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Jay'sAnalysis
Revealing the Hidden Messages of Kubrick's 2001 (Flashback)
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- [00:24]
A
Happy Monday, friends, and welcome back to the Mark Claire Show. Today we're going to be doing something I've been looking forward to doing ever since I branched off from Lions of Liberty, started this show, which allows me to go into areas beyond politics, do some different stuff, and frankly, just do stuff I want to do. And in this case, this is going to be the first in a series I am calling Cracking Kubrick, where we are looking at the hidden meanings, the esoteric and occult symbolism in the films of Stanley Kubrick. And of course, when I. When I dreamed up this idea. I've been fascinated by Stanley Kubrick and his films since I was at least a young teen. Maybe earlier, before I even understood a lot of the meaning and esoteric nature of things. But of course, the first person I thought of is who you're going to hear talk about this with me today. That is, of course, the great Jay Dyer. Before we get to that conversation, I got to remind you, you know, normally I would hold the coffee up. I am holding it up for video viewers, but it's empty. It's empty. Why? You can even see the coffee residue. So I want you to look, if you're not watching on video platforms and you want some evidence, go subscribe on YouTube if you like. In fact, I ask you to, even if you don't want to watch there, because we're on the mission to get to a thousand subs so we can do more. We're with YouTube. But of course, great to support all the various other platforms because not every episode will be on YouTube because just like last week, last week's my conversation with Olay Damagard, not on YouTube for what I think would be obvious reasons. So head over to Bitchute Odyssey. What else? Rumble. There's all sorts of places you can find and subscribe to the show off YouTube as well. But I want you to head over and do something else. While you're browsing the Internet, I want you to head to foxandsons.com f o x, the letter n s o, n s dot com. Even if you don't drink coffee, I don't know how you survive not drinking coffee, because I got to start my day with it. But if you don't, I bet you have a friend, a loved one, something like that. And if you like this show, all I ask is you to do one thing for me. Actually, I have a lot of things I want to ask you to do. ITunes review, Become a premium subscriber, yada, yada. I know. But right now, I'm asking you to do one thing. Head over to fox and sons.com and get yourself a bag. I'm going to get you 18% off just for, for trying it once. Use discount code MCS the letter M, the letter C, the letter S. Think Mark Claire show. Use that discount code, get yourself 18% off the show. Help a sponsor of the show, help my show, help yourself, help a friend or loved one if they're in need of some excellent, fresh, incredibly sourced. Incredibly sourced. I just made that up. But they are sourced and they are incredible. So there you go. Incredibly sourced coffee beans. I think ethically sourced is probably the phrase we're supposed to use. I'm going to say incredibly sourced because Steven Fox does an incredible job with this business business which he also started to help teach his sons about entrepreneurship. So I think it's just a beautiful thing all around. Head over to foxandsons.com use discount code MCS for 18 off your order. That being said, it is time now for My breakdown of 2001 A Space Odyssey with Jay Dyer. My guest today is an author, comedian, TV host, and most pertinent to our discussion today, he is the author of the books Esoteric Hollywood, in which he analyzes the esoteric and occult meaning behind popular cinema. I'm very pleased to welcome Jade Irj. Welcome to my show.
- [03:30]
B
What's up, dude? Glad to be back. We had a good chat last time, so I'm glad to do a film analysis. I think last time we were talking more philosophical, religious, geopolitical topics. So this is a nice change of pace. I haven't done a movie breakdown with somebody else in a long time.
- [03:46]
A
Yeah, back on. That was back on Lion's Liberty and we were kind of talking about, you know, some politics and philosophy, the, the machinations of the elite and stuff like that. And that's kind of why I wanted to do, well, an episode like this. Breaking down. We're going to be breaking down 2001 A Space Oddities Odyssey today. Which is. It is, I can say, I think at this point, I can safely say it is my favorite movie of all time. Although I, I'm sure you've probably gone through similar stuff. It, it kind of hits a little bit differently now than it did when, say, I was 15 years old. And I'm just kind of blown away by how cool it looks without, you know, thinking about the deeper meaning behind it. Before we dive right into that, though, just for people that might not be new to you, people that might not have seen our discussion last year, On Lions Liberty, maybe you can just give a little bit of background on yourself as it pertains to your interest in film and how you got into sort of dissecting film and looking into the esoteric meanings and all that.
- [04:34]
B
Yeah, I'm a. My name is Jay Dyer. I do a lot of dog paintings, as you can see.
- [04:40]
A
Oh, that's lovely.
- [04:41]
B
I take dogs and then I stuff them and I put them in poses and paint them. So it's pretty much all I do now. I do a lot of film analysis. I do a lot of geopolitical analysis. I do a lot of breakdowns of what's really going on in my perspective. I've been doing that for a long time. And we've kind of added on over the years more and more topics to discuss. So I started just doing mainly a lot of film stuff, and then I added on other interests, and so that's what we do. Host the fourth hour of Lord Voldemort every Friday and was just on Tim Cass. We just shot a bunch of big shows that. That are going to be coming out in the near future. I can't say what they were, but big stuff. So that's what I do.
- [05:24]
A
All right. Some top secret projects in the works, it sounds like here. But so before we dive into this film itself, maybe you could just give a little bit of your background either, like on how you first saw this film, when this first came into your world view, and just your general interest in the work of Stanley Kubrick. Did you get into that. That stuff kind of before you started diving and looking into these hidden meetings and such?
- [05:48]
B
I. I got into Kubrick in high school because I had a lot of friends that were like film nerds. And, you know, we all liked the arts. So I was. I was trying to find my. I'd have a. I have a long analysis of this. I was trying to find it because. A lot of notes in analysis anyway. Yeah. So, I mean, we all really liked the arts. I wanted to go into acting just because I thought it was fun. I'm not gay. I'm actually heterosexual. So I wasn't in theater because of guys. I was in theater because I actually just liked theater. I thought it was a lot of fun. And so we had a bunch of buddies that were in bands and that kind of stuff. So I was more in, like, the artsy crowd. And I remember we watched 2001 in high school. I had no idea what this was. I had no idea what was going on. None of it made any sense to Me.
- [06:44]
A
Me.
- [06:44]
B
So I just knew some sort of, like, trippy experience. And I remember we were probably smoking weed and, you know, I had no idea what it was. I thought at that time, I think it was, oh, it's just for the experience, right? Like, yeah, it's not a movie that has some deep meaning. Maybe it's just like, you know, visually kind of like David lynch movies are supposed to be more about the experience than some coherent, you know, chronological beginning, middle, end narrative. So that's kind of what I thought it was. And then many, many years later, after I had gotten deeper into, you know, took film classes and I was taking philosophy classes and trying to get a better understanding of the world and, you know, those domains, I. I went back and watched the whole Kubrick canon in my twenties and. And I started noticing because I had a better education and things like Gnosticism and, you know, Luciferian worldviews and this kind of stuff. And to me, it started sticking out more and more that K was throughout all of his films, kind of lacing in a lot of conspiratorial elements. And it's really obvious in certain movies like, you know, Eyes Wide Shut, but. And perhaps even things like Lolita or the Shining. But 2001, in my view, fits into that because if you look into the history of Arthur Clark. C. Clark, he's a weird character. And by that time I'd read some Arthur C. Clark. And so I kind of had a. A better picture on it. So I went. And when I watched it again in my twenties, I wrote a really long essay that was kind of basically a shitty essay at the time because I wasn't very good at writing. And then I went and watched the movie again a few years later and wrote a really long analysis. And that ended up being, I think, the one of the chapters in my first book. And so the more that I learned, the more I was able to understand, you know, that there is a lot of depth in this film. I don't really agree with the. The worldview message presented in the film, but I do appreciate, you know, a lot of the achievements in terms of cinema. A lot of the. The tech achievements and just a grandiose story. Right. But in the end, I don't agree with the message of it. But, yeah, that's my take on it. It took me basically, you know, many, many years and many, many reviewings of it to figure out what was going on.
- [08:57]
A
Yeah, I think that's pretty true with, well, not just Stanley Kubrick movies, maybe just general sci fi, Type movies in general, where when you see them when you're younger, they're just cool. You might not have any idea what's going on. And it's only as you maybe get more educated on certain other philosophies or certain other world views that you can go back and start to see like, okay, this is actually across the board and all. Not just this one particular movie, but then across a series of movies. And it starts to become more clear, but it's always a little bit of a conflict. Whereas I learn more about the meaning behind film, it doesn't make me appreciate it less, but it. I don't even know how to describe it does something. So we'll dive into that more as we. As we go through the movie. So we're kind of start off. We're not gonna necessarily go, you know, frame by frame here, but this movie is pretty easily divided into a few different sections here. And I probably notice something more about this movie every. Every time I watch it. And I did just watch it again this past past weekend. So it's pretty fresh. But I'm pretty sure I go through this every time I watch it. But the way that Kubrick uses extended periods of silence and darkness really stood out to me even more this past time. It feels like that first. That first note of Thus Spake Zarathustra, it. It hits that into, like, third. You know, it feels like, to me, like two minutes of blackness. It's probably not that much, but I think the first place to start to me is this. This opening music that we hear, Thus Spake Zarathustra because there is significance behind exactly who is Zarathustra. So maybe you can just start there with the music and what it references and we'll. We'll see. See where it goes from that point.
- [10:27]
B
So that's a reference to Nietzsche, who wrote the book Thus Bake Zarathustra. And it also refers to Wagner and hence the Wagner, you know, film sequence that we hear. And that's odd because, you know, that's kind of, like, usually associated with tiny mustache man. So it's kind of odd that we would see that in this film. I'm not saying it necessarily means that, but I'm just saying that it's usually associated with that. So I would say that the tiny mustache man element here ties into the notion of dialectical materialism or dialectical process. And that's kind of what Nietzsche, I think, was getting at with Eternal Return is that the nature. The forces of nature are just sort of inherently Violent and they. That's what propels man's evolution in this worldview. So I think that's the reason for the conscious choice of that. And we do have that planetary alignment. It's in my view that planetary alignment is, you know, via Clark, I think there is something esoteric or occult connected with that. I don't know necessarily that he believed in astrology, but I think that the idea here is that these kind of planetary alignments are part of a universe that in, in that whole trilogy that Clark wrote is basically seeded by a form of advanced alien technological life. So I think that what's going on is that the monolith is essentially guiding human evolution. And we see the alignment because this is the next phase of that, of that evolution. And that's going to be when the apes, you know, learn warfare and learn violence. And so, again, it makes sense because those are all Darwinian, Nietzschean, and in a way, kind of esoteric Gnostic themes.
- [12:17]
A
Yeah, we see that alignment. The, the Earth, the sun and the moon. I, I think we see. It's a different alignment later on, but we See planetary alignments 3 different times in the movie. First here in the beginning, then later on, two other times. But each time we see that alignment, it coincides with the appearance of this monolith, the black rectangle, the black square. There's a lot of different meanings, potential meanings for that. But I'll take whatever you think your, your, Your interpretation of the significance of the monolith, not just what it does in terms of shaping the course of man's evolution, but why do that particular shape, that particular structure was used to represent the technology, the techne behind that.
- [13:00]
B
You talk about the, the way it turns out to look like a pyramid.
- [13:04]
A
Yeah, that way. Yeah. When it first appears as the rectangle. But that. Yeah, you get that.
- [13:07]
B
That's so like when, when you see the, the monolith, this from the cameras down at the bottom, and it looks like a pyramid with a no capstone and a light at the top. I think that's an intentional sort of, you know, Luciferian image. Is that, Is that what you're talking about? Are you talking about.
- [13:22]
A
I was just talking about the general appearance of the monolith. But that, that's something that I took from your. The thing with the pyramid is something I took from your book. Like, I, I had never thought of that on my own. But that is part of your, your analysis of it as well. So you can dive.
- [13:32]
B
Yeah, I think, you know, Kubert really liked to have those Weird angles and play with that. He does the same kind of thing in Shining, where he'll play with, you know, tilting the, the angle of the camera to make things look kind of bent and turned into different geometric formations. And I know that. We know he has that obsession with that sort of geometric forms and all that because of the, the maze and the shining and because of the diamonds that appear, you know, later on in 2001. But the year. Right, you're right. The, the basic shape of the monolith, I think is supposed to be a tv. And I read in what's a screen? It's. And I read it in that in the original screenplay, the, the Clark idea was to have images on the screen. And so the idea would be that this sort of unknown, unexplained technology that just sort of appears because it's just simply the unknown. It. It's what propels or it's like the catalyst to, you know, bring about the next phase of evolution. So that's what I think what is supposed to be. But of course, there's a lot of other interpretations. You know, we did it, see a season of TV show and one of those episodes was with Jay Widener. And he, he thinks that it's. It represents like the movie screen itself. Right. So like when it turns and. And if you turn it over, it's supposed to look like a movie screen, which entirely is entirely possible too. But it also has this idea of just being a sort of black. It's a form of a black cube. You know, we think of Saturn and the Saturnalian cube and a lot of esoteric traditions. So it could, it could have a reference to all those things. But yeah, I think it's supposed to be the catalyst for the next phase in evolutionary development. Right.
- [15:11]
A
And we see that in that first scene. Again, the scene lasts like. I always remember it as being two minutes long. And then I re. Watch the movie and I always think to myself, oh, this is a lot longer than I thought. It's like a 20 minute extended scene meeting all these. All these apes in Africa and them kind of gets. Getting in a frenzy with the monolith and they kind of show the apes sort of dealing with a lot of, you know, they're dealing with, you know, cougars, jaguars, whatever, whatever lion type type creatures are out there eating them, dealing with water shortage, dealing with warring tribes. It's only when this monolith appears and the one sort of alpha. Alpha ape goes and touches it that he seems to be sort of imbued with this extra knowledge. And it's not long after that where we see him picking up the bone, smashing the bone. And it's, it's almost like the, the monolith gave him the knowledge of, oh, hey, you can pick things up and, and, and hurt people with them and that might help your tribe. So what's your just, what's your thought about how just the, the purpose behind the monolith intentionally giving these apes? Is it, is it about technology that it's, that it's sort of guiding them on? Or is it more about a spiritual change in introducing the concept of violence?
- [16:22]
B
It's both, right? It's like, it's, it's dominance through tech and violence and tech can give you that dom, that, that upper hand, that survival of fittest, right? So that's what we see immediately with the alien or with the, with the, the monkeys is that, you know, it's purely primal, you know, survival, the fittest. And we immediately begin to see the Alpha, you know, battle there between the, between the two. And this then splits the, the company of the monkeys and we have like a whole new. I'm just going from memory from that scene, like, isn't there like a now a new Alpha, once he kills the other Alpha and he kind of has dominance, right? And then he celebrates and he throws the, the bone up and the bone, you know, becomes this spaceship. So we jump ahead several thousand years. And I think that in that, in that worldview, that's the idea, is that violence is part of the necessary dialectical process to propel the species to the next phase. And that's part of the justification, I think, for the worldview of people who have a lot of these illuminist and gnostic types of worldviews is that nature itself has within it the principle of death. And death is a natural part of the process of propelling us to the next phase. And that's, you know, that's pretty fundamental to Darwinism. And I think that Nietzsche and company, right, that's, that's their whole thing. So that's why Nietzsche was so important. And that's, that's what I understand this to be.
- [17:45]
A
And something else I noticed re watching this this weekend, that, that sort of alpha ape that, that gets the bone and becomes the violent one, he starts his own sort of like, I don't know if it was already his tribe, but his whole tribe of apes. Yeah, they all have, they all have the bones. But what I noticed this weekend watching is when, when the bone, the ones with the bones come and confront the, the dumb apes that didn't get the monolith, you know, upgrade or whatever, whatever. Those, those other apes with the bones that did touch the monolith, they're standing almost more. They're standing more straight up, whereas the other ones are clearly more hunched over, which I had never noticed before. So I, I do wonder if there's even a sort of a not, not so hidden, I guess, message there, just about evolution and Darwinianism included in the, in the choice of sort of making those bone apes, the violent apes, stand up straighter. I don't know if you ever noticed that.
- [18:31]
B
No, I had not. That's really cool. And I do think there's. Yeah, I remember the. I was looking back at my notes. The, the reason that it shows the pyramid uncapped is that it's the, the work is not complete. Right. So the, the great work is the perfecting of man in this hermetic alchemical tradition. So in this notion, you have to evolve, and it may take millions of years, it may take 10,000 years, who knows, right? You have to evolve to the stage where man can, through tech, achieve immortality or achieve godhood or achieve the transcending of the physical limitations. And so that's why I think at the beginning we see the pyramid uncapped. I just, I wanted to bring that back because I was trying to remember why it was. It was uncapped. But then I was like, yeah, okay, so it's that, it's that great work process. And yeah, I think you're right that the, the group that's going to go into the future, the next phase is the one that has the advantage. And I had not noticed that, that they were standing more upright, but it makes perfect sense. That's a great point.
- [19:32]
A
Yeah. And like you said, so he throws the bone in the air and that sort of transmorphs visually into the, the spaceships and the sort of. Can you comment on the. The thing that I didn't really know much about, but I heard I'd seen you mention it in your own commentary, sort of when we see. We see this a few times throughout the film, but when we first see these, These spaceships that are sort of orbiting the moon, these space stations, whatever they be, we see this sort of turning wheel and that is sort of a reference to a symbol that we see in Buddhism and some other sort of ancient cultures.
- [20:03]
B
Yeah, this is used in a lot of places. So it's kind of hard to pick out exactly what the white, the wheel might be referencing. But we do see the wheel that comes up not just in like Buddhism and Hinduism, which is like the cycle of life. And like all the universe is like this never ending wheel that recycles you. So it's like eternal return. That's would make sense too because that's Nietzsche and Nietzsche and taught the doctrine of eternal return. And so there's that. But there's also like the idea of Ezekiel's wheels, which I don't think it's an actual like spaceship. I think it's supposed to be an angelic being. But a lot of people have interpreted that to be, you know, some sort of spaceship or something like that. So it could have that element.
- [20:45]
A
It's a big agent aliens. Call back that one.
- [20:47]
B
Yeah, exactly. But here the ancient aliens are like, they're not aliens, they're advanced AI. Right. Which is, which is able to, if I recall. Right, which is able to. I'm talking about when you read 2010 and when. And then in 3001 it's like, it's not aliens, it's just AI that's really advanced. And that's how Star Child. Right. Because at the end he's going to become the God, the God child. Right. So that's going to be apotheosis. And so. Yeah, that's what I, that's what I think on that.
- [21:17]
A
Yeah. So once we're sort of introduced into this, we kind of get the direct line from the violence and the bone straight to spaceships and conquering that sort of plane, if you will. And we learn that there is. Which is really another thing that sort of hits harder watching it now after the last couple of years especially, is that they've introduced a virus, a virus cover story just to cover up for the fact that they found this monolith on the moon. But everyone else, I found it kind of interesting. I forgot the character's name, but you know, he's chatting with these other people and they're kind of saying, you know, hey, we, we heard there might be a virus or something. And he's just kind of like, no, no, we can't really, I can't really talk about it. He basically says it in a way that's confirming it, but in, in doing so, he's actually just advancing the COVID story because the whole point is to make it seem like they're hiding a virus when they're. Are hiding a viral outbreak, when really they're using that story to cover for this other thing that they found, which they don't want to tell people. About. Did that, did that hit any harder for you after just after seeing the last couple years and seeing this sort of play out in its own way?
- [22:21]
B
Yeah, it's. It's interesting because, I mean, you know, I don't know. I'm not, I know you're not saying this, but it's not necessarily a direct connect between. Yeah. Like this and like Kubert predicted. Co.
- [22:31]
A
Right, right.
- [22:32]
B
But we do shows.
- [22:35]
A
It's kind of in the playbook in a sense.
- [22:36]
B
Yeah, exactly. The COVID stories are always in the playbook. That's a great point. And same thing that was. It was going on in 2000 or in Spielberg's Close Encounters. Right. The third kind.
- [22:49]
A
I think ET too, there was like a. There's a whole.
- [22:51]
B
Oh yeah, there's a bioweapon cover story for the, you know, so called alien invasion or whatever. And they even fake the alien or the, the bioweapon release. Right. Where they have the dead cows laid out. Encounter. So, yeah, I think we do see that idea of the government putting forth plausible counter narratives that are cover stories. And Kubrick would know that because, I mean, I don't know that Kubrick necessarily filmed the moon landing or anything like that. I mean, that's a lot of speculation. But, but, but because on this film he did consult with NASA. I think he did have an understanding of how things work on, you know, in, in terms of the real power structure, the shadow government, et cetera. So he knows that they have the ability to do that. And Clark being one of those people who in some degree, I don't know how far on, in terms of the inner party circle he was, but he was definitely to a degree, an insider. You know, Clark was hanging out with people like Crowley and he was hanging out with all the Royal Society elites and was himself pretty, pretty nefarious of a character. So in my view also there's probably some seeding of the notion that human. Human beings are seated by some other foreign kind of space based entity. Like in this, it's going to be AI but it also might relate to something like panspermia. I mean, I know that in this movie it's not panspermia, but it might be a form of Panspermian because, you know, we don't know. Well, when Starchild is, is created in the original story, he nukes Earth, right. So there's like this depopulation narrative because it. Everything needs to start over. And so there might be a seeding, a panspermia seeding when everything starts over, which is that eternal Return. So I think that when we get to Star Child and we get a new Genesis at the end, I'm not trying to jump too far then, but understand the end to know what's going on.
- [24:41]
A
This is a, this is a spoiler filled review. So if anyone hasn't seen the movie before watching this, that's their own problem. You know, if you haven't seen the movie, you should probably just stop this right now and go watch it and then, and then return.
- [24:51]
B
Well, I'm assuming everybody in your audience probably has.
- [24:54]
A
I would think so.
- [24:54]
B
Yeah.
- [24:55]
A
I would think so at this point. But yes. I mean, yeah, the, the, the.
- [24:58]
B
Am I bothering you that I'm talking about the ending?
- [25:01]
A
Oh, no, not at all.
- [25:01]
B
No, no, Just because, just because it, it's the notion of eternal return because the universe starts over, right? That's the point.
- [25:08]
A
Yeah. No, I, I presume anyone seeing this has seen the whole thing. So we can bounce around as much, as much as we need to to tell the, Tell the tale. Also, I forgot to mention that the.
- [25:17]
B
Planets might also relate to planetary overlords because they're pictured again, as, I think, kind of sentient intelligences. And they're the ones that when they align, they lead mankind to the next phase of evolution. But I think they're supposed to be like advanced AI. I don't think that that's why Jupiter is such a big deal in this. Right, Because Jupiter, Jupiter is a big part of this alignment and the notion of the planetary gods leading man into an ascent towards apotheosis. I mean, that's just kind of like classic, you know, esoteric hermetic alchemical philosophy.
- [25:54]
A
What is this? The, the specific meaning of Jupiter specifically, because they do, in pretty much right after the scene is when they find out the real story that they found this monolith and they go to see the monolith on the moon and it emits this sort of this, this, you know, deafening sound. But what they, they discover is that it's beaming this sound to Jupiter, which is why we end up later going to the next sort of scene and seeing that whole mission. But why can you dig further into the, you know, specifically Jupiter? What is the significance of that planet?
- [26:25]
B
So in a lot of the occult narratives, and I'm speculating here, and this would be an occult narrative that Clark would have known about and probably would have accepted. You have the idea that the God that controls our universe, our universe is in some way probably Jupiter, right? The king of the planets. And that's a. Just like Saturn or Kronos. It's a. It's a power or a force that limits and controls man. And so Jupiter corresponds to Yah, the Christian God, Yahweh, the Jewish God. And he's a very limited kind of localized God. And so for man to go to the next phase of evolution, he has to break out of the limitations of the localized deities of this universe. And in a lot of the esoteric circles, like in Crowley circles, Crowley, if I recall, talked about how Jupiter represents, you know, the, the imprisoning creator God of the Christian Jewish theology. And the real God of the universe is the unknown, unexpressible, beyond being God. So in that way, it's a lot of a Neoplatonic types of, type of mythology. But I think that the, the signals and the transmissions refer to now it's time for, you know, a new transmission to, to bring man to the next phase. So man's going to sort of begin to break out of the planetary deities that run this dimension or this universe to go to the next phase. And that's why at the end we see that the planetary diamonds align. Those are the, the planetary, what are called celestial intelligences, in my view. Right.
- [28:08]
A
Yeah. So I think at that, at this point when we're, we're finding out that they're going to Jupiter and we all. We see that again, we see the planetary alignment, I think it's right before we again see the monolith on the moon. So like you said, it's, again, it's signifying a change in the movie. We're going to go to a sort of a different direction of the movie, but it's also signifying that change in mankind or that it's time for this other change in mankind. Just like we saw in the beginning with the apes standing upright and getting each other's senses with bones. Exactly. So this does send us along into the sort of the somewhat meatier part of the movie. It's weird because it's a long movie, but every section always like, feels small until I watch it. And it's, it's twice as long as I thought. But we, we see Henry meet Henry Bowman, who basically becomes our, our protagonist of sorts. Here again we see more wheel symbology. He's kind of like running around sort of almost on like a hamster wheel of sorts in the, in the spaceship. But ultimately what we learn in this, in this whole section is that it's. There's Bowman, this other scientist, and these other ones that are sort of cryogenically frozen or sleeping or whatever technology they use for that, along with their other companion named Hal9000. So as they're kind of transgressing towards Jupiter or beyond Jupiter to, to sort of take this next step of man. They already have a next step in a sense, or what is a certain kind of technological leap with the AI technology. Again, this is another one of those things that hits harder a lot more today than it did even five, 10 years ago, where we see, you know, people having little chats with AI that call themselves demons and are. Are expressing sort of not so great intent. So HAL definitely strikes a little bit more of a chord to me after seeing conversations with like chat GPT and Dan and stuff like that. But maybe you can just take it from wherever you want there. Just in terms of what they show us in terms of the, the spaceship and also how they introduce HAL and the. And how we're supposed to see this artificial intelligence of how, as it relates to these sort of evolution of man that we've been seeing the whole time, right?
- [30:10]
B
So now man is. He's gone beyond the territorial terrestrial limitations of being confined to the Earth, right? He's floating in space and in space he kind of can float. Right. So this is an image of the beginning to the beginning of overcoming the limitations of things like gravity.
- [30:27]
A
It's also when things start getting pretty phallic in the, in the imagery with the spaceship.
- [30:32]
B
Well, and then, yeah, the idea is that the. Just as man was seated on Earth, man is going to seed the universe. And the birth at the end of Star Child, right, is the production of that seminal seed. Let me read just a quick few sections in the. Where I cover this. The uncapped pyramid, in an alchemical sense signifies the lack of the completion of the Great Work. The grand plan is to transmute base matter into gold, which signifies both the inner journey of the psyche and its ascent back to God or the soul back to the one in Neoplatonism, or the after death journey of the Gnostics through the planetary spheres. In the macro sense, the Great Work is the transformation of the entire universe into the Omega point of Teilhard de Chardin or of Hegel, where the totality of reality becomes conscious of itself as conscious and inanimate matter becomes merged into psyche, realizing its own inert potentiality and God in process. Right, so this is where we get to Starchild. The universe has within it the ability to produce. And so Halloman will be one of these figures. One of these, Hal is the figure that will. That's an emergent deus ex machina from within. The God from within that will eventually in 3001, unite with how to become the new deity Hellman with the apes. Early man was limited, caged and bound by the forces of nature, time and space. In space age, man has overcome gravity floating about the universe, no longer hindered by the limitations of hunger, resources and mass. This is the middle stage of man's gradual ascent out of the cage of the box of time and space, which is precisely what the monolith signifies. In part, this is why the monolith becomes a kind of coffin box for Bowman in the climax. For Kubrick, the evolutionary ascent is premised on the presupposition of perpetual progress through technology, overcoming limitations of space and body hunger. By the time we're in, space is gone, gravity is gone, and through the cryogenic sleep sleep pods, time is beginning to be mastered. That was my take on that.
- [32:32]
A
And I think it's pretty interesting too, that when. When we're out in space, they really. And when we're first meeting Hal, at least to me, they really do seem to present how, from the very beginning, really, as having a personal. There's that scene where he kind of talks about how he was born or first created, I guess, in 1992. And he has the. That song Daisy. That Daisy song that gets a lot. It's a lot weirder and creepier when he. When he sings it later on. But do you think that they made it sort of an intentional decision to. To make Hal almost. He's almost likable in a way. Just the way he's. He sort of is able to use sarcasm and, and even. Even when he's gone bad and is. And is sort of turned on the crew, I can't help but get a kick out of Hal pretty much the whole time till. Till his very end. So I'm just. Just curious on your overall thoughts on. On the presentation of Hal.
- [33:22]
B
Yeah, I think there's this idea that humanity is evolving to become more robotic in this narrative, and the robot is evolving to become more and more human. And that's going to lead to that emergence, right, or that merging at the end. How is funny? Because, yeah, he has this. This character that you're mentioning, but he also speaks to himself as perfect because he's free from all human error. And that's going to be the challenge right between the next phase of human evolution as to who's going to win in this Darwinian survival, the fittest battle between how or Bowman. And I think that the solution Ultimately here is they're gonna have to. It's almost like a agnostic merging like of two, two principles. The male principle, the feminine principle. I mean, how's not feminine? But he's, he might represent the two elements that are needed for the synthesis. Because a lot of this relates to alchemy. Even Hegelianism is very premised on alchemy. So you have thesis, you have antithesis, and then you have the synthesis of the two. And so here you have man, you have the robot, the AI and then they, they eventually merged to, to be that synthesis. Trying to remember what all I went to in my analysis, I got into a bunch of DARPA stuff and the history of AI. And yeah, I think you're right to point that point out that this movie is really prescient for right now because we have the emerging of AI in my view, I don't really think it's as advanced as they're saying it is. Just my opinion, it seems to be. I mean, maybe they have a secret version of it that's really advanced, but like the stuff that's out there, chat GPT is kind of ridiculous. It doesn't seem to be that. It seems to spit out basically what Google spits out when I search Google. So yeah, I'm not sure what to say about that other than that it's kind of like deus ex machina again that the, the deity of this universe emerges from within the universe and then can start new universes. So. And by the way, if you, if you've watched, if you haven't watched 2010 in a long time, I highly recommend watching that one because there's a lot of really deep esoteric Luciferian elements in 2010 that are really clear at the end of the movie. And it's. And it's actually about the dialectic of the Cold War and how out of the Cold War we're going to get this new synthesis between capitalism and communism, right, that produces the, the technocratic era of space travel and seeding the other planets.
- [35:45]
A
It's funny because I never actually seen. I'd read all the books way back in the day, but I'd never actually seen 2010. And last night it popped up. And after I watched the movie and I was about to go press it, but then I was like, $3. And I was like, nah, I don't know if I want to play $3. But that's before I knew it was good. So if it's actually good, I will pay the $3.
- [35:59]
B
It's boring. I wouldn't say it's a good movie.
- [36:01]
A
Okay.
- [36:01]
B
Certainly not as good as it's worth.
- [36:03]
A
Watching for analysis purposes. Might not be the same as good analysis.
- [36:06]
B
It's really perfect at the end. And a lot of the stuff that. Because when I wrote this analysis I had not. I. Back when I wrote this, I. I didn't watch 2010 yet. I mean I'd seen it maybe back in high school. I didn't remember. I thought it was really boring. I went to sleep. And then when I wrote this analysis of 2001, I had not yet re. Watched 2010. 2010. Jamie and I re. Watched it, I think last year and we did a podcast on it in our Alien series. And I was blown away. Like, this is like. This is really, really like really relevant. And, and I've not read the second book, so I don't know how close it follows that book, but it's. You should definitely watch it for analysis purpose.
- [36:50]
A
That might be one for when the wife isn't. Isn't around and I can. I don't have to bore her with it. But back into, back into like the confrontation with Hal, because basically Bowman, I forget. I forget the other astronaut's name, but he starts to get the sense that. That something's up with Hal, that maybe his programming's off or something like that. And they have a sort of a secret meeting because Hal has ears everywhere except in these. This certain pod they go into, which comes back a little bit later, but they kind of go in and. And we. We kind of see it from Hal's perspective, which I think is a really cool. Just in. In the filmmaking sense. We see them in there sort of talking and we, we both see them. You know, we hear the words. But there's also a part where we can kind of just see what House. What. We later find out that Hal sees that in the. The sort of big reveal, which is like one of my favorite parts of the movie when. Well, we'll just kind of skip to it, but we're Bowman. Hal basically kills Bowman's. Bowman's partner as well as everyone else on board. So it's basically just down to. Down to Bowman. And he's talking to Hal and he's saying, and how's. Like, uh, kind of have a feeling you're going to shut me down. And Bowman's just like, what do you mean? Why? What are you talking about, Hal? And Hal's like, dude, I can read lips pretty much. And that's when you see this look. The look on Bowman's face when he finds that out is just like, it's like getting caught texting the wrong girl or something. He just like, he knows he's done but it's, it's another one of those things when I watch the movie back it. They stay on him to hit the shot of him for like two minutes where as he just processes how he is that HAL has not only killed his crewmates but knows that he wants to shut him down. But yeah, but luckily, you know, Bowman is, is pretty smart and Hal. And so he quickly figures out well I'll just go in the escape hatch. And what I really love about the scene as he's slowly going through these and how's like you don't have a helmet, you can't do that. He eventually is able to get in there and through a whole, a whole scene that's worth watching him getting him back into the spaceship. But I think one of my favorite parts here of the movie going in is, is once Bowman is back in the ship and you know, even though Hal has arms and eyes and all that stuff and that doesn't have, doesn't have arm, has eyes and ears, he doesn't have arms or anything like that. He can't, he can't touch Bowman. So once Bowman's back in the ship HAL is pretty much fucked at that point. And this is when Hal goes from sort of perfect computer mode to he starts to sort of like whine and rationalize. It's. I thought of it like a couple who had just got into a fight and then he starts to kind of say like hold on, I know I got a little crazy out there before, but I'm better now. He starts saying I'm better now. And I laughed out loud. When he even suggests to Bowman, he says why don't you just take a stress pill and, and calm down there. I don't really have a question here, but I just, I just want to get your own, your own thoughts on, on that whole interaction between Bowman and Hal as Bowman is preparing to, to send Hal to.
- [39:31]
B
Yeah, this is on his way. A referring back to the battle between the two monkeys at the beginning. Right. So now we have two new versions of monkeys. And Pal's not a monkey, but like he's a monkey compared to where the, the deity of this universe is at the end. And there's a great quote by Clark. Clark was reported to have said, quote. It may be that our role on the planet of Earth is to not worship God, but to create God. And this is in reference to a story hero called the Final Query. The screenplay writer, Clark, the co writer, allowed significant changes to the script by Kubrick with, for example, the TV screen monolith. Another significant change is the ending where Starchild uses the satellite system to blow up the planet. And so man, we find out, is an evolutionary error or an abortion that's not supposed to be. We find this, by the way, in a lot of science fiction where the accidental or just sort of random emergence of man is a, is a mistake that needs to be corrected. And, and man is an abortion. In fact, if you watch the Alien series, that's actually really prevalent in the, the alien I'm talking about, really, Scott, alien mythos, like man is this, is this accidental genetic modification creation from the, you know, experiments of the space jockeys or whatever. And so that's that. We find this a lot in science fiction and that's why.
- [40:58]
A
And the alien is kind of like almost that the, the dream virus of the elite that is just there to just wipe out the error.
- [41:04]
B
Yeah, it's, it's like the ultimate depot weapon. Exactly. So, so here we think, oh, actually maybe Hal's going to do that. Right. Because the next phase is going to be as they're in the ship and they've been shot out like seminal emission right into the universe, literally. Right. It's supposed to, I think it's supposed to mean that. And so we have this sort of survival of fittest battle within the sperm to see who's going to win. And we think that it's going to be how is going to depopulate Bowman and then how will, you know, I guess go into the beyond through the, the Stargate or whatever and he'll become the new God or something like that. But it's not going to go in that direction. Yeah, that's all I can remember about that part.
- [41:47]
A
Well, I'm curious what you think about because something I always thought to myself and then watch, but watching back, it kind of sends mixed messages almost with, with Hal. I, I wonder, do you think that there is. Because Hal, they, they say Hal was born or created in 1992. So the technology for HAL has been around this whole time. And this entire time, Hal's never, I, I presume ever killed anybody or turned on a crew or anything like that. So it seems like he's been around for almost 30 years here. So I'm curious if you have any thoughts about whether the emergence of the monolith at this time has anything to do with sort of Hal's change in consciousness and consciousness. If that sort of upgraded hal. That's what I think on one side, but then on the other side you see how get defeated. So it kind of, I kind of go both ways on that.
- [42:30]
B
Yeah. Because 2001 is supposed to be the. Well, HAL isn't actually defeated. That's the thing, right?
- [42:35]
A
Well, yeah, in the, in the moment, it seems.
- [42:37]
B
So we're in the moment, right? Exactly. So if, yeah, so if it's 1992, then you know, they probably guesstimated that it would take 10 years for the AI to develop to be, you know, that advanced. Of course, it wasn't that advanced in 2001 that we know of. Right. Unless we live in some sort of, I don't know, AI created simulation universe that maybe in 2001. Right. Maybe Y2K really was the end of the universe and we're all actually in. We've been in a house simulator, a.
- [43:08]
A
Victorian, a Victorian era era bedroom since then. Yeah.
- [43:11]
B
Right. Go ahead.
- [43:15]
A
No, no, go ahead. Do you have something else on, on the how thing? Yeah, because like I, I just, I wonder if the, the defeat of Hal, it almost, it almost seems like an uplifting thing. The defeat of Hal at first where he just. Bowman just goes in and sort of like slowly removes the heart. Which is probably my favorite scene in the movie besides the next scene that we'll get into. But, but where as Hal is, as he's talking, as Hal is talking to him, he's pulling out the hard drives. Hal's voice is getting slower and more and. And then he sings that. I think that's my favorite, one of my favorite lines in the movie when he's singing that daisy song and he just does. His voice gets more and more like this. But it does seem like for the moment anyway, that man has. Has triumphed over AI So for a brief period which doesn't last too long, it almost seems like in some way man is superior to machine or man has outsmarted machine or could maybe, could maybe actually last longer than the machine. Halcam.
- [44:04]
B
Yeah, I think it's a question of dominance. Is it, is it going to be a future dominated by tech and AI or is it a future is going to be dominated by man achieving and controlling the tech. Right. Because God in this world is the tech, the AI that's created by man, like Clark said. And in this alchemical trans. Self transformational narrative here, by the time we get to this key point now we're at the next, the next juncture. Right. That's why it was so important that we see the next, we skip from the monkeys to here because this is the next leap. Like are we going to go into again an AI dominated future or. And that's, or a man dominate. And that's in a lot of sci fi too, even from this time in the Dune narrative, right? Like in Dune you have the Butlerian Jihad which banned the, the banned AI because when a. In Dune when AI got loose, it enslaved mankind. They had to have this war against the AI and then it's banned in the future, right. So yeah, there's a prevalent sort of narrative I think at the, in the sci fi of the 60s and, and 70s, 50s, 60s, 70s. So in ways, I guess it was, it was prescient because here we are and I don't know, I don't believe that AI is like, you know, gonna be God or it can come alive or become conscious because I don't believe that that even makes any sense. Because no matter how many additions to an algorithm that you put in there to make it more complex, it's still an algorithm. It's not conscious. There's a really good essay that covers this, it's great, that critiqued it a long time, a long time ago, called Minds, Machines and Girdell. It's an essay that you could read at, at Oxford. It's just a philosophical critique of the pos. The impossibility of AI becoming conscious or self aware. It's a philosophical argument which I think is pretty good. So. But I do think it's possible that, you know, this sort of merging that we see in this story and later on in the trilogy is, is very possible that man can, you know, extend his life and you can have these sort of cyborg Android type situations. I mean, that's pretty much always already here, right? So that I think is possible, but I don't think that it's like a data sex machina.
- [46:17]
A
All right, well, this is where, this is kind of the point where the movie goes from. If you were just watching it for the first time, it almost could just be sort of any, any standard fare sci fi sort of film. You know, people in some space fighting robots or what have you. And then things go completely, completely off the wall. So right after Bowman defeats Hal, he finds the transmission that was designed not to, to make them aware of the real mission once, once they kind of arrived. So they, they're, they're, they defeat Hal right as he's getting to Jupiter and like Phobos and all the moons of Jupiter planets. And the message. This is not a point where I laughed. Were you watching it too? The message is like, well, now that you're here with your whole crew and Hal, we can tell you the real thing. And he's just like. Again, they just cut to Bowman. That just looks like, what the am I doing all the way out here with this?
- [47:04]
B
It was like a secret space program, right? Yeah.
- [47:06]
A
It was like they didn't. They knew they were out there. They didn't. I don't know what. They didn't really say what the COVID story was, but apparently the crew didn't know any of the real reason that they were out there. And that's the scene where the video. The guy on. From that we saw earlier explains about the monolith. Explain. Like, Bowman didn't know any of this before that scene, which I. I found pretty interesting, too. Especially because his reaction is. Well, his first reaction is. It's almost like simultaneous with the. The viewer of the film. And this is where it's like, okay, kind of what you said earlier about does the monolith almost represent the movie? Because right at this moment is when the monolith appears again. And this is where things get. Get super trippy. And Bowman sees the monolith. I guess he's like, kind of looking out of the spaceship. The viewer sees the monolith. So we. It kind of seems like we're seeing it through. Through Bowman's point of view. But the monolith also takes these sort of different shapes that at times it feels like the model that is sort of enveloping the viewer. Enveloping, you know, us. So in some ways, that does play to the fact that it is representing the movie itself, because it is. It's sort of like sometimes you just. Especially if you have enough big enough screen, you. You might actually feel like you're inside the movie at some point. So. But Bowman, I guess they don't really explain anything about what Bowman is doing. I don't think he speaks another word the rest of the movie, actually. He just sort of looks as worse looking at the visual effects, at the awe of everything. And then this is when it's not clear to me if the monolith is just guiding him or if he even, like, goes inside the monolith. But basically, he ends up going through what can only be described as like, a vortex. What's that?
- [48:34]
B
Yeah, he's going. And it's even clearer in this. In the next. The next. In 2010, there's a. It's. He's. Going into the monolith because. Yeah, okay, he will in the next one too.
- [48:43]
A
Yeah. So the monolith basically sends him down this. This crazy vortex. And just, just with pretty much every other scene in this movie, I remember it as two minutes and it's like 20. It's like. It's like 20 minutes of him seeing various, like perfect geometry, various colors. Those who have partaken in certain psychedelics might see a lot of it as familiar. It's really just visually stunning. I think this is the. And this is the part of the movie where I think when I was younger, I just sort of turned my brain off and said, well, this part's just supposed to look cool. This part is just.
- [49:12]
B
That's what I thought.
- [49:13]
A
This is where I don't know what the going on. So I'm not gonna exactly like, whoa, man. So let's grab another bong hit and just enjoy this. But, you know, as we know, with Kubrick's filmmaking in general, and with this film being no exception, nothing is by accident. Nothing is by chance. Yes, it does look cool, but there's meaning behind it all. So I'll let you pick up wherever you like. Just what is your interpretation of this entire, like, it's literally like a 20, 25 minute sequence of, of him going through, not just these, like, visuals of the lights and, but also there's. There's, you know, there's. There's a lot in there. There's the up close of his eyes being illuminated. And eventually once he gets through the vortex, as you mentioned earlier, if you can call it being through, he sees these sort of like landscapes. It almost looks like, is he on another planet or is he seeing the formation of.
- [49:58]
B
Of Earth?
- [49:59]
A
It's time has now become confusing as well. But eventually, like at the end there, he does also see those, those seven sort of. It's like perfect sort of triangles or pyramids or diamonds or whatever.
- [50:10]
B
Yeah, they're Platonic solids. I think they're supposed to represent the planetary deities. Right. Because in the classical world, you have seven planetary deities. So Kubrick said, quote, I will say that the God concept is definitely at the heart of 2001. However, it's not any traditional anthropomorphic notion of God. I don't believe in any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that you can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God once you accept the fact that there's 100 billion stars in our galaxy. In our galaxy, and each star has life giving potential and 100 billion galaxies, blah, blah. The planet is in a stable orbit, not too hot, not too cold. And given a billion years of chance, the chemical reactions due to the sun's energy rays can produce a chance for life to emerge. It is reasonable then to assume that there must be countless billions of worlds and that life probably developed on, and developed on other planets and that their intelligence was high eventually. So he says that that would have led to, you know, it's kind of the typical sort of alien, the logic of the alien story that, oh, well, there would be these advanced evolutionary beings on other planets because of the billions of years of time in the universe. He says their potentialities would be limitless. Their intelligence would, would be ungraspable by humans. And he says that they would have been beings who, like a chrysalis, transformed from matter into beings of pure energy and spirit. So that's Gnostic, that's Hegelianism, that's Tehar, that's everything that I was getting at. And so what we have here is this, as we said a minute ago, this challenge between Hal and Bowman. Hal ends up not winning out, but Bowman goes into the, the Stargate, the Monolith Stargate, which in my view, he's stepping outside of time and space. So he's again finally getting to the phase of transcending those previous limitations that we mentioned. And by going beyond Jupiter, he's going beyond, as we said, the limiting deity of, of this universe or celestial intelligence of this universe. And now he can see, like you said, like he's seeing the formation of this universe. He's seeing outside of time and space. He's saying, in fact, in my view, the, even the fundamental structure of the universe, that it has these sort of fundamental structures, Platonic solids with, like we read in Plato's Timaeus, that's kind of the ultimate cosmology of all the hermetic and occult religions is Plato's Timaeus, which it itself says goes back to ancient Egypt. So it's kind of supposed to represent.
- [52:49]
A
Like the, the building blocks of reality or like, you know, the, the code of the matrix, wherever you want to.
- [52:54]
B
I kind of think it's a matrix galaxy type of thing here. Right. So that Bowman is saying that this is how the universe. He can see the smallest level of how the universe is structured. He can see it on a macro scale. He can see the beginning of it. He can see the end of it. So he's outside of time and space and he can, you know, has a, maybe a limited notion of omniscience I.
- [53:13]
A
Guess it's like he's the human. And you kind of see this on the look on his face when he's in the room later. Like he has this huge amount of sort of ability to see things and understanding, but also is still this human mind that can't comprehend anything.
- [53:27]
B
Yeah. So I wrote the transcendent sequence. Hearkens to some kind of LSD trip or initiate. It's a kind of initiation. And I think the viewer is supposed to be initiated too. So the. The movie experience is an initiatory. Right. Or it's. And Kubrick does this all the time. That's why he called the movie Eyes Wide Shut. Right. He's like, you're in the audience. I'm going to show you how the world really works with, like, you know, these powerful cults that run things. And you're not going to understand it. Your eyes are going to remain shut. You're going to think it's a movie when it's actually how the world really works. And so I wrote Bowman's mind is overloaded with illumination, and it signifies the reaching. His reaching of the eye. So the reason of the eye imagery at the. At the end is so important, is that the capstone had been uncapped, and now Bowman is the eye of the capstone, in my view. So that means that he's achieved apotheosis. He's become a God man. And that's what Star Child is. Right. Star Child is the ultimate apotheosis of man, the God man that emerges from the universe. But it did take. It did take the aid of how to do it, ironically. How was part of that dialectical process? And later on, how will be actually integral to he. The being becomes Helman. So Hal and Bowman merged to become Halman. And he has this, like, Chariot thing that he. That he runs around and rolls. Rules the universe with.
- [54:50]
A
That's all on. On the books, right? Yeah, Because.
- [54:52]
B
Yeah, that's the third in the film.
- [54:54]
A
It's unclear that there's any connection to hell anymore at this point. But, yeah, in the book, that becomes much more of a thing.
- [55:00]
B
Yeah. So I just think that it's basically showing the initiatory journey of an individual, an alchemical worldview to understand the possible future of mankind from this esoteric perspective to how man would kind of become. Become his own God.
- [55:20]
A
Yeah. And if that. If that whole vortex and everything wasn't. Wasn't trippy enough, this sort of pretty much final scene that we'll go into here is when Bowman suddenly finds himself after going through this whole thing, seeing the birth of the universe, seeing, you know, the seven, the salmon diamonds, the. All of that stuff. He is suddenly just in sort of a room, or his space pod is in this room. So it. Like this was physically being guided through and then just kind of plopped in this place that seems to have been, I guess, created for him in some way, shape or form, or maybe created by himself in his mind, depending on how you want to interpret things. But he's in this sort of weird Victorian era, sort of like fancy, fancy bedroom. And this is where it's. Again, it gets pretty. Pretty trippy, you might say, because you're seeing this through Bowman's point of view at first and you're seeing him look out again. This is the kind of a theme with Kubrick's movies like. Like you mentioned there, where you're almost supposed to be part of the movie, in a sense. So it kind of feels like that when. When you're. You're seeing as Bowman from outside of his little space capsule, seeing into the room, and then he sees himself. He sees himself in the space in the spacesuit. And then suddenly he goes from seeing himself to being himself. Now he is this older version of himself in the spacesuit, walking around this. This sort of weird Victorian castle or whatever it might be, until he comes upon a room where he hears someone and sees someone eating. This person turns around, just kind of. And then once again, he goes from seeing that person, which is just himself, into being that person. So then he becomes the. The Henry Bowman that was sitting there eating, drops this glass and then looks over at the final, absolute, creepiest version of himself, this version that is this pruned and, like, gross and just like it looks like if a human could become 2000 years old, this is what a human at 2000 years old would look like as he again sees himself, then becomes himself in the bed right before we see the monolith one final time. And, well, we'll get to Star Child one more time at the end, but why don't you just give me just your thoughts on. On this whole thing where Bowman is. Do you have any thoughts on why they chose this. This sort of decor? First of all, that. That part's always complexity.
- [57:26]
B
Good question. I remember reading somewhere why he did that. And I. I don't remember what his reasoning was, but if I recall, he's. He said something innocuous like he just thought it looked cool. I don't remember what exactly, but there's probably more to it than that maybe he was just joking around. Yeah, this seems to be a kind of a temporary, I mean, I don't know what word to you like maybe catabasis, like. So in a lot of literature you have this notion of the hero has to do his descent into the underworld before he can be resurrected or, or before he can come back. And the underworld journey is part of, it's like the last phase of, of his event, of the hero's adventure and then he comes back and he, you know, saves his bride or he, you know, beats the monster, whatever. So I think that. Or it's the same as Christ descent into Hades in Christian theology. So Bowman is kind of like he's undergoing his catabasis, he's gone into outside of the universe and then this is a kind of, again, it's not hell, but it's like a kind of a purgatorial temporary holding place so that he can see his, his own self, his own life, his own progression from youth to, to death so that he can undergo death to be reborn. So I think this is just his death. He needs to see and undergo death. But he's in a place where he's outside of time and space. So it's kind of like he's reliving and seeing his whole life is flashing before him again. I don't know why it's in a museum, but, but maybe it's just like this is the museum of, you know, the history of man as hitherto known to be man. Now man is going to be something new. He's, he's becoming a whole new thing. And that's the apotheosis, that's the, the birth into being, the next, the God man. So that's my reading of that. I'm sure there's more to it. I just haven't really figured out all the, exactly what the whole Victorian or it's actually, I think he says a Louis xvi, you know. Yeah, yeah, palace or whatever. I'm not exactly sure what the meaning of all that is, but I do know that it's like the last thing that he has to overcome is death. Right. So you have the limitations of time and space and all that kind of stuff previously that we mentioned. And now in this ascent he's got one last thing to overcome, which is mortality. So I think that's the main significance of it is overcoming mortality through being born again as Stardog, which he is.
- [59:51]
A
Yeah. So he goes from that creepy old, you know, disgusting 2000 year old man to a Fetus. Upon. Upon the. The appearance of the monolith. We. Then we get, of course, we close up with another appearance from the great. Thus spake a Zarathustra music that we're all familiar with as we see this new super creepy looking baby, Henry Bowman, star child, appear over the Earth. And so he basically looks like a baby, but also looks like Henry Bowman as a baby. So it's. It's a. It's super weird, super creepy. And then that. That is the movie. So you've referenced it a few times. Maybe you can just sum it up with, you know, what. Why. Why is Henry Bowman. I mean, now we know it's the star child and the significance. But I mean, this is the one where as a kid, I would be like. Or not even a kid. I mean, just a few years ago, I would just kind of throw my hands up in the air and be like, all right, this movie means nothing. They just want. They just made him a baby. But there. There is more significance to it than that.
- [60:45]
B
Yeah. A lot of the people from the alchemical, hermetic tradition and people even in transhumanist philosophy today believe that evolution is this upward ascent somehow sort of a predetermined upward. Upward ascent to perpetual progress, to achieving deity. So man will evolve to become God. And the reasoning is, well, what's the most likely means by which he would evolve to become God? Well, it would be technology. So that's, I think, ultimately the root narrative throughout the Clark stories here. That's what's going on. And like I said, there was supposed to be the idea that Starchild would nuke Earth and start over, but they decided that was a little too dark, so they didn't put that in there, if I remember. So they just left it as Starchild, basically kind of like creating another universe. Universe. So we're back at Genesis. And since Bowman has transcended and become his own God, he can now create his own universe. He's the God of his own universe. And so that's the. The whole meaning of, you know, the alchemical process, the ascent of man. Apotheosis means man becoming God. So that's what I think the story is supposed to be.
- [61:55]
A
So at least as far as the movie goes, I mean, the books and the sequels, the movies go in other directions or what have you. But as far as the movie goes, that's what always confused me. Like, is this Bowman just returning to Earth to do whatever? Or is this a cycle? Or is it almost like this might be back at Genesis? Yeah, and now, now maybe Bowman Universe.
- [62:11]
B
Right, yeah.
- [62:11]
A
Bowman through that. Well, as we know in the books, like when he sort of merges with Hal, he is the one responsible for almost like interstellar, where the ones that are guiding this whole thing are actually the ones are what make humans becomes the one that started. And then we're sort of stuck in this. In this never ending cycle.
- [62:27]
B
Exactly, yeah. And that would make sense in the Nietzschean view that it's an eternal return. Thus spake Zarathustra. Right. The, the, the. That notion of the sort of a never ending cyclical universe where, you know, the process starts over again and we're back at Genesis and creation, which. Not Genesis in the biblical sense, but the idea of Genesis in a, you know, big bang, cosmic beginning of the universe sense.
- [62:52]
A
Right, Definitely not in the biblical sense. One more question I want to. And then we'll. We'll hop over to the smoke for room and see if we can get a little bit weirder. But I'm just curious where you put this personally in. If you have a head, sort of a headcanon ranking of Kubrick films, where would you land this one in terms of your personal favorites anyway?
- [63:14]
B
That's a good question.
- [63:15]
A
I didn't prep you for that one. It's a tough one.
- [63:17]
B
My personal. I like, probably Eyes Watch, that's probably my favorite. Just because it's a little more ground grounded and down to earth when it comes to the, the reality of the conspiracy world.
- [63:31]
A
That's one that's moved up my rankings, I think. When I first saw it, I was like, I don't know, it was. There were some cool orgies, I guess, but I'm not sure. But now, like, the more I watch it, it just, it ages like a, like a fine wine. It gets better every time I see it.
- [63:43]
B
Yeah. Probably next would be the Shining. I like that a lot. Probably next would be. I mean, I appreciate Barry Lyndon, but it's kind of boring. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Lolita, although it is relevant to, I guess, how the world really works. Spartacus. Yeah, I mean, I guess I would put 2001, maybe in terms of just appreciating the accomplishment and the artistic achievement and the, you know, significance of it. Even though I don't agree with the worldview. I would probably place it fourth.
- [64:18]
A
Fourth. Okay. So what would you have above it? Eyes Wide Shut, Shining. And what was the other one they have you have above it?
- [64:24]
B
I forgot what I put third. Maybe I'll put third and then it's not better than Barry Lyndon. So maybe Bear Lyndon fourth.
- [64:30]
A
All right, all right. Well, Jay, I really appreciate you coming on to break this down. Like I said, we're gonna hop into the smoke filled room for the premium, premium subs in a second. But before we sign off, just make sure you give everybody the full roundabout about where they can find your work all over the place. Your website, YouTube, you're everywhere.
- [64:47]
B
Yeah, Jay Dyer on YouTube, pretty much everywhere else. Jay Dyer on Twitter, Instagram. You can find my fourth hour at my website. All the last two years. It's. Everything's on my website. But you can also find all that on band video. TV show that we did, which is more relevant to today's analysis was over at Gaia. It's called Hollywood Decoded. So there's a whole season of that TV show where we did basically 20ish episodes like we did today, breaking down all these different films, including 2001 and other Kubrick films too. We did the Shining, we did Eyes Wide Shut. So that's over there. And you know, I have a bunch of books, so if you like this kind of analysis, you can get my two Hollywood books. But I also have a bunch of books on philosophy and theology at the website too. My wife has books kind of breaking down film symbolism and occult symbolism as well. And all that's at my website. In the shop.
- [65:48]
A
You can give yourself your own sort of master class. And I mean, you could spend years just, just devouring Jay's material. So check that all out. And Jay, thank you so much.
- [65:56]
B
Philosophy course. Real quick. I forgot.
- [65:58]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
- [65:58]
B
Over at Richard Groves Autonomy University, we just taught a whole history of Western philosophy course. So that's available over at Autonomy University.
- [66:07]
A
Awesome. Kick ass. Jay, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate you coming on my show.
- [66:11]
B
Thank you.
- [66:12]
A
All right, friends, I hope you enjoyed my breakdown. Really? Jay's breakdown, our breakdown of 2001 Space Odyssey with Jay Dyer. Be sure to follow his work. If, if it's been created, there's a decent chance that Jay has done an esoteric analysis and breakdown of it. So he's just a vast source. Source of information and knowledge. And not just on this subject. I mean, if you're, if you're becoming an ortho bro or something. He is. So much stuff on theology, so much stuff on global politics, conspiracy. I mean, Jay just has an incredibly vast depth of knowledge at his disposal. So I really want to encourage you to head over, check out Jasonalysis.com and give Jay a, like a sub A follow. Whatever you got to do, just go ahead and do it. And of course, if you enjoy my conversation with Jay today, you probably will enjoy the rest of it because this conversation, as always, continued in the smoke filled room. Bonus segment for my premium subscribers on Patreon, on Rockfin, on SubscribeStar. However you subscribe, you get the complete and early access to every single episode of this program. Every single episode you hear on the public feed is only scratching the surface. We always go deeper in the smoke filled room. In this one we got Jay's thoughts on whether Stanley Kubrick was involved with the moon landing footage, which has been rumored. Of course he also gets into his thoughts on things like the Mandela effect and the flat Earth. What does Jay Dyer think of flat Earth? We're going to find out in the smoke filled room. If you haven't. Hey, you can get yourself a free trial, you know. SubscribeStar. Go click the SubscribeStar link. Just go to Mark Claire again. M A R C L A I r dot com. Try subscribestar. If you just want a free trial, you can get a five day, five day, seven day, whatever. It's a free trial. Check it out. Dive through the archive. You can do it all probably in a few days. You can't go to work, you want a time for anything else. Your family, eating, loved ones. But you can get through the whole archive in a few days. And if you like what you hear, you like what you see, you want to support the show, I'm happy to have you. So head over to markclair.com for all the options of how you can subscribe to and support this program. Be sure to join the Telegram group. We're having a good time in the Telegram group getting some conversation. That one is free. You don't be a paid subscriber for that. Also linked over there at the link tree@markclair.com that being said, that is all for this week my friends. Next week we're gonna have another great conversation. If you thought this was weird, well, we talked about some some fictional aliens today. Well today, next week we're going to be talking about some possible non fictional aliens. The current hoopla around UFOs, what is going on here? We're going to be talking about that with my guest Griffin Daughtry next week. Until then my friends, in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night.
- [68:54]
B
Sam.