Warning: Spoilers ahead! This post contains furthermore copyrighted material for the purpose of research, commentary and eduction as per fair use provisions.
We have arrived in the second act of
2001: A Space Odyssey – the TMA-1 sequence. It is the 1. setting of the act, the Orion III Spaceplane, with which Dr. Heywood R. Floyd travels to his first stop, the Space Station, while on his way to TMA-1, the second Monolith of the film.
What do we see on the very first cut to the interior of the Spaceplane? We become witness of an assassination – an purely symbolical assassination, of course.
First we see Dr. Heywood R. Floyd sleeping in his seat – some movie can be seen on the TV screen in front of him:
The movie we see shows us cars on what resembles an airfield:
His pen floats into view:
The movie zooms in on a car, which seems to be (what I presume) some futuristic version of the Corvette Sting Ray:
The pen's tip is visibly blood-red:
In the car we see a woman and a man. The woman sits on the left side, the man sits on the right, and they talk with each other:
As the pen floats in front of the TV screen, the man in the car is beheaded, he gets his head cut off – symbolically, of course – by the tip of the pen. This is the stroke that orders an assassination:
We see the pen drifting for a little more:
What's interesting to note is (again) the formula 2+1=3: The pen has 3 buttons: 2 white buttons, and 1 red button (ASO125-01):
We see the Stewardess enter …
… with the famous velcro-boots:
The woman on the TV screen, as we can see, looks vaguely like Jacqueline …
… while he looks vaguely like John Fitzgerald:
The stewardess comes by, grabs the pen and safely tucks it away into Dr. Floyd's pocket – how nice if the personnel shows initiative and acts on their own.
Finally she turns the TV off – all is well again.
The
very first close-up shot of a modern human in the film, and what do we witness? An (allegorical) assassination – with the stroke of a pen. We have seen a murder before in the film, but the early humans had to use crude weapons to slay one-another, to club each other to death – now humans are civilized, and their murdering has become civilized as well.
The pen's tip is red, symbolically covered in blood – from the look of it we can presume that this wasn't the first assassination ordered with the pen. It is Dr. Floyd's pen – the pen is Dr. Floyd's murder weapon.
However, Dr. Floyd is sleeping, he knows nothing of what his pen does. In the surface narrative Floyd would have known better than to let his pen float freely around at zero-G. In the hidden allegorical narrative Floyd has not openly ordered an hit, it were Dr. Floyd's underlings that acted on their own – but Dr. Floyd need not be concerned. And after all, (to paraphrase) Dr. Floyd knows his men "do things the way Dr. Floyd wants them done", Dr. Floyd doesn't even have to give orders:
FLOYD
Thanks, Ralph. Oh, by the way, I wanted to say to both of you I think you've done a wonderful job. I appreciate the way you've handled this thing.
HALVORSEN
Well, the way we look at it it's our job to do this thing the way you want it done and we're only too happy to be able to oblige.
Dr. Heywood R. Floyd is in the surface narrative of
2001 the head of the "National Council of Aeronautics (NCA)", and for the purpose of the surface narrative he is a mix between Wernher von Braun and McGeorge Bundy. In the hidden allegorical narrative the agency he heads will carry out an "wet operation" without his overt knowledge – but he does not need to worry, as people will step in on their own initiative – without need for orders – and set things straight: the pen is put out of sight, and the TV is switched off. At the end Floyd will be able to plausibly deny any knowledge.
An personal intermission: Let me make it clear while I think that what Kubrick portrays here is not far from reality (the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem and the behaviour by Lucien Conein* come to my mind), I however think Kubrick had another specific example in mind, and I think Kubrick might have gotten that specific example wrong.
Kubrick gives us quite striking images at the beginning of the TMA-1 sequence – here the replay:
Zapruder, eat your heart out.
We will see where this leads further in the film – or so I hope.
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* By the way, Lucien Conein has served as Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.'s liaison officer with the coup plotters. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. in turn was the first to hold in 1960 a speech for a presidential rally at the University of Illinois – in Urbana, Illinois – before JFK spoke there as well during the same year. Amusing coincidence, but likely not relevant, as it is doubtful whether Kubrick could have known the extent of the role of Lucien Conein.
