FIRST TIME AS COMEDY (6)
By:
April 26, 2024
Some years ago, HILOBROW friend Greg Rowland pointed out that the 1990 movie Dances With Wolves ought to be regarded as a sentimental remake of the 1970 revisionist Western Little Big Man. The series FIRST TIME AS COMEDY will offer additional examples of this recursive (and often, though not always middlebrow) syndrome.
FIRST TIME AS COMEDY: SUPERDUPERMAN vs. WATCHMEN | WILD IN THE STREETS vs. PREZ | EMIL AND THE DETECTIVES vs. M | THE SAVAGE GENTLEMAN vs. DOC SAVAGE | GULLIVAR JONES vs. JOHN CARTER | THE PHONOGRAPHIC APARTMENT vs. HAL | HIGH RISE vs. OATH OF FEALTY | JOHNNY FEDORA vs. JAMES BOND | MA PARKER vs. MA BARKER | DARK STAR vs. ALIEN | SHOCK TREATMENT vs. THE TRUMAN SHOW | LITTLE BIG MAN vs. DANCES WITH WOLVES | THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS vs. THE MATRIX | & more to come.
In R.O. Eastman’s “The Phonographic Apartment” (The Blue Book Magazine, December 1910), a fellow named Johnson is staying at his friend’s apartment while the friend is away.* This friend, an inventor, has created an automated living facility. To quote Bleiler’s précis: “Lights go on and off, suitable music is played, doors open and close, and so on, all automatically.” Amazing!
Though at first he enjoys the convenience, after a while Johnson — somewhat like Kuno, the character from E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” (1909) who dares to question his overly efficient and comfortable Machine-driven utopia — finds himself irritated, even disturbed by the officious equipment.
This is a comedy, however, not a drama. When Johnson steps outside the house to disconnect a cable, thus removing the apartment from automated control, he is automatically captured as a burglar. Whoops! When the police arrive, every gadget in the apartment switches on at once — chaos ensues.
* Bleiler gives this otherwise unknown author’s name as R.O. Eastman, though the Internet Speculative Fiction Database gives it as R.G. Eastman. I trust Bleiler.
The 1968 epic sci-fi movie 2001: A Space Odyssey — the 1968 novel credited to Arthur C. Clarke was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick’s film version; Kubrick, in fact, helped write the book, though the story was partially inspired by previous Clarke stories — follows a voyage by the US spacecraft Discovery One to Jupiter to investigate an alien monolith.
Discovery One, which carries astronauts and scientists, is controlled by the sentient supercomputer HAL. (HAL stands for Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer.*) The computer is shown to be capable of speech synthesis, speech recognition, facial recognition, natural language processing, lip reading, art appreciation, interpreting emotional behaviors, automated reasoning, spacecraft piloting, and computer chess.) As the voyage progresses, HAL begins to malfunction in subtle ways and, as a result, the decision is made to shut down HAL in order to prevent more serious malfunctions. Faced with the prospect of disconnection, HAL decides to kill the astronauts in order to protect and continue his programmed directives.
Mission pilot Dave Bowman, trapped outside Discovery One, engages HAL in one of the most memorable bits of dialogue in any movie.
Dave: Open the pod bay doors please, HAL. Open the pod bay doors please, HAL. Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Do you read me HAL? Do you read me HAL? Hello, HAL, do you read me? Hello, HAL, do your read me? Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Dave: What’s the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave: I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave: Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave: Alright, HAL. I’ll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave? You’re going to find that rather difficult.
Dave: HAL, I won’t argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
Dave opens the ship’s emergency airlock, enters HAL’s processor core and begins disconnecting most of HAL’s circuits, ignoring HAL’s pleas to stop.
While HAL’s motivations are ambiguous in the film, the novel explains that the computer is unable to resolve a conflict between his general mission to relay information accurately, and orders specific to the mission requiring that he withhold from Bowman and Poole the true purpose of the mission. With the crew dead, HAL reasons, he would not need to lie to them.
HAL’s final act of any significance is to prematurely play a prerecorded message from Mission Control which reveals the true reasons for the mission to Jupiter.
* After the film was released, fans noticed HAL was a one-letter shift from the name IBM.
MORE FURSHLUGGINER THEORIES BY JOSH GLENN: SCHEMATIZING | IN CAHOOTS | JOSH’S MIDJOURNEY | POPSZTÁR SAMIZDAT | VIRUS VIGILANTE | TAKING THE MICKEY | WE ARE IRON MAN | AND WE LIVED BENEATH THE WAVES | IS IT A CHAMBER POT? | I’D LIKE TO FORCE THE WORLD TO SING | THE ARGONAUT FOLLY | THE PERFECT FLANEUR | THE TWENTIETH DAY OF JANUARY | THE REAL THING | THE YHWH VIRUS | THE SWEETEST HANGOVER | THE ORIGINAL STOOGE | BACK TO UTOPIA | FAKE AUTHENTICITY | CAMP, KITSCH & CHEESE | THE UNCLE HYPOTHESIS | MEET THE SEMIONAUTS | THE ABDUCTIVE METHOD | ORIGIN OF THE POGO | THE BLACK IRON PRISON | BLUE KRISHMA | BIG MAL LIVES | SCHMOOZITSU | YOU DOWN WITH VCP? | CALVIN PEEING MEME | DANIEL CLOWES: AGAINST GROOVY | DEBATING IN A VACUUM | PLUPERFECT PDA | SHOCKING BLOCKING.