‘A Clockwork Orange’, the undeniably and notoriously controversial cautionary tale of a dystopian future in which the British Government has resorted to ‘brainwashing’ criminal offenders with newly-formed ‘Ludovico Treatment’, follows ‘Alex DeLarge’, a particularly sadistic and psychotic 16 year old as he goes through this moral-minefield of a process. The film is rife with uncomfortable moral questions presented but never answered (God bless you and your ambiguity, Stan), blatant anti-authoritarian undertones and a famous rape scene played to classical music and presented therefore almost as a natural, terrible evolution for interpretive dance. As such, it of course caused nothing short of an uproar from Johnny Bland-Conservative and his wife, Elizabeth Boring-Oldfashion. Perhaps our whitebread couple, breath stinking of weak tea and the latest Coronation Street storyline fresh in mind, was most upset by the misleading categorising of this film- though it is most frequently referred to as a ‘sci-fi’, albeit with a disclaimer-like “political message“, heaven forbid we learn something from a film, Kubrick’s masterpiece (well, one of many) frequently detours from it’s political-philosophical focus into moments of extremely dark black comedy. And of course, the cry from the cheap seats was a resounding- “How dare they!?”

By the 1971 release of ‘A Clockwork Orange’, Kubrick was already fairly established as an auteur with a distinct personal style, and a large part of ‘A Clockwork Orange’s intended audience was likely fans or followers of Kubrick’s previous work, art house filmgoers and, for a brief while before it’s withdrawal from cinemas, ticket buyers attracted simply by the controversy, forerunners of the modern media-frenzy-feeder. As is the nature of film though, a few (read: shitloads) of tactless, 10-a-penny seatfillers of course went to see the film, perhaps in misguided searches for a comedy about teen-punks talking funny and giving it rough to their ‘lasses’, and perhaps out of a sheep-like following of the box-office herd. Baaaah. Or maybe the football just wasn’t on. Regardless, Kubrick’s trademark slow, contemplative and meditative direction coupled with a minimalist approach to the narrative designed to guide the viewer along a sequence of what can, at first, seem like a thematically incoherent and pointless series of events gradually presenting the audience with hints to the film’s many philosophical questions, of course inspired contempt and confusion in those too close-minded or dense to comprehend it, too self-righteous and set in their ways to enjoy the film regardless, and too uptight to loosen their puckered arseholes and enjoy the [proverbial] ride. Kubrick, perhaps anticipating this controversy, populated his film with archetypal characters recognisable to even the most common British film goer, allowing the audience to use these characters as ‘canaries in the mine’ to compare themselves to, contrast against their own most likely reactions and generally opinionate themselves on the events unfolding on-screen by means of simple comparison. “Hey, I’m like that guy! I’d just do what he did probably.” Though rarely addressed in retrospectives of this oft-discussed film, perhaps herein the problem lies:

Kubrick presents us with a selection of fantastically prim-and-proper, “British to the bone” recognisables, and as the film progresses you could be forgiven for questioning whether or not Kubrick is consciously attempting to present everyone involved, bar protagonist ‘Alex’ and his similarly-aged accomplices, as old, authoritarian and faintly ridiculous caricatures in a comedic effort to place the audience’s interpretative opinions somewhere within Alex’s own spectrum and outlook on the world, and create empathy for an otherwise generally ‘dislikeable’ character, while still light-heartedly poking fun at the ridiculous right-wing leaning so common of the average public and audience of the time. There are moments in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ where Kubrick almost seems to be knowingly acknowledging (If I may use such a terribly duplicitous term), with a nod and wink to the more learned watcher, the explicitness of the cultural and filmic stereotypes he presents to us, the more attentive, and as a result of such the film, often successfully, plays nearly all of them largely for laughs. An exemplary line that, in my experience, never fails to generate laughter occurs when Alex particularly nonchalantly wishes his intentionally cliché Mother a “nice day at the factory”, taking the identifiable representative last straw many housewives duped into seeing the film were surely clutching to, and grounding her cynically to a brilliantly dull lower-class cardboard cut-out.

The question on the lips of most old, boring and utterly bereft of imagination viewers of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ is (quite tiresomely to us, the desensitised MTV generation and beyond, since we‘re just too damn apathetic to care either way) precisely why Alex is driven to commit the terrible acts of violence we see. And when explicitly raised by the newly introduced Mr. Deltoid, the old lady in the audience clutching her handbag in disgust often breathes a sigh of relief at her concerns finally being voiced, however many minutes in. It is a moment short lived, however, when in a stroke of genius Kubrick quickly establishes Deltoid to be not so much a voice of wisdom and guidance appointed by the government, but more a creepy and sexually deprived old queer, interested and perhaps infatuated with Alex. This, directly after witnessing the ineffective parenting of Alex’s “Ma” and “Pa”, is further reaffirmation of the concept that Alex, as a young adult, has no real guardians or superiors to associate with or trust, as every one of his elders is ultimately as equally flawed, just in different ways. It’s a big fantastic middle-finger raised pre-emptively to all those guarantee before it was even released to complain about Kubrick’s film. To the young, dispassionate and riotously amused, Kubrick is giving a nod. To the old and outraged, he blows raspberries.

This is arguably what lead to the film’s removal from cinemas- rather than the high horse of moral outrage popularly jumped on, many of the more conservative non-target audience foolish enough to watch ‘A Clockwork Orange’ were probably dimly aware, in whatever feeble dim flickering light-bulb of realisation their self-righteously right-wing minds could afford, of the undercurrent of ridicule, the man behind the scenes pointing his finger to the lens and laughing directly at them, and the morally transcendent teenagers sat behind them, indirectly joining in on the fun simply by failing to be close-minded and upset.