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2001: A Space God-esy
by Mark Midbon

Thirty years ago Stanley Kubrick argued for peace in "2001: A Space Odyssey." At that time his greatest concern was the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. But his use of imagery from the Hebrew scriptures and Jewish liturgy makes his movie timeless.

When the movie is re-released to theaters in 1998 to celebrate its 30th anniversary, Kubrick's use of Jewish imagery will make the film just as relevant to issues of war and peace as it was in 1968.

Stanley Kubrick did not expect to argue for peace or use religious symbolism when he began working on this movie in 1964. By making a contract with science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, he expected to escape from the cares of the earth by soaring into outer space.

But two circumstances blocked his escape. The first circumstance was FOBS, the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. This senseless scheme for putting hydrogen bombs in orbit found champions in the US House and Senate during the mid-1960s. Outer space was no longer a place to escape earthly cares.

The second circumstance that ruined science fiction as a means of escapism was unexpected things that Arthur C. Clarke put into the story that he wrote for Kubrick: two plugs for atheism and a dig at rival author Isaac Asimov.

Kubrick might have expected these things of Clarke if the two men had known each other better. But, as it was, Kubrick was probably unaware of the Clarke/Asimov War, the feud between the two great science fiction writers that was fueled by the fact that Arthur C. Clarke was an atheist and Isaac Asimov was a Jew.

Clarke wrote a story called "Journey Beyond the Stars." It was arranged in four parts:

1. Clindar the alien visits earth 3 million years ago to study and teach the primate ancestors of the human race. On his way home he leaves a pyramid on the moon.

2. In modern times, astronauts exploring the moon find the pyramid, which sends a radio beacon toward Jupiter.

3. The earth sends a mission to Jupiter.

4. The astronauts meet Clindar, who still remembers his visit with their primate ancestors.

The first and fourth parts ended with atheist soliloquies by Clindar the alien (pp. 75, 198). The second part poked fun at Isaac Asimov (pp. 84-85).

Without telling him why, Kubrick ordered Clarke to change the story. Sometimes Kubrick provided the changes, but sometimes he just made Clarke rewrite and rewrite until the results were acceptable. The process drove Clarke into melancholy when he thought of the hundreds of pages of material that Kubrick had discarded. That is why - when Clarke later published the discarded chapters with related entries from his diary - he called the book "The Lost Worlds of 2001" (New American Library, 1972).

Here, by way of example, are three of these changes.

Originally the lead astronaut who flew from earth to Jupiter was named Alexander (p. 33). By the time "Journey Beyond the Stars" was sent to MGM for approval, the astronaut's name had become David.

Kubrick changed the name of the story to "2001." The new title referred back 3,000 years to the reign of David, the shepherd king (and, incidentally, back 2,000 years to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth).

Kubrick changed the pyramid into a monolith. In fact he changed it into three monoliths: the first appears in a hilly, rocky desert on earth during the night in part one, the second is found on the moon in part two, and David finds the third near Jupiter.

Besides changes to the story, Kubrick also made a big change to his face. All his life he had been clean-shaven. But while he was struggling with Clarke on "2001" he grew a full beard, giving himself that rabbinical look which has been part of his image ever since.

Why did Kubrick choose monoliths to replace Clarke's pyramid? Monoliths were centers of worship for the ancient Canaanites and Israelites until the reign of Solomon. The Hebrew word for such a stone is "massebah" (literally "something stationed"). English translations of the Bible usually render the word as "pillar."

Genesis 28:12 describes the origin of the monolith near Bethel. Jacob dreams of a ladder to heaven with angels going up and down. When he awakens he declares the place to be the door of heaven and he raises a monolith. For this reason the monolith in "2001" looks like a door when seen from a distance. But when seen from up close, looking from the ground toward the top, the monolith resembles a ladder.

(Go to pictures of the monolith on earth, scroll down, then hit the BACK button at the top of your screen.)

(Go to pictures of the monolith on the moon, scroll down, then hit the BACK button at the top of your screen.)

Monoliths like Jacob's ladder - called gates and doors because of their shape - feature prominently in the 24th Psalm. In fact "2001" can be seen as a meditation on the 24th Psalm. The first two verses of the Psalm are about the creation. Verses 3-5 are about the ascent to God of one who is virtuous. Verse 4 describes the virtuous one as not giving into "shav" (desolation, waste), and this calls to mind how the hero of "2001" survives the vacuum of space when the ship's computer locks him out of the ship.

But these changes baffled Arthur C. Clarke. On November 18, 1965, he took a break from writing and went to a movie, "The Agony and the Ecstasy." In the very middle of the movie, the main character began quoting from the first chapter of Genesis about the sixth day of creation. When Clarke heard him say, "God created man in his own image," Clarke realized that this was the new theme of the movie he was writing. (p. 39)

Clarke's realization was on target. One theme of "2001" is that we are still in the sixth day of creation. Not until the final scene of the movie is the creation of man complete. And Clarke recognized the breaking of the wineglass in part four of the movie as an allusion to Jewish liturgy.

Now that Clarke understood what Kubrick was doing, he fought back. He crafted the novel of "2001" so that it paralleled the movie but contradicted its religious message. Whereas Kubrick's movie portrayed the extraterrestrial force as all-knowing and godlike, Clarke's novel portrayed this force as sometimes misunderstanding earthlings and making mistakes.

Kubrick objected in writing to many parts of the novel, but Clarke arranged for it to be published by Delacorte in the summer of 1966 (pages 48-49). Then Kubrick blocked the publication for two years so that the public could not read the novel until after the movie was released.

This essay has discussed the religious meaning of the monoliths. Of course there is more to these objects. Their appearance in the film is not crude and primitive but smooth and straight, suggesting that they have been made with precision machinery.

Kubrick used the term "monolith" not only as used by archaeologists but also as used by electrical engineers. You can read about this side of the movie by going to my essay Creation Machines.

(And you can write to me, Mark Midbon.)