One of the seminal geek films is Stanley Kubrick’s SF masterpiece, 2001. That it takes place mostly in outer space is not why geeks embrace the film. They love it because it takes place in outer space and does it well: silence in a vacuum, slow and stately ship maneuvers, even artificial gravity generated by centripetal force rather than magic. Add this accuracy to stark cinematography, a beautiful score, and an intriguing series of stories, and you get a geek film for the ages.
And the ages is what 2001 is all about. The film is divided into four sections, and, thankfully for our purposes, each features food in some way.
Our first view of the apes is as they are eating, competing with herbivorous tapirs for leaves and other plantstuff. A hardscrabble existence. Worse, a leopard attacks one of the apes, revealing one rather embarrassing aspect of our ancestors’ existence: Ape As Food.
After the Monolith appears and the apes learn how to use tools and weapons, the Tapirs Are Food. In fact, it might be said the Monolith’s “uplifting” of the ape teaches him a better way to get food. Smart.
The bone tool spins through the air and suddenly we are in outer space, where the food/eating theme continues. Heywood Floyd, on his way to have breakfast with the security chief, symbolically refuses to join the Soviet scientists for drinks.
On his trip from orbit to the Moon, Floyd sleeps through the attendant bringing him a “liquid dinner.” She serves another attendant instead, then brings two trays to the pilots. Then we see Floyd has awakened and is “drinking” his dinner out of tubes.
Once on the Moon, traveling to Tycho crater, Floyd and his colleagues eat chicken and ham sandwiches. “They look pretty good,” Floyd says. The other responds, “Well, they’re getting better at it all the time.” … then coffee.
Frank eats a meal out of a compartmented tray, watching the BBC 12 news feed. Meanwhile, Dave pulls dishes from an automat and serves himself, burning his finger in the process.
After the hallucinogenic trip through infinity, Dave is shown as an old man, eating alone with his memories. It has been pointed out by fans that this is the first decent meal shown in the movie.
There’s nothing particularly profound about the food thread running through 2001. As we see from the leopard and tapirs at the beginning of the movie, eating is not unique to humankind. Yet, the innumerable ways we prepare our food is unique to us. It is part of what it means to be human, something that separates us from the other residents of Earth.
No matter how far away from our home planet we get, we will need food in some form. In fact, one of the most important things we’ll need to have worked out before our interplanetary journeys is how to keep the astronauts fed. And if you think that’s mind-boggling, how about interstellar travel?
Continue “Cooking with Phasers!” in Part 2: Goo doesn’t cut it
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