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“Liberals, They Hate ‘Clockwork'”
Even half a century on, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange is still one of the darkest and most haunting of dystopian films about the near future. A bitter satire on the inability of judgment-free modern society to deal seriously with violent crime, it premiered in New York City fifty years ago this week, on December 19, 1971. As a student writer at NYU, I was able to see it a week early at a press and critics screening at the Cinema 1 Theater. Getting there that night was no joy; riding the graffiti’d-up Lexington Ave. subway, and watching your back on the dark, crime-ridden winter streets of Manhattan. It was a good prologue for seeing the film.
A month into its release, Malcolm McDowell gave an interview to The New York Times: “Liberals, they hate Clockwork because they’re dreamers and it shows them realities, shows ‘em not tomorrow but now. Cringe, don’t they, when faced with the bloody truth?”
The Times journalist asks about the effects of movie violence. McDowell drily noted that New York had 88 rapes a day. “I hate violence, but it is a fact, the human condition…Movies don’t alter the world, they pose questions and warnings. The Clockwork violence is stylized, surreal. Kubrick uses it only to warn us.”
That is the case for the defense: A Clockwork Orange, for all of its shocking imagery, is a sobering lesson about free will, humanity’s inability to overcome its worst impulses, and the evils of scientific attempts to control the mind. That was the stated intention of novelist Anthony Burgess.
In 1971, liberal discourse about juvenile delinquency still hadn’t (and still hasn’t) moved much past the platitudes that even staunch progressives Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim satirized in “Officer Krupke”—The kids were depraved because they were deprived. But Kubrick knew better. He quoted Robert Ardrey in “African Genesis”: “The idealistic American is an environmentalist who accepts the doctrine of man’s innate nobility and looks chiefly to economic causes for the source of human woe. And so now, at the peak of the American triumph over that ancient enemy, want, he finds himself harassed by racial conflict of increasing bitterness, harrowed by juvenile delinquency probing championship heights.”
Kubrick was the son of a neighborhood doctor, an amateur photographer who turned pro when he was seventeen, a kid who ventured into the wide, wilder world of Greenwich Village and other areas of Manhattan. After he’d become famous and successful, the unprecedented crime wave of the Sixties drove him and his family from New York; it was largely fear of urban violence that brought him to the quiet countryside of the north of London, then and now the world’s second-most important center for making films in English.
A Clockwork Orange was made and released in a strange era not unlike our own, with new forms of cultural extremism. Before there was a formal women’s movement, there was already a growing backlash to what was becoming non-stop hyper-sexualization of women in magazines, movies, and other media. It created a new term—sexism–that first came into use in this period.
This is where the film crossed a then-nearly-invisible tripwire that would affect its reputation over time. Was it a bitter critique of a sex-obsessed but loveless world, or a well-crafted example of it? Stanley Kubrick’s deliberately shocking opening shot of bar tables and drugged-milk dispensers molded into the images of naked women, not to mention the notoriety of what is probably the most famous home invasion scene in movie history, were unlikely to ever make it a female-friendly favorite, but in its time, audiences and readers of both sexes were receptive to what Kubrick said in its defense, that he didn’t depict that world because he approved of it, let alone gloried in it, but because if men’s appetites for sex and violence are totally unrestrained, this is where we’re going to end up someday soon.
Not everyone bought that, of course. To skeptics, A Clockwork Orange, despite its undeniable cleverness in visual design, integration of picture and pre-existing music, and other aspects of film craft, is essentially a futuristic porno rape comedy with gaudy costumes and science fiction overtones, its face, Alex’s smirking leer.
The 50th anniversary of a famous film is generally the occasion of its final major remembrance and lasting sum-up in the press. Whether it’s Gone With the Wind, 2001, How the West Was Won, or any other, the posts and articles at 50 signal a film’s public sendoff to critical Valhalla, or to critical Hades, or if simply forgotten and ignored, to obscurity by neglect. Each previous Clockwork milestone, its 10th and 25th anniversaries, were occasions to debate the value of this still-controversial movie. Novelist Anthony Burgess and film director Stanley Kubrick are long gone, so A Clockwork Orange’s sole surviving principal, Malcolm McDowell, will no doubt be questioned closely to, essentially, pressure him to denounce the film. It will be claimed that today’s Left puritan attitudes are clearer, sharper, truer than 1971’s.
A few weeks after the Malcolm McDowell quote that headlines this post, Stanley Kubrick chimed in with his own article, headlined “Now Kubrick Fights Back.” He began:
“An alert liberal,” says (Times writer) Fred M. Hechinger, writing about my film A Clockwork Orange, “Should recognize the voice of fascism.” “Is this an uncharitable reading of the film’s thesis?” Mr. Hechinger asks himself … I would reply that it is an irrelevant reading of the thesis, in fact an insensitive and inverted reading of the thesis, which, so far from advocating that fascism be given a second chance, warns against the new psychedelic fascism—the eye-popping, multimedia, quadrasonic, drug-oriented conditioning of human beings by other human beings—which many believe will usher in the forfeiture of human citizenship and the beginning of zombiedom.
A prescient warning from—it’s hard to believe–a half-century ago. Not bad prophecy, Stanley.
This post is part of the Group Writing Project, a member-created regular feature of Ricochet, administered by Clifford A. Brown. The theme for December 2021 is “Winter Lights, and Dark Winter Nights”. Member participation is not only welcome, but encouraged.
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Superb.
Great post. Thanks.
I took my future bride to see Clockwork Orange. She was furious at me initially, ‘why did you take me to this garbage”? By the end of the movie she got it, and that the violence wasn’t’t gratuitous but essential to the plot.
Another prophet, Robert Heinlein, called it in his novel “I Will Fear No Evil” from 1970.
His description of the future of our inner cities, with them devolving into “Abandoned Areas”, absent any real government, and essentially areas of pure anarchy, is looking remarkably prescient.
Questionable choice for a date. Doesn’t really set the mood for romance afterwards…
“In the mood for some ultra-hanky-panky?” he leered.
I read the book but never saw the movie. I think the read was enough for me.
Of course, the true face is the clearly psychotic Alex of the penultimate scene, with the State’s enthusiastic acceptance of that, as long as it can be used to their benefit.
Great stuff, as usual Gary. It will be interesting to see how <current year> twists itself into both denunciation of the message of the film, and support of the reality that creates such a society.
Various foundations in Urbana screened films on the weekends as fundraisers. A Clockwork Orange was in heavy rotation at that point and I saw it a few times. This was only about 7-8 years after its theatrical release and VCRs were only then making their way into the mainstream. I don’t recall it being all that offensive. It wasn’t My Fair Lady, but I didn’t run screaming from the gymnasium either. A different world, seven year on.
Wow, Gary, great post. I never knew any of this about Kubrick. One of the most basic reasons Leftism fails is the misunderstanding of the immutability of human nature (they always think they can socially engineer it away), and the naivety of their “solutions” and the idea that identifying “root causes” to explain (or excuse) criminal behavior is more lofty than punishing it.
What Clockwork Orange really needs is a woke reboot where the droogs are female or transgendered and multiracial; and they only commit ultraviolence against white men. *Then* liberals will love it.
Ricochet’s search feature skips comments, but among posts, this appears to be the only one that has ever mentioned Robert Ardrey. That’s a little surprising. I should in any case reread his books.
I would certainly hope not.
I’ve tried to watch it twice but found myself so disgusted and furious at Malcom McDowell character that I never finished it.
I’ve been told by friends, ‘don’t worry, he gets his’ but just didn’t/wouldn’t finish it. Seems so nihilistic. I should give it another try just to say I watched it.
Dr. Stranglove is the only film of his “I got” and enjoyed.
Not even Spartacus?
Boldly Slovos!
In the same Times interview, Kubrick says, “Man isn’t a noble savage, he’s an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective where his own interests are involved…and any attempt to create social institutions based on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure”.
Thanks, Judge! Another Kubrick quote: “It is because of the hysterical denunciations of self-proclaimed “alert liberals” like Mr. Hechinger that the cause of liberalism is weakened, and it is for the same reasons that so few liberal-minded politicians risk making realistic statements about contemporary problems. The age of the alibi, in which we find ourselves, began with the opening statement of Rousseau’s “Emile”: Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society’s fault”.
What movie did you see on your second date? Straw Dogs?
Blue Velvet.
I’ve never seen Clockwork. Had no desire to ever since I found out one of my favorite actresses, Carol Drinkwater, has a small role in it. I prefer Mrs. Herriot to remain untouched.
2001: A Space Odyssey was the biggest moneymaker of 1968. MGM promised Kubrick that they’d back his very expensive project on the life of Napoleon, then reneged. So out of (justified) spite, Kubrick went to Warner Brothers to get financing for his next film. He set himself the challenge of doing it differently. Though Clockwork, like 2001, was set in the future, it would be made for only $2 million–chicken feed even in the early Seventies. Instead of a four year production process, he whipped through it in less than two. Every set, every location in 2001 was artificially created in a studio. By contrast, Clockwork was made entirely on location; not a single shot was made on a sound stage. Its worldwide box office was only half of 2001‘s, but it cost only one sixth to make, so it was enormously profitable. A nice housewarming gift to his new studio, Warners, where he would stay for the rest of his life.
I saw it when it came out. We were stopped by the police (4 white young guys in a 1958 Oldsmobile) on the drive home. It was such a regular occurrence that the driver had an 8 track loaded with the Highway Patrol theme music to play for the officers, which he did. No reason for the stop, just checking . . . driving while young and white.
’58 Olds? I can imagine the cop saying, “Sir, are you aware that you’re carrying 200 pounds of chromium in your car?” The rear quarter panels were “decorated” with parallel lines that vandals sometimes “decorated” with musical notes.
Gary, I always look forward to the fantastic inside information you bring us on Hollywood history. Thank you!
Count me among the skeptics. I loved the book–read it many times as a teen-ager–but hated the movie, having just the reaction described above. Gads, though, I can’t believe it’s 50 years old!
There are people who, to this day, think that Stanley Kubrick was a liberal favorite. The only one of his films that fit that description was Strangelove, and as a result many film critics were upset and annoyed that 2001 wasn’t what they had expected.
I don’t agree, but I can’t blame you for being repelled. I feel roughly the same way about Pulp Fiction, which everyone else seems to have adored.
Kids
Wish I could give that comment a hundred likes. For the life of me, I can’t understand the affection for this film. There was nothing about it that I cared for.
Quibble: The shot of Alex and his droogs driving through the night in the stolen convertible was done with rear projection. I assume that means it was shot on a sound stage, though I suppose they coulda done it in someone’s backyard.
I think it was a raging moderate movie. Without fighting crime, you give way to people so desperate they will promote crazy ideas out of desperation.