When preparing the movie "2001 Space Odyssey", Kubrick believed that the first thing that needs to be determined is whether the issue of alien life is a legal scientific research topic? Are we the only one in the universe? Does it have far-reaching significance to human beings? If this can be done, other questions will be accepted.
Kubrick interviewed the cutting-edge scientists, theologians, astronomers and philosophers who studied the problems of alien life during the filmmaking process. Kubrick carefully listed a series of questions and looked for answers, and in 1966 he sent his colleague Roger Carras to interview "21 scientists" and other scientists and others who he believed could contribute to the production work.
This movie has invested a lot of scientific research in the production process, and can almost be called a documentary that accurately predicts the emergence of things such as credit cards, chat software and tablets.
All the people interviewed have been or have become important international figures in their respective fields, and to emphasize their importance, some of them have been included in David W. Swift’s recently praised SETI Pioneer: Scientists are here to talk about their exploration of extraterrestrial civilizations.
I randomly selected some names: Alexander Ivanovic Opalin (1894-1980), the most important scientist who studied the origin of life in the 20th century, elaborated on the understanding that was described as the first to be able to talk to the main modern issue.
Hallow Shapley (1885-1972) is a great American astronomer and an eloquent writer, and is also a source of knowledge about the size and shape of the Milky Way.
Skinner (1904-1990) is well known for his research on behavioral regulation. Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) invented the Dyson Ball. Dr. Margaret Mead (1901-1978) is the author of the book "Adult of the Samoans" (1928). He has successively proposed cultural determinism, three metaphors cultural theory and generation gap theory, and is known as the mother of anthropology.
Frank Drake (1930-) was a pioneer of SETI and radio astronomy and the maker of Drake's equations. These scientists undoubtedly provide scientific guarantees for film production. Although many people call him a pessimist, rather, Kubrick is a pragmatist.
In an interview on "2001 Space Odyssey" in 1968, he wonderfully summarized his views on the dilemma of humanity: "No matter how vast the darkness is, we must supply our own light." Trying to select the elusive and changeable beauty in human nature in amidst all the shortcomings and atrocities of mankind.
Although he describes a bleak future in which robots are “much greater than their human creators”, his story revolves around robots’ hopelessly futile pursuit of being human, for that indescribable quality that makes people “real”.
When "Dr. Strange Love" stands up from a wheelchair, takes a twisted step, shouts "Futh" and walks with this dramatic ecstasy; when Sir Charles Linden, who is paralyzed in "Barry Linden", turns into an unwell cough, and then turns into a heart attack; when Jack loudly complains about his married "old sperm bank" in "The Shining" (1980), how do we comment on such feelings or emotions?
It is certain that these emotions are black humorous, but they can also trigger other types of emotions - shock, disgust, horror, live entertainment, and even sadistic pleasure. To understand their impact and their impact on Kubrick’s so-called calmness, I think they can be examined from a weird aesthetic point of view.
However, the etymology of "geeky" is the Italian word "grottesco". To use this word to express Kubrick's business method , we must first consider the cultural history of the term and its influence on poetics.
Two Evil Elements
Unlike many important categories in art history, "Evil Evil" has a rather specific date of birth. It originated in the late 15th century. A series of exquisite murals were unearthed under the city of Rome at that time. In which images of animals, plants and minerals were mixed together in a strange way, deliberately confusing life and inanimate: human heads grow from trees, animal faces are pressed against humans, garlands grow from candlesticks, etc.
These paintings, denounced as "monsters" and "bastards", were discovered by the classical writer Vitruvie of the Augustan era in grottoes or caves and derived the adjective "grottesco" and the noun "lagrottesca" from this "underground" source. Initially these two words only refer to ancient decorative styles, but not long afterwards, the French writer Rabelay used "geeky" to describe the deformed or "lower" aspects of the human body.
By the eighteenth century Britain and Germany, the word has become a proper noun for art criticism and has a purely derogatory or critical connotation. Finally, during the Victorian era, British art historian John Ruskin gave it an important definition, which influenced almost all subsequent uses.
In "The Stone of Venice", Ruskin describes a series of "monsters" heads engraved on the Bridge of Sighs and other Venetian landmarks, "walking in the degradation of beasts", All these sculptures are inspired by "stupid mockery spirit", Ruskin moralizes the weirdness in a typical Victorian style, appreciates the "roadside" culture of medieval peasants belonging to the festival, and criticizes the decadence created by the Venetian aristocracy during the Renaissance, who created masked carnivals and played "unnecessarily" and engage in "uneasiness and dissatisfaction".
However, he found examples of "noble" weirdness in Dante's "Hell" and Shakespeare's "Othello" and "King Lear". Finally, he believed that "there is no great test of any era, country or person, more certain than development. is a noble weirdness among them or among them; nothing can test smaller or limited than no weird invention."
Kubrick once said in an interview: In my opinion, weirdness is composed of two elements in almost all cases, one is funny and the other is terrifying. When one or the other of these elements prevails, geeks are divided into two branches, hilarious geeks and terrible geeks.
But we can't reasonably consider it in both ways, because there are few examples that don't combine these two elements to some extent: there are few weird, totally fun to the cloudy day without shadow fear, and there are few ideas that absolutely exclude all jokes. This passage shows the weirdness in the context of Ku style movies.
The weirdness in the eyes of bystanders
The most detailed academic attempt to explore the full meaning of weirdness can be found in Wolfgang Kayser's Beauty and the Beast: The Griffon in Literature and Art, translated into English in 1968, and it draws the concept of a psychological strategy of form composition, aimed at familiarizing yourself with everyday life, with the purpose of wiping absurdity and horror from life.
Another influential theory was proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin (November 17, 1895-March 7, 1975) in "Rabile and His World". Bakhtin almost completely confined himself to "exciting" or "carnival". He explained that it was a popular social ritual dedicated to various physical overbearings, and targeted the superior power of the sun, the earth, the king, the military leader.
For almost all writers later, grotesque is in some way a wider category associated with carnival and horror—extreme, severely detached from comedy on the one hand, and grotesque, bizarre or supernatural on the other. However, in all its visual and linguistic representations, the quirky is composed of dual meanings.
Its defining feature is the “unresolved” tension between laughter and unpleasant emotions such as disgust or fear described by Philip Tomp’s son. In fact, it blends the urge to laugh and scream, leaving the audience or reader balanced between conflicts and overwhelmed. The problem with the definition of is of course that each audience may have different reactions.
Ultimately, in a way, weirdness is always in the eyes of the bystanders because it involves the effect of discord, and people sometimes disagree with what it should include. What exactly is
mixed with laughter and fear? Do you need to be disgusted to do weird things? To what extent is weird a style or theme? (For Victor Hugo, weirdness is something that appears in nature, not just in art.)
Is it an artistic model? If so, how does it contribute to related models like this? Satire, comics and black comedy? In my opinion, no one has given a completely satisfactory answer to these questions, although the reasonable and compelling argument has been made that grotesque relies on a more extreme style of exaggeration than a single narrative, and unlike some types of black comedy, it is totally focused on discordant or disgusting body images.
For most artists who are concerned with weird topics, weirdness seems to be completely visual, presented through pictures or descriptive language. Accordingly, there is no weird music, although when Alex is accompanied by a rape night and his "extreme violence" rendition of "The Song in the Rain", one might argue that the connection is weird.
Some writers, mainly Thomasman, claim that the tendency of modernist literature to mix genres and tones is essentially a weird practice. However, the most common understanding of this term is that involves deformities and disgusting manifestations of the body—especially when they overemphasize sexuality, or when they portray body secretions or fluids.
The same situation applies to images of human anatomy with alien images—images of animals, puppet legs, and so on. In the movie, masks, makeup, wide-angle close-ups can be used to create weirdness, stinging to extremely obese, thin or ugly actors, making their faces both funny and terrifying.
