The music of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the sublime object of cinema
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-7114.sig.2022.192902Keywords:
Music, Soundtrack, Sublime, Spectator, PsychoanalysisAbstract
A notable stylistic element of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is the innovative use of classical music, which, isolated from dialogue or sound effects, possesses an autonomous dimension of meaning. Borrowing Michel Chion’s concept of “anempathetic music”, we posit that two musical pieces—the Also sprach Zarathustra fanfare and the Blue Danube waltz—have very specific narrative and formal functions, to be analyzed here in terms of Lacan’s concepts of the imaginary and the symbolic, the gaze, suture, spectatorship, and the Kantian sublime. We aim to address and build on Annette Michelson’s formulation, in her seminal criticism, that 2001 is a film of cognitive restructuring and redefinition of cinema’s “shape of content”, through the role of music.
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