Kubrick's 2001: The Medium Is The Message

As Stanley Kubrick himself asserts, "2001 is a nonverbal experience; out of two hours and nineteen minutes of film, there are only a little less than forty minutes of dialog" (Nordern 47). Nothing is more evocative of the silence of which Kubrick speaks than the black monolith at the center of events in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is the ultimate promoter of change, the catalyst for evolution, the mysterious object of vast significance whose origin and message is unknown. All the characters of 2001 can do is react to the monolith's wavelength and let it take them wherever it leads. Likewise, the viewer of the film can do little more. While critics such as Eric Nordern have pondered the meaning of Kubrick's Odyssey, answers remain elusive and the film resists dissection. For in the words of Marshall McLuhan, "the medium is the...
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