.................................
To leave Commie, hyper to
http://commie.oy.com/commie_leaving.html
.................................

Surely sendmail reeled when thusly spake Jarmo Lundgren:
> 
> .... and 2001 in a nut-shell:
> http://www.angelfire.com/on2/daviddarling/2001.htm
> 

Screw that.  Here's one I wrote up, after seeing the film.

*       *

This time I tried to watch it from the viewpoint of the Monolith.


>From the viewpoint of the Monolith, the film is a drama in two acts:

        1) Monkeys and pigs

        2) Monkeys with rockets

In the first act, the Monolith arrives, and observes.  What it finds 
is a "Peaceable Kingdom".  Monkeys and Tapirs compete for grasses. 
The book version also informs that the Apes are dying out.

The Monolith observes.  The Tapirs take no notice of it, but the Apes
poke it, stroke it, respect it, show curiosity.  So the Monolith, 
presented with a choice, chooses Ape rather than Tapir. [1] 


Using means that are known only to itself, the Monolith works its 
effects.  An Ape gets a clue that its friend the Tapir can be Food. 

This one Ape starts the New Way, and the whole tribe benefits. This 
is emphatically emphasized in a long scene of Apes eating Tapir.  
Num num num.

What the Apes have acquired is a new sensibility of violence. This 
same sense helps the Ape tribe take control of the waterhole from 
the other, probably much stupider ape tribe.  What the Apes have 
gained is mainly knowledge of Tools.  Now this Ape tribe has both 
food and water, and they are set to colonize the savannah, and 
thence the entire planetoid.


Cut to shot of Pan Am Space Clipper.  


After some plot details, the New Space Apes have let a HAL 9000
(one of two in existence) control their living environment, and 
they are homing in on a Second Monolith.


The Apes are apparently no longer engaged in fratricide, but the 
cause for this is somehow linked to the fact that their culture's 
embodiment of Reason, HAL 9000, has also become a vessel for their 
sublimated general murderous intent.  The unresolvable tension 
between Reason and Violence has been displaced onto HAL, and 
preoccupied by its own curiosity, HAL snaps under the strain.

Luckily for Home Sapiens, the entity that arrives at the Jupiter 
star gate is Frank Poole, _NOT_ HAL 9000, because the New Space 
Ape outwits the computer.  If it had been HAL 9000 in the hotel 
room, could we possibly imagine what form the Starchild would 
have taken ?  Probably none: the Monolith would have understood 
that the Apes had been (in this critical situation) overruled by 
their own insensate monster, and the Monolith would have gone back 
to sleep, to continue its long wait for a spacefaring carbon-based 
lifeform.


[1] or maybe it tried the Tapirs too but they were not receptive


Copyright (c) 2002, Fred Baube  :)


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