A Clockwork Orange

I first read Anthony Burgess’s book, the distopian brave new world, A Clockwork Orange around 25 years ago. The book was turned into a film, made by in 1971 by Stanley Kubrick. But after a spate of so-called ‘copy cat’ acts of violence, and he reacted by placing a self-imposed ban on the film as he owned the distribution rights. Therefore a cult controversial film was born.

I think Kubrick was wrong to capitulate to censorship.

What fascinated me when I first read the book, was I was same age as Alex (the lead protagonist) and the inventiveness of the language, nadsat, which Burgess, created by fusing English (smattering of Shakespearean and Cockney rhyming slang) with Russian. And similar to Kubrick’s reading of the book, though there are many levels of interpretation, it’s dream like fantasy/nightmare and surrealism.

And the BFI have a Kubrick season and A Clockwork Orange is being shown. So I went along, as I said I read the book as a teenager as it was stocked in my old school library yet, strangely, they didn’t/wouldn’t stock Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence, which I never really understood why.

I had seen parts of the film but never in its entirety. Alex and his droogs, ready for a night of  knifey ultra violence horrorshow sitting in the Korova Milkbar, drinking Moloko plus (milk laced with mescaline). The film revolves around violence. Alex’s enjoys the thrill of the physical and sexual violence that he leads. Breaking into a house in the middle of nowhere, where the gang physically attacks a couple, and rape the woman. All of this Grand Guignol style while Alex sings and dances to the uplifting Singin’ in the Rain, kicking and beating the man, the choreography of violence (it reminded me of the Michael Madsen character in Reservoir Dogs with his odd dance to Stealers Wheel, Stuck in the Middle With You, while torturing the cop).

Alex is eventually is eventually arrested after burgling a remote house and killing the woman inside.  Sent to prison for 14 years. Whilst in prison he hears about the Ludovico Technique, which supposedly rehabilitates people and after the two week treatment they are freed into society never to commit a crime again. The process in the film involves the iconic image of Alex being strapped to a chair, his eyes wired open and forced to watch hyper graphic violence. Beforehand he has been administered an emetic. What also occurs, inadvertently, is that Alex becomes distressed when he listens to classical music especially his beloved 9th by Beethoven.

And he is released backed after the course of treatment. A rehabilitated man, a controlled and compliant Alex. This debate is at the core of the book and film, the clash of free will versus determinism. Alex undergoes aversion therapy, he associates violence with incapacitating sickness and distress. His free will has been curtailed for the good of society. And classical conditioning was a popular form of ‘therapy’, Burgess would have been aware of that, though a better word would be torture (and it was used to ‘cure’ gay men).  In the case of Alex, his behaviour has been controlled by reducing him to a Pavlovian state. The stimulus being violent imagery but at the same time he is being subjected to discomfort therefore he has been conditioned to associate the stimulus to physical discomfort. Therefore he has been cured. Alex becomes the poster boy for this new technique.

The film presents Alex in the latter part of the film as vulnerable and powerless as he comes up against the very people he abused and attacked. The hunter becomes the hunted yet he can’t fight back. His parents are afraid of him and reject him. Alex is being used as a political pawn, manipulated,  for this new technique, a populist measure (sound familiar?). But the political battleground changes and Alex is ‘changed back’ (“people messing with my gulliver” (head)) due to public opinion therefore the government (or the Minister of Interiors) is under pressure to reverse the technique on lab rat Alex.

And with his final words at the end as he imagines an orgy, ‘I was cured alright!’

The film in many instances does have dream like fantasy sequences, nightmarish fairy tales (remote houses they (Alex and his gang) pillageand rob). Malcolm MacDowell (favourite late 60s/early 70s actor for anti-establishment cinema) plays Alex, partly as a sullen teenager (you sometimes forget that he is 14) and as the thuggish leader of ‘his droogs’ asserting his control through intimidation and threats. Certainly the issue of free will versus determinism is a common thread throughout the film. We never don’t get any insight into why Alex is violent except that he gets a physical sense of satisfaction and the over powering rush, I guess, of adrenalin. Nor is he ashamed later on or exhibits any sense of responsibility for the damage he has caused.

And there’s an exploration of rampant and violent masculinity, along with male sexuality. The image of Alex being strapped to a chair while his eyes are forced open is graphic adds real discomfort, the viewer indeed can turn away from this assault. The dialogue and script is pretty much faithful to the book (though Kubrick, interestingly, left out any of Chapter 21).

The women in the film, as in the book, are peripheral, even Alex’s mum. They are either raped or reduced to ‘tits and arse’. It gave me real discomfort watching the rape scenes as they static in a time when rape scenes were romanticised and glorified. They are indeed shocking to watch and it exposes the misogyny inherent in Alex’s masculine world, the cinematic world at the time and the lack of political consciousness. The film is graphic, there’s constant imagery of phallic symbolism. Alex and his droogs wear the uniform of white trousers, shirts, black boots, bowler hats and codpieces (again, rather like the iconic suit wearing robbers in the much later Reservoir Dogs).

The interesting thing about this film is the response it received on release. It caused a storm of protest, especially regards to certification because of the graphic violence. Kubrick eventually withdraw the film, again I believe he was wrong to do that as he capitulated to censorship and to his detractors. There were media reports of ‘copy cat’ violence. Life imitating art? Was Clockwork a stimulus to violence, a conditioned response?

But those arguments are timeless. Are we desensitised by violence? Violence has been around long before movies! There are always the moral panics about films that show graphic violence, nudity, sex and criticise religion. Coupled with young people and gang culture, mainly young men, out of control and on the rampage (again, that belief is never out of the media). Public outcries concerning films, whether it’s A Clockwork Orange, The Devils, various so-called video nasties from the 80s, Last Temptation of Christ, In the Realm of the Senses, Reservoir Dogs, Natural Born Killers, The Matrix…and so on.

The lyrics of Marilyn Manson, films like The Matrix and the Basketball Diaries were blamed for encouraging two teenagers to shoot their class mates in Columbine. Real life is scarier than fiction yet films, lyrics and books are easy targets and a distraction from examining the underlying issues of power, oppression and control.

The arguments in A Clockwork Orange, issues of free will and determinism, violence, gang violence are still prevalent but also the public and establishment reaction to these films, the knee jerk reactions and the politics of the gut. It comes across as highly conditioned responses. People are much more complex, along with the political choices they make.

Here’s an experiment, how about ameliorating the social conditions of patriarchal capitalism along with the relationship to the means of production? How about building an equitable society?

En la ciudad de Sylvia (In the City of Sylvia)

Voltaire wrote that madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively. The latter can be applied to Él, in the film In The City of Sylvia, who is searching for the woman he briefly met 6 years previously. We are invited to follow him in his pursuit of this woman, Sylvia.

There’s hardly any dialogue, the film revolves around a visual narrative. Él, the tourist, sitting in cafes in Strasbourg (and to be honest, this town reminds me of the fictitious town of Hollyoaks where only beautiful people exist!!) studying maps of where the elusive Sylvia might be. His memories of this brief encounter are based on a drawing and that she was student. The director, José Luis Guerín, uses the cinematography and sound techniques to highlight Él’s quest. The constant labyrinth of backstreets, where we, the viewer, follow him while he follows obsessively a woman who may or may not be Sylvia.

 Él is a voyeur, who watches women while sitting in cafes, sipping his beer obsessively sketching. The camera hones in on these women, intimately gazing at various non-verbal gestures and expressions, objectifying them. And camera acts as Él, the power of the male gaze. And the viewer is a spectator.

He glimpses a young attractive woman, a brunette, who he believes to be Sylivia and follows her feverishly around the backstreets of this town. Stalking her, wrapped up in his own obsession of the fantasy he has constructed about Sylvia. Indeed there are elements of Hitchcock’s Vertigo but at least that did have suspense this does not instead I couldn’t care less and started to feel very irritated by this man especially his disregard for women, and him invading their space.

There’s no consideration or respect given to the women he gazes at, transfixed, deluded by the belief that one of them may be Sylvia. A needle in a haystack? Is this a futile exercise? And is he really interested in Sylvia, the real woman, or is it the fantasy he has conjured up that compels him?

The film has had good reviews, funnily enough the reviews which give it rave reviews have been written by men, some describe it as a ‘romance’. I found it creepy, the unnerving experience of unwanted attention by a man. And the added fear of being stalked. Yet we don’t see it from the woman’s point of view. We glimpse her expressions fleetingly but the emphasis is on the man and his reactions.

When Él is reprimanded by a woman, he doesn’t get it, he is so self-absorbed and unaware to understand the fear he is instilling and the irresponsibility of his actions. Is he consciously aware of his behaviour? And the male film reviewers don’t touch on this at all.

Does the film have anything to say? The cinematography is beautiful, the clever emphasis on sound editing and the sparse dialogue gives it realism. Along with seeing people beyond speech and language by concentrating on non-verbal communication and expressions.

That was interesting but it was overall a superficial film. It doesn’t draw you in except as a spectator in the gaze and the voyeurism.

There is so much lacking, it is a fractured film. More exploration of obsession, even how brief encounters can shape and dominate our lives (the ‘what if’ scenario) but I don’t think that is what José Luis Guerín was trying to present. Instead we get a brief snap shot over 3 days of this man’s quest and fixation.

Why did this man wait 6 years to track Sylvia down? And gawd only knows why he didn’t take her phone number 6 years previously….