Greek Mythology, Monsters and Exotic Worlds, Part I

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Greek Mythology, Monsters and Exotic Worlds, Part
I
HOMER AND STANLEY KUBRICKS 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY
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You cant have an Odyssey without an Iliad
The Iliad is the story of the Trojan War a
long, bloody conflict lasting ten years.
How did Troy finally fall?
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The Trojan Horse
Odysseus gets all the credit for the Trojan
Horse, which finally allows the Greeks to
capture Troy, thus setting off the epic cycle of
myths surrounding the return (or dispersal) of
the heroes of the war (eg. Menelaus, Diomedes,
Aeneas)
Vergils famous line quidquid id est, timeo
Danaos et dona ferentes
The horse appears as a gift to the Trojans, but a
gift fraught with dangers (keep this theme in
mind when we get to Kubrick)
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The Odyssey in 1500 Words Or Less
1. Odysseus visits the Lotus-Eaters. Where were
they going again?

• Our hero visits the land of Polyphemus. In a fit
  of pique, he
• decides to tell the Cyclopes his real
  name, thereby bringing
• down the wrath of Poseidon upon him and his men.

• Aeolus, king of the winds, gives Odysseus enough
  wind to get him
• where hes going. His companions
  open the bag at the wrong
• time and get blown off course.

• Odysseus visits the Laistrygones, thereby making
  his men lunch.
• I mean, they REALLY became lunch.

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Our Hero Soldiers On

• Odysseus ends up on Circes island. With a
  little help from moly,
• he saves his men from a life of swine.

6. The Sirens Song.

• The Greek version of between a rock and a hard
  place Scylla
• and Charydis.

• Odysseuss men slaughter the Suns cattle. Zeus
  then proceedes
• to sink their boat when they leave the harbor.

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Just One More Adventure!

• After getting blown back to Charydis, Odysseus
  paddles about for
• nine days, winding up with Calypso.

John van Sickle sums this adventure up
thusly From there he gets carried for another
nine days to another island, where the nymph
Calypso receives him in her vine-girt cave by the
sea. For seven years, then, he remained there,
required to make love to the goddess by night,
but sitting by day on the shore and longing for
his distant home.

• Odysseus finally gets home, bloodily reclaims his
  palace, and.
• the story ends. What happened then?

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Something Wonderful.
What is an odyssey?
The first MYTHEME in our odyssey plot involves
getting there (getting started, then getting
through or over any hurdles, obstacles, perils,
or getting out of baited traps along the way),
the second MYTHEME involves getting what you
went to get once you get there while the third
MYTHEME involves getting away with it in spite of
the guards and the fourth MYTHEME involves
getting back where you came from, again, as on
the way out, getting past dangers, which may be
harder now because the prize you're bringing back
makes you more likely to get ripped off. (van
Sickle)
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Something Wonderful.
In such a story, we can notice, the traveler
keeps coming up against the unexpected in other
words, dangers and distractions keep overtaking
one. Now "over" plus "take" add up to what in the
languages derived from Latin gets called
SURPRISE while coming upon or up against gets
called ADVENTURE. So the odyssey we have been
defining turns out to be a classic plot of
adventure and surprise.
Now we can turn our attentions to Kubricks
freaky future mindtrip
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2001 A Space Odyssey
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2001 A Space Analogy
The movie is fraught with analogies to classical
stories and themes
When you are watching the movie, see if you agree
or disagree with the following four parallels
1. The Dawn of Man the first scene in the
movie.
The monkeys meet the monolith, and humanity is
changed forever is it for good or ill?
The Monolith as Pandoras Box?
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2001 A Space Analogy
2. The Monolith as a futuristic Trojan Horse.
The scene on the moon when Dr. Floyd visits the
Monolith on the moon.
Leonard Wheat has drawn the following analogies
to this scene and the Horse

• a) The moon monolith scene takes place at the
  moon crater
• Tycho. Kubrick evidently scoured the list of moon
  crater names
• Tycho is a real crater name - and chose Tycho,
  the name that
• most nearly resembled Troy. Both names are short,
  both begin
• with T, and both contain the additional letters
  o and y.
• Tycho symbolizes Troy.

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2001 A Space Analogy
b. The moon monolith is inside the walls of a
pit. The pit's walls are the walls of Troy.
c. The astronauts in the pit, symbolizing the
Trojans, curiously inspect the object that
stands within the walls.
d. Something comes out of the monolith - a
powerful signal beamed at Jupiter
e. The symbolized Trojans reel in pain. The
surface story has no need for them to reel in
pain, no need for the signal to be painful or
even audible. Kubrick had the astronauts fall
back in pain because he wanted to symbolize the
pain of the dying Trojan warriors.
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2001 A Space Analogy

• The adventures/misadventures of Dave are to read
  as those of
• Odysseus.

• Daves last name is Bowman ? Odysseus was the
  original
• Bow-man

b) When HAL locks Dave out of the Discovery, the
mytho- logical roles are reveresed from the
Polyphemus story the human relies on brute
strength while the monster relies on genius.
c) When Dave enters the Monolith, he forgets
himself and his mission the Monolith serving as
a the lotus-plant.
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2001 A Space Analogy
4. The Prometheus myth and the Creation of Man.

• the Monolith brings man a gift, a gift that soon
  proves to be
• beyond his control (as does Prometheus)

• men are created perfectly in a Golden Age, then
  quickly
• degenerate into the Iron Age (HAL?)

• The movie is about creation by design
• computers and their part in them - computers that
  
• can misfunction and cause destruction - or was
• that all part of the plan?

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2001 Different Analogies
As you watch, keep these in mind, but also see
what your mind tells you ? the movie came out in
1968, and people STILL dont know what it means.

When you watch 2010 The Year We Make Contact,
see how long they puzzle over one line
from Dave Bowman
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