![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/2001Style_B.jpg\" "\\"2001Style_B\\"")
<\/a>Read the following remarks at your own risk.\u00a0 The post begins one way and finishes in another.<\/p>\nThe online film journal Senses of Cinema<\/em><\/a> has an excellent essay by Pedro Blas Gonzalez<\/em> called Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: An Existential Odyssey<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 He examines 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em><\/a> from an existential viewpoint.\u00a0 He focuses primarily on astronaut Dave Bowman’s journey in the film toward not only a far-flung physical destination, but also his journey as a human being on a path toward knowledge, an unknown future and ultimate change or evolution.\u00a0 I’ve always viewed the Bowman character as being exceedingly emotional and noble in spite of the fact that he barely moves a facial muscle or changes his vocal tone.\u00a0 He seems on the surface to be little more than another machine on board the giant Jupiter-bound space ship.\u00a0 But he is in fact full of tiny, barely perceptible emotions and concerns that make him perhaps the greatest representative character for the human species in film history.\u00a0 The Bowman character completes his mission of discovery by surmounting incredible obstacles, included the most powerful example of artificial intelligence ever devised by humankind.\u00a0 But he does this without ever losing his capacity for anger, despair, love, fear, or wonder.<\/p>\n We’ve lived through what I consider to be the single worst decade in the history of the United States, including the time of the Civil War.\u00a0 In 2000, the country willfully elected to the presidency the most uneducated, unintelligent, disgusting, drunken, irresponsible, uncaring, warlike, criminal and religious fanatic in its history.\u00a0 The damage done to our own self-image, to our sense of wonder in the face of the magnificent unknown, to our drive forward technically, scientifically, artistically, and morally, to our own self-respect and our dignity in a world teeming with slavery and murder and starvation – well this damage is going to be exceedingly difficult to repair.\u00a0 We’ve seen the drive for knowledge turned into something that is suspect, something that religion should argue with and fight at every turn.\u00a0 This is the legacy of the first decade of the twenty-first century.\u00a0 The tragic crime committed by half of the population of the United States to elect – twice-over – the closest thing to an authoritarian leader we’ve ever had will not be wiped clean by voting for new candidates.\u00a0 These awful people are among us.\u00a0 They work with us in offices, in grocery stores, on farms, selling insurance, selling\u00a0 cars, investing on Wall Street.\u00a0 They are all around us and they are waiting to destroy again.\u00a0 They want us to be dumb and mute.\u00a0 They want us worshiping in their churches.\u00a0 They want women to answer to them for how they use their bodies.\u00a0 They want us to ignore the greatest scientific thoughts ever had and to replace them with tall-tales from an ancient book of children’s stories called The Bible<\/em>.\u00a0 It has been my mission over the past year to fight these people and to rid this web site of them (thousands and thousands of them, by the way), and to break their web links by using aggressive and insulting language at every possible turn.\u00a0 I freely mix children’s stories and games with brutal assaults on this ignorant and dangerous population within our nation.\u00a0 After 15 years of experience with children’s web sites, I have decided that they are rubbish.\u00a0 They serve little purpose and make a pretense at wholesomeness and clean language which only does a disservice to our children who must grow up with the strength and knowledge to eradicate the foolishness that has prevailed over the past decade.\u00a0 I have no concern for who I may insult, including my own authors who may or may not want their content removed because of my strong views.\u00a0 My candle is a blowtorch and I turn it on barbarians with joy.\u00a0 The only effective way to fight them is to get excited about discovery and knowledge again –\u00a0 to do what Star Trek<\/em> says we should do:<\/p>\n …to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes. We won’t get there by watching imbeciles like James Cameron<\/em> film tales about white guys invading blue guys.\u00a0 50-some-year-old adolescents pretending to be great directors don’t give us anything worth knowing.\u00a0 Artists like Kubrick do.\u00a0 Films like 2001: A Space Odyssey do.\u00a0 We need to take this next decade and use it to elevate ourselves beyond and out of reach of the poor lost savages we see around us driving their pick-ups, their SUVs, thumbing through their Bibles and Korans, and going to movies like Avatar<\/em>.\u00a0 Let’s try thinking again.\u00a0 Go rent 2001.\u00a0 Watch it.\u00a0 Wonder.\u00a0 Think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the following remarks at your own risk.\u00a0 The post begins one way and finishes in another. The online film journal Senses of Cinema has an excellent essay by Pedro Blas Gonzalez called Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: An Existential Odyssey.\u00a0 He examines 2001: A Space Odyssey from an existential viewpoint.\u00a0 He focuses primarily on astronaut Dave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,163],"tags":[828,455,2494,246,830],"class_list":["post-3123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-comment","category-opinion","tag-2001-a-space-odyssey","tag-cinema","tag-film","tag-kubrick","tag-new-year"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3123"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3128,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123\/revisions\/3128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}