2001 a Space Oddessey , 50 years ago this month

[seth123]

As for AC Clarke, he was a pedophile and not ashamed of it, insisting that he was educating young boys in the ways of sex and what is wrong with that? His mate, Rupert Murdoch insisted that his papers not print the facts about Clarke as long as he was alive.

Stavros, you need to update wikipedia with your verified information if you can show proof that Artur C. Clarkk was a paedophile . It currently states that those accusations were proven to be false and apologised for as "The Sunday Mirror" never produced any shred of the evidence that they claimed to be at the source of their paedophilia report.
If it were true they should have stood by their story instead of apologising to avoid losing a lawsuit .
By the way , what relevance does this accusation have concerning the movie 2001 a Space Oddysey or any of Author C. Clarks work ?
The guy was a homosexual. Ever hear of Alan Turing, subject of the movie "The Imitation Game" ? He was born a few years before Clark?
Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, when by the Labouchere Amendment, "gross indecency" was criminal in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment, with DES, as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death as suicide,....., British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way he was treated." Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013. The Alan Turing law is now an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
Clarks moved to Sri Lanka, where laws against homosexuality were less harsh seems logical though he still could have faced being flogged as part of the existing laws on their books.


Knight Bachelor vs Paedophilia
On 26 May 2000 he was made a Knight Bachelor "for services to literature" at a ceremony in Colombo..... The award of a knighthood had been announced in the 1998 New Year Honours list, but investiture with the award had been delayed, at Clarke's request, because of an accusation, by the British tabloid The Sunday Mirror, of paedophilia. The charge was subsequently found to be baseless by the Sri Lankan police. According to The Daily Telegraph (London), the Mirror subsequently published an apology, and Clarke chose not to sue for defamation.Clarke himself said that "I take an extremely dim view of people mucking about with boys", and Rupert Murdoch promised him "the reporters responsible would never work in Fleet Street again".Clarke was then duly knighted......

And in addition:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-03-2...-lanka/1081914
"Clarke, who died Wednesday at age 90, vehemently denied the allegations and also threatened to sue the British newspaper which made the charges following a "sting operation" by two undercover reporters.
Clarke said at the time that he was "disturbed to discover that there has been a long-standing conspiracy here in Sri Lanka to discredit [him] ... involving activists associated with child welfare organisations."
The accusations surfaced while Prince Charles was visiting Colombo and was due to confer a knighthood on Clarke. The investiture was eventually held two years later.

[Stavros]

Seth I think you make fair points. I am not sure why I threw in the stuff about Clarke in my discussion of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I did and it was based on what I recall from the reports (and allegations) made at the time. I did not update my knowledge of this, mostly because I am not that interested in Clarke or science fiction, but I appear to be wrong, but did not intend to offend anyone by repeating the allegation.

The material on Alan Turing is irrelevant to the discussion. I feel ambivalent about the legal pardon which is a judgement that I feel should mostly only be made for the wrongful imprisonment of people who are still alive, of which there are too many. Perhaps the key point is the punishment that Turing was subjected to, which I think would impress those people on both sides of the Atlantic who want to reverse all of the laws on same-sex relations, re-criminalize anyone who is not like them, and offer 'therapy' to 'return' people to the natural heterosexuality that almighty God intended. This stands as a warning to all.

[trish]

It seems to me Kubrick had more than one story to tell. I’d rather not attempt to reduce his work to a single formula.

I agree Dr. Strangelove is a depressing film, but honestly so. The film was a warning that honestly depicted the paranoia of the times. Daniel Ellsberg, in his recent book Doomsday, says the Kubrick had it pretty much right: the failsafe mechanisms in our command structures were harrowingly faulty and could have (past tense?) easily led to the destruction of the civilized world. I think it is an important, must-see film.

On the other hand, 2001 is a hopeful film. It depicts a guided progression in the evolution of humankind. Huddled in fear under wind carved cliffs, listening to the roars of crepuscular predators we co-evolve with the tools we make, from simple to complex, from thoughtless amorality to the knowing eyes of the watchful star-child depicted in the closing scene. It is humans who that step - not artificial intelligence. One can disagree with Kubrick on just how desirable this vision might be, or on how accurate a depiction of evolution this might be, but I do not think one can disagree that both Kubrick and Clarke (although they disagreed about many things in relation to this film) intended the story to be one of hope. In the same way you can disagree with Nietzsche’s vision of Zarathustra, but you can’t disagree that Nietzsche thought that humans could be better than they are and that he thought of Zarathustra as a hopeful prophet of better times.

The Shining is of course a horror story. All horror stories end with a scene that tells the audience that despite appearances the story has not resolved. Relatively speaking, this one ends pretty well. Danny and his mother are saved. Mr. Hallorann died, but not before he passed on to Danny the important information the he is not alone. That he has an ability, not an affliction. Although he died almost immediately upon arrival, Hallorann is depicted as a human being at his best.

In Eyes Wide Shut we see a married couple no longer engaged in their relationship; just going through the motions - and not even all the motions. The last scene of the film signals an important change. Dr. Harford and his wife, Alice, are at close quarters, face to face. Alice starts,
“And you know, there is something we need to do as soon as possible.”
“What’s that?”
“Fuck.”

If you read Anthony Burgess’s book, A Clockwork Orange and then see Kubrick’s movie you’ll find the two are remarkably parallel. Kubrick didn’t change a whole lot. Reading the book is like seeing the movie and vice-versa. Alex is the teenage protagonist of this story. He’s smart. He's complex. He’s almost spiritually moved by Beethoven and also by violence. The narrative imagines a society were people like Alex can be cured by a sort of psychological conditioning that strips subjects of their free-will. Is this a trade society should be willing to make for law and order? Burgess and Kubrick through Alex answer, “No.” You can disagree, but I don’t see how this film says anything like, “I piss on life.” It merely opens a discussion on what society should be wiling to do to suppress criminal activities and rehabilitate offenders, if anything.

I see all of these films as fairly distinct. What they have in common is Kubrick's love of music, and his meticulous style of story telling.

[Stavros]

Trish, you offer an alternative view of Kubrick's films, it is one that I am familiar with, and though I don't agree with it, I accept that it is a valid interpretation.

If I defend my own, it is because I find so little in Kubrick's films that offers an alternative to what I see as his conservative politics: resistant to a change that humans cannot make. It is his essentialism, or 'realism' that I object to because there is so much more to human nature, and more positive than I think he allows in his films. The paradox of change in Kubrick's films lies in the ability of humans to develop technologies that change the way in which we live, yet does not appear to change the way we behave, yet this to me is one of the signal weaknesses of both his work and the 'realist' view of things, be it human nature or politics -because we have changed as a species over time, and change is always possible, as is evident to you and me with regard to 'race relations', gender & sexuality and even the mere idea of women in positions of political power, which just in my lifetime has undergone a major transformation.

Even where there is hope in the examples you give, they are lessened by something else -the liberation in The Shining is diverted from its happy ending to the camera in the hotel focusing on the photo from 1921. I don't read Eyes Wide Shut in the same way, but I consider it a waste of time anyway, while a Kubrick nerd has posted on a website all the references throughout the film that Kubrick makes to the films he made before it. However, I just can't accept the 'star child' stuff and the optimism of 2001, it is just a symbolic version of you and me, and the fanfare from 2001 is a mockery not the herald of something new, as nothing in the film suggests it.

Although I have come to detest his films after years of uncritical admiration, I accept he is an accomplished director, and that his mastery of technology gives his films an edge over many others. We can all also agree that 2001: A Space Odyssey was a pioneer of the superior space/science fiction films that have emerged since, though you wonder if the producers of both the execrable Star Trek and Star Wars series have taken the genre further rather than backwards, being little more than expensively produced tv shows. But, again and again, one comes back to the relationship between form and content, which is where, for me, Kubrick fails.

But that is just my interpretation and there are, as you have shown, alternative readings.