Kubrick and Marx: an academic reading

Stanley Kubrick met controversy many times as a filmmaker. From joking about nuclear war to producing several ultra violent films, Kubrick never backed down from tackling tough projects. His interest in Arthur Clarke’s science fiction novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey, created a unique and cerebral film that puzzles many people. Understanding Marxist ideas helps viewers in interpreting some of Kubrick’s scenes.
Kubrick makes a connection with Marx’s ideas about labor in this film. Through labor, man loses his value. This film depicts how man has lost value and importance as his mechanical sense has grown. It also shows, in a climatic sequence, the next phase in man’s evolution.
The film begins in prehistoric times as early humanoids first discover tools. When one finds that a bone can be used to attack, it leads to war, on a small scale. This creature has advanced beyond others by creating a tool. Kubrick then makes a daring jump-cut from the bone to a spaceship, eclipsing thousands of years of civilization.
The bone and the spaceship are both tools, just of different ages. From the time of the first tool to the time of the spaceship, man has made astounding technological advances. These advances, however, are starting to limit man. Marx believes that the working man and his product have an inverse relationship. As the product improves, the condition of man gets worse. Marx says that “the worker becomes a slave of his object.” Kubrick uses this idea throughout the film. In the latter part of the film, the focus is on alienated labor.
Marx described alienated labor as part of this paradoxical relationship. Man can produce objects, but man is not an object. Man is estranged from the product, from himself, and from others. In the second part of the film, the people are supposed to be working together to fix a problem that has occurred on a lunar base. Dr. Floyd arrives to help. Floyd, though, offers little explanation as to the root of the problem. Even thought the people act civilized, their words are meaningless. They have polite but empty conversations. They are estranged from each other, and the technology is keeping them apart.
Technology in this film is not celebratory. The more technology man has, the more lethal it can be. The more lethal that technology can be, the less the value of human life can be. The depressing music played during the Jupiter flight emphasizes the sorry fate of man. Indeed, man has created marvelous machines. He has a computer that can think for itself. He has bases on the moon and other colonies planned. He is now just a pawn, however, for these creations.
In the first part of the film, man has not separated himself from nature. Man resides in the animal stage, but the invention of the tool begins a distancing of man from other animals. Man creates an object, and this eventually leads to him creating an objective world. From the first tool, man learned to make houses, and eventually, cities. He created this alien world of unnatural objects, imposed it upon nature, and now sets to do the same in space. As he tarnished Earth, so will he tarnish other planets. Man’s object world separates him from animals also because it shows man’s use of logic. We have a consciousness. This simple creation shows that we are aware of our ability to create.
This ability, though, does not always allow us freedom. Our existence in the object world separates us from nature. Our activity is important. Marx claims that activity defines us. When labor is our activity, it separates us from nature and from ourselves. The people in the spaceships in the film are there to serve the computers and instruments. The object, the product of man’s labor, has become more important than the person. HAL, the computer system, has more personality than the human astronauts do. He is in control of the mission, and determines himself to have more worth to the mission when he finds out that they are going to turn him off. He kills all of them but Dave, who finally shows some human aggressiveness.
The monolith is a much more complicated object. It is decidedly not manmade. It appears to be alien in a literal sense. It is really a visual interpretation of alienated labor. The spark that the monolith produced led the first man to build a tool- to kill. This spark could be consciousness, or awareness, or logic. In any case, it leads to labor, which leads to alienation. The object created alienates man from himself. The monolith is thus the literal form of how the product has power over man.
When Dave turns off HAL, it makes for a breakthrough in the film and its symbolism. HAL, who has shown forms of personality, begs Dave for his “life.” He seemingly takes revenge on the humans and control of the mission by killing the frozen astronauts and Frank. He admits to being scared. He claims that he is losing his mind, but he is a computer. Perhaps HAL has a consciousness as well. Every report Dave and Frank read states that this has never happened before. Computers should not make mistakes, they see. HAL appears to be more human than these dull humans.
This is the next step in the evolutionary process. Man creates objects, but man is not an object. Man has a consciousness, and this separates him from animals and objects. Now, man has made an object with consciousness. The product of man’s labor has overtaken him. This completely inorganic device has reached the level of man. This means that man must adjust or be dominated by his own creation.
Dave’s actions represent a positive step for humanity. Throughout most of the non-prehistoric part of the film, the humans have been very passive. Dave stands up to the powerful computer and shuts it down. This represents man’s rejecting technology as a dominating force. Marx wanted people to stand up to the powers that controlled labor. In a way, Dave does that. He does not allow the product to control him. He asserts that he is a human and has power. He is not a slave to technology anymore.
Ironically, what should be a triumphant scene plays out more like a slow murder. The audience may feel compassion for HAL as Dave slowly disconnects his circuits. HAL’s rendering of an old song shows more of his human side. If HAL does have a consciousness, perhaps the audience must feel sorry for him as he is shut down. Though triumphant, the scene is a stark reminder of how far man has gone with technology. In creating thinking, man has played God in a sense.
Dave finally heads off into the infinite in the last part of the film. This is the most confusing part, but Kubrick may also have Marxist ideas in mind here. Dave, after traveling for however many hours or light-years, discovers a strange hotel. This hotel is a representation of how man has created an inorganic world. This world seems like an alien’s depiction of human quarters. Dave then sees himself as an older man, and finally, as a fetus.
Since man, at this point in the film, has created an object with consciousness, he must move on to the next stage of evolution: pure consciousness. “Nature is man’s inorganic body” Marx says. “Man lives from nature. Estranged labor estranges man from nature.” Man becomes an individual. If man has shunned nature and created a completely unnatural object with consciousness, then the next step is for man to become totally estranged with nature. Man leaves his organic body and becomes pure thought.
This is just my interpretation of the film, based on Marx’s text about man. I believe that Kubrick, in the end, intended to show man evolving again into new a new form. I know that Marx does not talk about it in the text, but I think this is the next step. I also think that Kubrick wanted to use this triumph of man over machine to send a warning to people. In the age of the cold war, the concern was that we would blow ourselves up with our brand new atomic bombs. Kubrick made a great farce out of this idea with Dr. Strangelove.
Kubrick uses many Marxist ideas in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The alienation of labor, as Marx described it, becomes a major part of the film. Marx’s theories on man as a species and as a conscious thinker also influenced Kubrick in the development of the film. Kubrick’s classic remains a mystery to many viewers, but with a Marxist reading, its purpose becomes clearer. Man cannot fall to his own creation. Labor must not make men slaves.