A Tale of Two Films

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...when I first saw ‘2001 a Space Odyssey’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_%28film%29). A king was about to fall and a nation tear itself apart in the culture war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war). But, between the nights of April 2, 1968 and April 3, 1968 those, who were lucky enough to gain admittance under the proper circumstances, were transfigured. I was too young to pass through the star gate, but I was there, having travelled across the city by myself. As I became aware that the sounds I was hearing, as we entered the ellipse of the Uptown’s auditorium, was some sort of music (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligeti), I began to get the feeling in my gut that something was different here and something was going to ‘happen’. Something quite unlike the cheese S.F. films I had grown up with. Then, in the dark of the auditorium, I heard Also Sprach Zarathustra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Also_sprach_Zarathustra_%28Richard_Strauss%29) for the first time in my life, as the camera lifted from the dark side of the moon to reveal an alignment of the Moon, Earth, and Sun in brilliant C major. The veil was lifted from my eyes and the philosophy of my fathers died on the spot.

By the end of the film I was reduced to a dazed silence having no idea of what I had just seen and heard or what had just happened and why. I remember, a number of us got on the bus outside the Uptown. There was no conversation. Everyone was deep in thought. Then someone mentioned that they had read ‘The Sentinel’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sentinel_%28short_story%29) and told us the story. I had become a child again.


It was many weeks before I saw ‘2001’ again, and it was not the film I saw the night after the premier. I later found out about the cuts and was crushed. I realized that I had seen the best film I had ever seen (I hadn’t seen much of the European or avant garde cinema at the time, having just become a teenager) and would never see it, whole, again. This was my greatest heartbreak until I watched America fumble the manned space program many years later. Little more than a year later we stepped out onto the moon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing) and truly entered ‘The Space Age’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Age), the age in which I became a man.

I mark, as I might, given it’s personal significance, The Space Age as the high point of American civilization. Kubrick had given us a vision of how it could be and what we could become out amongst the stars. Wernher von Braun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_von_Braun) had given us the means to step off this planet and move onto higher ground. Yet, it was not to be. We reverted to the animalistic ways of the retrogressive culture within our society and spent the money that would have elevated us on wars of idealism waged with the religious fanaticism of those who have nothing to live for but their warped beliefs in a heavenly reward for a life without 'sin'.

We spent trillions on wars against the communists who would have taken over the whole world; the hippies and dopers who wouldn’t die for their country; the queers who slaver around in the filth of their nightly assignations; and the Islamists who would take over what’s left of the world. We created an out of control military-industrial-intelligence complex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex , http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/) that couldn’t stop one young man with inflammable underwear from getting on a plane and burning himself up. We’ve fouled our air and our waters and allowed our educational and medical systems to fall into almost complete dysfunction! We have allowed our corporations to move almost all of their manufacturing and technical jobs overseas to cheaper labor pools causing massive permanent un- and underemployment, thus wiping out ‘the middle class’. We have allowed our financial and banking institutions to become centers of fraud and corruptions of every sort and then bailed them out with taxpayer dollars when they collapsed under the weight of their fraudulent repackaging of sham mortgage loans, thus causing a world wide economic collapse.

The space age world of my youth is now long dead. For today’s youth the space age is ancient history sometime before the great war of 911. The world that has replaced the world of my youth is a financially spent world of cynical liars who have turned ignorance and stupidity into virtues and institutionalized technical wizardry into nerdiness. Corrupt politicians in the pockets of corrupt businessmen who sell health and justice right along with Viagra and Coke Zero. A world where it is cool, in some circles, to wear your pants down below your ass and revel in a music that glorifies sexual violence and killing each other over a rock of crack cocaine. As those, below; so those above. A world where The Right news is taught to the faithful on the Fux News Nutwork by fat jolly white fellers who know black in the white house just ‘ain’t riight’!

Crapitalism has triumphed over Clownmunism and the world that is left branded is that, so wickedly depicted, in 'Idiocracy' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy)! As the great wiki puts it:

“…natural selection has become indifferent toward intelligence, so that in a society in which intelligence is systematically debased, stupid people easily out-breed the intelligent, creating, over the course of five centuries, an irredeemably dysfunctional society. Consequently, the children of the educated elites are drowned in a sea of sexually promiscuous, illiterate, alcoholic, ADHD, degenerate peers.”

Sound familiar? I first saw this on cable coming in during the middle of the film and wondered: WTF? But, after a while I got into it and nearly busted ‘my Balls!’ Every scene is a scream! Easily as funny as ‘Dr. Strangelove’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove). The main problem with this film is that it was too conservative in trying to maintain its verisimilitude. Five centuries? How about five decades of republicanism! In ‘Idiocracy’, the people still wear their pants up over their assess, although ‘Ass’ is the biggest hit on the big screen at the time depicted in the film. As Not Sure’s doctor puts it, just as Not Sure sees just where he is:

“Right, kick ass. Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothin', but, ah... it says on your chart that you're fucked up. Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded. What I'd do, is just like... like... you know, like, you know what I mean, like...”

and

“Don't worry, scrote. There are plenty of 'tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was 'tarded. She's a pilot now.”

Yeah…well…you know: welcome to your future. A long way down from ‘2001’. Remember, the apes in ‘2001’ were on their way to The Space Age. The ‘tards’ are on their way back to The Stone Age. And what awaits them before the get there? ‘The Road’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road), but that’s another story…

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