Here's my tedious "reading" of 2001: Hal is basically a
cosmic abortion/fetus, a "step" in evolution which is conditioned but not
made
by the humans' contact with the monolith, which is just a place-saver
for the condition which "sepearates people from animals." It (the monolith)
is not in
any significant way the token of a divinity or a "superior" intelligence
(although you can figure the thing it is that way if you want to). In the
place of the monolith, you can just place the words "we don't know." Its
a big question mark, or "the phallus" or whatever you want (but not, that
is it isn't any of these things in a positive way). Hal is the product of
the human political relationships of the second segment of the film in
the exact same way the bone-club is in the first--that is as the next
logical "step" in the story we make for ourselves. The ONLY difference is
that neither Kubrick nor anybody else knew what happens after we generate
an intelligence--that is, after we occupy the position we find it
necessary to posit as the very divinity/intelligence that the monolith
is(n't). Do we become divine? Does the intelligence we create resolve the
questions that make us exist and just kind of turn us off? Do we step
forward into some new exciting stage of existence? Do concepts like time
and space become meaningless and confuse our unready sensibilities to the
point of immobilizing us? The film offers all of these possibilities, but
anyone who tries to tell you that they know that answeris (I think)
barking up the wrong tree.
 
        I think what's so interesting about 2001 is that it fields its
complicated set of signs, some of which are pretty blindingly obvious
after all, and ends up in the process utterly destroying any "reading" of
those signs which can be made into a unified text. I understand that
Kubrick has claimed that he felt like the making of the film was more or
less a fiasco and that he didn't intend all of the connections which
people see in the film. That's clearly untrue (whether or not he said
it), but in saying it he tells the story of the film--which resolutely
refuses to "mean" in the way that we as filmgoers expect it to.
 
 
Enjoy teaching it, I think its a far, far better film than the arrogant
critical response affords it.
 
 
Sean Desilets
Tufts University
 
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