A Clockwork Orange

Book, 1962; Movie, 1971, R

Premise - In a near yet already dystopian future, a teenage boy (Alex) and his fellow friends spend their nights committing violence on the streets for drugs and money. When Alex gets taken in by the police and sentenced to prison for homicide, he first turns to God to reform, until he hears about a new scientific technique that's an even better cure for his delinquency. The mysterious Ludovico Technique, allegedly, has the power to turn even the most violent of individuals into obedient saints.

Review - I have been saying this a lot lately about what I have read, but it never becomes less true: This book has become one of my favorites of all time. I read every word aloud to myself, wanting to savor every moment, because the novella is not all that long. This book philosophically explores everything I could have dreamed of ethically exploring, and through the lens of psychological treatment, no less.

The caveat, however, is that I doubt all too many people have even read the book, compared to the film. If you google, "A Clockwork Orange" right now, I guarantee the film will show up first, as Stanley Kubrick's film's legacy has become overpowering. I watched it the morning after finishing the novel, and oh boy did it leave me indescribably angry. Why is this sensationalist film what A Clockwork Orange is remembered for??? Oh, the injustice! The inhumanity!! Somehow, with an almost 1-1 adaptation of the plot, this cult classic stripped away every (and I just about EVERY) thing I loved about this book. It's a beautifully crafted film, no doubt. If I had not read the book (as many haven't), I could actually see myself liking it as a cult film. Crazy, beautiful, violent, creepy shots. Wacky colors. Pure insanity of a film. But it's not what I fell in love with in the book, so the amount of bias I have is insane. I can't truly speak about the value of this film as a classic that stands on its own.

In my defense, Anthony Burgess (the original author) also thought Kubrick's film was inaccurate and flawed. Kubrick, on the other hand, thought Burgess's writing was flawed. They didn't see eye to eye. The most notable difference of all is the ending. The original British publication had 21 chapters. The American edition only had 20, omitting the final chapter, as it was deemed "unbelievable" and, likely, politically inappropriate. Kubrick used the American edition, and admitted to never even reading the original ending before writing the script. After reading it, he brushed it aside. But for me, the ending in many ways makes the story what it is.

I can discuss what I didn't like about the film from the perspective of what I did love about the book, so just assume the film is the inverse. First and foremost, this is a film about juvenile delinquency. Our protagonist is a 15-year-old kid, leader of his own gang, in a highly crime-ridden dystopian society. He thrives on the power he feels when attacking the vulnerable. Simultaneously, we see an insecurity about his own power as the leader of his friends. For a character who commits such despicable acts of violence, there is such a humanity to him as, well, a kid caught up in really, REALLY bad decisions, influenced in his behaviors, fashion, and hobbies by his peers and the society around him, and tempted by the rewards of drugs and money. The film, instead, paints him as a maybe 18-ish-year old young man (I say 18 because he was still in school, but my god the actor looked 30), who seems to be an absolute psychopath.There's a look in his eye in the very first shot in the film where he looks of pure and unfiltered evil, straight into the camera, no shame. His humanity is stripped into this larger-than-life evil villain.

This bleeds into the entire tone of the film - in which the humanity of the book has been stripped into something sensationalist, larger-than-life, humorous in all the wrong places (the book is very humorous, too!), and what seems to me like an almost antisocial propaganda film. It reminded me of something Quentin Tarantino might make, with violence as art or violence for the sake of violence. It's a stretch to say the film was pro-violence but hey, the film's tone made me angry.

The book, for all its horrific violence, is NOT what I would call pro-violence. Generally, the book paints a much stronger, more realistic picture of a crime-ridden society. It doesn't take much imagination to envision - it's a lot how I imagine communities are now if suffering from gang violence, particularly in low SES/black communities. It's not like people have to be wild, raging lunatics in order to commit violence. Lunatic is not how I would describe our narrator. Imagine a young, black kid in a gang, except in a future where that's common among white kids, too (though who says Alex has to be white?). That's who I picture. He speaks in slang common among juvenile delinquents of the time, like those in black or low SES communities may speak among themselves, and then forces himself to speak "proper" among adults/police so as not to be looked down upon and, most especially, to avoid police brutality. These comparisons are becoming so strong... Actually, I think a race-bend would be a FASCINATING adaptation to this story because we would view it entirely differently. I swear, if I chose a different life path and studied cinema in school, I could see myself writing a whole dissertation on a race lens being applied to A Clockwork Orange, wrote a hell of an amazing screenplay, get noticed by a famous Hollywood director, run the film festival circuits, campaign for my Oscar, and go down in history. But alas, that is not my life, as I instead study psychology and social work.

Both of those topics, I must say, are inherent to the story. I do like to think that, more than a psychological book, this is a philosophical book, but let's focus on the psychology for a moment. The Ludovico Technique uses the behavioral principle of classical conditioning to associate acts of sex and violence with an extreme sensation of sickness, injecting a nauseating and torturous drug into the participant while he views a violent film. Whether or not classical conditioning could ever be applied to this extreme of turning someone's behavior into a "mechanical" response (aka "clockwork"), is beside the point, as this is science fiction. What I think ethically is called into question is the consent to participate in such a practice. I can think of examples of classical conditioning in the real world, used on humans, to reduce undesired behavior. Alcohol addiction, for example, can be treated with "Antibuse", a drug that makes the body intolerant to alcohol and causes feelings of extreme sickness when drinking alcohol. A less consequential example is parents putting nasty-smelling nail polish on their kids to stop them biting their nails. It's the oldest psychology technique in the book, Pavlovian, for simply associating an undesired behavior with an undesirable sensation. Positive punishment. We don't call the ethics of that into question though, do we? Because the person on the other end of treatment knows EXACTLY what they're getting themselves into, WANTS to change their behavior, and is willing to suffer a little bit to make that change (though never suffer an inhumane amount). Alex understands nothing about the research experiment he is participating in, and is put through an inhumane level of torture. Worse yet, he was a prisoner who was extra-willing to do anything to change his life around. It's the reason why human research among prison populations is so difficult to pass by an ethics board - it's considered exploitative. These are the issues. But, the idea of teaching somebody empathy through behavioral techniques is a useful one. Empathy can be taught. Aversion to violence can be taught - all while done humanely. Remorse, or feeling guilty about one's actions and seeing the wrong in what has been done, is a form of suffering that we would consider positive for its indication of reformation.

The other lens I really wanted to take while reading this book was more through a social justice/sociological lens, which I think the film largely ignores. The book brings forward important ethical issues when it comes to juvenile delinquency (or perhaps crime in general) - whether it is best to be tough on crime and "eliminate" criminals from society, or attempt to restore them and integrate them back into society, the further harm that imprisonment can do, especially to a juvenile, whose social circle than just becomes other delinquents who learn from each other, and how this perpetuates a lifestyle of going in-and-out of prison, as once someone's sentence is over they do not have the skills to effectively reintegrate. Also fascinating is I'd imagine it's a technique that still may be used today, the only "skills" that prisoners are taught in an effort to reform them are religious ones. They use the bible to force prisoners to "come to Jesus" as if that's the best way they can be saved, without giving them any substantial vocational lessons. The film did not do this portion of the story justice.

The last lens I want to take is a political one, which the film does acknowledge but not necessarily in the same way. We have two sides here - the government, who is advocating for using the Ludivico Technique on prisoners, and the opposition, who want to take down the government. BOTH sides exploit Alex, the same way many oppressed individuals are exploited for political gain. The opposition, who supposedly believe in Alex's freedom, paint him out to be a victim, a sob-story, pulling for sympathy so as to say the government is evil. It's humiliating, the same way we may discuss how victimized disabled people are, or black people, or whoever else. Alex makes it clear, he is no victim. He survived this treatment, but he is no victim, and he hates being turned into a sob-story. On the government's side, they try to sweep their wrongdoings to him under the rug by paying him off. We see that exploitation in the real world too, such as with abuse victims.

As I previously mentioned, the ending of the film is not identical to the book. In the film, the Ludovico Technique is reversed (not really sure how though?) and he is cured, able to relish in sex and crime again. He will stay "evil" in that way, but he is cured, as he now has his free will back. Better to be evil and free than to be forced into good against one's will, the philosophy of the film seems to say.

But how does the book end? Same way. That's how chapter 20 ends. In chapter 21, however, our kid grows up. He enters adulthood. He doesn't have some sort of "come to Jesus" moment where he realizes the error of his ways and wants to be good. He just... loses interest in crime. Because his gang are all young teenagers and it's no longer cool anymore to be a part of it, kind of like it's lame for an ex-high school footballer to always go back to the games. His old friends now have jobs, and wives, and he feels left out. He decides to not commit crime that night and do something else because, meh, don't feel like it. And this is SO FREAKIN' ACCURATE. Societal pressures change people all the time, ESPECIALLY when younger and still forming their personality. How many awful teenagers grew up to be law abiding citizens? I'll tell you, most of them. Juvenile delinquency is not at all equivalent to a life of some sort of antisocial personality disorder. All people have good and bad behaviors, some more out of balance than others. The idea of Alex as an inherently evil protagonist in the film really just set me off.

The title, A Clockwork Orange, just spoke to me in such an important way. A "clockwork orange" is something full of life made into something mechanical. Alex has such a life, a humanity to him. His love of classical music, even his horrible love of crime - they all make him very human, fleshy, juicy, like an orange. I just think that humanity was already molded into a mechanical archetype the moment he entered the screen. The book, however, I will hold in my heart forever. (96/100)

Quote - “What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”

What to read/watch for - So I briefly mentioned the fact that the narrator speaks in a futuristic slang called "nadsat." It takes a while to adjust - I kept a dictionary open so I could be sure of what I was reading, but I had a lot of fun picking up on the slang. There were many reasons why the slang was created, but one unique one I hadn't thought about was the author wanted to lessen the blow of some of the really violent scenes by throwing in a bunch of unrecognizable words. It adds humor as well. I read a lot of this book out loud to myself, word by word, to make sure I understood each sentence. I have absolutely NO idea how these words would have come across in the film if one hadn't read the book or familiarized themselves with the slang. Is it possible to understand? It's also just strange in the film that he speaks in such a posh, upper-class British voice with these random words thrown in. Maybe it's offensive, but I imagined a more Northern-England accent because they already speak in a very slang-heavy manner.

If you liked this book/film, I'd recommend Requiem for a Dream or Joker! Also, from what little I know about Lord of the Flies (I haven't read it yet), I'd imagine it would be relevant as well.

Written by Anthony Burgess

Published by William Heinemann (UK)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Distributed by Warner Bros.