A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 crime and dystopia movie based on the novel of the same name, written by Anthony Burgess and published in 1962. The film is set in a futuristic London and focuses on a young man called Alex. London, at this time, is the pinnacle of a downfallen and ruinous society. The movie opens in a “milk bar,” where Alex and his friends get high on drugged glasses of milk and proceed to commit “ultra-violence,” as is the style of teenagers in this dystopian society. As the film progresses, Alex becomes victim to an experimental government treatment for criminals, making him sick when he sees violence or sexuality — which doesn’t go quite as they expect.
The film is meant to be a larger social commentary and exploration in madness: the madness of prison, the madness of psychopathy, the madness of trauma and thirst for revenge, the madness of a society that seems to go in circles, a government’s inability to deal with offenders, and their attempts to placate the public without changing. Alex goes from hated man to public hero and a token for state negligence, but is essentially a pawn in the government’s publicity game.
Director Stanley Kubrick is a master of perfectly framed shots. Each scene is gorgeously laid out and full of detail and colour. He lingers the camera just long enough to force viewers to really see the shot. While I can admire Kubrick’s eye for colour and scene, I can’t ignore the problems in the content of this film.
Following its release, strings of violent crime were committed in the U.K. as teens were reenacting the “ultra-violence” they saw in the movie, leading Kubrick and Warner Bros. to pull it from release in the U.K.
Sexualizing violence in films is a problem, and people should be mindful of consuming this media without being aware of the very real and serious problem of sexualized violence towards women. Indeed, Kubrick’s depiction of nude, young women in combination with the amount of rape scenes does come off as excessive and uncomfortable.
The movie remains problematic because rape is used as a pawn in the director’s attempt to make a statement about something else. Kubrick could easily have used some other trick of cinematic magic and storytelling to come to the same conclusion.
What’s ironic is that one of the major themes of the film and the novel was that it was supposed to be a comment on this very issue: the harmful effects of media. An oversexualized culture is supossedly responsible for feeding into the corruption of Alex. The author of the novel, Burgess, wrote an unfinished non-fiction follow up, The Clockwork Condition, discussing further the themes of the book.
An article from the BBC quotes the director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Professor Andrew Biswell, saying: The Clockwork Condition provides a context for Burgess’s most famous work, and amplifies his views on crime, punishment, and the possible corrupting effects of visual culture.”
This leaves watchers, readers, and critiquers with much to chew on.
Darien Johnsen is a UFV alumni who obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree with double extended minors in Global Development Studies and Sociology in 2020. She started writing for The Cascade in 2018, taking on the role of features editor shortly after. She’s passionate about justice, sustainable development, and education.
