Technology: Progressive or Regressive? Kubrick's 2001 and Schaffner's Planet of the Apes Johnnette Johnson College

“Man is a social animal, distinguished by ‘culture’: by the ability to make tools and communicate ideas. Employment of tools appears to be his chief biological characteristic” (Oakley).

Directors Stanley Kubrick and Franklin J. Schaffner maintain Oakley’s assertion as they insinuate a growing dependence of human nature to technology. Both films, Franklin J. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, indicate that technology promotes inter and intra-species separation that are exacerbated by the strong dependence. According to Planet of the Apes, apes are the dominant species who has the most advanced technology and killing mechanisms. Kubrick’s places humanity – the evolutionary product of the apes of “The Dawn of Man” - as the dominate species counterpart. These two films thus explore the contradictory and superior relationships that humans and apes hold towards machines; 2001 and Planet of the Apes both suggest that species dependent of technology as a means for advancement places themselves in the dominant societal role.

The opening scene of Planet of the Apes depicts the level of dependence that humankind has always had on technology. The spacecraft, equipped with leather furniture and...