This is a scene by scene analysis of 'A Clockwork Orange' by Stanley Kubrick
This 1st clip involves a delinquent named Alex who is the leader of a small gang of hoodlums that call themselves droogs. After having milk laced with drugs at the Korova Milk Bar, Alex Delarge and his gang go out for a night of ultra-violence. First, they beat up a homeless man underneath a bridge; then they get into a brawl with a rival gang in the process of raping a young woman; and finally, they invade the home of a writer, pin him to the floor, and force him to watch as they gang-rape his wife as the leader, Alex, sings ‘Singing in the Rain’.
My viewpoint
Alex lacks any religious or moral principles and is led by his desires for pleasure and violence. Society is at the mercy of street gangs that prey on the weak, starting with a homeless man, a female rape victim, and a writer and his wife. These violent scenes are done to classical music as a way of showing the paradox that Alex is both civilized and primitive at the same time. He is quite normal if you look at ‘civilized’ society itself as a paradox. On one hand, you have classical music, which is among our highest forms of cultural expression and one of the things that distinguishes us from animals. On the other hand, we live in a society obsessed with sex and violence in the media and in real life. These 2 contradictions are what Alex represents.
This film, like Kubrick’s earlier film ‘Dr. Strangelove,’ also uses satire to address serious issues such as criminal behavior, the justice system, morality, free will, and juvenile delinquency.
Title 8 (17:48-21:37) (4:11)
Alex is home after another day of random violence and he unwinds by listening to Beethoven. Later, his probation officer pays a visit and warns him to keep his proboscis out of the dirt and to stay out of trouble.
My viewpoint:
Alex lives with his parents in a housing project. Like most young men, his walls are covered with posters depicting sex and violence.
Title 13 (29:44-35:10) (5:34)
Members of Alex’s gang demote him and Georgie is the new leader until Alex catches them off guard and reasserts his dominance.
My viewpoint:
Title 14 (36:38-43:33) (6:55)
Alex and his gang go by a health farm. There, Alex sneaks in through an open window while the others wait outside. Alex confronts the lady of the house and smashes her face in with a statue of a giant penis. The woman had called the police when she heard him knock on her door earlier. Outside, Dim, the weakest member of the group, knocks Alex out with a bottle of milk. Alex is arrested and taken to jail.
My viewpoint:
Again the pictures on the walls of the mansion suggests that Alex’s fixations with sex and pornography are influenced by society.
Title 16 (48:12-53:23) (5:11)
Alex is emasculated as he enters prison and begins the transition from being powerful to being powerless.
My viewpoint:
This prison is a metaphor for totalitarian authority; Alex is completely powerless here. The power he had on the outside is gone.
Title 18 (57:30-101:22) (3:52)
Alex asks about the Ludovico treatment that can make him eligible to get out of prison early.
My viewpoint:
The prison is a counterpoint to the experiment. The prisoner is encouraged to read the Bible in the hopes that he will choose good over evil when he is released. The prison chaplain poses the question of whether or not the experiment makes a man good or not. He also says that “Goodness comes from within.” But this contradicts the fact that prison forces prisoners to do good. The difference between the prison and the experiment is that the prison will eventually release Alex into a free society and he will then have the power to choose good over evil; the experiment, on the other hand, will deprive Alex of free will when he is released from prison. This will reverse the roles that Alex and society play at the 1st half of the film. Then, Alex was powerful because he had choice and the society he preyed on was weak; after his release from prison, Alex will be weak in a society he once victimized, a society that has not changed but a society that has been empowered by the fact that he cannot fight back.
Title 22 (1:14:52-1:17:28) (2:24)
Doctors reprogram Alex to associate sex, violence, and his favorite symphony, Beethoven’s 9th, with pain instead of pleasure. This will give Alex normal aversions to deviant sex and violence.
.
My viewpoint:
Propaganda is used in this scene to make violence unpleasant to Alex. Normally, propaganda is used to condition people to accept certain ideas instead in this case it is used to get Alex to reject the ideas he had about violence in the past.
Title 28 (1:36:05—1:42:28) (5:23)
After completing the Ludovico treatments, Alex is released from prison only to discover that his parents have rented his room to a boarder. Alex is now homeless and exposed to those he once preyed on beginning with the bum he assaulted, then his old partners Dim and Georgie who are both police officers.
My viewpoint:
The treatments Alex got in prison got a lot of publicity and everyone knows that he cannot defend himself. He is an easy target now for those who were once his targets. This shows how society regards those who are weak. This also shows how one may function under a totalitarian system that exerts absolute control over individual freedom. In this case, Alex is the powerless citizen and each of his oppressors is the government or those with power. The message seems to be that a government that takes away the liberties of its citizens is a government that opposes dissidents. This idea is expressed later as Mr. Alexander—who was assaulted and whose wife was raped earlier by Alex’s gang—is arrested for writing “subversive” literature against the government. This explains the films Alex is forced to watch at the Ludovico Treatment Facility, films that act as propaganda by programming him to feel certain ways about sex and violence that promote a political agenda.
Title 30 (1:43:39-1:46:39) (3:00)
After getting beat up by Dim and Georgie, Alex stumbles to the doorstep of Mr. Alexander, writer and outspoken critic of the government and the Ludovico treatments. Although he does recognize Alex from the publicity he got for his treatments, Mr. Alexander doesn’t realize that Alex and his gang were responsible for him being in the wheelchair.
My viewpoint:
Mr. Alexander is a writer now since the assault by Alex and his gang. Since their last meeting, Alex and Mr. Alexander have been emasculated—Mr. Alexander has a male partner and Alex has been deprived of his free will. Mr. Alexander doesn’t recognize Alex at this point because of the masks Alex and his gang wore during the assault. Also significant symbolically is that Mr. Alexander is crippled and depends on a wheelchair, which is how the Ludovico treatments have crippled Alex. This may be the reason why Alex and Alexander are basically the same name because they are basically in the same situation.
Title 30 (1:49:01-1:52:55) (3:54)
Alex takes a bath and sings ‘Singing in the Rain,’ the tune he sang the night he and his gang assaulted Mr. Alexander and his wife. Mr. Alexander overhears the song and remembers Alex. Later, Mr. Alexander drugs Alex.
My viewpoint:
Mr. Alexander’s reaction to hearing ‘Singing in the Rain’ is just like Alex’s reaction to hearing Beethoven’s 9th. The difference is that Mr. Alexander’s reaction is natural and Alex’s is not normal because of the treatments he received. This suggests that Alex’s aversion to violence is actually abnormal. Also, there is the paradox of a happy song like ‘Singing in the Rain’ being associated with a painful experience that is similar to the way that Alex associates Beethoven’s 9th with pain. But Alex’s reaction is abnormal because he has been programmed to feel the way he does and not of his own free will.
Title 31 (1:58:14—2:01:52) (3:38)
Alex is locked in a room. Underneath his room, Frank Alexander blasts Beethoven’s 9th as loud as possible out of giant speakers, getting revenge for the crimes Alex committed on he and his dead wife. Unable to bear the pain any longer, Alex leaps from the bedroom window. He wakes up in the hospital with numerous broken bones.
My viewpoint:
Mr. Alexander and his associates compel Alex to try to commit suicide to turn public sentiment against the government’s use of treatments to rob men of their free will. But Alex is operated on and reprogrammed back to his old self in the hospital. This makes sense if Alex is looked at as society and its obsession with sex and violence through the media. The media uses sex and violence to promote many agendas be they social, political, or economic. This explains the many images and references to sex and violence throughout the film from the posters on Alex’s wall; the pornographic art on the walls of the cat-woman’s home; the pornographic graffiti drawn on the buildings; the Korova Milk Bar; the phallus-shaped popsicles in the record shop; the cod-pieces Alex and his gang wears; Alex’s perverted probation officer, Mr. Deltoid, etc.
Title 33 (2:04:26-2:07:34) (3:08)
Alex passes a psychological test where he’s asked to describe some pictures. He is back to his old self.
No comments:
Post a Comment