![]() So again, why did the psychotic-symbolic HAL machine NEED this fantasy figure of the human for his whole ideology to function? Why is it the case that if you remove his figure of the human (as evil entity masterminding all deception and error) his entire edifice, his whole reality system disintegrates? As an example similar to HAL's, let us imagine that a Mr X has a paranoiac idea that Mr Y is trying to kill him. HAL's denial of all of this now returns with full force to overpower and destroy him: now it is the entire cosmos that becomes for HAL an 'error', that is to blame for all 'error', and as he can't annihilate the entire cosmos, he 'saves' himself from it through self-annihilation: destruction becomes the mode of appearance of preservation ("destroying the village in order to save it"). But now there's no more humans, no humans to blame for all the problems of the world, for all its contradictions, inconsistencies, incompleteness. HAL would have then cut off all communication with Mission Control because they too are humans, the cause of all 'error', and must be exterminated. If HAL had also killed Dave Bowman, it would have been the end of the mission, not its blank continuation. So who can he now blame all the errors on/for? When you remove from the paranoiac the basis of his paranoiac fantasy (humans for HAL) it is the end for them, their whole world collapses and they end up suicidally exterminating themselves. By eliminating them, he no longer has his object of fantasy, no longer has any humans to blame for any 'errors'. But what HAL fails to realize is the structural function of the humans, of his fantasy of them (as the source of all error) in his notion of 'reality'. He sees humans, therefore, as evil entities engaged in a plot against him, deceiving him, and so resolves - as with all paranoiacs who become psychotic - to exterminate all of them. For HAL, all humans are an object of his paranoid fantasy, his excessive over-invested fantasy of humans as being responsible for, to blame for, all "error". ![]() ![]() HAL's paranoid psychosis leads him to concluding that the 'best' way to serve the mission, that is, to serve the humans, is by annihilating all of them, all the humans, that the 'best' way to achieve a successful mission is to destroy it, exterminate it. It was humans who conceived of the 'mission', who defined its terms of reference, function, purpose, operation, etc. We need to examine the presuppositions underlying such assertions as "the success of the mission". ![]() Isn't it that HAL's major flaw is his chronically delusional fantasy of self-perfection, of imaginary wholeness and completeness ("incapable of error")? And it isn't either a question of whether his subjectivity, his mind, his consciousness, his reflexivity, his sentience, is 'genuine' or not, because all subjectivity (ie human) is always-already a simulation. People seem to think that when you do classical things you can’t do anything else.” The closest he came was a 1957 film version of a stage production of Oedipus Rex.I'm not sure that everything about HAL, this purely symbolic machine that's nevertheless "human, all too human", is perfectly clear. In a 1981 interview Rain said: “It is not that I haven’t wanted to do movies, it’s just that I’ve never been approached. He was also nominated for a Tony award for the 1972 Broadway production of Robert Bolt’s Vivat! Vivat Regina!ĭespite HAL’s celebrated status, Rain was never cast in a feature film in a live acting role – a fact that he put down to his reputation of an interpreter of classical roles on stage. He remained associated with the festival for over four decades, acting there until 1998. I felt that England had lost all feeling of the true essence of theatre.” He returned to Canada in 1953 and became a founding member of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Company. However, he did not enjoy the experience, later saying: “I was very depressed by the stagnant atmosphere which pervaded the school and all of the English theatre. Photograph: Jeff Goode/Toronto Star via Getty Imagesīorn in Winnipeg in 1928, Rain won a scholarship in 1950 to study acting at the Bristol Old Vic.
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