Episode 75: Our Old Friend the Monolith: On Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2020

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

"You don't find reality only in your own backyard, you know," Stanley Kubrick once told an interviewer. "In fact, sometimes that's the last place you'll find it." Oddly, this episode of Weird Studies begins with Phil Ford hatching the idea of putting a replica of the monolith from 2001 in his backyard. As the ensuing discussion suggests, this would amount to putting reality -- or the Real, as we like to call it -- in the place where it may be least apparent. Perhaps that is what Kubrick did when he planted his monolithic film in thousands of movie theatres back in 1968. Moviegoers went in expecting a Kubrickian twist on Buck Rogers; they came out changed by the experience, much like the hominids of great veld in the "Dawn of Man" sequence that opens the film. This is what all great art does, and if you look closely, maybe 2001 can tell you something about how it does it. Because in the end, the film is the monolith, and the monolith is all art. REFERENCES Stanley Kubrick (dir.), 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke, "The Sentinel" Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (novel) Clement Greenberg, American art critic Stanley Kubrick (dir.), The Shining Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory Weird Studies episode 62: It's Like "The Shining," But With Nuns: On "Black Narcissus" Ligeti, Atmosphères Gerard Loughlin, Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology Jay Weidner, Kubrick's Odyssey: Secrets Hidden in the Films of Stanley Kubrick Rob Ager's analysis of 2001 (Ager was criticized for not citing Loughlin above) Eric Norton's Playboy interview with Stanley Kubrick J. F. Martel, "The Kubrick Gaze" in Daniel Pinchbeck & Ken Jordan (eds.), Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age J. F. Martel, "The Future is Immanent: Speculations on a Possible World" Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion Sid Meier's Civilization V Stanley Kubrick (dir.), Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Stanley Kubrick (dir.), A Clockwork Orange Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology" Gilbert Ryle, "Improvisation" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:23.3	For more episodes or to support the podcast, go to weird Studies. I'm Phil Ford.
0:52.7	Two weeks ago, we dropped our last episode, the second of a two-part
0:56.8	discussion of Carl Jung. In the time since then, the world has changed. Those were the far-off
1:03.5	days when people were protesting not being able to get haircuts. Today, two weeks later, not only
1:09.9	the United States, but the entire world is pausing to
1:13.4	contemplate white supremacy and colonialism and their baleful effects on those societies and cultures
1:19.8	and populations that have been most wounded by them. Indeed, their baleful effects on all of us.
1:27.3	J.F. and I talked about the protests a week ago.
1:30.5	At that time, it looked as if the United States was sliding into terrible destruction and new oppressions,
1:37.0	and our discussion was more an expression of feelings than thoughts.
1:41.5	You can listen to that conversation on our Patreon.
1:44.8	And while I feel I should note in passing that this is the sort of content that we're
1:48.5	putting out for our beloved patrons, hint, hint, maybe you should go and sign up, my point
1:53.7	here is to say that as I speak these words, a mere week after that Patreon episode dropped,
1:59.5	the world feels like it is transformed again,
2:02.6	and that episode now feels like a period piece from a distant era.
2:07.1	Who knows what the world will look like by the time of our next show?
2:11.6	Most of the time, we don't feel as if we're living in history.
2:15.6	History is what happens somewhere else, in halls of government,
2:19.4	and on battlefields, and so on. It's something we read about. The news is a counterpoint to our
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Phil Ford and J. F. Martel, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Phil Ford and J. F. Martel and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.