Violence and A Clockwork Orange are it seems synonymous, but was it necessary violence? If I were to ask you which lines of the film are the most memorable, which ones would you choose?
Perhaps for you it’s the sheer streetwise poetry of something like:
“Ho ho ho! Well, if it isn’t fat, stinkin’ Billy Joe, Billy boy, and poison. How are thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinkin’ chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if thou have any yarbles, you eunuch Jelly thou!”
It’s got a rhythm to it, I’ll give it that. It perfectly echoes the unbridled passion of a good fight carried on in a world out of control and I’d say far superior to the gruffer, ‘come on over here then, if you think you’re hard enough’.
Maybe it is one of the starker statements about politics that sticks, such as that uttered by The Prison Governor instructing his inmates over who is boss:
“I do not approve. An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you, you hit back – do you not? Why then should not the state, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans not hit back also?”
The Prison Governor is very much an agent of the State, although the precise political complexion of the film’s government is not a central point. Politics is all over the film, but is it really about politics? Burgess is known to have written the book following a visit to Leningrad in 1960. “Nadsat”, the film’s cultural slang is derived from Russian and he was ruminating greatly upon the flaws in Communism at the time; references to overcrowded prisons and gangs roaming the streets litter the film’s dialogue. There is little difference between the ruled and their rulers in outlook, and later in the film two of Alex’s criminally violent accomplices actually become police officers, as if to ram the point home. It’s a future where morality seems rare and the exercise of power is all. A dystopia then, it is reasonable to assume. Arguably one that comes about following a failed authoritarian liberal or Socialist government in the midst of tipping over towards totalitarianism.
What about the immortal and chilling:
“Viddy well, little brother. Viddy well.”
If you’ve seen the film I bet that horrific and disturbing one-liner springs to mind. Talk of glorification of violence was rife following the film’s release. But then, what’s the point of speculative fiction set in a dystopian near future, other than to disturb?
What about instead, the unrelenting cheek of Alex’s character as in:
“No time for the old in-out, love, I’ve just come to read the meter”
The dialogue was great, but for me it’s the film’s final line:
“I was cured, all right”.
We can infer that the contract between State and people up until the point where we join the story, was the usual one where The State governs and the people do whatever they want. If the people want to step out of line then that’s just fine, so long as the people are prepared to accept the consequences. Then along comes The Ludovico Technique and all that is about to change. A cure for all society's worst evils is at last nigh.
Banged up for murdering one of his victims, or as Alex himself has it; “the weepy bit” of the story, while in prison he opts to undergo The Ludovico Technique in order to free himself altogether from his sentence. The contract between Alex and State is about to alter irrevocably, as it is for everyone in what is to become a panoptican society. The technique will cure him of his violence against society by reducing him to a physical wreck, making him react nauseously and to tremble physically; unable even to contemplate violent action in any measure. In short, Alex will exchange his free will for the State’s blessing of freedom.
But what of Alex himself and his choices before his conversion? Well, like many yobs he’s a short-termist at heart. He just wants to dance through the hoops in order to receive his reward. If it gets him time off, then he’ll say whatever it takes. So much so that he replied to the Prison Chaplain following a warning that the Ludovico is probably dangerous like this:
“I don’t care about the dangers, Father. I just want to be good. I want the rest of my life to be one act of goodness.”
Er, yeah… right mate!
Is Alex any different from anyone else? Well he’s definitely no Superman swooping to the rescue of good citizenry everywhere in the world while simultaneously in his alter ego as Clarke Kent he writes up the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in the local rag afterwards. Is he more of an anti hero, then? Again, is he really Dirty Harry? Is Alex De Large likely to march down the street and, pointing his .44 magnum at the latest punk in his sights having broken every law in the book in order to carry out justice, to challenge, “Go ahead, make my day”? A law breaker himself undoubtedly, but is he one standing up for common justice? Is Alex ever going to be evidence that the answer to a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun?
Maybe he’s nearer to Charlton Heston? That depressing sort given to battling the system whether it’s in the form of apes or totalitarian regimes. This hero of sorts fights gamely against the odds stacked against him, but dies anyway. Alex though, doesn’t die. He fights unwittingly against the
odds as some sort of clueless innocent lost in a maze of higher powers. In the end he triumphs despite that.
Kubrick cunningly portrays Alex as heroic, but he’s the most anarchic hero you’ll ever find. Kubrick deliberately makes him in some sense likeable in ways you could end up feeling guilty about. It’s against your better judgement to root for Alex, but many find in the end that they do. And it’s nothing to do with his actions. It’s little to do with glorifying violence either, unless you are given pathologically to a bit of “the old ultra violence” yourself; arguably the fear of which is the primary stuff of liberal nightmares. It’s to do with what he represents. He’s the very battleground upon which the struggle for free will is fought. Going the full Robin Askwith perhaps, his nearest characterisation as alter ego cheekily ‘Confessing’ his life as itinerant ‘Window Cleaner’, just would not have cut it. The joke would have worn thin very early on in this film.
Alex has no saving graces usually accorded to the traditional heroic figure of fiction and mythology. What he does have is independence of spirit and indomitable will. His very brand is freedom of the will. Violence of the ultra variety is his stock in trade and he apologises for none of it.
Violence is destructive, but one particular act of violence frees Alex from his “contract” – his attempted suicide. A pity then that not much is ever said about what for me was the most critical piece of violence of the entire work; the incident upon which the whole premise of the film rests. Discussions of violence in the film among the reams that have been written about it often revolve around who is committing it and who is the greater criminal: the obvious one being is it societal disorder such as Alex’s or is it in fact the State’s version of it. All very well observed, I’m sure, but that comparison has always come across to me as maybe a bit stale. Who knew that States get violent?
When Alex decides to chuck himself out of a top floor window this is surely the ultimate form of violence? Or at least the exceptional one in this story. The ultimate affirmation of freedom of the will; that you have the choice to end your own existence on Earth and no one is going to prevent you.
What was it that broke Alex’s conditioning? He wasn’t supposed to be able to carry out violence according to the tenets of The Ludovico Technique and up until that moment in the film we see that he cannot do so; nevertheless, Alex commits violence upon himself. That is what I think breaks his conditioning.
The point of Ludovico was that it prevented the freedom to exercise choice. If the will itself cannot be cured, only suppressed, then what is it? It’s respectable these days to suggest that it does not exist at all or that if it does then it only does so within the confines of a non libertarian, or deterministic universeii. Equally, you can argue as many neuroscientists actually do that it is bad enough trying to prove we are even conscious; in which case where does that leave free will. Kubrick’s interpretation however, is what counts here.
Kubrick himself was of Jewish descent and his religious beliefs cannot really be pinned down; however, if you look to the sort of films he made, then if he wasn’t kicking against authority with films such as Paths of Glory in which he depicts struggles against injustice, he was giving us 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is a film about God-like beings manipulating the history of the human race. A Clockwork Orange is right on point, in keeping with the questions that concerned him most.
Kubrick is keen to conflate Burgess’ dystopia with a society of the moral majority and the Establishment with Christian doctrine. In the film Kubrick is actively linking freedom of the will with theological questions. The struggle going on in the film is expertly portrayed in the scene where Alex reflects after he gets back to his bedroom following a night’s mayhem. It’s beyond the scope of what’s being said here, but dig the film out and revisit that. The combination of Kubrick’s use of music both diegetically and non diegetically, married with the foregrounding going on at every instant in that scene will tell you everything you need to know about what’s at stake in terms of religion, the State and freedom of the will.
The tenet of the piece is like the one that the Prison Chaplain raises when Alex is in jail; only he doesn’t really get at the point, either. He just tells us the consequence of a failure to be able to choose:
“The question is whether or not this technique really makes a man good. Goodness comes from within. Goodness is chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.”
It tells us the reason for “A Clockwork Orange” in the title to the film, but cunningly hides in plain sight the real question: if you have not any free will, do you actually exist at all.
Disturbingly, the film’s premise is that all creation is in the end under God’s will; or render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s, if you like. Let’s be in no doubt, in this context everything is meant to belong to God in the film: the Earth itself obviously; the police and the State; the judges sending Alex down; Alex as sinner. The post suicide scene even suggests that doctors have “fiddled with [Alex’s] gulliver” in order to put him right, like some sort of reverse lobotomy. But is that any more true than they really put him wrong with the Ludovico Technique? The implication is that the State thinks it controls free will too, but Kubrick anarchically suggests that what belongs to Alex is something that the State can never have, even if they can dull
his neurons. They cannot have it unless Alex gives it away. That is in effect the essence of the human being.
Reviewers often suggest that the film, “raises questions about free will”, but I believe it goes further. The film asserts that free will is a necessity of human existence; the absence of free will is the equivalent of the absence of existence. Kubrick’s work isn’t just about power structures and
struggle by the individual against authority. Its final scene demonstrates a personal victory for Alex and vindication for the cause of free will. In its political landscape the winner remains nevertheless, the State. Alex's personal future will henceforth be indulged by the State. He will be lauded by society too, as depicted by the crowd gathered applauding him while he has sex with two women, instead of being reviled. He declares, “I was cured all right”, but ironically has sold out for a “mess of pottage”. They might have refrained from trying to take his free will, but in return he’s ended up giving his service to the Establishment as a useful instrument of their political power.
i Much has been written about Anthony Burgess’ politics. It is complex and one of the best places to start if you want to know more is with a useful summary by The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, here:
https://www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/anthony-burgess-and-politics/
ii Dennett, Daniel C. 1978: “On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want”, In Brainstorms:Philosophical
Essays on Mind and Psychology, 289-99. Montgomery, Vt.: Bradford.
iii Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. 2005. ISBN 9780191578052
iv Matthew 22.21
James Gatehouse