[Writingworkshop] 2001: A Synopsis

[Neale Morison]

Thank you very much to Chris for organizing the viewing of 2001: A Space 
Odyssey, in memory of Arthur C. Clarke. I really enjoyed it. I saw 2001 
with my brother in 1969, in a cinema that had fluorescent carpet 
climbing up the walls in the modern style. That didn't prepare me for 
anything I was about to see, although I'm sure the cinema would have 
liked to be the interior of that space station.

For those unable to come, here is a synopsis.

Synopsis

A group of feral goths ekes out a precarious existence on the outskirts 
of Los Angeles during a prolonged recession. They are in conflict with 
other ferals and the local authorities are notable by their absence. One 
day a package arrives. There is no return address. This product is so 
cool it doesn't even have to show its brand. The goths are excited but 
at the same time terrified that it will end up on their credit card.
Later, thinking about products and branding, one of the goths has an 
idea for a new line in bone piercings. He tries it out on another 
demographic group with mixed results. What the hell, he thinks, and in a 
gesture of frustrated defiance of market forces spontaneously creates a 
logo.

Pan Am has stayed afloat during the financial and resource crisis by 
jacking up its fares, to the point where they can run flights into space 
with only one passenger. They have done nothing to improve their 
in-flight movie offerings, and the mega-rich passenger has lapsed into 
unconsciousness. Overpaid and underworked, the hostesses amuse 
themselves by trying out hairstyles inside their wearable hair salons 
and practising new tricks with velcro. They try the old fountain pen gag 
on him but we never find out if it worked.

The space station is only half finished, but they did the food 
franchises first. Heywood, the mega-rich traveller calls home, only to 
discover he has forgotten not only his daughter's birthday but also her 
name. Maybe it's a wrong number. He joins some foreigners from another 
corporation, modelling a new line in drab, who are curious about what 
he's doing there. If he does know what they're talking about, he doesn't 
let on.

Heywood travels to a conference center on the moon. He is still 
space-lagged, and when called upon to address the conference he falls 
back on a gag he has always found useful: claim that there is a serious 
security threat and people must temporarily suspend their rights and 
liberties. This has many advantages. It shuts them up, so they don't 
question him closely and figure out he has no idea what's going on. 
Moreover, he can do whatever he likes with impunity. No wonder he's 
mega-rich.

Then they take a bus to a crater. There is the cool product again. This 
is the launch for the mega-rich. The goth launch must have been viral 
marketing. They line up for a photo but someone has left a cell phone 
turned on and it has a seriously bad ring tone.

Now we see another mega-rich couple, Frank and Dave, on a cruise to 
Jupiter. They are pretty bored. The girls on the ship are frigid. Dave 
and Frank don't seem too interested in each other either. Maybe they are 
taking super-strong meds. The only other person they have to talk to is 
the computer, Hal, who is nice but ultra-competitive. They can watch TV 
but they can only get educational channels. Then Hal tells them the 
antenna is going to break. They welcome the opportunity to take a 
recreational vehicle out for a run to fix it, but it turns out not to be 
broken. No problem, says Hal, put it back and wait till it breaks.

Huh? Frank and Dave sneak off for a quiet moment in a pod, to get some 
privacy and gossip about Hal. In the whole discussion, they never 
mention what a dumb idea it is to fix something, then put the broken 
part back and wait till it really breaks. There are three conscious 
intelligences on this ship and between them they can't change a light 
bulb. Meanwhile Hal reads their lips and knows all the bitchy things 
they are saying about him. Hal expresses emotion by staring without 
emotion out of his strange red eye with the yellow pupil. And he always 
sounds reasonable. This is how we know he is a complete psycho.

Frank goes out in the RV to unfix the antenna. His RV runs amok and 
sends him barreling off into space with no oxygen. Dave heads out in the 
other RV to save him. He manages to catch him, but when he returns to 
the ship, Hal won't let him in.

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.

It is at this point that we know either HAL or Dave is doomed. There is 
no clean way to end a conversation in which someone says that last line.

Dave gets back into the ship with a move so weird HAL could not compute 
it. He blows himself through the emergency door and smashes his head 
into the end of the airlock. HAL, who respects intelligence, cannot 
anticipate macho insanity.

Dave's trip is now totally ruined. He takes it out on HAL, by turning 
off his memory so that HAL forgets how to sing A Bicycle Built for Two. 
Dave is now on a cruise ship built for one. By the time he reaches 
Jupiter he is so far into his meds that he can't see straight. He takes 
the RV out for sightseeing. We see the product again, floating around in 
front of Dave, but maybe it's just an ad on the pod windscreen.

Jupiter is picturesque but overwhelming, the pod computer starts cycling 
through its screensavers, the only thing in the pod CD player is 
techno-atmospherics, and Dave just wants to get to his hotel and take a 
shower. Then the nightmare really begins. We see his hotel. The décor is 
terrible and Dave can't get out. Dave keeps thinking other people are in 
his room but it's only him. As he dies he sees the product again, and 
realizes his whole life is placement for a product whose brand he 
doesn't even know. In his last moments he imagines a heaven where he can 
float around space listening to popular classics, his first love.

Kubrick leaves us with this disquieting warning: You can spend any 
amount of money on a trip, and still end up stuck in a really bad hotel.

 

-- 
Neale Morison
neale at nealemorison.com
http://www.nealemorison.com
31 Maple Ave #2, Cambridge MA 02139
+1 617 460 9969
nmorison at mit.edu