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The Monolith

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Submitted By comerunninghome
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i’ve watched 2001 along with other Kubrick films over ten times and as a prime of what I state of what my interpretion of the monolith it would be useful to highlife some details, one of them being that there are no aliens in the movie and there is no dialogs specifically describing dialogs. this is as close as we get “18 months ago the first evidence of intelligent life off the earth was discovered.” The briefing scene on the moon contains no cryptic references to the aliens, and may very well be talking about anything and humans flying around in space could also be considered intelligent life off the earth. Our assumption that an alien intelligence is guiding the whole movie is primarily based on the monolith. In the exacted screening of the screen Kubrick had included a voice over narration that explained the presence of an alien intelligence throughout the film, and after the investors of the movie had watched he thought to remove it in the general release. Kubrick then explained that the surface plot line that an alien intelligence is contacting the human race and guiding it’s revolution was the film’s “simplest level” and when asked to elaborate on the film he would flat out refuse or make cop out excuses not to talk about it at all, just being able to say what the viewer’s own subjectivity brought to the film. The film was very loosely inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Sentinel” the full novel of the movie was written as the film was being shot and was therefore was loosely based on the film brochures that was allowed to be seen by Clarke, Kubrick was constantly making changes to the script and had to sole write to dictate what shaped the novel through. Clarke was just a writer for hire and had no clue as to what Kubrick was up to. The result is that the dilm and novel is extremely different and this is also observed by Kubrick. Now regarding the monolith itself and it was pyramid shaped in Clarke’s original the short story and he changed into an upright rectangular slab and he experimented with projecting images on to the monolith’s surface that would instruct the apes and their intellectual development. Instasidy that feature is retained in the novel and Kubrick abandoned that because he didm’t want the monolith to be a “an advanced television teaching machine” now in the film itself endings with a series of shots of jupiter and the first one is slightly tilted as well as tjupiter and its moons these tilts increase gradually, at a point the shot gets to 90* angle. The shot then tilts upward to a 90* angle and as where we should see the sun we see the star gate. The monolith is always seen standing upwards but on the jupiter shot it seems to be floating about on it’s side, nothing past in its front or behind. Therefore we don’t know about it’s scale. In this shot it even threatened to align with the screen itself, and in the final shot in the stargaze it is tilted 90* on its side from it’s normal position then tilts back to normal and then disappears, the camera then makes the star gate transition, also in parallel view there is a sunrise with a moon positioned equator. The star gate also begins to vertically align tunnel that switches pricesily midway through to a horizontal tunnel and among it’s geometric patterns a series of fractal arrows tilting in to each other into 90* increments. The point of all this emphasis on 90* angled transitions that were non of which were in the novel is that the meaning of the monolith is hidden in by it’s orientation. we’re supposed to view it horizontally and it represents the screen which the film is being viewed. Basically, 2001 was funded as a space race propaganda film by nasa and the IBM and Kubrick has used a cryptic upright presentation of the monolith to hide simple clue which one discovered demolishes the artificial intelligence narrative. The film itself is the monolith, “the advanced television teaching machine” and the apes and the astronauts puzzled about the monolith convey to us that the space race propaganda is not real, it is an illusion. It’s just a movie.

This interpretation also explains many other things in the movie in this moon box landing sequence the pilots observe a graphical display that imitates the explosion of realization that we will see later in the stargate itself, and in in the center of the display a 90* tilted monolith rectangle slides in and aligns in the center causing sing the display to flash. The shot then cuts to a guy watching the same display below a window which may be representing us watching the movie. In the excavation scene the the astronauts line up for a photo shoot the cameraman can be seen shooting in 90* agree. Kubrick was a photographer as well and he coded an incredible clue, he timed the shots that so the rectangular lens flare flows in with the lines with it’s own light source at the prices moment that the monolith gives off in to appearing to be a signal.

In the mysterious bedroom in the end of the movie there is no way out, no doors. the astronaut is trapped, the monolith is positioned like a door and then the camera switches a position to external in of the door. Tv and cinema screens are flat and two diminutional. In the briefing scene, the monolith is

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