If you ask many film enthusiasts to name one movie that completely embodies “gratuitous violence,” they will name A Clockwork Orange. Director Stanley Kubrick brought Anthony Burgess’ novella to the big screen in 1971. It caused a stir—and no small stir at that! Here in the US the film was slapped with an X rating and the US Catholic Bishop’s Office of Film and Broadcasting gave it a C for “condemned.” But it was in the UK where the most over-blown responses were seen. It was claimed that all the youth and gang-like violence in the film would cause young men to commit copycat crimes and engage in fantastical emulation behavior. The hysteria over the film was so high, that Kubrick was forced to ask for it’s withdrawal from British theaters on police advice, because his family had received so many threats.
There was never any evidence that even one copy-cat crime was committed anywhere over this bit of “cinny,” yet it did engender a kind of dishonest violence in those who merely imagined (wrongly) how dangerous the film really was to their society at large. So deep was this fantasy in many, they felt compelled to threaten Kubrick’s children with death. Here one must assume that a kind of fanaticism, similar to religious zealotry, had taken hold over a film that shows much more than just nihilist youthful rape and murder (not that these are small things). All they “saw” (or rather didn’t because most had not seen the film at all) was Alex and his Droogs. They did not see, for example, the violence sanctioned by the state. They did not see that so called “liberalism” couldn’t keep a man from seeking vengeance on Alex—taking advantage of the very state sanctioned violence that he claimed to loathe at all cost (only he didn’t—not when it should have mattered according to his own philosophy). They did not see, either, that political fanatics meet each other coming around the corner, be they for the “right” or the “left.” They do so, because fanaticism is that dangerous place that all extremists find themselves; a dark place of intolerance and fear-mongering. It doesn’t matter if there are elements of truth to anything these people say; their reasons for uttering them is dishonest—and we shouldn’t listen.
The dystopian seemingly “future” society seen in Clockwork, is dark to be sure. It gives all indication that it is set in the future. The car, for example, pretty much tells the audience what the calendar year is or was. But, for all of that, this film is really a film for it’s time. The early 1970’s saw a great deal of urban decay on both sides of the Atlantic; London and New York City were both dangerous and declining places. And really, is the action so futuristic? These were bleak times in the US, with the after-math of the Civil Rights movements and many urban myths about urban dwellers sprung up (myths that only began to fade in the late 1980’s). Kubrick was most concerned about the larger violence(s) that might be new perpetrations of government than he was about the gang-land crimes of the droogs. He told the Saturday Review:
...a social satire dealing with the question of whether behavioural psychology and psychological conditioning are dangerous new weapons for a totalitarian government to use to impose vast controls on its citizens and turn them into little more than robots. [Wikipedia]
Another point to make about this infamous film, is that can be pointed to as one of the purest examples of a Black Comedy. That so many people do not see this after viewing it is a strange surprise. As I have previously said, there are many moments here that almost “snickery”—silly and cruel at the same time.
The thing with this movie is, that it seems that one either loves it or hates it. Strong opinions abound on both sides. For people who hate it though, there is one almost universal reason offered for why this movie is either unlikeable, loathsome or even dangerous: “gratuitous violence.” For those us that love it, I honestly haven’t heard one person deny that it is an unbelievably violent bit of cinema.
Of course, this is much wider subject. I have been around very politically liberal students and teachers at various universities who become ridiculous if they find out that anyone thinks there is something of merit here. Many of these people shun you if you even admit that you like Stanley Kubrick as director. There is a terrible (and I think deliberate) notion that Kubrick was a really serious male chauvinist; in reality nothing could be further from the truth. It seems, that is was this movie that got that bit hokum started. Later on Barry Lyndon and The Shining was falsely solidify that. People, it seems, cannot tell the difference between the characters in a story and the person who is merely telling it.
For all of that misguided thinking, people also cannot really see the character of Alex for what he is. It seems, at least from the ways that he acts, he fits the description laid out the 19th century “McNaughton Rule.” He just doesn’t seem to get that what he is doing is actually wrong; he does sort of admit that it is “crime”—but to that end, he doesn’t seem to understand the definition of “crime.” That is what makes his undergoing the so-called “Ludovico technique” appear so much like injustice. When he goes to prison, there is no doubt that he belongs there. When he is removed from prison and sent to the psychiatric facility, there is a sense that everyone, including the doctors who are supposed to be the experts on this new “treatment,” are in dangerous uncharted territory—with outcomes that will be monstrous—but who really knows? When the Dr. laments that he’s thinks that Alex’s accidentally being programmed to be sick when he hears Beethoven might be deserved—can anyone say that he, at that moment, is any better than Alex the criminal?
Dr. Brodsky: Can’t be helped. Here’s the
Punishment element perhaps.
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