2001 and Counting – Kubrick, Nietzsche, and Anthropology

Despite mixed critical reception, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey mesmerized audiences at the time of its initial screening in 1968 and went on to become one of the highest-grossing films of the decade. In "2001 and Counting", Bruce Kapferer revisits the film, making a case for its continued cultural relevance. While the film's earliest audiences considered it to be a critical examination of European and American realities at the height of the Cold War, Kapferer shows that Kubrick's masterwork speaks equally well to concerns of the contemporary world, including the Iraq War, the 2008 financial crisis, and the material and political effects of neoliberalism. Kapferer explores Kubrick's central themes both with regard to current events and through the lens of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the mythical concept of the eternal return.