’A film specially suitable for children’: The Marketing and Reception of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

This chapter builds on my earlier publications about Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), using some of the same archival sources, but also exploring in much more detail than before the place of children in the film's audience. In the first section, I examine the marketing campaign for the film, demonstrating that, while this campaign was addressed to an all-inclusive mass audience, it also specifically targeted children. In the second section, I analyse, once again, the letters Kubrick received from cinemagoers in the late 1960s and the 1970s, paying particular attention to those written by parents who had gone to see 2001 with their children, and to letters written by children. I demonstrate that the film was widely understood, and enjoyed, as family entertainment.