A Clockwork Orange--50 Years Ago Today

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"A CLOCKWORK ORANGE" opened in the U.S. 52 years ago on December 19, 1971 (6 days earlier in the U.K.). The film was prophetic, controversial, divisive, disturbing… innovative, daring, and dynamic. 

The film is an assault on the senses.

Stanley Kubrick was at the height of his powers. His movie is more disturbing today than it was 52 years ago, and no less brilliant.

In league with other future prediction stories like 1984 by George Orwell and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury a Clockwork Orange predicted a sick society obsessed with violence.

It was and still is bravura filmmaking. An unprecedented display of command of the cinematic language. Whether you like it or not. One can't help but admire the magnificent performance by Malcolm McDowell. The role he was born to play was "Little Alex."

I was 17 years old when A CLOCKWORK ORANGE hit the silver screen. The right age to feel the full effect of the endorphin rush from being front row to rape and gore.

My gang of friends changed after the film introduced the idea of violence being cool. And so did millions of other young men across America.

A match to gasoline.

The favorite male Halloween costume of 1972 was to dress up as the brutal gang in the film called "droogies."

The film, young men around my age was set near the future of London. Dressed in violent attire they hit the drug milk bar to get pumped up. Once high enough performed their evening raids of violence on innocent victims.

There was no purpose to their violence. It was a "high" to watch a person plea for their life.

Did Kubrick get his idea from observing the British skinhead movement? A skinhead is a member of a subculture. It originated in the 1960s. Among the working-class youths in London, England. It soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom. With a second working-class skinhead movement emerging worldwide in late 1970.

A Clockwork Orange - violence against innocent victims became a cult. It was a cult with its style of music "Beethoven" and Army boots.

The orange clock never stopped ticking.

There have been more mass shootings than days in 2023, with 163 mass shootings so far this year. There have been 131 mass shootings with four or more people wounded or killed so far in 2023 compared to 113 this time last year.

More than 11,500 people have been killed by a gun in 2023 and it's only May.

That's more deaths than Americans who died in battle during the Revolutionary War 1775–1783.

America won the war and wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and in 1791 the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) was amended in the US Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights.

Second Amendment: A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Keep in mind 231 years ago there were no police or a National Guard to help maintain law and order in a sparsely populated rural country.

There also weren't many men and the average lifespan was 35 years old.

The standard gun of the time was a flintlock muzzle-loaded weapon. If you were lucky it fired.

Somehow the need to own guns grew over time and today semi-automatic weapons of mass destruction like the AR-15 are commonplace.

There is no need for a well-regulated Militia anymore unless one considers anyone who is not white who rings your doorbell and drives into your driveway by accident to be an invader.

Ultraviolence psychosis has entered every part of society from schools, churches, the police, and even music concerts.

Egged on by political leaders and media, men dress up in military fatigue murder helpless, unarmed civilians in the name of the Second Amendment.

Extremists want a purge.

Politicians want votes.

Violence is so prevalent in today's society it can be felt everywhere.

It has integrated American culture on all levels.

From cars driving through a Christmas parade, people brawling on airplanes, and video death games.

Too much media that glorifies violence. There's no end in sight. People are numb. It's here to stay. The only thing missing is the milk bar.

Kubrick's vision of a violent psychotic society not only turned out to be true. It surpassed our wildest imagination.

Living abroad in a country where guns are illegal the locals watch America in shock. They have crime. But children don't walk into a school and murder teachers and shooters killing students.

The Small Arms Survey stated that U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian-held firearms. That amounts to 120.5 firearms for every 100 residents.

A Clockwork Orange didn't create this mass violence hysteria. It brought to light a dark, sinister side to the apparent catastrophe of postmodern American identity.

The question remains: Order in Society vs. Freedom of Choice

The freedom of individuals to make choices becomes problematic when those choices undermine the safety and stability of society, and in A Clockwork Orange, the state is willing to protect society by taking away the freedom of choice and replacing it with prescribed good behavior. In the main character's world, both the unfettered power of the individual and the unfettered power of the state prove dangerous. The character steals, rapes, and murders merely because it feels good, but when his violent impulses are taken away, the result is equally as dangerous, simply because freedom of choice, a fundamental element of humanity, has been taken away. - Sparknotes

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