In the book at the very end Alex decides out of his own free will to stop being violent. Which is the entire point of the book: free will vs being forced to do something. It’s so powerful, I don’t think any book affected as much as that did at the time.
Kubrick focused on the violence and the rapes and by leaving out the most important part, it was more soft core porn than anything else and an abject failure in my opinion.
The American version of the book doesn't have the final chapter, and was the basis for Kubrick's film. He was aware of the final chapter but never considered using it, as he didn't agree with Burgess and thought it didn't make sense (this was also the opinion of the American editor who had the final chapter removed).
The movie does include the Ludovico technique and all the themes about free will and goodness vs the choice of goodness, it just leaves out the very unrealistic ending where Alex reforms.
I think the film is a masterpiece and the book's original ending is unrealistic nonsense. I hardly think it's the "most important part".
The "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" introduction is from November 1986. It covers the reasoning behind the shortened American edition[0], Kubrick's film, and his own feelings on the 21st chapter[1]. I think the final paragraph summarizes it well "Readers of the twenty-first chapter must decide for themselves whether it enhances the book they presumably know or is really a discardable limb. I meant the book to end in this way, but my aesthetic judgement may have been faulty" (Burgess xv).
[0] "I needed money back in 1962, even the pittance I was being offered as an advance, and if the condition of the book's acceptance was also it's truncation - well, so be it" (Burgess x-xi)
[1] "There is no hint of this change of intention in the twentieth chapter. The boy is conditioned, then deconditioned, and he foresees with glee a resumption of the operation of free and violent will. [...] The twenty-first chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation [...] The American version or Kubrickian Orange is a fable; the British or world one is a novel" (xii)
I think the film is very good, but the book's original ending is is essential to the whole point of the story. The film is inferior to the book because it's missing.
But I'm not sure what you mean by "unrealistic". On one level, neither the book nor movie is very realistic anyway. On a deeper level, they both speak real truths.
I found the movie itself to be very unrealistic. Something in the way it looked (costumes and everything) and the way actors acted and talked made me not believe any of it. It felt more like comic movie then something that attempts to be realistic.
This is all a long way of saying that faithfulness to the source material is overrated in film. Some written works just don't work well when closely adapted to the screen. A few notable movies even manage to twist the original to express a completely different idea or theme (e.g. Starship Troopers). The original author is not some ultimate authority regarding the meaning of a work.
[1] https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-stephen-king-hated-stanley-...
The problem is that films are not books (shocking, I know) and what works in one medium of storytelling doesn't necessarily work in the other. As in actual translation, there has to be some liberty in how something is adapted from one form into another or else it will be very accurate but not very good.
I find that I'm less disappointed if I watch the film before I read the book. Frequently because if I read it first, then I always dislike the director's choice of actors. Or their choice of locations. I'm such an annoying critic.
It was about disaffected youth acting out immorally because they were not given a functioning moral code? And that's what the movie showed.
Those who make progress impossible make revolt inevitable.
The “point” of the book is irrelevant; chapter 21 is disconnected from the main text, set at some remove from the events in the previous chapters, and utterly banal. It’s an extended internal monologue of the most boring sort where the author states his moral.
But the best works of literature, in my opinion, transcend simple morality tales and touch something a bit more universal and hard to define in language. If your point can be summarized in a short essay, all you’ve done is illustrate an essay at length. “This novel could’ve been an email.”
What is captivating about _Clockwork_ is precisely its depiction of violence, its almost sympathetic glorification of the id. The protagonist’s unapologetic thirst for violence is what makes the novel (and movie) interesting. It’s reminding us that violence and aggression are part of the human condition, and part of the reader, too: you may recoil, but you also identify with Alex — it’s a first person account so that’s natural.
The last chapter ruins it though with petty moralizing. The voice of Alex the psychopath is far better than that of Burgess the moralist, and the novel is better for having its terminal essay removed.
The book is extremely funny, darkly funny obviously, but still uproariously absurd and filled with set pieces that possess the structure of comedy. The subject of humor is usually Alex’s misfortunes and the consequences he reaps from his terrible choices. He is a sort of George Costanza figure painted in shades of ultraviolence.
Burgess behaves as though he thinks he has written a very serious book. Of course it is possible to create a humorous satire that also has a message, e.g. Veerhoven’s Starship Troopers, but whenever I read Burgess’ commentary on Clockwork I am left with the sense that this isn’t what he was trying to do. Which leaves me thinking that he, like many creators, doesn’t actually understand why his creation was good.
On top of that, it's another piece of art. Directors should be allowed to provide an opinion. Take Verhoeven's adaptation of Starship troopers as an example, which is widely a critic of the source material. They're both different stories in their own right. I enjoy both of them differently, and I'm glad Verhoeven didn't go out of his way to relay the message that militaristic dictature is the way to go.
Morally, I'd say it's fair to call many of his great works failures: even Full Metal Jacket failed at being an anti-war movie even though it is still referenced as such. But artistically they're interesting and, if you ignore the supposed intentions and the moral implications of his failure, indeed very good.
And the film. He's conditioned one way, but reverts to himself.
A Clockwork Orange is not about a happy ending in which a young, violent and brilliant teenager finally decides to get an apartment and a job; it's about that teenager realising that he can channel his violence in a much more productive way. Or to put it more clearly: the minister that spoon-feeds him at the end is a psychopath possibly worse than Alex- but one in a suit, with vast resources and power, because he uses violence in a more covert and clever way. So the growth of the main character that we expect at the end of a good story is there, it's just not a happy ending (for us).
With the last chapter intact, the story is no longer about Alex. It’s about some hypothetical futuristic society where ultraviolence is the norm and is just considered to be some coming of age rite of passage, that you eventually grow out of. It takes the violence in the story and makes it mundane and pedestrian, to the point where we have to come up with insane torturous methods like the Ludivico Technique, just as we prescribe kids Ritalin or Adderall, only we would do so just to attempt to keep things under control. It’s a story that is, frankly, ridiculous in its hyperbole, to the point that it bears little resemblance to anything but science fiction.
Kubrick and Burgess’s American editor were absolutely right to leave off the last chapter, thereby transforming the novel into the portrait of an irredeemable sociopath. A sociopath who has been enabled to a far greater extent by a simultaneously far more lenient and vindictive society than our own, yes, but therein lies the warning. While we want to redeem those criminals who are victims of circumstance, what happens when we take it too far?
By apologizing for Alex as a victim of society and circumstance, who only owes his psychopathic tendencies to said circumstances, Burgess’s novel falls flat as a criticism of society at Large (get it?)
Don’t get me wrong—I greatly enjoyed the novel, and recommend it to anyone who liked the movie. But I honestly believe the last chapter would have been best left unwritten.
According to the votes, on the one hand it's not pornography, but on the other hand it is. It just isn't when you want to point it out as being soft porn, but if you want to critique the movie vs the book, it's okay to critique it as soft porn... hrrrm
I saw a youtube interview of an addict who said he started taking painkillers regularly because he saw House doing it. Surely the writers didn’t know they were setting up some kid in suburban America up for addiction by giving him that mannerism
The whole point of publishing an idea or art piece is to influence people. Sure, some people will misinterpret it, but it should be pretty obvious that if you make a heroically brilliant protagonist dismissive of an opioid addiction that some people are going to think that's cool, especially if you're portraying that on TV. That's why Burgess wrote:
> I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation...
Kubrick's film (disclaimer: I've only read the book, I've never seen the movie) has apparently made this problem worse for Burgess. Similarly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was a deeply flawed protagonist, which readers of his books would see, but I believe that the way the character was portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. in the recent film/series adaptations similarly disguised those flaws and had a strong potential for some misinterpretation and more negative impacts.
One of the topics constantly running in my mind is Alan Moore saying that writing a comic, novel, movie, is an act of magic.
You write, or say, something. Other people hear, and their brain is forever changed. They will think and/or act differently.
So he truly is a wizard.
As an author, I throughly disagree with this statement. Humans like to tell stories and entertain each other.
My primary goal for publishing my stories is for people to find them enjoyable. Some of my stories have a secondary goal of showing less common perspectives for the purpose of introducing people to ideas they may not have considered.
Any idea can influence someone, but does not mean all ideas are published to influence.
Despite the book's quite unflattering depiction of Wall Street firms and many of the people who worked there, many younger readers were fascinated by the life depicted. Many read it as a "how-to manual" and asked the author for additional "secrets" that he might care to share
Just because a minority wrongly take inspiration from an ill behaved character is no reason to temper a fictional character actions. Did Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lead to an increase in bank and train robberies?
In general society agrees that people are responsible for unintentional effects to their actions when they're obvious and predictable, such as involuntary manslaughter for killing someone while driving drunk. A reasonable person should understand the risk of that and take it into account before deciding to drive after having a number of drinks.
Where it gets more complicated and divisive is when the unintentional effects become less obvious or easily attributable.
I feel there are lots of behaviors that we're able to show empirically have negative impacts on the world yet aren't immediately obvious or unavoidably attributable, and because they're not intuitably, at-first-glance attributable there begin to be people who dismiss them despite empirical evidence proving their cause. Things like chemical dumping into rivers as an externality of an industrial process causing health impacts to surrounding communities come to mind as an example.
Where it gets even fuzzier is when impacts are social and diffuse.
A place I see a lot of discussion related to this topic is in the comedy world. You regularly see people criticize comedians for their jokes being harmful or hurtful. In my opinion these criticisms are sometimes accurate, and sometimes are inaccurate due to mistaking the topic of a joke as being the butt of it (a good example highlighting the difference I feel is Shane Gillis' jokes about autism from his standup https://youtu.be/ly14Pr2RLys, vs him calling out Andrew Shultz for jokes on the same topic but done in a derogatory manner: https://youtu.be/ENpTQ6ws3P8?t=954).
The general retort from comedians to people criticizing them is that "The intent of the joke isn't bad, it's all about the intent." I feel this is partially true, but it completely ignores the potential unintended consequences of the things they say, and the potential responsibility people have for the them.
I think this area and ones like it, involving the question of to what degree people with cultural influence should be held accountable for the unintentional impacts of their influence is really interesting and complex. I don't have much more to say beyond that I find it interesting and nuanced.
It seems that the desire to grandstand our outrage has exploded as we all now have access to our "15 minutes of fame" via our new global social platforms. Like children finding their ability to speak, society as a whole is still in a dadaistic phase. I hope that, with much time and troubles, we eventually learn to speak in a more mature way.
>I think this area and ones like it, involving the question of to what degree people with cultural influence should be held accountable for the unintentional impacts of their influence is really interesting and complex. I don't have much more to say beyond that I find it interesting and nuanced.
Well said and agreed. In our complex social web, the unintended consequences of every nuanced thing we do makes it very hard for the wise to be sure of the societal value of our beliefs and resultant actions. There are very few topics where I am comfortable fully embracing a side.
This is already enshrined in law as "negligence" and "reasonable person". It's not helpful to hold people responsible for not considering every possible outcome of what they say, including perspectives that aren't well known.
For example, I'm bipolar. Almost every media representation of bipolar individuals is reinforcing a stereotype that is actively harmful to me. I don't think the average reasonable person would be aware of this.
Bipolar is not limited to mania and depression. I call it the grab bag of issues. My brain went to the grocery store of mental illness, stuck out an arm across a shelf on aisle 3, and swept everything into the cart, like a snow plow clearing a highway.
I'm going to disagree with this. Music, movies, and TV have been proven to be very effective at influencing. While the writers may not have intended to promote drug use, they had to expect that the wrong idea might be taken away from it. Is their fault, hell no. Does it mean that a writer should take pause before writing something? Maybe, but now we're on the verge of recommending pre-censoring content. My contention is that someone putting something out for mass consumption should not be surprised by anyone coming back later and saying they were influenced by that work as it has been demonstrated time and time again. You think Salinger thought his work was going to influence serial killers?
The drug use is another thing - Sherlock used cocaine and morphine. House used Vicodin. Morphine and Vicodin are both opioids.
If they had him abuse cocaine, it would be too unrealistic. If they had him abuse Adderall, it might not be obvious to audiences that he has a substance abuse problem - people could write it off as him using it to focus. A prescription opioid is something audiences understood were abused at the time, and maintains the Sherlock connections the writers were going for.
Plus it gives plenty of plot hooks to explore the effects and consequences of addiction to someone we believe to be very successful (success is happiness, right?) in season 1
You get used to the effects. House wasn't high. He was just addicted.
Ya think? I disagree. It was product placement at the time. Now, it's hard not to call it outright drug pushing.
Despite all of that, he has crippling pain and a painkiller addiction that he’s utterly dependent on. It brings him back down to earth.
Not everything is some vast conspiracy...
I don't speak French, and yet something leads me to believe that's not a direct translation.
An even more literal alternative is: "A mechanical orange, the machinery pieces of violence."
[1] https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/rouage/69972
The omission of that chapter in the American book and Kubrick's adaption undercuts the whole point of the story in my opinion. When the film ended, I felt like my time had been wasted and that I'd been dragged back to the beginning all over again.
In addition to freewill being a key theme in the book, the nadsat language is used to disassociate the reader from the actions and events partaken in by the narrator. Alex describes in clear detail the fact that he's beating the crap out of old ladies in the book, but you, the reader, don't interpret it that way. Those acts are hidden behind a language that doesn't hold the same connotations to you, the reader, so you don'tt look at Alex the same way because of it.
Conversely when his punishment and "re-education" begins you view that as harsh and inhumane, because those things are expressed in more familiar terms simply because the reader is more comfortable with the language Alex uses. Worse, he had something that he loved taken away from him (his classical music), which you understand wholeheartedly as the reader.
The fact that Alex punishment was arguably justified (if not grotesque in it's own way), is something that's missed because language disassociates the crime and amplifies the impact of the punishment. It makes you question the humaneness of criminal punishment, because it's expressed from a perspective rarely portrayed.
All of these things are completely lost once the story is taken into any visual medium. The idea of making it a film was flawed before Kubrick even touched the project, and any other director would have struggled to have the same impact as the book. I genuinely think that the project attracted Kubrick for the wrong reasons and he was far more interested in making something provocative, which "A Clockwork Orange" had plenty of opportunities.
If you haven't read "A Clockwork Orange", I strongly recommend you do, and I strongly recommend reading it as quickly and in as short a timeline as possible. Understanding the language is key, and it makes it a slow read at the start. The quicker you can become familiar with it, the easier the rest of it goes.
Then after you're done reading it, reread it again. Being familiar with the language from the start makes some of the more graphic scenes at the start really stand out in a way that they don't the first read through.
I also would argue that Kubrick's tricks weren't all that effective, in that they didn't really humanize Alex or pull the viewer into Alex's perspective, but rather just made the film into more of spectacle.
A lot of the visual elements of the movie struck me as very cartoonish in a way that wasn't conveyed at all in the book. The book is not all that descriptive of aesthetics and visuals in terms of fashion and architecture/decorations. I feel like those are some areas where Kubrick took the most liberties (because there wasn't as much to go off of) and I just found it distracting.
From the article:
"Kubrick himself, in response to a series of murder trials where the defendants explicitly mentioned his work..."
I'm saying the story is not a call to violence for normal individuals.
I don't have a lot to add but I'm impressed at the level of discourse.
I have read both versions of the book and seen the movie several times, there are lots of interesting ideas presented here at HN.
That came through sufficiently in the movie that I feel like this delivery was fine.
Similarly, the free will issue came through fine. Alex lacks the capacity to dwell on the subject. It falls to a prison chaplain to even ask. Nobody cares, of course, this is about results, not reformation. If Alex and other recipients of the Technique must stagger through society wearing invisible chains, that's fine as far as Government is concerned. Again, well-conveyed.
These two themes collide at the end, wherein the Government changes its mind and finds it politically expedient to restore (or just re-re-program) him to his original and savage state. ("I was cured alright.") Twenty-one, incidentally, is the terminal age in the novel for Logan's Run; youth violence and an age divide was certainly on the minds of some.
I felt like Alex himself was almost, well, not irrelevant, but simply a ball upon which multiple dogs had set their sights.
"You know, Nietzsche didn’t, you know, from his drawing room give
birth to a century of cannonade, slaughter, concentration camps,
CIA subterfuge, the raping and the murdering of nuns, the bombing
of continents, the despoiling of beaches and the ruin of a planet!
Four or five pedants do not have that much power, and never have."
- R. Roderick
In fact I watched it recently to steal a sample for a track I'm working on... "When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man"
Still potent stuff.
we are but beasts!
It reeks of illusions of grandeur. Sure it is a nice piece, but he overestimates the influence imho. Similar to William Gibson thinking he is the father of things Steam Punk ever.
Edit: Indeed I meant cyber punk.
Though if Gibson is the father, I might say Bester is the grandfather.
Great observation! Being a popular part of a zeitgeist is not the same as defining it.
I have to wonder if, and the article does hint at, "if the movie was never made..."
FTA: Burgess introduced a character “with a beard like Stanley Kubrick’s” who played Singin’ in the Rain with a trumpet — before being kicked off the stage.
1. Shitty people had latent bullying and cruelty instincts and South Park gave them the idea of diverting that to redheads
2. People were just chilling until South Park taught them to be cruel and bully gingers
One day his son played at a friend's house when he was 3, nearly 4, and ended up watching a hulk cartoon. He spent the next 3 weeks running around the house screaming 'hulk smash' and hitting things with pillows.
Did the cartoon make him that way, or just tell him it was OK to act that way?
If that kid was kept from watching TV for nearly 4 years, he never had a chance to learn that copying things from TV is wrong, so really it was both the TV at their friend's house and the previous lack of TV at his house that made him act that way.
For adults this shouldn't matter, because they are responsible for their own morality. If you showed a Hulk cartoon to an adult member of a previously uncontacted tribe, they probably won't hulk smash obnoxiously for three weeks.
There are loads of situations like this where people have an over the top rhetoric that is based upon the notion that everyone is in on the joke, when some subsection of the population simply isn't.
We have been a household without TV ads for a little over a decade. My wife and I have not seen an ad really at all - certainly not within our home - during this time. Maybe one or two at a dentist visit or something when they play the TV, but nothing on a regular basis. Not even YouTube ads (yay adblockers and pihole!)
To save some money, we decided to go to an ad supported tier of Peacock, and within 2 weeks my wife noticed she was spending more money than usual on shopping (I don't watch Peacock shows, so I had little to no exposure).
Despite both of us trying to inoculate ourselves to marketing, some subliminal thing worked, at least in her case. We both decided that it was worth going to the ad free tier again. We haven't bought anything on Amazon for 3 months since.
Neither of us are 100% certain what to make of this experience.
On a related note, it's interesting that folks in the US tie the anti redhead thing to South Park, given it's been an unfortunate prejudice here in the UK (and presumably other commonwealth countries) for decades. I guess that episode ended up importing a prejudice from one country to another?
kids are brutal
That's the whole point of the ad industry.
Media are experienced as authoritative and high status. If they normalise behaviours and beliefs at least some humans will copy them unthinkingly.
There aren't any moral limits to this. If media normalise mass murder, you get mass murder.
Some people are more resistant than others, but everyone has weak spots.