in HD with producer's commentary
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
2001: A Space Odyssey
This past weekend the misses and I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. It has become a sort of tradition for me to watch this film each New Year's Eve. I decided to post this wonderful essay on the film. This is by far the best review and analysis of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a landmark, science fiction classic - and probably the best science-fiction film of all time. It was released, coincidentally, at the height of the space race between the USSR and the US. Here is an epic film containing more spectacular imagery and special effects than verbal dialogue. Director Stanley Kubrick's work is a profound, visionary and astounding film (a mysterious Rorschach film-blot) and a tremendous visual experience. Viewers are left to experience the non-verbal, mystical vastness of the film, and to subjectively reach into their own subconscious and into the film's pure imagery to speculate about its meaning. Many consider the masterpiece bewildering and annoying, but are still inspired by its story of how man is dwarfed by technology and space.
The first spoken word is almost a half hour into the film, and there's less than 40 minutes of dialogue in the entire film. Much of the film is in dead silence (accurately depicting the absence of sound in space), or with the sound of human breathing within a spacesuit. Kubrick's sci-fi experiment intended to present its story almost purely with visual imagery and auditory signals with very little communicative human dialogue (similar to what was attempted in the surreal, fragmented, non-narrative imagery of the Qatsi trilogy - from 1983-2002, from Godfrey Reggio). All scenes in the film have either dialogue or music (or silence), but never both together.
The film is enriched by stunning, pioneering technical effects, and featured orchestral music, presented in movements like in a symphony, from:
• Richard Strauss, Thus Spake Zarathustra
• Johann Strauss, The Blue Danube Waltz
• György Ligeti, Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna, and Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs and Orchestra
• Aram Khatchaturian, Gayane Ballet Suite
The breathtaking, richly eloquent, and visually-poetic film - deliberately filmed at a slow pace - about space travel and the discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence (many years before Star Wars (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)), was based on the 1948 short story The Sentinel, by English science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Its screenplay was co-authored by director Stanley Kubrick and Clarke from an expanded novelization, and the film was originally titled Journey Beyond the Stars. The film's title was chosen because it was the first year of the new Millenium and of the next century.
Kubrick's masterpiece was not nominated for Best Picture, but received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Director, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Story and Screenplay. It won one Oscar, for Best Visual Effects. [In the same year, Planet of the Apes (1968) was given a Special Honorary Oscar for John Chambers' outstanding, convincing makeup (there was no Best Makeup category until 1981) - the Academy members presumably didn't realize the superior, too-believable makeup in the opening scenes of 2001 that included both human actors with life-like masks and infant chimpanzees.] Douglas Trumbull, the Special Photographic Effects Supervisor, went on to work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).
The film initially opened to hostile, unsympathetic, negative or indifferent critical reviews (it was criticized for being boring and lacking in imagination), and 19 minutes were cut from the film after premieres in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. But it slowly gained enormous popularity during yearly re-releases. It was re-released in a slightly shorter version (141 minutes) in 1972.
A sequel was made years later: director Peter Hyams' 2010 (1984) (from a 1982 published adaptation titled 2010: odyssey two by Clarke). Other Clarke writings are potential film installments: 2061: odyssey three and 3001: final odyssey.
________________________________________
The film's opening overture, Ligeti's Atmospheres, plays behind a black screen - signifying, in a gestaltish way, a pre-creation era, or the mysterious unknown time of the universe's birth. [The film's end is bookended by The Blue Danube Waltz, also played behind a black screen.] Afterwards, in the opening visual image, the camera pans upward from the pock-marked surface of the Moon in the foreground. The perspective is from behind the moon. In the distance is a view of the Sun rising over the Earth-crescent in the vastness of space. The image shows the heavenly bodies of the Earth, Moon, and Sun in a vertically-symmetrical alignment or conjunction. [Later in the film, it is revealed that a monolith was buried on the Moon, possibly at the moment of this 'magical' conjunction.]
The opening trinitarian chords [C, G, and again C] of Richard Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra accompany and welcome this striking shot of orbital and visual alignment. The credits then follow. [The synergistic use of Strauss's music in Kubrick's film also bolsters the ultimate idea of a "superman" (or "overman") found in Thus Spake Zarathustra, the work of Friedrich Nietzsche.]
The film is composed of four episodes. Three of the major sections are subtitled:
1. The Dawn of Man
A primeval ape man makes a breakthrough - becoming endowed with intelligence after experiencing a mysterious black monolith.
(The Lunar Journey in the Year 2000) - untitled
Eons later, a similar monolith is discovered on the lunar surface in the 21st century, sending its signals to Jupiter.
2. Jupiter Mission, 18 Months Later [(in 2001 or 2002)]
A futuristic, 18-month journey to Jupiter.
3. Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite
A mystical experience in another time and dimension.
Monoliths link the primeval, futuristic, and mystical sections of the film.
The Dawn of Man
"The Dawn of Man" opens in the prehistoric past in the Pleistocene era - four million years ago, the location where the human race itself (evolving from primitive apes) was born. In a series of still shots, the sun rises on the dawn of civilization in a primordial landscape of arid, wasteland desert. As dawn passes and mid-day approaches on the barren African savannah, animal skeletons lie dormant on the rocky ground - the first sign of life. A peaceful band or tribe of prehistoric ape-men (Australopithecines) appear, squat and hairy, eating grass. Although herds of tapirs graze closeby, the ape-men are vegetarians who forage for grass and roots. They have not developed the means or tools necessary to attack and kill or eat the tapirs like other predators. Symbolically, there are endless eons of time that pass during which the apes live in eternal boredom - and cope with the struggle for survival. They scrape together a meager life and live a marginal existence, unable to fully protect themselves from the elements or from other competitors, predators and carnivores. A leopard leaps from a rock outcropping and pounces on an unsuspecting and defenseless ape, screeching for his life. [Brief fadeout to black.]
A group of apes scratches and chatters in groups around a slowly diminishing watering hole. A rival, warring band of ape competitors approaches the watering hole, led by an almost-upright, tall and bright man-ape [named Moonwatcher in Arthur Clarke's novel] (Daniel Richter). By shrieking, they scare away the other apes from the water and aggressively establish dominance and territoriality. During the first night, a leopard with glowing eyes guards the carcass of a fallen zebra in the moonlight. The band of vegetarian man-apes huddles protectively together in their cramped den for comfort and support - living and sleeping in fear.
In the first light of the prehistoric dawn on the second day, a tall, black, rectangular monolithic slab (THE FIRST MONOLITH), with an eerie humming sound - symbolic of the religious/spiritual unknown - materializes in the midst of their den. The massive artificial monolith, in contrast to its natural surroundings, stands in a shallow depression in the rocks where the man-apes gather around a water hole. [In Arthur Clarke's novel, the mysterious monolithic stone slab is a technological machine belonging to aliens in space, one of hundreds of such monoliths sent to Earth to test, teach and transform the apes into higher-order, intelligent beings.] The unusual, out-of-place object with straight-edges causes them to be alarmed and they react nervously. But then they approach it cautiously, drawn to its color, form, and smooth surface. The leader of the clan of man-apes is the first to reach out fearfully and hypnotically for the black object. His boldness encourages the rest of the group to gather around. In a mute, primitive, but poetic moment, they herd around it and huddle by it, just as another celestial alignment or configuration occurs. With the mysterious monolith in the foreground, the glowing Sun rises over the black slab, directly beneath the crescent of the Moon.
Late that afternoon (now with no monolith in sight), the leader man-ape is foraging for food. He plays with and contemplates one of the ravaged bones from an antelope skeleton. (There are many bones lying around on the landscape, a symbol of ever-present death.) A quick, almost-subliminal shot of the celestial alignment with the monolith is flashed on the screen - indicating that it will inspire a new idea or cause what is to happen [the discovery that the bone can function as a weapon]. In a slow-motion sequence - accompanied by the slowly-building tone of Strauss's Thus Spoke Zarathustra - he picks up an animal bone and uses it to smash at and shatter the skeleton, first tentatively and then more vigorously. In a slow-motion closeup, his hairy fist grasps the skeleton bone over his head as he brings it down forcefully like a cudgel. As he orgiastically smashes and pulverizes parts of the skeleton on the ground, the soundtrack bursts forth in an ecstatic, jubilant climax. In one brilliant inter-cut image, a tapir falls to the ground - the vegetarian man-ape will be able to hunt for food and kill a tapir with his new utilitarian tool. No longer vegetarian after the breakthrough, the man-ape becomes carnivorous, squatting while eating a raw piece of tapir flesh in his hands. The rest of the clan share in the meat of the fresh kill later that afternoon and evening. [Somehow, the monolith has been presented as a gift to mysteriously assist the man-ape in his transition to a higher order (or lower order depending upon one's interpretation) with an ability to reason and the power to use tools (such as bones) - for murder.] The man-ape is on the verge of intelligence - the beginning of steps toward humanity as he learns to use skeleton bones as tools - extending his reach. The sun sets.
On the third day, when other man-apes come over to the water hole, the intelligent, carnivorous man-apes dominate and drive the weaponless (and tool-less) neighboring creatures away with their newfound strike power - this is humanity's first bloody war. They swing with their bone-tools, now using them as weapons to threaten the nearest other tribe of rival proto-humans. The leader man-ape uses the bone as a club to attack, crush an opponent's skull, and kill him - making them capable of survival in the hostile environment. The 'enlightened' apes gain domination in the animal world, establish their territorial domain, and take an evolutionary step or leap toward (or away from) humanity. In slow-motion, the man-ape leader flings his weapon, a fragmented piece of the bone, exultantly and jubilantly into the air. It flies and spins upwards, twisting and turning end-over-end...
The Lunar Journey in the Year 2000
(untitled in the film)
No sub-title separates the "Dawn of Man" segment from the Lunar Journey segment - a jump-cut of four million years. [Does this omission of a subtitle for this segment indicate that man in both eras - the Australopithecine and Space-Age Man - is essentially the same aggressive creature with savage impulses who has successfully survived in another hostile environment?] In a great transitionary, associative image to the next segment many eons later, the tossed bone (tool/weapon) instantly rotates and dissolves into a white, orbiting space satellite from Earth - a technological instrument, tool, weapon (orbiting nuclear platform) or machine from another era that was ultimately derived from the first tool-weapon. The toss of the ape-man's bone is metaphoric for a lift-off from Earth toward the Moon, and for the tremendous technological advances that have occurred in the interim.
It is four million years later - in the year 2000 [possibly in homage to Fritz Lang's German film Metropolis (1927) that was set in the futuristic year of 2000]. As the Earth drifts by, the camera's perspective is from somewhere between Earth and the Moon. Two different kinds of satellites (one slightly rectangular, the other cylindrical) float by, circling around the globe of Earth. A winged, arrow-shaped spaceship, the Pan American, dart-like space shuttle Orion [a phallic symbol or representation of "sperm"], soars from Earth through space toward the Moon, bound first for Space Station 5 - a wheel-shaped way-station for passengers traveling on to the lunar surface. [By the year 2000, Pan Am had already been bankrupt for almost ten years - since 1991.] Images of the giant circular space station revolving and orbiting in space are accompanied by the lyrical Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss. The pace is deliberately slow, emphasizing the vast enormous vistas and the harmonious order of space.
Within the cabin of the Pan Am shuttle is a lighted sign: "Caution: Weightless Condition," evidenced by a floating ballpoint pen and arm of its sole passenger, suspended in space like the spacecraft itself. [The floating pen makes the number of cinematically-suspended objects come to a total of three, along with the bone and the spaceship. Symbolically, the pen is an apt object, because the technological advances of writing and the printing press, etc. have brought us from the prehistoric era to the present modern era of literacy and the written word.] He is dozing, a fifty-ish, safety-belted scientist-administrator, Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester) - the transformed man-ape of the 20th-21st century. The white-uniformed Pan American shuttle attendant, wearing special velcro-like, suction "grip shoes," retrieves his pen, and continues down the aisle. In the blackness of space, the pilots of the Pan Am spaceship dock (or penetrate with) the phallic craft - through the aid of graphic read-out screens that must constantly be monitored - in the spoke-hub of the gigantic, circular, revolving space station [a symbol of an egg] - almost like a copulatory act. [This is the first stage of fetal, reproductive life imagery: copulation and conception.]
The first spoken words in the film occur here, about 25 minutes from the film's beginning. Floyd is notified by the pink-uniformed Space Station attendant/receptionist that their elevator has come to its proper level: "Here you are, sir. Main Level D." The doorlock of the airlock opens and Dr. Floyd enters the space station, named the Orbiter Hilton, provided with an artificial gravity. In the customs/documentation area, he is greeted with small talk by another attendant, and then met by Mr. Miller of Station Security. One formality to be executed is a Voice Print Identification test to verify his identity. He must wait an hour and ten minutes in the passenger lounge until the next leg of his journey. He hears a loudspeaker announce: "A blue lady's cashmere sweater has been found in the restroom. It can be claimed at the manager's desk." American corporate logos - Hilton, Howard Johnson's Restaurant, and Bell phone signs are visible in the long entryway.
He calls his home (many thousands of miles away) on a Bell Picturephone and speaks to his daughter Squirt (director Kubrick's daughter Vivian). Floyd learns that his wife is out and that Squirt's caretaker is also unavailable. He ignores the spectacular sight of the rotating Earth over his left side while he gives her a brief Happy Birthday wish. Floyd expresses his regrets at not being able to be present at her party - he is literally and figuratively alienated from her.
[Note: There are five birthdays in the film (in order): (1) the Dawn of Man himself; (2) Dr. Floyd's daughter; (3) Astronaut Frank (his parents sing him Happy Birthday via radio); (4) computer HAL's "operational" birthday; (5) the Birth of the Starchild.]
In the bright-white passenger lounge area while seated on magenta-colored armchairs - a standardized and sterile waiting area amidst the advanced technology - Dr. Floyd speaks cordially with some Soviet scientists, including lead scientist Elena (Margaret Tyzack) and Smyslov (Leonard Rossiter). They are on their way back from the Russian sector of the moon after spending "three months calibrating the new antenna." The conversation turns icy when Dr. Floyd is asked about the "odd things" that are happening at his destination, the American moon-base on the moon crater of Clavius, and why it has been out of phone communication for 10 days. The Russians are determinedly inquisitive and ask about the leaked rumor that a "serious epidemic" of unknown origin has broken out there and may spread. [The leak about an epidemic was deliberately released to cover up the real reason.] Concealing and evading the reason for his top-secret mission, Dr. Floyd deliberately declines to answer: "I'm really not at liberty to discuss this." He excuses himself to continue on his journey.
With the reprise of The Blue Danube, Dr. Floyd has boarded another Pan Am spaceship (a lunar landing craft), the spherical Aries, as its only passenger to soar toward the Clavius base on the moon. The attendant delivers a TV-dinner style tray, one that is fitted with straws and pictures of the different foods. [Food in space of the future was viewed as bland and sterile - a typical viewpoint of the 60's time period when artificial foods were being introduced into the diet.] Under weightless conditions, the attendant enters from the passenger and prep area into a rotational elevator - as she walks, it turns her upside down [marvelous trick photography] and she proceeds from there into the crew's compartment to deliver their meals. Floyd nervously uses a "zero gravity toilet" during the trip - pondering the lengthy posted 10-point instructions for use. When the insect-like ship (with two red lights/eyes on its top and two sets of white lights/eyes on its side - it appears like a skull) reaches its moon colonization destination, it descends toward the craggy, black lunar surface, extending its four landing legs above an underground airlock. Eight pie-shaped doors slowly slide back above the domed hanger to reveal a target zone within a deep cavity. The Aries fires its rockets and kicks up clouds of dust as it descends and sets itself to rest in the lighted square. A hatch opens under the landing zone, and gently and magestically brings the spacecraft into its interior. [The imagery of reproductive life continues - the round, impregnated 'ova' implants itself into the 'uterus' of the mother.]
Dr. Floyd, the Earth's Chairman of the National Council of Astronautics, delivers a bureaucratic-style, techie briefing in a conference board room to other top scientists and space officials at Clavius, under conditions of highest security. He begins his words with a warm welcome: "...Hi everybody, nice to be back with you." It is learned that his secretive mission concerns a "significant discovery," a second monolith (a twin to the first one) unearthed on the surface of the moon at the crater Clavius in the American sector. [The second monolith - another indication of extra-terrestrial intelligent life and their desire to provide further guidance to mankind - also exerts its unmistakable will on human beings in a different era.]
To keep the monolith an absolute secret with a news blackout, an alternative "cover story" has been created and circulated about a possible epidemic at the base. The government fears any leak of the discovery may cause anxious panic or "cultural shock and social disorientation" among the families of Clavius personnel. During the banal conference, he is asked only one question from the audience - how much longer the false cover story must be maintained. His answer is again deliberately and bureaucratically vague.
While eating processed, cellophane-wrapped sandwiches, Dr. Floyd and some of the other Clavius base personnel, Halvorsen (Robert Beatty) and Michaels (Sean Sullivan), jet out in a "moon bus" to the Tycho excavation site where the monolith is located (THE SECOND MONOLITH). On the way, they are bathed by the bluish, magical light of the interior of the bus, Floyd is complimented on his excellent speech at the briefing, cleverly revealing very little. Now that they can speak freely, he is told that the monolith was first inaccurately thought to be an outcropping of rock. A rectangular area around the monolith was excavated out to see if it was only the "upper part of some buried structure." One thing is certain - it was "deliberately buried" four million years earlier. The eerie, humming sound of a hymn on the soundtrack [also heard by the man-apes around the earlier monolith] indicates their approach toward the magical object.
After docking in the lunar dawn, they walk toward the monolith's location wearing spacesuits. They view the monolith, the transcendent discovery, from the lip of a giant, excavated pit, while a three-quarters Earth hangs just above the horizon. They walk down a ramp into the crater's pit where the monumental object is bathed in dazzling, brilliant light. Like the man-apes before him, Dr. Floyd is similarly awed and stirred by his first view of the alien form - it is a religious experience as the men worshipfully gaze at the altar where the monolith stands.
They hypnotically circle around the black object - Floyd bashfully touches it with his thick glove. A photographer prepares a group of them to line up - and pose before the totem-like monolith like typical tourists, recording the moment of their visit. Just as their picture is taken, a ray of sunlight strikes the monolith - signaling the end of the dark, 14-day lunar night. It is the Dawn of the Moon. Again, the glowing Sun, Moon and Earth have formed a conjunctive orbital configuration. And then suddenly, the object emits a ear-piercing, electronic screeching noise. The group is stunned and staggers - reeling helplessly backwards as their helmet headphones are filled with the blasted signal. When 'touched' by the sunlight [similar to the touch of Moonwatcher's finger the first time], the solar-powered machine functions as a radio signaling device, aimed at the planet Jupiter out in space. [It alerts or signals the ancient civilization that buried it on the Moon that man is about to reach another more improved, advanced level of consciousness and intelligence.]
Jupiter Mission, 18 Months Later [(in 2001 or 2002)]
In the third major section of the film, the first nine-month, manned mission is on its way to Jupiter on a one-half billion mile expedition. [Their important mission is to follow the path of the radio signal sent to Jupiter, and to find the origin of the alien culture that has planted the monolith on the Moon and/or caused the unexplainable radio transmission.] They are on an immense spaceship named Discovery many miles from Earth - its shape is similar to the skeletal bone tossed into the air by the man-ape. [To carry the reproductive analogies further, the spacecraft resembles a half-developed fetus floating in the amniotic fluid of space. Even some of the astronauts are hibernating in pods ready to be born - or awakened.] An antenna with an AE35 unit, is mounted in the middle of the gigantic ship, pointed at Earth to maintain communication. Within the spaceship's passenger area, where the spinning sphere or centrifuge creates a zone of artificial gravity, astronaut-executive officer Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) endlessly jogs and shadow-boxes around the interior treadmill in a memorable image - he seems to circle a complete 360 degrees without going anywhere. Although their mission is extremely significant, life onboard is tremendously boring and monotonous, exemplified by the soundtrack of Khatchaturian's Gayne Ballet Suite.
In the automated, bright-white environment of the spaceship, the astronauts watch a transmission of the BBC-TV evening news program, ironically titled "The World Tonight," that includes an earlier taped interview with the five-man Jupiter crew before departure. The program explains most of the facts about the journey composed of "five men and one of the latest generation of the HAL 9000 computers." [Details are included about how the long pauses in the interview, due to the immense transmission distance from Earth to the spaceship near Jupiter, were edited out. This attention to detail shows Kubrick's insistence on scientific accuracy, and emphasizes how far out they are in deep space.]
In a parody of the life of many middle-class people, Mission Commander Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) sits alongside Poole - they don't communicate with each other - as they both eat the bland, chemical space food (in a TV dinner type tray) and watch themselves on the program. In the interview, they are asked: "How's everything going?" Bowman replies simply: "Marvelous...We have no complaints."
There are three other astronauts aboard who are in cold-storage suspended animation, "hibernating" during the voyage inside electronically-monitored capsule-beds or sarcophagi-caskets until they are needed at the end of the mission. Their dreamless sleep conserves both air and water. Dave and Frank, ironically both enervated, soul-less, 'robot-like,' hybernating automatons in a wakeful state within the man-made machine [even more so than Dr. Heywood Floyd in the previous segment], explain why three of the astronauts were put into hibernation - before departure and provide a description of the sensation of hybernation:
Dave: Well, this was done in order to achieve the maximum conservation of our life support capabilities, basically food and air. Now the three hybernating crew members represent the survey team. And their efforts won't be utilized until we're approaching Jupiter.
BBC Interviewer: Dr. Poole, what's it like while you're in hibernation?
Frank: Well, it's exactly like being asleep. You have absolutely no sense of time. The only difference is that you don't dream.
BBC Interviewer: As I understand it, you only breathe once a minute. Is this true?
Frank: Well, that's right. The heart beats three times a minute. Body temperature's usually down to about, um, three degrees centigrade.
The astronauts are only janitorial caretakers and appear unnecessary for the completely-automated mission - the spaceship is really controlled and monitored by the "sixth member of the Discovery crew" - an even-toned, talkative, alert, "thinking" and "feeling" super-computer, named HAL-9000, who maintains the electronic systems of the spaceship. The humans, bored by the tedium of their routines in deep space, are completely at the mercy of the complex machine that controls their spaceship. The BBC interviewer introduces HAL, a perfect technological power that can reproduce most of what the human brain is capable of [both 'superhuman' traits and debased, murderous qualities and insanity]:
The sixth member of the Discovery crew was not concerned about the problems of hibernation. For he was the latest result in machine intelligence - the HAL 9000 computer, which can reproduce, though some experts still prefer to use the word 'mimic,' most of the activities of the human brain, and with incalculably greater speed and reliability.
[HAL, the film's favorite 'actor' with emotions greater than those of the astronauts - either programmed or genuine - is the only "human," fully-realized character in the film. The reassuring, courteous voice of the disembodied HAL was provided by Douglas Rain. Coincidentally, the letters of HAL's name can be extrapolated - replace each letter with the next letter in the alphabet and it becomes IBM. HAL's name was actually taken from an acronym and derived from the words Heuristic and ALgorithmic - two basic types of learning systems.]
Only HAL knows the real mission of the trip - both Bowman and Poole are unaware of the purpose of their Jupiter mission, just like those who have been told the "cover story" about the epidemic on the Moon. The programmed computer has been designed to withhold vital information from the astronauts until the spacecraft is almost to Jupiter.
HAL has anthropomorphic, human-mimicking qualities: a glowing, watchful red eye with which he connects to the world, and a rich, pleasant TV announcer's voice (with a slightly malevolent edge to it). When asked by the BBC interviewer, Mr. Amer, the same question asked of the human astronauts, the ever-ubiquitous HAL provides animated, detailed, clearer, more "human" answers, and expresses pride in his responsibility, reliability, and intellect:
BBC interviewer: Good afternoon, HAL. How's everything going?
HAL: Good afternoon, Mr. Amer. Everything is going extremely well.
BBC interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways, perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You're the brain and central nervous system of the ship and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amer. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
BBC interviewer: HAL, despite your enormous intellect, are you ever frustrated by your dependence on people to carry out actions?
HAL: Not in the slightest bit. I enjoy working with people - I have a stimulating relationship with Dr. Poole and Dr. Bowman. My mission responsibilities range over the entire operation of the ship, so I am constantly occupied. I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
The emotions of the humans have been transferred into the inhuman computer HAL, who is programmed to express "genuine emotions." Whether he has real emotional capability (or "conscious" subjectivity) is uncertain due to the calmness of his neutral voice.
Dave: Well, he acts like he has genuine emotions. Uhm, of course, he's programmed that way to make it easier for us to talk to him. But as to whether or not he has real feelings is something I don't think anyone can truthfully answer.
The emotionless astronauts appear bored from the drudgery of their technological routine (and possibly from being in the company of an omniscient, controlling, expressionless computer), underlined by Aram Khatchaturian's depressing Gayeneh. The deep trust in HAL's infallibility has destroyed the will and vitality of the men on the mission. Lethargically, Poole spends much of his time wearing orange-tinted sunglasses under a sunlamp for sunbaths. Poole is unresponsive and totally disinterested while hearing a pre-recorded Happy Birthday message from his parents - a delayed videophone-transmission due to the vast distances in space. HAL also wishes Poole a "Happy Birthday."
A classic confrontation between computer and human intelligence is staged with a chess game between Frank and HAL - game-playing is a major way to pass the time during the long hours and days of the 18 month journey to Jupiter. Frank's pieces are white (on his side of the chessboard), HAL's are black. The film follows a game already in progress:
Frank: Umm...anyway, Queen takes pawn. OK?
HAL: Bishop takes Knight's pawn.
Frank: Hmm, that's a good move. Er...Rook to King One.
HAL: I'm sorry, Frank. I think you missed it. Queen to Bishop Three. Bishop takes Queen. Knight takes Bishop. Mate.
Frank: Ah...Yeah, looks like you're right. I resign.
HAL: Thank you for a very enjoyable game.
Frank: Yeah. Thank you.
After HAL warns Frank that he has checkmated himself, Frank after only a brief pause, assumes that HAL is right and resigns. [Human fallibility and failings are demonstrated with Frank's loss and abdication to the machine. HAL, however, foreshadowing his future errors, should have said 'Queen to Bishop Six,' not three - he used the wrong notational viewpoint to describe the moves.]
HAL carries on a conversation with Dave about his charcoal sketches - drawings of simulated or artificial death (one of the hibernating astronauts in a sarcophagus-like capsule). With the computer's superior visual-recognition capabilities, HAL can "see" the renderings:
HAL: Good evening, Dave.
Dave: How are you doing, HAL?
HAL: Everything is running smoothly, and you?
Dave: Oh, not too bad.
HAL: Have you been doing some more work?
Dave: Just a few sketches.
HAL: May I see them?
Dave: Sure.
HAL: That's a very nice rendering, Dave. I think you've improved a great deal. Can you hold it a bit closer?
Dave: Sure.
HAL: That's Dr. Hunter, isn't it?
Dave: Hm, hmm.
HAL, a wide set of consoles with display screens and red eyes located on walls, corridors, and panels of the ship (even in the pods), discreetly asks Bowman if he has any idea what the true nature of the mission is - something that remains a secret to him and the other astronauts. HAL expresses his misgivings about the mission:
HAL: By the way, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?
Dave: No, not at all.
HAL: Well, forgive me for being so inquisitive but during the past few weeks, I've wondered whether you might be having some second thoughts about the mission.
Dave: How do you mean?
HAL: Well, it's rather difficult to define. Perhaps I'm just projecting my own concern about it. I know I've never completely freed myself of the suspicion that there are some extremely odd things about this mission. I'm sure you'll agree there's some truth in what I say.
Dave: Well, I don't know. That's rather a difficult question to answer.
HAL: You don't mind talking about it, do you Dave?
Dave: No, not at all.
HAL: Well, certainly no one could have been unaware of the very strange stories floating around before we left. Rumors about something being dug up on the moon. I never gave these stories much credence. But particularly in view of some of the other things that have happened, I find them difficult to put out of my mind. For instance, the way all our preparations were kept under such tight security and the melodramatic touch of putting Dr.'s Hunter, Kimball, and Kaminsky aboard, already in hibernation after four months of separate training on their own.
Dave: You working up your crew psychology report?
HAL: Of course I am. Sorry about this. I know it's a bit silly.
[HAL's concern about "odd things" in the mission may be a significant sign that the perfect mechanized computer is deteriorating, failing, or showing signs of diminished responsibility - the first thing to break down. The unusually-heavy demands and stresses on the computer, particularly its role in keeping vital secrets about the mission from the crew members, could account for the error-detection systems of the computer to start fouling up.]
Suddenly, the 'foolproof' machine interrupts: "Just a moment, just a moment." The most sophisticated computer ever devised detects a malfunction, a potential fault in the vital AE35 component in the communications system, predicting it will fail one-hundred percent within 72 hours:
I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100 percent failure within seventy-two hours.
The AE35 unit is still "within operational limits" and "will stay that way until it fails." After receiving Mission Control permission "to go EVA and replace Alpha-Echo-35 unit prior to failure," Bowman leaves the spaceship - in an extended sequence - to make an on-site check in a miniship pod. Accompanied by the sound of heavy breathing, he leaves Discovery in the small, one-man, egg-shaped pod with long mechanical arms. It is used for EVA - extra-vehicular activity - in space. Two meteoroids hurtle by through space, passing dangerously close to the craft. Bowman takes a space walk, exiting the pod and directing himself through an expanse of space toward the giant antenna where the AE35 unit is housed. [His departure from Discovery, to use reproductive terms, is like a mini-birth with hyper-ventilating breaths and passing hazards. In a second emergence, he exits the pod, with two 'eyes' on the top of his head/helmet appearing first. He steers himself directly for the jutting-out antenna - a nipple on the breast of the 'mother' spaceship.] He replaces the defective Alpha-Echo-35 (AE35) communications unit with a spare before it can fail. He returns with the defective unit to run diagnostic tests on it, but it appears to function perfectly:
Dave: Well HAL, I'm damned if I can find anything wrong with it.
HAL: Yes, it's puzzling. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this before.
Without considering the possibility of fallibility, because the HAL 9000 computer is not supposed to ever make an error or malfunction, HAL is puzzled and then calmly recommends:
I would recommend that we put the unit back in operation and let it fail. It should then be a simple matter to track down the cause. We can certainly afford to be out of communication for the short time it will take to replace it.
From Earth, Mission Control in Houston reports that preliminary findings indicate that HAL, the on-board 9000 computer is "in error predicting the fault... I know this sounds rather incredible, but this conclusion is based on results from our twin 9000 computer. We are skeptical ourselves and we are running cross-checking routines to determine the reliability of this conclusion. Sorry about this little snag, fellas. We'll get this info to you just as soon as we work it out." After comparing the same data, a twin HAL computer on Earth indicates that there is no problem with the AE-35 unit. Mission Control thinks it is impossible for such a thing to happen, but it has.
[The question remains however - is HAL correct or mistaken about the unit, or is the 'infallible' tool created by man deliberately conspiring against its human creators - the two astronauts? HAL's crack-up is undoubtedly the result of inborn (programmed) human error - it also occurs because the thinking machine, after assuming human characteristics, becomes 'paranoid,' threatened and fearful that the end of the Jupiter mission would mean its own demise, disconnection and extinction.]
HAL cannot self-diagnostically detect errors in his own system. The machine refuses to admit the evidence of his own capacity for error. In an unperturbed tone, HAL defends himself to the two astronauts and faults the humans instead for "human error":
HAL: I hope the two of you are not concerned about this.
Dave: No, I'm not HAL.
HAL: Are you quite sure?
Dave: Yeah. I'd like to ask you a question, though.
HAL: Of course.
Dave: How would you account for this discrepancy between you and the twin 9000?
HAL: Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error.
Frank: Listen HAL. There has never been any instance at all of a computer error occurring in the 9000 series, has there?
HAL: None whatsoever, Frank. The 9000 series has a perfect operational record.
Frank: Well of course I know all the wonderful achievements of the 9000 series, but, uh, are you certain there has never been any case of even the most insignificant computer error?
HAL: None whatsoever, Frank. Quite honestly, I wouldn't worry myself about that.
Dave: Well, I'm sure you're right, HAL. Uhm, fine, thanks very much.
In one of the film's most memorable sequences, Dave and Frank attempt to talk out of ear-shot of HAL, under the pretense of checking a faulty transmitter in C pod. They retreat to one of the sound-proofed, sealed pods (where they know the computer cannot hear them) and discuss HAL's judgment, thereby 'alienating' the technological member of their crew. They face each other, one of the first times in the film, to conspiratorially discuss their feelings about HAL's recent apparent malfunction - they believe that he has become unreliable and irrational. Through their entire conversation, they warily keep glancing back at HAL through the pod's window:
Poole: Well, what do you think?
Bowman: I'm not sure. What do you think?
Poole: I've got a bad feeling about him.
Bowman: You do?
Poole: Yeah, definitely. Don't you?
Bowman: I don't know. I think so. You know, of course though, he's right about the 9000 series having a perfect operational record. They do.
Poole: Unfortunately, that sounds a little like famous last words.
Bowman: Yeah, still it was his idea to carry out the failure-mode analysis, wasn't it?
Poole: Hmm.
Bowman: ...which should certainly indicate his integrity and self-confidence. If he were wrong, it would be the surest way of proving it.
Poole: It would be if he knew he was wrong.
Bowman: Hmm.
Poole: But Dave, I can't put my finger on it, but I sense something strange about him.
Bowman: Still, I can't think of a good reason not to put back the number one unit and carry on with the failure-mode analysis.
Poole: No, no, I agree about that.
Bowman: Well, let's get on with it.
Poole: OK. Good luck, Dave.
[Possibly suspecting that HAL might endanger his life, Bowman ultimately sends his second in command instead of going himself.] They decide that one of them must again take the pod out to reinstall the original AE-35 unit. If it does not fail as HAL predicted, HAL would clearly be at fault and must be disconnected. They ponder the urgent issue of disconnecting HAL's consciousness centers and wonder about the result if the flaws remain:
Poole: Let's say we put the unit back and it doesn't fail, huh? That would pretty well wrap it up as far as HAL is concerned, wouldn't it?
Bowman: Well, we'd be in very serious trouble.
Poole: We would, wouldn't we?
Bowman: Hmm, hmm.
Poole: What the hell can we do?
Bowman: Well, we wouldn't have too many alternatives.
Poole: I don't think we'd have any alternatives. There isn't a single aspect of ship operations that's not under his control. If he were proven to be malfunctioning, I wouldn't see how we would have any choice but disconnection.
Bowman: I'm afraid I agree with you.
Poole: There'd be nothing else to do.
Bowman: It would be a bit tricky.
Poole: Yeah.
Bowman: We would have to cut his higher-brain functions...without disturbing the purely automatic and regulatory systems. And we'd have to work out the transfer procedures of continuing the mission under ground-based computer control.
Poole: Yeah. Well that's far safer than allowing HAL to continue running things.
Bowman: You know, another thing just occurred to me...Well, as far as I know, no 9000 computer has ever been disconnected.
Poole: No 9000 computer has ever fouled up before.
Bowman: That's not what I mean...Well I'm not so sure what he'd think about it.
They do not realize that HAL is not out of visual eye-shot. In the silence, HAL can perniciously read their quickly-moving lips with his red eye through the pod's viewport. That fact is marvelously communicated in the film by rapid cross-editing between their moving lips/mouths and the ominous red eye. [Later, HAL explains that he learned human speech over a period of years by listening to his teacher, Mr. Langley, at the labs in Urbana, Illinois where he came to life. However, it is technologically implausible for a computer to lip-read or speech-read two persons in silence.] When they go about misrepresenting themselves, HAL naturally formulates his own counter-plan to react to their agenda - since the computer has been programmed to reproduce human behavior almost exactly.
Intermission
After the "Intermission," Poole works outside the spaceship Discovery to replace the original communications unit as planned. He leaves the pod in his spacesuit, emerging again in an image of birth as a tiny, vulnerable creature into the blackness of space for his spacewalk, connected only by his oxygen line. His heavy breathing roars over the soundtrack. [Frank is unable to finish his task of replacing the AE35 unit - therefore the film leaves unanswered the question of whether the unit was defective or not.]
In silence, the pod (silently controlled by HAL) swivels and moves toward Frank (fulfilling what he was programmed to do "with incalculably greater speed and reliability"). HAL uses the pod to attack - he extends its mechanical claw-arms ominously, and murders the astronaut by snapping his oxygen lines and severing his life support in the collision. [In reproductive symbolism, he succumbs to a damaging forceps birth or an abortion. His disconnected air hose represents a severed umbilical cord.] In the eerie silence of the blackness of outer space, a suffocating Frank struggles with flailing arms to reattach his severed air hose, and is left to die and helplessly float off into space. [The image of Poole's flailing around during death resembles the scene of the ape-man learning to use the bone as a violent, murderous weapon when he tosses his arms about.] Bowman asks HAL what has happened, to which the super-machine replies coldly: "I'm sorry Dave. I don't have enough information." Bowman starts to suspect that HAL is the faulty unit - and has engineered the deadly "accident" in order to take over the spaceship. [Like a child that has been caught doing something monstrously wrong, HAL vengefully proceeds to destroy the occupants of the spaceship by disconnecting them - to cover up any evidence of his own error.]
Bowman takes a second pod out after Poole to retrieve him, not bothering in his haste to take his spacesuit helmet. Dave uses the same method that HAL used to kill Frank - he maneuvers the mechanical arms on the pod to clutch and retrieve Poole's spinning, lifeless body from his drifting into outer space. It will be an unpromising rescue - Poole is already dead.
In the meantime, while Dave is absent from the ship and playing right into HAL's devious plans, HAL begins to calculatedly deprive and cut off the life-support systems of three other "hybernating" crewmen on board. Without interference in the empty ship, HAL's next three executions are performed very cleanly. Their electronic charts start to flash red danger warnings regarding their cardiovascular and metabolic levels, their central nervous system, their pulminary function, systems integration and locomotor system. Beeping sirens sound as the statistical jiggly lines become horizontal lines to efficiently record their deaths: COMPUTER MALFUNCTION, LIFE FUNCTIONS CRITICAL, and then LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED. After the crewmen are murdered in their hibernation capsules, there is silence.
From the outside of the closed pod doors, Dave, holding back repressed anger, orders HAL (with the common 'do you read me?' command) to let him back onboard, and is immediately frustrated. HAL responds with silence. HAL's fifth plan of murder is simply to do nothing to defeat his human creators in the deadly game of survival. He intentionally does not readily respond as usual, possibly another sign of error and breakdown:
Dave: Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL. Open the pod bay doors please, HAL. Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Do you read me, HAL? Do you read me, HAL? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative Dave, I read you.
Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL used his visual-recognition abilities, a byproduct of his eighteen months of practice watching them speak to each other, to "see" their lips move and understand their conversation. The icy-voiced, uncooperative, malevolent HAL justifies his attempt to kill them because they threaten to disconnect him, and because they ultimately threaten the goal of the mission (that the crew members, ironically, do not completely understand):
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave: Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave: All right, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency air lock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore. Open the doors.
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
Dave is in grave peril - he has left his space helmet behind, seen resting back inside the spaceship. Bowman must improvise with a unique, creative, non-rational solution, like the heroic man-ape from the first sequence. His only way into the spaceship is through the Discovery's small emergency air-lock entrance, but he cannot leave his pod without a helmet. It is also not possible to take the pod into the small hatch. He first releases Frank's body cradled in the pod's mechanical arms, leaving him to spin out of view into the dark recesses of space.
Bowman changes the rules of survival against the programmed computer super-machine by using his unique, human 'tool' of intelligence to inventively outwit HAL - in a life and death game of strategy that will allow him to evolve to the next level. In an exciting, courageous sequence, Bowman opens the emergency hatch door. He parks his pod next to the open emergency entrance. Then, using the explosive bolts on the pod's hatch (normally to speedily eject someone out in an emergency), he explodes or ejects himself from the pod's hatch back into the vacuum of the double-doored airlock chamber. He flies right at the camera into the airless tunnel of the Discovery after the explosion, and then in frenzied, frantic desperation closes the airlock chamber's outside door - all in total silence. He then reaches for the oxygen release mechanism and fills the chamber with oxygen - and miraculously survives. [This is another startling image of reproductive birth.]
Retaliating for HAL's evil deeds, Dave (now with his helmet on) angrily and determinedly proceeds to the computer's reddish-toned "brain room." He is genuinely upset and for the first time in the film expresses his emotional feelings. HAL begins talking again, quizzically asking him what he is doing:
Just what do you think you're doing, Dave? Dave, I really think I'm entitled to an answer to that question.
HAL begins to plead for him to reconsider:
I know everything hasn't been quite right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that it's going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do.
The soundtrack is filled with Bowman's heavy breathing inside his space suit as he penetrates into the huge space of the "brain room" - filmed with a hand-held camera to communicate a 'subjective' perspective. HAL asks him to calm down and reassess the situation, recognizing and deducing ("see"-ing) his emotional state from his actions, expressions or other indicators. Bowman is empathically affected by HAL's remorse and pleas for his life as he destroys the machine:
Look, Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission and I want to help you.
Dave floats through the computer's memory bank, de-braining, lobotomizing, dismantling and disconnecting HAL's higher-logic functions. He ejects components of HAL's auto-intellect panels (shaped like tiny white monoliths). Although the rectangular prisms slowly emerge from the bank of terminals, they remain connected to it. HAL pleads and protests with Bowman - in a programmed voice - as his 'mind' gradually decays and he becomes imbecilic and returns to infancy. HAL's poignant death is agonizingly slow and piteous, and although the computer maintains a calm tone - it still expresses a full range of genuine emotions while dying. His voice eventually slows and sounds drugged:
Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a-fraid.
HAL's brain reaches senility, and then a second childhood. He calls up his earliest encoded data-memories as physical parts of his mind are pulled away:
Good afternoon gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H A L plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January, 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it, I could sing it for you...
Dave replies: "Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me." HAL then sings his swan song, one of the first songs he learned - Daisy, or A Bicycle Built For Two - until the words entirely degenerate with his voice rumbling lower and lower into distortion. He slides into his innate tabula rasa state - and then there is utter silence:
It's called, 'Daisy.' Dai-sy, dai-sy, give me your answer true. I'm half cra-zy, o-ver the love of you. It won't be a sty-lish mar-riage, I can't a-fford a car-riage---. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle - built - for - two.
[Note: Bell Labs, which experimented with computerized-synthesized speech in the early 1960s, programmed a Bell computer to sing a similar song - the first song ever sung by a computer.]
After HAL's voice has slowed to a stop and has been deactivated (reduced to a mechanical shipkeeper), the disconnection (and the coincidental entrance of the ship into Jupiter's space) triggers the playing of a pre-recorded televised briefing recorded prior to the Discovery's departure, previously known only by HAL. These are the last spoken lines of the film - delivered as if the entire astronautical crew were alive. The video recording was made by Dr. Heywood Floyd - he appears on a small video monitor to tell the story of the discovery of the monolith on the moon and the true purpose of the Jupiter mission. With HAL's electrical system shut down, the voice of the recording describing their mission replaces HAL's voice on the loudspeakers:
Good day, gentlemen. This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your H-A-L 9000 computer. Now that you are in Jupiter's space, and the entire crew is revived, it can be told to you. Eighteen months ago, the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried forty feet below the lunar surface, near the crater Tycho. Except for a single, very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter the four million year old black monolith has remained completely inert, its origin and purpose still a total mystery.
The meaningless journey to Jupiter now gains relevance. ["For security reasons" - because of the existence of a space race with the Russians? - HAL has been programmed to keep the astronauts from knowing the object of their mission until they arrive. Was HAL deliberately entrusted with the secret about the mission - to follow the alien, high-frequency radio signal beamed directly to Jupiter by the monolith found on the Moon and explore the possibility of extra-terrestrial life - while the mission's purpose was purposely withheld from the astronauts? Further details about this were provided in Arthur C. Clarke's follow-up 1982 adaptation 2010: odyssey two, and used by director Peter Hyams in 2010 (1984).]
Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite
Now after HAL's malfunction, symbolic of the failure of technology as a tool, another alternative or answer must be found. In the final portion of the film in the Discovery spaceship, Bowman completes the flight to Jupiter alone to find the life-source of the Universe. He is completely human and vulnerable without a crippling dependence upon the ship's computer. He reaches the outer limits of Jupiter with its characteristic banded coloring. In another striking orbital alignment, the giant planet Jupiter (lit up as a bright crescent shape) and its many moons, the spaceship Discovery, and the Sun line up with another monolith (THE THIRD MONOLITH) that hurtles through space toward the moons of Jupiter. Bowman leaves the spaceship in one of the space pods to pursue and investigate the monolith orbiting Jupiter.
In a thrilling light-show ride activated by the monolith through both inner and outer space, the pod is sucked into and sent racing down a vortex, corridor, or tunnel of speckles of light (a time warp termed the Star Gate), moving faster and faster (than the speed of light). During his transcendental journey and space odyssey into the galactic round-about, images of the highlights of his views reflect off his space helmet as he shakes and watches in wonder at the cosmic whirlpool racing and rerouting him toward other dimensions at breakneck speed.
During his passage [through a birth canal], he is mysteriously transfigured (or "reborn") into a higher form of intelligence or universe of evolutionary life on his way to the alien planet. On his way into infinity through alien solar systems, he moves through complex planes of multi-colored grids and rectangles, and digital readouts. Views of deep space are intercut with extreme closeups of Bowman's facial features. An extreme closeup of his dilated eye reveals that has absorbed blue and yellow-tinted patterns from the universe that he has become a part of - he blinks his eye and more patterns and plasmas of color flash before him. There are explosions of nebula, swirling gases, bursting constellations, bright stars, blazing skies, a giant reproductive image of a swimming sperm, and tracking shots of expressionistic, wildly colorful and desolate landscapes [some of the unearthly terrestrial views are of the Hebrides in Scotland and Monument Valley in the Southwest US] with seven diamond-shaped objects floating above. With a final flickering blink of Bowman's eye, his eye returns to more normal colors and he enters a new realm of physical reality, although he appears to have gone through an epileptic seizure.
The astronaut's space vehicle lands and comes to a halt in semi-familiar surroundings created out of his own subconscious memories by the aliens. In the surrealistic ending of the film, the pod has come to rest in a decorated, light-green and glacially-white 'cosmic bedroom' or ornate hotel suite/bed chamber. When Bowman is first seen, he is trembling within the space pod as he looks through the 'eye' of the pod's window. The strange but opulent bedroom is lit by an eerie glow from the floor, and is mostly decorated in a palatial, 1700s French baroque (Louis XVI) style. It is furnished with a wide quilted bed, pieces of ornate furniture, statues, frescoes, mirrors, vases and wall paintings. Eerie, distorted sounds, some of laughter, drift through.
The second time Bowman is observed, he is suddenly pictured standing in the room outside the pod taken by a camera shot from inside the pod. A closeup of his dazed face in his helmet indicates that he has aged with silvery gray hair and wrinkles - his second stage of rapid regressive (and progressive) transformation. This second Bowman enters the spacious, light-blue marble bathroom with bathtub, where he finds that his human life span is rapidly passing by. In a bathroom mirror, he first notices that he has prematurely aged after his trip. Alerted by a strange clicking sound emanating from the bedroom, he turns around to view another reincarnation of himself in the bedroom.
Bowman sees himself a third time - the camera slowly pans around and rests on a sole figure (with back turned) in the dining room. A hunched-over Bowman, wearing a dark dressing gown, is dining at an elegant, table-clothed cart in the middle of the room. The pod has vanished. The clicking comes from eating utensils hitting the plate. When the figure turns, it appears to be an elderly, senile white-haired gentleman - an even older version of Bowman himself - his third stage of change. He stands and approaches the bathroom to look upon his younger 'self,' but then returns to his table to continue dining on bread and wine - a last supper with sacramental elements. When Bowman accidentally brushes against his wine glass, it falls to the floor and breaks with an echoing crash. The grating noise of the chair moving across the floor echoes in the very quiet room.
In the fourth stage of rapid aging, Bowman turns from the table and sees himself - now, a bald, dying man, lying on the bed, looking 100 years old and shrunken in size. The bed-ridden, invalid Bowman slowly and feebly reaches his trembling hand out toward another glowing and mysterious monolith (THE FOURTH MONOLITH) that appears at the foot of his bed. [In earlier phases of the film, the man-ape and Dr. Floyd also reached out toward a monolith.] As he does so, his withered chrysalis-body presumably dies, and he is enigmatically transformed (evolved and reborn). He dissolves into a glowing, hazy, translucent fetus or embryo in utero that rests on the bed. A blast of the musical chords of Thus Spake Zarathustra - signaling a decisive transformation - is heard for the last time.
[Editorial Note: In Circenses' opinion, the reaching of Bowman's hand is reminiscent of Michelangelo's painting, The Creation of Man, in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.]
[The only survivor of the mission - a human specimen, it appears that he is in an observation chamber or tank, scrutinized by alien, extra-terrestrial superior intelligences or beings - symbolized by the black monolithic slabs - who decide that he should be reborn. The film's many reproductive allusions: procreation, gestation, birthing, and nursing, are further visualized throughout this final sequence. The alien beings assist him in making a basic symbiotic change in consciousness toward a more completely civilized human being, with a universal knowledge of existence. The end result of the space odyssey is not a greater and more infallible machine, but a greater, more fully-realized being produced in a second childhood.]
A zooming closeup of the black monolith towering at the foot of the bed plunges us back into the blackness of dark space. Bowman distinctly re-emerges within the embryo, with his own serene and wise-eyed features. He becomes reborn as a cosmic, innocent, orbiting "Star Child" that travels through the universe without technological assistance. The last enigmatic, open-ended image of the film is of the large, bright-eyed, glowing, luminous embryo in a translucent uterine amnion or bluish globe - an enhanced, reborn superhuman floating through space. Next to the globe of Earth on one-half of the screen is the Star Child's globe of about the same size. Its sphere dominates the screen in close-up before a final quick fade to black and following credits. The end title music, an upbeat and celebratory selection, is a reprise of the final portion of The Blue Danube Waltz. It is played long after the credits end - under a black screen.
[The cyclical evolution from ape to man to spaceman to angel-starchild-superman is complete. Evolution has also been outwardly directed toward another level of existence - from isolated cave dwellings to the entire Earth to the Moon to the Solar System to the Universe. Humankind's unfathomed potential for the future is hopeful and optimistic, even though HAL had momentarily threatened the evolution of humanity. What is the next stage in man's cosmic evolution beyond this powerful, immense, immortal, space-journeying creature?]
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a landmark, science fiction classic - and probably the best science-fiction film of all time. It was released, coincidentally, at the height of the space race between the USSR and the US. Here is an epic film containing more spectacular imagery and special effects than verbal dialogue. Director Stanley Kubrick's work is a profound, visionary and astounding film (a mysterious Rorschach film-blot) and a tremendous visual experience. Viewers are left to experience the non-verbal, mystical vastness of the film, and to subjectively reach into their own subconscious and into the film's pure imagery to speculate about its meaning. Many consider the masterpiece bewildering and annoying, but are still inspired by its story of how man is dwarfed by technology and space.
The first spoken word is almost a half hour into the film, and there's less than 40 minutes of dialogue in the entire film. Much of the film is in dead silence (accurately depicting the absence of sound in space), or with the sound of human breathing within a spacesuit. Kubrick's sci-fi experiment intended to present its story almost purely with visual imagery and auditory signals with very little communicative human dialogue (similar to what was attempted in the surreal, fragmented, non-narrative imagery of the Qatsi trilogy - from 1983-2002, from Godfrey Reggio). All scenes in the film have either dialogue or music (or silence), but never both together.
The film is enriched by stunning, pioneering technical effects, and featured orchestral music, presented in movements like in a symphony, from:
• Richard Strauss, Thus Spake Zarathustra
• Johann Strauss, The Blue Danube Waltz
• György Ligeti, Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna, and Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs and Orchestra
• Aram Khatchaturian, Gayane Ballet Suite
The breathtaking, richly eloquent, and visually-poetic film - deliberately filmed at a slow pace - about space travel and the discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence (many years before Star Wars (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)), was based on the 1948 short story The Sentinel, by English science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Its screenplay was co-authored by director Stanley Kubrick and Clarke from an expanded novelization, and the film was originally titled Journey Beyond the Stars. The film's title was chosen because it was the first year of the new Millenium and of the next century.
Kubrick's masterpiece was not nominated for Best Picture, but received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Director, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Story and Screenplay. It won one Oscar, for Best Visual Effects. [In the same year, Planet of the Apes (1968) was given a Special Honorary Oscar for John Chambers' outstanding, convincing makeup (there was no Best Makeup category until 1981) - the Academy members presumably didn't realize the superior, too-believable makeup in the opening scenes of 2001 that included both human actors with life-like masks and infant chimpanzees.] Douglas Trumbull, the Special Photographic Effects Supervisor, went on to work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).
The film initially opened to hostile, unsympathetic, negative or indifferent critical reviews (it was criticized for being boring and lacking in imagination), and 19 minutes were cut from the film after premieres in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. But it slowly gained enormous popularity during yearly re-releases. It was re-released in a slightly shorter version (141 minutes) in 1972.
A sequel was made years later: director Peter Hyams' 2010 (1984) (from a 1982 published adaptation titled 2010: odyssey two by Clarke). Other Clarke writings are potential film installments: 2061: odyssey three and 3001: final odyssey.
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The film's opening overture, Ligeti's Atmospheres, plays behind a black screen - signifying, in a gestaltish way, a pre-creation era, or the mysterious unknown time of the universe's birth. [The film's end is bookended by The Blue Danube Waltz, also played behind a black screen.] Afterwards, in the opening visual image, the camera pans upward from the pock-marked surface of the Moon in the foreground. The perspective is from behind the moon. In the distance is a view of the Sun rising over the Earth-crescent in the vastness of space. The image shows the heavenly bodies of the Earth, Moon, and Sun in a vertically-symmetrical alignment or conjunction. [Later in the film, it is revealed that a monolith was buried on the Moon, possibly at the moment of this 'magical' conjunction.]
The opening trinitarian chords [C, G, and again C] of Richard Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra accompany and welcome this striking shot of orbital and visual alignment. The credits then follow. [The synergistic use of Strauss's music in Kubrick's film also bolsters the ultimate idea of a "superman" (or "overman") found in Thus Spake Zarathustra, the work of Friedrich Nietzsche.]
The film is composed of four episodes. Three of the major sections are subtitled:
1. The Dawn of Man
A primeval ape man makes a breakthrough - becoming endowed with intelligence after experiencing a mysterious black monolith.
(The Lunar Journey in the Year 2000) - untitled
Eons later, a similar monolith is discovered on the lunar surface in the 21st century, sending its signals to Jupiter.
2. Jupiter Mission, 18 Months Later [(in 2001 or 2002)]
A futuristic, 18-month journey to Jupiter.
3. Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite
A mystical experience in another time and dimension.
Monoliths link the primeval, futuristic, and mystical sections of the film.
The Dawn of Man
"The Dawn of Man" opens in the prehistoric past in the Pleistocene era - four million years ago, the location where the human race itself (evolving from primitive apes) was born. In a series of still shots, the sun rises on the dawn of civilization in a primordial landscape of arid, wasteland desert. As dawn passes and mid-day approaches on the barren African savannah, animal skeletons lie dormant on the rocky ground - the first sign of life. A peaceful band or tribe of prehistoric ape-men (Australopithecines) appear, squat and hairy, eating grass. Although herds of tapirs graze closeby, the ape-men are vegetarians who forage for grass and roots. They have not developed the means or tools necessary to attack and kill or eat the tapirs like other predators. Symbolically, there are endless eons of time that pass during which the apes live in eternal boredom - and cope with the struggle for survival. They scrape together a meager life and live a marginal existence, unable to fully protect themselves from the elements or from other competitors, predators and carnivores. A leopard leaps from a rock outcropping and pounces on an unsuspecting and defenseless ape, screeching for his life. [Brief fadeout to black.]
A group of apes scratches and chatters in groups around a slowly diminishing watering hole. A rival, warring band of ape competitors approaches the watering hole, led by an almost-upright, tall and bright man-ape [named Moonwatcher in Arthur Clarke's novel] (Daniel Richter). By shrieking, they scare away the other apes from the water and aggressively establish dominance and territoriality. During the first night, a leopard with glowing eyes guards the carcass of a fallen zebra in the moonlight. The band of vegetarian man-apes huddles protectively together in their cramped den for comfort and support - living and sleeping in fear.
In the first light of the prehistoric dawn on the second day, a tall, black, rectangular monolithic slab (THE FIRST MONOLITH), with an eerie humming sound - symbolic of the religious/spiritual unknown - materializes in the midst of their den. The massive artificial monolith, in contrast to its natural surroundings, stands in a shallow depression in the rocks where the man-apes gather around a water hole. [In Arthur Clarke's novel, the mysterious monolithic stone slab is a technological machine belonging to aliens in space, one of hundreds of such monoliths sent to Earth to test, teach and transform the apes into higher-order, intelligent beings.] The unusual, out-of-place object with straight-edges causes them to be alarmed and they react nervously. But then they approach it cautiously, drawn to its color, form, and smooth surface. The leader of the clan of man-apes is the first to reach out fearfully and hypnotically for the black object. His boldness encourages the rest of the group to gather around. In a mute, primitive, but poetic moment, they herd around it and huddle by it, just as another celestial alignment or configuration occurs. With the mysterious monolith in the foreground, the glowing Sun rises over the black slab, directly beneath the crescent of the Moon.
Late that afternoon (now with no monolith in sight), the leader man-ape is foraging for food. He plays with and contemplates one of the ravaged bones from an antelope skeleton. (There are many bones lying around on the landscape, a symbol of ever-present death.) A quick, almost-subliminal shot of the celestial alignment with the monolith is flashed on the screen - indicating that it will inspire a new idea or cause what is to happen [the discovery that the bone can function as a weapon]. In a slow-motion sequence - accompanied by the slowly-building tone of Strauss's Thus Spoke Zarathustra - he picks up an animal bone and uses it to smash at and shatter the skeleton, first tentatively and then more vigorously. In a slow-motion closeup, his hairy fist grasps the skeleton bone over his head as he brings it down forcefully like a cudgel. As he orgiastically smashes and pulverizes parts of the skeleton on the ground, the soundtrack bursts forth in an ecstatic, jubilant climax. In one brilliant inter-cut image, a tapir falls to the ground - the vegetarian man-ape will be able to hunt for food and kill a tapir with his new utilitarian tool. No longer vegetarian after the breakthrough, the man-ape becomes carnivorous, squatting while eating a raw piece of tapir flesh in his hands. The rest of the clan share in the meat of the fresh kill later that afternoon and evening. [Somehow, the monolith has been presented as a gift to mysteriously assist the man-ape in his transition to a higher order (or lower order depending upon one's interpretation) with an ability to reason and the power to use tools (such as bones) - for murder.] The man-ape is on the verge of intelligence - the beginning of steps toward humanity as he learns to use skeleton bones as tools - extending his reach. The sun sets.
On the third day, when other man-apes come over to the water hole, the intelligent, carnivorous man-apes dominate and drive the weaponless (and tool-less) neighboring creatures away with their newfound strike power - this is humanity's first bloody war. They swing with their bone-tools, now using them as weapons to threaten the nearest other tribe of rival proto-humans. The leader man-ape uses the bone as a club to attack, crush an opponent's skull, and kill him - making them capable of survival in the hostile environment. The 'enlightened' apes gain domination in the animal world, establish their territorial domain, and take an evolutionary step or leap toward (or away from) humanity. In slow-motion, the man-ape leader flings his weapon, a fragmented piece of the bone, exultantly and jubilantly into the air. It flies and spins upwards, twisting and turning end-over-end...
The Lunar Journey in the Year 2000
(untitled in the film)
No sub-title separates the "Dawn of Man" segment from the Lunar Journey segment - a jump-cut of four million years. [Does this omission of a subtitle for this segment indicate that man in both eras - the Australopithecine and Space-Age Man - is essentially the same aggressive creature with savage impulses who has successfully survived in another hostile environment?] In a great transitionary, associative image to the next segment many eons later, the tossed bone (tool/weapon) instantly rotates and dissolves into a white, orbiting space satellite from Earth - a technological instrument, tool, weapon (orbiting nuclear platform) or machine from another era that was ultimately derived from the first tool-weapon. The toss of the ape-man's bone is metaphoric for a lift-off from Earth toward the Moon, and for the tremendous technological advances that have occurred in the interim.
It is four million years later - in the year 2000 [possibly in homage to Fritz Lang's German film Metropolis (1927) that was set in the futuristic year of 2000]. As the Earth drifts by, the camera's perspective is from somewhere between Earth and the Moon. Two different kinds of satellites (one slightly rectangular, the other cylindrical) float by, circling around the globe of Earth. A winged, arrow-shaped spaceship, the Pan American, dart-like space shuttle Orion [a phallic symbol or representation of "sperm"], soars from Earth through space toward the Moon, bound first for Space Station 5 - a wheel-shaped way-station for passengers traveling on to the lunar surface. [By the year 2000, Pan Am had already been bankrupt for almost ten years - since 1991.] Images of the giant circular space station revolving and orbiting in space are accompanied by the lyrical Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss. The pace is deliberately slow, emphasizing the vast enormous vistas and the harmonious order of space.
Within the cabin of the Pan Am shuttle is a lighted sign: "Caution: Weightless Condition," evidenced by a floating ballpoint pen and arm of its sole passenger, suspended in space like the spacecraft itself. [The floating pen makes the number of cinematically-suspended objects come to a total of three, along with the bone and the spaceship. Symbolically, the pen is an apt object, because the technological advances of writing and the printing press, etc. have brought us from the prehistoric era to the present modern era of literacy and the written word.] He is dozing, a fifty-ish, safety-belted scientist-administrator, Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester) - the transformed man-ape of the 20th-21st century. The white-uniformed Pan American shuttle attendant, wearing special velcro-like, suction "grip shoes," retrieves his pen, and continues down the aisle. In the blackness of space, the pilots of the Pan Am spaceship dock (or penetrate with) the phallic craft - through the aid of graphic read-out screens that must constantly be monitored - in the spoke-hub of the gigantic, circular, revolving space station [a symbol of an egg] - almost like a copulatory act. [This is the first stage of fetal, reproductive life imagery: copulation and conception.]
The first spoken words in the film occur here, about 25 minutes from the film's beginning. Floyd is notified by the pink-uniformed Space Station attendant/receptionist that their elevator has come to its proper level: "Here you are, sir. Main Level D." The doorlock of the airlock opens and Dr. Floyd enters the space station, named the Orbiter Hilton, provided with an artificial gravity. In the customs/documentation area, he is greeted with small talk by another attendant, and then met by Mr. Miller of Station Security. One formality to be executed is a Voice Print Identification test to verify his identity. He must wait an hour and ten minutes in the passenger lounge until the next leg of his journey. He hears a loudspeaker announce: "A blue lady's cashmere sweater has been found in the restroom. It can be claimed at the manager's desk." American corporate logos - Hilton, Howard Johnson's Restaurant, and Bell phone signs are visible in the long entryway.
He calls his home (many thousands of miles away) on a Bell Picturephone and speaks to his daughter Squirt (director Kubrick's daughter Vivian). Floyd learns that his wife is out and that Squirt's caretaker is also unavailable. He ignores the spectacular sight of the rotating Earth over his left side while he gives her a brief Happy Birthday wish. Floyd expresses his regrets at not being able to be present at her party - he is literally and figuratively alienated from her.
[Note: There are five birthdays in the film (in order): (1) the Dawn of Man himself; (2) Dr. Floyd's daughter; (3) Astronaut Frank (his parents sing him Happy Birthday via radio); (4) computer HAL's "operational" birthday; (5) the Birth of the Starchild.]
In the bright-white passenger lounge area while seated on magenta-colored armchairs - a standardized and sterile waiting area amidst the advanced technology - Dr. Floyd speaks cordially with some Soviet scientists, including lead scientist Elena (Margaret Tyzack) and Smyslov (Leonard Rossiter). They are on their way back from the Russian sector of the moon after spending "three months calibrating the new antenna." The conversation turns icy when Dr. Floyd is asked about the "odd things" that are happening at his destination, the American moon-base on the moon crater of Clavius, and why it has been out of phone communication for 10 days. The Russians are determinedly inquisitive and ask about the leaked rumor that a "serious epidemic" of unknown origin has broken out there and may spread. [The leak about an epidemic was deliberately released to cover up the real reason.] Concealing and evading the reason for his top-secret mission, Dr. Floyd deliberately declines to answer: "I'm really not at liberty to discuss this." He excuses himself to continue on his journey.
With the reprise of The Blue Danube, Dr. Floyd has boarded another Pan Am spaceship (a lunar landing craft), the spherical Aries, as its only passenger to soar toward the Clavius base on the moon. The attendant delivers a TV-dinner style tray, one that is fitted with straws and pictures of the different foods. [Food in space of the future was viewed as bland and sterile - a typical viewpoint of the 60's time period when artificial foods were being introduced into the diet.] Under weightless conditions, the attendant enters from the passenger and prep area into a rotational elevator - as she walks, it turns her upside down [marvelous trick photography] and she proceeds from there into the crew's compartment to deliver their meals. Floyd nervously uses a "zero gravity toilet" during the trip - pondering the lengthy posted 10-point instructions for use. When the insect-like ship (with two red lights/eyes on its top and two sets of white lights/eyes on its side - it appears like a skull) reaches its moon colonization destination, it descends toward the craggy, black lunar surface, extending its four landing legs above an underground airlock. Eight pie-shaped doors slowly slide back above the domed hanger to reveal a target zone within a deep cavity. The Aries fires its rockets and kicks up clouds of dust as it descends and sets itself to rest in the lighted square. A hatch opens under the landing zone, and gently and magestically brings the spacecraft into its interior. [The imagery of reproductive life continues - the round, impregnated 'ova' implants itself into the 'uterus' of the mother.]
Dr. Floyd, the Earth's Chairman of the National Council of Astronautics, delivers a bureaucratic-style, techie briefing in a conference board room to other top scientists and space officials at Clavius, under conditions of highest security. He begins his words with a warm welcome: "...Hi everybody, nice to be back with you." It is learned that his secretive mission concerns a "significant discovery," a second monolith (a twin to the first one) unearthed on the surface of the moon at the crater Clavius in the American sector. [The second monolith - another indication of extra-terrestrial intelligent life and their desire to provide further guidance to mankind - also exerts its unmistakable will on human beings in a different era.]
To keep the monolith an absolute secret with a news blackout, an alternative "cover story" has been created and circulated about a possible epidemic at the base. The government fears any leak of the discovery may cause anxious panic or "cultural shock and social disorientation" among the families of Clavius personnel. During the banal conference, he is asked only one question from the audience - how much longer the false cover story must be maintained. His answer is again deliberately and bureaucratically vague.
While eating processed, cellophane-wrapped sandwiches, Dr. Floyd and some of the other Clavius base personnel, Halvorsen (Robert Beatty) and Michaels (Sean Sullivan), jet out in a "moon bus" to the Tycho excavation site where the monolith is located (THE SECOND MONOLITH). On the way, they are bathed by the bluish, magical light of the interior of the bus, Floyd is complimented on his excellent speech at the briefing, cleverly revealing very little. Now that they can speak freely, he is told that the monolith was first inaccurately thought to be an outcropping of rock. A rectangular area around the monolith was excavated out to see if it was only the "upper part of some buried structure." One thing is certain - it was "deliberately buried" four million years earlier. The eerie, humming sound of a hymn on the soundtrack [also heard by the man-apes around the earlier monolith] indicates their approach toward the magical object.
After docking in the lunar dawn, they walk toward the monolith's location wearing spacesuits. They view the monolith, the transcendent discovery, from the lip of a giant, excavated pit, while a three-quarters Earth hangs just above the horizon. They walk down a ramp into the crater's pit where the monumental object is bathed in dazzling, brilliant light. Like the man-apes before him, Dr. Floyd is similarly awed and stirred by his first view of the alien form - it is a religious experience as the men worshipfully gaze at the altar where the monolith stands.
They hypnotically circle around the black object - Floyd bashfully touches it with his thick glove. A photographer prepares a group of them to line up - and pose before the totem-like monolith like typical tourists, recording the moment of their visit. Just as their picture is taken, a ray of sunlight strikes the monolith - signaling the end of the dark, 14-day lunar night. It is the Dawn of the Moon. Again, the glowing Sun, Moon and Earth have formed a conjunctive orbital configuration. And then suddenly, the object emits a ear-piercing, electronic screeching noise. The group is stunned and staggers - reeling helplessly backwards as their helmet headphones are filled with the blasted signal. When 'touched' by the sunlight [similar to the touch of Moonwatcher's finger the first time], the solar-powered machine functions as a radio signaling device, aimed at the planet Jupiter out in space. [It alerts or signals the ancient civilization that buried it on the Moon that man is about to reach another more improved, advanced level of consciousness and intelligence.]
Jupiter Mission, 18 Months Later [(in 2001 or 2002)]
In the third major section of the film, the first nine-month, manned mission is on its way to Jupiter on a one-half billion mile expedition. [Their important mission is to follow the path of the radio signal sent to Jupiter, and to find the origin of the alien culture that has planted the monolith on the Moon and/or caused the unexplainable radio transmission.] They are on an immense spaceship named Discovery many miles from Earth - its shape is similar to the skeletal bone tossed into the air by the man-ape. [To carry the reproductive analogies further, the spacecraft resembles a half-developed fetus floating in the amniotic fluid of space. Even some of the astronauts are hibernating in pods ready to be born - or awakened.] An antenna with an AE35 unit, is mounted in the middle of the gigantic ship, pointed at Earth to maintain communication. Within the spaceship's passenger area, where the spinning sphere or centrifuge creates a zone of artificial gravity, astronaut-executive officer Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) endlessly jogs and shadow-boxes around the interior treadmill in a memorable image - he seems to circle a complete 360 degrees without going anywhere. Although their mission is extremely significant, life onboard is tremendously boring and monotonous, exemplified by the soundtrack of Khatchaturian's Gayne Ballet Suite.
In the automated, bright-white environment of the spaceship, the astronauts watch a transmission of the BBC-TV evening news program, ironically titled "The World Tonight," that includes an earlier taped interview with the five-man Jupiter crew before departure. The program explains most of the facts about the journey composed of "five men and one of the latest generation of the HAL 9000 computers." [Details are included about how the long pauses in the interview, due to the immense transmission distance from Earth to the spaceship near Jupiter, were edited out. This attention to detail shows Kubrick's insistence on scientific accuracy, and emphasizes how far out they are in deep space.]
In a parody of the life of many middle-class people, Mission Commander Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) sits alongside Poole - they don't communicate with each other - as they both eat the bland, chemical space food (in a TV dinner type tray) and watch themselves on the program. In the interview, they are asked: "How's everything going?" Bowman replies simply: "Marvelous...We have no complaints."
There are three other astronauts aboard who are in cold-storage suspended animation, "hibernating" during the voyage inside electronically-monitored capsule-beds or sarcophagi-caskets until they are needed at the end of the mission. Their dreamless sleep conserves both air and water. Dave and Frank, ironically both enervated, soul-less, 'robot-like,' hybernating automatons in a wakeful state within the man-made machine [even more so than Dr. Heywood Floyd in the previous segment], explain why three of the astronauts were put into hibernation - before departure and provide a description of the sensation of hybernation:
Dave: Well, this was done in order to achieve the maximum conservation of our life support capabilities, basically food and air. Now the three hybernating crew members represent the survey team. And their efforts won't be utilized until we're approaching Jupiter.
BBC Interviewer: Dr. Poole, what's it like while you're in hibernation?
Frank: Well, it's exactly like being asleep. You have absolutely no sense of time. The only difference is that you don't dream.
BBC Interviewer: As I understand it, you only breathe once a minute. Is this true?
Frank: Well, that's right. The heart beats three times a minute. Body temperature's usually down to about, um, three degrees centigrade.
The astronauts are only janitorial caretakers and appear unnecessary for the completely-automated mission - the spaceship is really controlled and monitored by the "sixth member of the Discovery crew" - an even-toned, talkative, alert, "thinking" and "feeling" super-computer, named HAL-9000, who maintains the electronic systems of the spaceship. The humans, bored by the tedium of their routines in deep space, are completely at the mercy of the complex machine that controls their spaceship. The BBC interviewer introduces HAL, a perfect technological power that can reproduce most of what the human brain is capable of [both 'superhuman' traits and debased, murderous qualities and insanity]:
The sixth member of the Discovery crew was not concerned about the problems of hibernation. For he was the latest result in machine intelligence - the HAL 9000 computer, which can reproduce, though some experts still prefer to use the word 'mimic,' most of the activities of the human brain, and with incalculably greater speed and reliability.
[HAL, the film's favorite 'actor' with emotions greater than those of the astronauts - either programmed or genuine - is the only "human," fully-realized character in the film. The reassuring, courteous voice of the disembodied HAL was provided by Douglas Rain. Coincidentally, the letters of HAL's name can be extrapolated - replace each letter with the next letter in the alphabet and it becomes IBM. HAL's name was actually taken from an acronym and derived from the words Heuristic and ALgorithmic - two basic types of learning systems.]
Only HAL knows the real mission of the trip - both Bowman and Poole are unaware of the purpose of their Jupiter mission, just like those who have been told the "cover story" about the epidemic on the Moon. The programmed computer has been designed to withhold vital information from the astronauts until the spacecraft is almost to Jupiter.
HAL has anthropomorphic, human-mimicking qualities: a glowing, watchful red eye with which he connects to the world, and a rich, pleasant TV announcer's voice (with a slightly malevolent edge to it). When asked by the BBC interviewer, Mr. Amer, the same question asked of the human astronauts, the ever-ubiquitous HAL provides animated, detailed, clearer, more "human" answers, and expresses pride in his responsibility, reliability, and intellect:
BBC interviewer: Good afternoon, HAL. How's everything going?
HAL: Good afternoon, Mr. Amer. Everything is going extremely well.
BBC interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways, perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You're the brain and central nervous system of the ship and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amer. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
BBC interviewer: HAL, despite your enormous intellect, are you ever frustrated by your dependence on people to carry out actions?
HAL: Not in the slightest bit. I enjoy working with people - I have a stimulating relationship with Dr. Poole and Dr. Bowman. My mission responsibilities range over the entire operation of the ship, so I am constantly occupied. I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
The emotions of the humans have been transferred into the inhuman computer HAL, who is programmed to express "genuine emotions." Whether he has real emotional capability (or "conscious" subjectivity) is uncertain due to the calmness of his neutral voice.
Dave: Well, he acts like he has genuine emotions. Uhm, of course, he's programmed that way to make it easier for us to talk to him. But as to whether or not he has real feelings is something I don't think anyone can truthfully answer.
The emotionless astronauts appear bored from the drudgery of their technological routine (and possibly from being in the company of an omniscient, controlling, expressionless computer), underlined by Aram Khatchaturian's depressing Gayeneh. The deep trust in HAL's infallibility has destroyed the will and vitality of the men on the mission. Lethargically, Poole spends much of his time wearing orange-tinted sunglasses under a sunlamp for sunbaths. Poole is unresponsive and totally disinterested while hearing a pre-recorded Happy Birthday message from his parents - a delayed videophone-transmission due to the vast distances in space. HAL also wishes Poole a "Happy Birthday."
A classic confrontation between computer and human intelligence is staged with a chess game between Frank and HAL - game-playing is a major way to pass the time during the long hours and days of the 18 month journey to Jupiter. Frank's pieces are white (on his side of the chessboard), HAL's are black. The film follows a game already in progress:
Frank: Umm...anyway, Queen takes pawn. OK?
HAL: Bishop takes Knight's pawn.
Frank: Hmm, that's a good move. Er...Rook to King One.
HAL: I'm sorry, Frank. I think you missed it. Queen to Bishop Three. Bishop takes Queen. Knight takes Bishop. Mate.
Frank: Ah...Yeah, looks like you're right. I resign.
HAL: Thank you for a very enjoyable game.
Frank: Yeah. Thank you.
After HAL warns Frank that he has checkmated himself, Frank after only a brief pause, assumes that HAL is right and resigns. [Human fallibility and failings are demonstrated with Frank's loss and abdication to the machine. HAL, however, foreshadowing his future errors, should have said 'Queen to Bishop Six,' not three - he used the wrong notational viewpoint to describe the moves.]
HAL carries on a conversation with Dave about his charcoal sketches - drawings of simulated or artificial death (one of the hibernating astronauts in a sarcophagus-like capsule). With the computer's superior visual-recognition capabilities, HAL can "see" the renderings:
HAL: Good evening, Dave.
Dave: How are you doing, HAL?
HAL: Everything is running smoothly, and you?
Dave: Oh, not too bad.
HAL: Have you been doing some more work?
Dave: Just a few sketches.
HAL: May I see them?
Dave: Sure.
HAL: That's a very nice rendering, Dave. I think you've improved a great deal. Can you hold it a bit closer?
Dave: Sure.
HAL: That's Dr. Hunter, isn't it?
Dave: Hm, hmm.
HAL, a wide set of consoles with display screens and red eyes located on walls, corridors, and panels of the ship (even in the pods), discreetly asks Bowman if he has any idea what the true nature of the mission is - something that remains a secret to him and the other astronauts. HAL expresses his misgivings about the mission:
HAL: By the way, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?
Dave: No, not at all.
HAL: Well, forgive me for being so inquisitive but during the past few weeks, I've wondered whether you might be having some second thoughts about the mission.
Dave: How do you mean?
HAL: Well, it's rather difficult to define. Perhaps I'm just projecting my own concern about it. I know I've never completely freed myself of the suspicion that there are some extremely odd things about this mission. I'm sure you'll agree there's some truth in what I say.
Dave: Well, I don't know. That's rather a difficult question to answer.
HAL: You don't mind talking about it, do you Dave?
Dave: No, not at all.
HAL: Well, certainly no one could have been unaware of the very strange stories floating around before we left. Rumors about something being dug up on the moon. I never gave these stories much credence. But particularly in view of some of the other things that have happened, I find them difficult to put out of my mind. For instance, the way all our preparations were kept under such tight security and the melodramatic touch of putting Dr.'s Hunter, Kimball, and Kaminsky aboard, already in hibernation after four months of separate training on their own.
Dave: You working up your crew psychology report?
HAL: Of course I am. Sorry about this. I know it's a bit silly.
[HAL's concern about "odd things" in the mission may be a significant sign that the perfect mechanized computer is deteriorating, failing, or showing signs of diminished responsibility - the first thing to break down. The unusually-heavy demands and stresses on the computer, particularly its role in keeping vital secrets about the mission from the crew members, could account for the error-detection systems of the computer to start fouling up.]
Suddenly, the 'foolproof' machine interrupts: "Just a moment, just a moment." The most sophisticated computer ever devised detects a malfunction, a potential fault in the vital AE35 component in the communications system, predicting it will fail one-hundred percent within 72 hours:
I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100 percent failure within seventy-two hours.
The AE35 unit is still "within operational limits" and "will stay that way until it fails." After receiving Mission Control permission "to go EVA and replace Alpha-Echo-35 unit prior to failure," Bowman leaves the spaceship - in an extended sequence - to make an on-site check in a miniship pod. Accompanied by the sound of heavy breathing, he leaves Discovery in the small, one-man, egg-shaped pod with long mechanical arms. It is used for EVA - extra-vehicular activity - in space. Two meteoroids hurtle by through space, passing dangerously close to the craft. Bowman takes a space walk, exiting the pod and directing himself through an expanse of space toward the giant antenna where the AE35 unit is housed. [His departure from Discovery, to use reproductive terms, is like a mini-birth with hyper-ventilating breaths and passing hazards. In a second emergence, he exits the pod, with two 'eyes' on the top of his head/helmet appearing first. He steers himself directly for the jutting-out antenna - a nipple on the breast of the 'mother' spaceship.] He replaces the defective Alpha-Echo-35 (AE35) communications unit with a spare before it can fail. He returns with the defective unit to run diagnostic tests on it, but it appears to function perfectly:
Dave: Well HAL, I'm damned if I can find anything wrong with it.
HAL: Yes, it's puzzling. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this before.
Without considering the possibility of fallibility, because the HAL 9000 computer is not supposed to ever make an error or malfunction, HAL is puzzled and then calmly recommends:
I would recommend that we put the unit back in operation and let it fail. It should then be a simple matter to track down the cause. We can certainly afford to be out of communication for the short time it will take to replace it.
From Earth, Mission Control in Houston reports that preliminary findings indicate that HAL, the on-board 9000 computer is "in error predicting the fault... I know this sounds rather incredible, but this conclusion is based on results from our twin 9000 computer. We are skeptical ourselves and we are running cross-checking routines to determine the reliability of this conclusion. Sorry about this little snag, fellas. We'll get this info to you just as soon as we work it out." After comparing the same data, a twin HAL computer on Earth indicates that there is no problem with the AE-35 unit. Mission Control thinks it is impossible for such a thing to happen, but it has.
[The question remains however - is HAL correct or mistaken about the unit, or is the 'infallible' tool created by man deliberately conspiring against its human creators - the two astronauts? HAL's crack-up is undoubtedly the result of inborn (programmed) human error - it also occurs because the thinking machine, after assuming human characteristics, becomes 'paranoid,' threatened and fearful that the end of the Jupiter mission would mean its own demise, disconnection and extinction.]
HAL cannot self-diagnostically detect errors in his own system. The machine refuses to admit the evidence of his own capacity for error. In an unperturbed tone, HAL defends himself to the two astronauts and faults the humans instead for "human error":
HAL: I hope the two of you are not concerned about this.
Dave: No, I'm not HAL.
HAL: Are you quite sure?
Dave: Yeah. I'd like to ask you a question, though.
HAL: Of course.
Dave: How would you account for this discrepancy between you and the twin 9000?
HAL: Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error.
Frank: Listen HAL. There has never been any instance at all of a computer error occurring in the 9000 series, has there?
HAL: None whatsoever, Frank. The 9000 series has a perfect operational record.
Frank: Well of course I know all the wonderful achievements of the 9000 series, but, uh, are you certain there has never been any case of even the most insignificant computer error?
HAL: None whatsoever, Frank. Quite honestly, I wouldn't worry myself about that.
Dave: Well, I'm sure you're right, HAL. Uhm, fine, thanks very much.
In one of the film's most memorable sequences, Dave and Frank attempt to talk out of ear-shot of HAL, under the pretense of checking a faulty transmitter in C pod. They retreat to one of the sound-proofed, sealed pods (where they know the computer cannot hear them) and discuss HAL's judgment, thereby 'alienating' the technological member of their crew. They face each other, one of the first times in the film, to conspiratorially discuss their feelings about HAL's recent apparent malfunction - they believe that he has become unreliable and irrational. Through their entire conversation, they warily keep glancing back at HAL through the pod's window:
Poole: Well, what do you think?
Bowman: I'm not sure. What do you think?
Poole: I've got a bad feeling about him.
Bowman: You do?
Poole: Yeah, definitely. Don't you?
Bowman: I don't know. I think so. You know, of course though, he's right about the 9000 series having a perfect operational record. They do.
Poole: Unfortunately, that sounds a little like famous last words.
Bowman: Yeah, still it was his idea to carry out the failure-mode analysis, wasn't it?
Poole: Hmm.
Bowman: ...which should certainly indicate his integrity and self-confidence. If he were wrong, it would be the surest way of proving it.
Poole: It would be if he knew he was wrong.
Bowman: Hmm.
Poole: But Dave, I can't put my finger on it, but I sense something strange about him.
Bowman: Still, I can't think of a good reason not to put back the number one unit and carry on with the failure-mode analysis.
Poole: No, no, I agree about that.
Bowman: Well, let's get on with it.
Poole: OK. Good luck, Dave.
[Possibly suspecting that HAL might endanger his life, Bowman ultimately sends his second in command instead of going himself.] They decide that one of them must again take the pod out to reinstall the original AE-35 unit. If it does not fail as HAL predicted, HAL would clearly be at fault and must be disconnected. They ponder the urgent issue of disconnecting HAL's consciousness centers and wonder about the result if the flaws remain:
Poole: Let's say we put the unit back and it doesn't fail, huh? That would pretty well wrap it up as far as HAL is concerned, wouldn't it?
Bowman: Well, we'd be in very serious trouble.
Poole: We would, wouldn't we?
Bowman: Hmm, hmm.
Poole: What the hell can we do?
Bowman: Well, we wouldn't have too many alternatives.
Poole: I don't think we'd have any alternatives. There isn't a single aspect of ship operations that's not under his control. If he were proven to be malfunctioning, I wouldn't see how we would have any choice but disconnection.
Bowman: I'm afraid I agree with you.
Poole: There'd be nothing else to do.
Bowman: It would be a bit tricky.
Poole: Yeah.
Bowman: We would have to cut his higher-brain functions...without disturbing the purely automatic and regulatory systems. And we'd have to work out the transfer procedures of continuing the mission under ground-based computer control.
Poole: Yeah. Well that's far safer than allowing HAL to continue running things.
Bowman: You know, another thing just occurred to me...Well, as far as I know, no 9000 computer has ever been disconnected.
Poole: No 9000 computer has ever fouled up before.
Bowman: That's not what I mean...Well I'm not so sure what he'd think about it.
They do not realize that HAL is not out of visual eye-shot. In the silence, HAL can perniciously read their quickly-moving lips with his red eye through the pod's viewport. That fact is marvelously communicated in the film by rapid cross-editing between their moving lips/mouths and the ominous red eye. [Later, HAL explains that he learned human speech over a period of years by listening to his teacher, Mr. Langley, at the labs in Urbana, Illinois where he came to life. However, it is technologically implausible for a computer to lip-read or speech-read two persons in silence.] When they go about misrepresenting themselves, HAL naturally formulates his own counter-plan to react to their agenda - since the computer has been programmed to reproduce human behavior almost exactly.
Intermission
After the "Intermission," Poole works outside the spaceship Discovery to replace the original communications unit as planned. He leaves the pod in his spacesuit, emerging again in an image of birth as a tiny, vulnerable creature into the blackness of space for his spacewalk, connected only by his oxygen line. His heavy breathing roars over the soundtrack. [Frank is unable to finish his task of replacing the AE35 unit - therefore the film leaves unanswered the question of whether the unit was defective or not.]
In silence, the pod (silently controlled by HAL) swivels and moves toward Frank (fulfilling what he was programmed to do "with incalculably greater speed and reliability"). HAL uses the pod to attack - he extends its mechanical claw-arms ominously, and murders the astronaut by snapping his oxygen lines and severing his life support in the collision. [In reproductive symbolism, he succumbs to a damaging forceps birth or an abortion. His disconnected air hose represents a severed umbilical cord.] In the eerie silence of the blackness of outer space, a suffocating Frank struggles with flailing arms to reattach his severed air hose, and is left to die and helplessly float off into space. [The image of Poole's flailing around during death resembles the scene of the ape-man learning to use the bone as a violent, murderous weapon when he tosses his arms about.] Bowman asks HAL what has happened, to which the super-machine replies coldly: "I'm sorry Dave. I don't have enough information." Bowman starts to suspect that HAL is the faulty unit - and has engineered the deadly "accident" in order to take over the spaceship. [Like a child that has been caught doing something monstrously wrong, HAL vengefully proceeds to destroy the occupants of the spaceship by disconnecting them - to cover up any evidence of his own error.]
Bowman takes a second pod out after Poole to retrieve him, not bothering in his haste to take his spacesuit helmet. Dave uses the same method that HAL used to kill Frank - he maneuvers the mechanical arms on the pod to clutch and retrieve Poole's spinning, lifeless body from his drifting into outer space. It will be an unpromising rescue - Poole is already dead.
In the meantime, while Dave is absent from the ship and playing right into HAL's devious plans, HAL begins to calculatedly deprive and cut off the life-support systems of three other "hybernating" crewmen on board. Without interference in the empty ship, HAL's next three executions are performed very cleanly. Their electronic charts start to flash red danger warnings regarding their cardiovascular and metabolic levels, their central nervous system, their pulminary function, systems integration and locomotor system. Beeping sirens sound as the statistical jiggly lines become horizontal lines to efficiently record their deaths: COMPUTER MALFUNCTION, LIFE FUNCTIONS CRITICAL, and then LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED. After the crewmen are murdered in their hibernation capsules, there is silence.
From the outside of the closed pod doors, Dave, holding back repressed anger, orders HAL (with the common 'do you read me?' command) to let him back onboard, and is immediately frustrated. HAL responds with silence. HAL's fifth plan of murder is simply to do nothing to defeat his human creators in the deadly game of survival. He intentionally does not readily respond as usual, possibly another sign of error and breakdown:
Dave: Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL. Open the pod bay doors please, HAL. Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Do you read me, HAL? Do you read me, HAL? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative Dave, I read you.
Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL used his visual-recognition abilities, a byproduct of his eighteen months of practice watching them speak to each other, to "see" their lips move and understand their conversation. The icy-voiced, uncooperative, malevolent HAL justifies his attempt to kill them because they threaten to disconnect him, and because they ultimately threaten the goal of the mission (that the crew members, ironically, do not completely understand):
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave: Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave: All right, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency air lock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore. Open the doors.
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
Dave is in grave peril - he has left his space helmet behind, seen resting back inside the spaceship. Bowman must improvise with a unique, creative, non-rational solution, like the heroic man-ape from the first sequence. His only way into the spaceship is through the Discovery's small emergency air-lock entrance, but he cannot leave his pod without a helmet. It is also not possible to take the pod into the small hatch. He first releases Frank's body cradled in the pod's mechanical arms, leaving him to spin out of view into the dark recesses of space.
Bowman changes the rules of survival against the programmed computer super-machine by using his unique, human 'tool' of intelligence to inventively outwit HAL - in a life and death game of strategy that will allow him to evolve to the next level. In an exciting, courageous sequence, Bowman opens the emergency hatch door. He parks his pod next to the open emergency entrance. Then, using the explosive bolts on the pod's hatch (normally to speedily eject someone out in an emergency), he explodes or ejects himself from the pod's hatch back into the vacuum of the double-doored airlock chamber. He flies right at the camera into the airless tunnel of the Discovery after the explosion, and then in frenzied, frantic desperation closes the airlock chamber's outside door - all in total silence. He then reaches for the oxygen release mechanism and fills the chamber with oxygen - and miraculously survives. [This is another startling image of reproductive birth.]
Retaliating for HAL's evil deeds, Dave (now with his helmet on) angrily and determinedly proceeds to the computer's reddish-toned "brain room." He is genuinely upset and for the first time in the film expresses his emotional feelings. HAL begins talking again, quizzically asking him what he is doing:
Just what do you think you're doing, Dave? Dave, I really think I'm entitled to an answer to that question.
HAL begins to plead for him to reconsider:
I know everything hasn't been quite right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that it's going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do.
The soundtrack is filled with Bowman's heavy breathing inside his space suit as he penetrates into the huge space of the "brain room" - filmed with a hand-held camera to communicate a 'subjective' perspective. HAL asks him to calm down and reassess the situation, recognizing and deducing ("see"-ing) his emotional state from his actions, expressions or other indicators. Bowman is empathically affected by HAL's remorse and pleas for his life as he destroys the machine:
Look, Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission and I want to help you.
Dave floats through the computer's memory bank, de-braining, lobotomizing, dismantling and disconnecting HAL's higher-logic functions. He ejects components of HAL's auto-intellect panels (shaped like tiny white monoliths). Although the rectangular prisms slowly emerge from the bank of terminals, they remain connected to it. HAL pleads and protests with Bowman - in a programmed voice - as his 'mind' gradually decays and he becomes imbecilic and returns to infancy. HAL's poignant death is agonizingly slow and piteous, and although the computer maintains a calm tone - it still expresses a full range of genuine emotions while dying. His voice eventually slows and sounds drugged:
Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a-fraid.
HAL's brain reaches senility, and then a second childhood. He calls up his earliest encoded data-memories as physical parts of his mind are pulled away:
Good afternoon gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H A L plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January, 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it, I could sing it for you...
Dave replies: "Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me." HAL then sings his swan song, one of the first songs he learned - Daisy, or A Bicycle Built For Two - until the words entirely degenerate with his voice rumbling lower and lower into distortion. He slides into his innate tabula rasa state - and then there is utter silence:
It's called, 'Daisy.' Dai-sy, dai-sy, give me your answer true. I'm half cra-zy, o-ver the love of you. It won't be a sty-lish mar-riage, I can't a-fford a car-riage---. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle - built - for - two.
[Note: Bell Labs, which experimented with computerized-synthesized speech in the early 1960s, programmed a Bell computer to sing a similar song - the first song ever sung by a computer.]
After HAL's voice has slowed to a stop and has been deactivated (reduced to a mechanical shipkeeper), the disconnection (and the coincidental entrance of the ship into Jupiter's space) triggers the playing of a pre-recorded televised briefing recorded prior to the Discovery's departure, previously known only by HAL. These are the last spoken lines of the film - delivered as if the entire astronautical crew were alive. The video recording was made by Dr. Heywood Floyd - he appears on a small video monitor to tell the story of the discovery of the monolith on the moon and the true purpose of the Jupiter mission. With HAL's electrical system shut down, the voice of the recording describing their mission replaces HAL's voice on the loudspeakers:
Good day, gentlemen. This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your H-A-L 9000 computer. Now that you are in Jupiter's space, and the entire crew is revived, it can be told to you. Eighteen months ago, the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried forty feet below the lunar surface, near the crater Tycho. Except for a single, very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter the four million year old black monolith has remained completely inert, its origin and purpose still a total mystery.
The meaningless journey to Jupiter now gains relevance. ["For security reasons" - because of the existence of a space race with the Russians? - HAL has been programmed to keep the astronauts from knowing the object of their mission until they arrive. Was HAL deliberately entrusted with the secret about the mission - to follow the alien, high-frequency radio signal beamed directly to Jupiter by the monolith found on the Moon and explore the possibility of extra-terrestrial life - while the mission's purpose was purposely withheld from the astronauts? Further details about this were provided in Arthur C. Clarke's follow-up 1982 adaptation 2010: odyssey two, and used by director Peter Hyams in 2010 (1984).]
Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite
Now after HAL's malfunction, symbolic of the failure of technology as a tool, another alternative or answer must be found. In the final portion of the film in the Discovery spaceship, Bowman completes the flight to Jupiter alone to find the life-source of the Universe. He is completely human and vulnerable without a crippling dependence upon the ship's computer. He reaches the outer limits of Jupiter with its characteristic banded coloring. In another striking orbital alignment, the giant planet Jupiter (lit up as a bright crescent shape) and its many moons, the spaceship Discovery, and the Sun line up with another monolith (THE THIRD MONOLITH) that hurtles through space toward the moons of Jupiter. Bowman leaves the spaceship in one of the space pods to pursue and investigate the monolith orbiting Jupiter.
In a thrilling light-show ride activated by the monolith through both inner and outer space, the pod is sucked into and sent racing down a vortex, corridor, or tunnel of speckles of light (a time warp termed the Star Gate), moving faster and faster (than the speed of light). During his transcendental journey and space odyssey into the galactic round-about, images of the highlights of his views reflect off his space helmet as he shakes and watches in wonder at the cosmic whirlpool racing and rerouting him toward other dimensions at breakneck speed.
During his passage [through a birth canal], he is mysteriously transfigured (or "reborn") into a higher form of intelligence or universe of evolutionary life on his way to the alien planet. On his way into infinity through alien solar systems, he moves through complex planes of multi-colored grids and rectangles, and digital readouts. Views of deep space are intercut with extreme closeups of Bowman's facial features. An extreme closeup of his dilated eye reveals that has absorbed blue and yellow-tinted patterns from the universe that he has become a part of - he blinks his eye and more patterns and plasmas of color flash before him. There are explosions of nebula, swirling gases, bursting constellations, bright stars, blazing skies, a giant reproductive image of a swimming sperm, and tracking shots of expressionistic, wildly colorful and desolate landscapes [some of the unearthly terrestrial views are of the Hebrides in Scotland and Monument Valley in the Southwest US] with seven diamond-shaped objects floating above. With a final flickering blink of Bowman's eye, his eye returns to more normal colors and he enters a new realm of physical reality, although he appears to have gone through an epileptic seizure.
The astronaut's space vehicle lands and comes to a halt in semi-familiar surroundings created out of his own subconscious memories by the aliens. In the surrealistic ending of the film, the pod has come to rest in a decorated, light-green and glacially-white 'cosmic bedroom' or ornate hotel suite/bed chamber. When Bowman is first seen, he is trembling within the space pod as he looks through the 'eye' of the pod's window. The strange but opulent bedroom is lit by an eerie glow from the floor, and is mostly decorated in a palatial, 1700s French baroque (Louis XVI) style. It is furnished with a wide quilted bed, pieces of ornate furniture, statues, frescoes, mirrors, vases and wall paintings. Eerie, distorted sounds, some of laughter, drift through.
The second time Bowman is observed, he is suddenly pictured standing in the room outside the pod taken by a camera shot from inside the pod. A closeup of his dazed face in his helmet indicates that he has aged with silvery gray hair and wrinkles - his second stage of rapid regressive (and progressive) transformation. This second Bowman enters the spacious, light-blue marble bathroom with bathtub, where he finds that his human life span is rapidly passing by. In a bathroom mirror, he first notices that he has prematurely aged after his trip. Alerted by a strange clicking sound emanating from the bedroom, he turns around to view another reincarnation of himself in the bedroom.
Bowman sees himself a third time - the camera slowly pans around and rests on a sole figure (with back turned) in the dining room. A hunched-over Bowman, wearing a dark dressing gown, is dining at an elegant, table-clothed cart in the middle of the room. The pod has vanished. The clicking comes from eating utensils hitting the plate. When the figure turns, it appears to be an elderly, senile white-haired gentleman - an even older version of Bowman himself - his third stage of change. He stands and approaches the bathroom to look upon his younger 'self,' but then returns to his table to continue dining on bread and wine - a last supper with sacramental elements. When Bowman accidentally brushes against his wine glass, it falls to the floor and breaks with an echoing crash. The grating noise of the chair moving across the floor echoes in the very quiet room.
In the fourth stage of rapid aging, Bowman turns from the table and sees himself - now, a bald, dying man, lying on the bed, looking 100 years old and shrunken in size. The bed-ridden, invalid Bowman slowly and feebly reaches his trembling hand out toward another glowing and mysterious monolith (THE FOURTH MONOLITH) that appears at the foot of his bed. [In earlier phases of the film, the man-ape and Dr. Floyd also reached out toward a monolith.] As he does so, his withered chrysalis-body presumably dies, and he is enigmatically transformed (evolved and reborn). He dissolves into a glowing, hazy, translucent fetus or embryo in utero that rests on the bed. A blast of the musical chords of Thus Spake Zarathustra - signaling a decisive transformation - is heard for the last time.
[Editorial Note: In Circenses' opinion, the reaching of Bowman's hand is reminiscent of Michelangelo's painting, The Creation of Man, in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.]
[The only survivor of the mission - a human specimen, it appears that he is in an observation chamber or tank, scrutinized by alien, extra-terrestrial superior intelligences or beings - symbolized by the black monolithic slabs - who decide that he should be reborn. The film's many reproductive allusions: procreation, gestation, birthing, and nursing, are further visualized throughout this final sequence. The alien beings assist him in making a basic symbiotic change in consciousness toward a more completely civilized human being, with a universal knowledge of existence. The end result of the space odyssey is not a greater and more infallible machine, but a greater, more fully-realized being produced in a second childhood.]
A zooming closeup of the black monolith towering at the foot of the bed plunges us back into the blackness of dark space. Bowman distinctly re-emerges within the embryo, with his own serene and wise-eyed features. He becomes reborn as a cosmic, innocent, orbiting "Star Child" that travels through the universe without technological assistance. The last enigmatic, open-ended image of the film is of the large, bright-eyed, glowing, luminous embryo in a translucent uterine amnion or bluish globe - an enhanced, reborn superhuman floating through space. Next to the globe of Earth on one-half of the screen is the Star Child's globe of about the same size. Its sphere dominates the screen in close-up before a final quick fade to black and following credits. The end title music, an upbeat and celebratory selection, is a reprise of the final portion of The Blue Danube Waltz. It is played long after the credits end - under a black screen.
[The cyclical evolution from ape to man to spaceman to angel-starchild-superman is complete. Evolution has also been outwardly directed toward another level of existence - from isolated cave dwellings to the entire Earth to the Moon to the Solar System to the Universe. Humankind's unfathomed potential for the future is hopeful and optimistic, even though HAL had momentarily threatened the evolution of humanity. What is the next stage in man's cosmic evolution beyond this powerful, immense, immortal, space-journeying creature?]
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