#15 ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’

Written By Veronica Blade

A Cold, Silent Bro-Mance with the Universe

Ah yes, 2001: A Space Odyssey—Stanley Kubrick’s slow, glacial love letter to silence, screensavers, and the spiritual journey of... men in suits pressing buttons. Often praised as the greatest science fiction film of all time by men who say “actually, it’s about evolution,” this 1968 cosmic lullaby is less a film and more an expensive existential screensaver with delusions of grandeur.

Let’s get this out of the way: yes, it’s visually stunning. Yes, the match cut from a bone to a spaceship is clever. And yes, the use of classical music is now permanently embedded in the cultural bloodstream. But somewhere between the apes discovering murder and the fetus floating in space, Kubrick forgot one tiny thing: a soul. Or at the very least, a woman.

This is not a film that “doesn’t have many women.” It is a film that seems utterly allergic to them. The only female characters are stewardesses with Barbie doll voices and lab technicians who appear briefly before vanishing into the void, presumably replaced by HAL’s maternal monotone. This isn’t the future. This is the corporate fantasy of 1960s white men imagining a future where women were finally, blessedly, irrelevant.

And what do we get in their place? Dave Bowman, a protagonist so devoid of personality he makes a Roomba look extroverted. We’re told he’s undergoing some kind of spiritual journey, but it’s hard to be emotionally invested when his entire character arc consists of blinking at blinking lights. HAL 9000, the murderous AI, is the most interesting and sympathetic character in the film—because, unlike the humans, he actually feels something: anxiety. Paranoia. Loneliness. You know, relatable emotions.

The final act? A drug trip through a lava lamp followed by an art deco deathbed and a giant fetus staring at Earth like it’s about to judge us all for our sins. Kubrick fans call this profound. I call it what happens when a male auteur takes a big hit of Nietzsche and thinks “you know what this movie needs? Rebirth. But make it vague.”

There are no relationships in 2001. No intimacy. No joy. Just machines, monoliths, and men slowly becoming more machine-like themselves, until one of them turns into a glowing space baby with a thousand-yard stare. It's evolution, but only if you believe the final form of humanity is a giant, floating boy fetus with perfect skin and no mother.

2.5 out of 5 malfunctioning AIs
(One for the visuals. One for HAL. Half a star for the sheer audacity. The rest got lost somewhere beyond Jupiter, along with Kubrick’s empathy and any trace of female existence.)

Veronica Blade

Born in Detroit in the late 70s to a unionized auto worker and a punk-rock-loving librarian, Veronica Blade was raised on equal doses of riot grrrl zines and vintage vinyl. Her adolescence was marked by a fierce independence, cultivated in the DIY music scene and sharpened by her participation in underground theatre collectives that tackled police violence, reproductive rights, and queer identity. After a short-lived attempt at an art school degree, Veronica left academia to tour with a feminist noise band called Her Majesty’s Razor, where she performed spoken word over industrial soundscapes in squats and protest camps across North America.

By her early 30s, she had moved to New York, where she lived in a Bushwick warehouse with performance artists, fire-eaters, and ex-dominatrixes. Here she co-founded Molotov Darlings, a guerrilla performance troupe known for their impromptu shows in front of hedge fund offices and their reimagining of Greek tragedies through a queer-anarchist lens. Her visual essays, blending collage and scathing satire, began circulating widely online, catching the attention of the alt-arts community and eventually being featured in fringe art festivals in Berlin, Montreal, and Melbourne.

Career Highlights:

  • 2007 – Co-wrote Vulvatron, a graphic novel hailed as “explosive, obscene, and essential reading” by Broken Pencil Magazine.

  • 2010 – Guest-curated the controversial exhibition Grrrls with Grenades at a renegade gallery in Brooklyn, which explored the aesthetics of feminine rage through street art, sculpture, and drag.

  • 2013 – Published a widely shared essay The Clitoris is a Political Weapon on feminist blogosphere site Jezebitch, which was banned in five countries and taught in two liberal arts colleges.

  • 2016 – Arrested during a protest performance at a tech conference where she set fire to a mannequin dressed as a Silicon Valley bro, gaining notoriety as both artist and agitator.

  • 2019 – Shortlisted for the Audre Lorde Radical Voices Fellowship for her anthology Blood Ink: Writings from the Queer Body Underground.

  • 2021 – Wrote a monthly column called Art Slaps for the experimental culture journal NoiseMuse, dissecting art world hypocrisies with her signature wit and fury.

Veronica Blade brings with her a reputation for fearless critique, raw intellect, and an unrelenting commitment to smashing patriarchy with glitter, words, and duct tape

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#14 ‘Psycho’