The Odyssey of Film Students
Theory Majors Be Warned:
Katie and Lilly are approaching this from a production major standpoint.
In order to write this blog, Katie and Lilly looked at major themes of The Odyssey, and how those themes are used in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Odysseys are usually composed of a philosophical journey into self-discovery with the ultimate goal of finding home, although sometimes not in a physical sense. As CAMS majors, and as college students in general, “self-discovery” is a familiar term. It seems as though college is a race to figure out who you are just in time for graduation. Every individual is held to certain expectations. 2001: A Space Odyssey reacts against expectations; it revolutionized a genre by defying the film industry’s movement away from auteur films and towards guaranteed blockbusters. Wellesley CAMS students react against expectations throughout their college careers. We attend a women’s college (strike one), we are cinema majors at a school where cinema-study is not necessarily a priority (strike two), and we pursue careers in a male-dominated field that does not guarantee success (strike three). Our inability to fit into any of the provided boxes presented to us places us amongst the “transcendentally homeless” (Lucáks). As CAMS students, we are never quite settled in our environment – like Odysseus, we are constantly searching for home.
Unlike Odysseus, however, we are not looking for a home that is physical. More like the protagonists in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contempt, we are on an odyssey of self-discovery to find a non-physical home. As students–as humans–we have a deep-seeded fear of never achieving success. Being CAMS majors multiplies this fear, because we have to come to terms with the idea that there is a very small margin of people who make it in this business. At Wellesley we are reminded of this every time someone asks us “what’s your major?” When we tell them, we get a flood of questions, such as: “what are you going to do with that?” or “do you want to work in Hollywood?” and my favorite, “wow, do you think you can make it out there?” What undergraduate student could possibly want to, or be able to, answer these questions? We are all still in development as people and artists, so we cannot have concrete answers about our futures. Nothing is concrete. Even our idea of “film” is constantly shifting. Growing up, we had no interest in auteuristic filmography. It was Disney, Pixar, Dream Works, Blockbuster-type films that we considered true cinema. However, as film students we have had the opportunity to expand our horizons immensely. We analyze, critique, and appreciate cinema in a different way than we ever have before. However, our current viewpoints could change again within the next year! We do not know how we will view and appreciate cinema in the future, so how are we supposed to know where we want to go within the film industry? The capability of being fluid is essential as a CAMS major at Wellesley.
Before we descend into a stress spiral, let’s relate this back to the Odyssey of CAMS students at Wellesley. How and why is our journey of self-discovery progressing? In the Odyssey films we watched in class, there is something greater nudging humanity along. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monoliths appear at key points in the evolution of (wo)mankind to kick start and ignite change. Curiously, the monoliths are large, flat, and rectangular – remind you of anything? Screens! The monoliths in the film as well as in the lives of CAMS majors are screens. Every film we watch shapes our understanding of ourselves as well as our understanding of the world around us. Some films can be seen as touchstones in each CAMS major’s life. For Katie, the monoliths that influenced her the most are: The first time she watched Saturday Night Live at 9-years-old, watching The Day After Tomorrow and being swept away in a story (no apologies for the quality of a monolith), seeing Citizen Kane for the first time and understanding that old doesn’t have to mean boring, becoming obsessed with Wes Anderson and understanding the role of a director, and watching 30 Rock and realizing that TV writing is a job that people have and that she could potentially have that job. Lilly’s monoliths are: The first time she watched The Birds in 9th grade and realized the importance of sound to a film, when she watched It’s A Wonderful Life and recognized that a feel-good film can still be of good quality, and when she saw Serenity after she finished the television series Firefly, and her idea of the role of television as compared to film was shattered, because Joss Whedon is a god who can develop characters and plot extraordinarily effectively in both forms of cinema. We each have monoliths leading us towards self-discovery and a sense of home. What are your monoliths? What role has Wellesley played in your odyssey of self-discovery?
References:
György Lucáks. The Theory of the Novel. 1920. Reprint. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1974. Print.
2001: A Space Odyssey. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood. MGM, 1968. DVD.