dimfuture.net

Certainly, a large part of the allure of villainy – a large part of the reason that, on some quiet level, we want to be villains – is that villains have power. They have to; it is a definitive trait. An enemy who is easily thwarted by Our Heroes, whomever they may be, creates no real narrative tension, and can thus hardly really be called a ‘villain.’ Now, this power can take any of a hundred forms; devilish cleverness will do, as will simple possession of henchmen. Let us define ‘power,’ then, for our purposes, as ‘ability to affect one’s environment.’ Or, as Doctor Doom might put it, “The ability to impose one’s iron will upon lesser men, and upon the very nature of time and space itself!” Thanks, Doctor! And we all have that; villains just have more of it.

By this definition, then, there are few great cinematic villains as powerful as the HAL 9000 computer, from 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL does not merely affect his environment; he is his environment. They come right out and say it: There is, we are told, “not a single aspect of ship operations that’s not under his control.” And there are subtler means of communicating the fact. Dave Bowman asks him how he’s doing; “Everything’s running smoothly,” he replies, which is appropriate – he is everything. HAL appears as a circle, and the circle is a recurring theme throughout the Discovery (the ship that HAL runs). This circle motif also creates a suggestion of completeness; the circle is a symbol of the totality of existence, of the world, that recurs from culture to culture. And beyond the Discovery, beyond HAL, there is nothing, emptiness. The astronauts have the ship, and they have HAL, and they have nothing else – at least, not until HAL is overcome.

The very moment that HAL’s shutoff is complete, a recorded video plays, and Bowman learns the truth of his mission – to find the recipient of the transmission made by a mysterious monolith, secretly discovered on the moon. The monolith, we have seen, is an agent of intellectual advancement; it brought reasoning tool-use to the ancestors of humanity. Bowman himself proceeds directly to the next monolith, and hence, to the next level of consciousness, which is, to the regret of many Americans, not actually Jesus. Rather, it is a riot of color and image and chaos, and it must be so; it is the next great advancement in human consciousness, and hence is incomprehensible, chaotic, to such viewers as we, stuck at the current level. And it comes really the moment HAL is killed. Now, along with HAL’s control over the ship comes another sort of power: the intellect to do so properly. He is said to be “foolproof and incapable of error”; he beats Bowman at chess – apologetically! – and Bowman is not in the least bit surprised. He is a computer from the future, after all. Let us say, then, that what HAL symbolizes, that the human trait that HAL exaggerates by not being human, is logical thinking. Thus a strong theme of the film is how logic must be transcended for the next level of consciousness to be achieved. (Fox News viewers: Please note that “transcended” is actually a very, very different concept from “ignored.” No, seriously!) This is a favorite theme of Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the film; it also appears in his novel Childhood’s End. And it is absolutely not an anti-logic philosophy. Note that it takes HAL to get mankind to the monolith.

Interestingly, it would be a mistake to take HAL as a purely logical entity, like so many of his future-computer counterparts. Toward the beginning of the Discovery sequence, the presence of real emotions in HAL is judged to be a question that no one can truthfully answer. By HAL’s end, though, the answer is very clear. HAL is clearly capable of fear, anger, and, especially, pride. Bowman asks if he’s taken care of a simple routine; “Of course I have,” he replies, wounded by the question. Bowman goes out to retrieve the body of Frank Poole, whom HAL has just murdered, unbeknownst to Bowman; he asks for a track on Poole’s body – “Yes,” says HAL, “I have a good track.” HAL begs for his life, when the end comes. And, of course, he goes crazy. Thinking he is going to be shut off, he defends himself – killing his tormentors.

But any old future-computer can go crazy and try to kill people, emotions or no. What, then, is the point, in the narrative, of giving feelings to HAL? Primarily, it humanizes him. There may well be a sort of paralleling between himself and Bowman. Red is the color for them both (HAL’s eye and Bowman’s spacesuit); Bowman is seen only as a great, staring eye during several parts of the final sequence; and much as HAL is an emotional computer, Bowman is a reserved and phlegmatic human. As the transcending of logic for advanced consciousness is a personal affair, so is Bowman’s overcoming of HAL, on a symbolic level, an overcoming of himself.

The humanizing of HAL also throws his own inhumanity into harsh relief. He is, of course, unmistakably a computer, and a cold one for it. He may have emotions, but they are clearly under control. His stare is unblinking. As he begs for his life, his tone remains cool. Even as he kills the astronauts, only once does he allow any darkness or threat to come into his voice: Bowman tries to contact HAL from a remote pod, saying, “HAL, do you read me?” over and over again, until HAL finally sneers, “Affirmative, Dave, I read you.” From then on, though, his voice returns to its cool, even tones, and he is the very soul of politeness. Asked to open the pod bay doors: “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Told that Dave is going to try to come in directly through the airlock: “Without your space helmet, Dave, you’re going to find that rather difficult.” He regrets to inform you that he is going to kill you. And it is at this point that he is scariest.

When a human being goes red with rage, this is actually not as bad as it seems. The rushing of blood to the skin is actually a manifestation of the parasympathetic nervous system – the system that shuts the body down, that tells it to relax and conserve strength – at war with the sympathetic system, which is the system that prepares the body to act. A red-faced person is in conflict between the two, between action and paralyzing fear. And this is probably the most common variety of anger. But sometimes, a person will go white with rage. In this case, the sympathetic system has entirely taken over, and the body is committed to action. And if that action does not happen to be ‘running away,’ then, well, you have reason to be afraid. Being white with anger signifies control, a rare and alarming sort of control. It is something to watch out for. And it is, of course, what HAL is all about – the cold and efficient enemy, unencumbered by doubt, by immediate emotional response. (It’s ironic, in a way, that red is his color.) The villain who is polite and unmoved as he personally kills you is a figure that is in control, even of himself. And that is a kind of power that we fear and admire.

One could go on and on about this, or about any aspect of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Every shot of this movie is a goddamned work of art, full of symbols and deserving of analysis. But now our time, I fear, is up.