Space Madness: A “Real” Hollywood Illness

There’s a special kind of insanity that afflicts interstellar travelers—space madness.

What is space madness? It’s what happens when you find yourself in the depths of deep space, alone in the void. Your mind starts to fragment, to collapse in on itself. You feel trapped, scared, unsure of reality. You have… space madness.

The idea of space madness properly begins with NASA’s worry about the mental strain of space travel on astronauts in the 1950s. As historian Matthew Hersch explains, “Psychiatrists working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the late 1950s feared the worst of the men they examined to be America's first astronauts: that they would be impulsive, suicidal, sexually aberrant thrill-seekers.” What they learned, however, was that astronauts were “sane, poised professionals able to absorb extraordinary stresses.”

Hollywood had other ideas.

In film after film, space travelers become unhinged, bizarre, selfish, and crazy. In other words, they reflect the feelings of uncertainty and worry that modern Americans are afflicted with.

Hersch notes that the unhinged astronaut theme really gets going in the 1970s, with films like "Marooned" and "Silent Running." This feels appropriate. This was the decade that gave us Watergate, Jonestown, "The Exorcist," Patty Hearst, the Three Mile Island disaster, and the oil crisis. This was a worried, uncertain time. America seemed to be slipping off into the void, unsure of what was to come next.

Netflix has recently given us a new and original vision of space madness, one appropriate to our own moment of chaos and uncertainty. In a surprisingly serious turn for comic actor Adam Sandler, "Spaceman" offers up a bizarre study of an astronaut who appears to be losing it.

In the film, Sandler plays Jakub Procházka, a lone space voyager on a mission to a mysterious mass called the Chopra Cloud, located somewhere near Jupiter. From the get-go, we can see that Jakub is suffering the early stages of space madness. He is haggard, exhausted, muddled. He’s 189 days into a solo mission, and the massive dark splotches under his eyes tell us that he’s not doing well.

In a video chat to Earth, a girl asks Jakub if it makes him “sad to be so far away.” She’s read that he is the “loneliest man in the world.” He responds that he is in regular communication with Earth and is very busy with his mission, so he is not lonely.

We don’t buy this. Jakub is spectacularly lonely.

Interestingly, this conversation echoes the experience of a very real space traveler. Michael Collins, who piloted the spaceship orbiting the moon while Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong took the Lunar Module Eagle down to the surface in 1969, was called “the loneliest man in history.” He floated alone at the farthest point from our planet that any human has ever been.

Reflecting on this, Collins remembered thinking: “I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the Moon, and one plus God knows what on this side. I feel this powerfully—not as fear or loneliness—but as awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation. I like the feeling.”

Collins had a great attitude, and he was known for his humor and panache. He did not have space madness. Jakub, on the other hand, is in trouble.

Here’s where the movie gets interesting. A huge space tarantula shows up inside his ship.

What follows is a series of discussions about life, love, and the Meaning of It All. Jakub names the spider Hanuš, and they bond. In one of the more interesting visions of cinematic psychotherapy, Hanuš helps Jakub heal his relationship with his emotionally estranged wife, and Jakub in turn helps the spider understand the human species.

Is Hanuš real, or is he only in Jakub’s head? Nobody else sees the spider, and he is not filmed by the ship’s cameras. Here is a fascinating conundrum: Is Jakub’s healing process the result of a complete detachment from reality, or is it the result of a unique space creature?

Also, does it matter?

"Spaceman" is not a particularly brilliant film, but like many pop culture artifacts, it does a good job sparking conversation about the conundrums that plague us modern Americans. We know what Jakub is going through—who doesn’t feel lonely and insecure sometimes? "Spaceman" lets us see that part of ourselves that is estranged and afraid of the future, in the funhouse mirror of cinematic art.

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Jakub’s space madness takes the form of an intergalactic arachnid. We may not believe what we are seeing, but we can certainly feel Jakub’s solitude and deep desire for intimate emotional connection. Space madness, which is really our own sense of estrangement and worry, is very “real,” in its own way.

If only we could all get our own space spider.