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A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian 1962 novel by the Mancunian writer Anthony Burgess, adapted as a film by Stanley Kubrick in 1971. It is widely regarded as a successor to earlier great British dystopian novels such as Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World.
Burgess wrote that the title came from an old Cockney expression "As queer [i.e. strange] as a clockwork orange", but that he had found that other people read new meanings into it¹. For instance, some believed that the title referred to a mechanically responsive (clockwork) non-human (orang, Malay for "person"). Burgess wrote in his later introduction, "A Clockwork Orange Resucked", that a creature who can only perform good or evil is "a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil." Rumour had it that Burgess had intended to name the work "A Clockwork Orang" and was hypercorrected to the form we know. In his essay "Clockwork oranges"² he says that "this title would be appropriate for a story about the application of Pavlovian, or mechanical, laws to an organism which, like a fruit, was capable of colour and sweetness". This title alludes to the protagonist's negatively conditioned responses to feelings of evil which prevent the exercise of his free will.
The book was inspired by an event in 1944, when Burgess' pregnant wife Lynn was robbed and beaten by four U.S. GI deserters in a London street, and suffered a miscarriage and chronic gynaecological problems³.
Synopsis
Set a few years in the future, the book follows the career of fifteen year old Alex. His main pleasures in life are classical music, sex of all kinds, and random acts of extreme violence ("ultraviolence" in Alex's idiom). He tells his story in a teenage slang called "Nadsat", which mixes Russian with English slang.
Eventually Alex is caught and "rehabilitated" by a program of aversion therapy, which, though rendering him incapable of violence (even in self-defence), also makes him unable to enjoy his favourite classical music as an unintended side effect.
The moral question of the book is that Alex is now "good", but his ability to choose this has been taken away from him; his "goodness" is as artificial as the clockwork orange of the title.
Eventually Alex falls foul of some of his former victims, and the political fuss that ensues results in the state removing his conditioning; he gleefully returns to his early habits but finds he has lost the taste for it. The 20th chapter ends the original American edition on a dark note, with Alex listening joyfully to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and eagerly anticipating his return to creating havoc.
At this point some editions of the book end, but there is a 21st chapter which was dropped at the time of US publication. Burgess claims that the original American publisher dropped his final chapter in an effort to make the book more depressing. The intended book was divided into three parts of 7 chapters each, which added up to be 21, a symbolic age at which a child earns his rights (when the novel was written). There is controversy as to whether the 21st chapter makes the book better or makes the book worse. In the 21st chapter, which takes place a few years after the 20th, we find Alex realising that his violent phase is over, but that it was inevitable. A few of the old characters are reincarnated as new friends of Alex. He thinks of starting a family, while thinking that his children will be as violent as he was, for a time.
The line "What's it going to be then, eh?" recurs throughout the book, and the first chapter of each of the three parts begins with the line.
Film adaptation
The book was adapted into a film by Stanley Kubrick in 1971, starring Malcolm McDowell as Alex and featuring a soundtrack by Wendy Carlos. It would appear, from one of Burgess' later novels, The Clockwork Testament, that Burgess himself may not have been too pleased by the adaptation that made it to the screen.
Rated X on its original release in the United States, the film was nonetheless nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture (it lost to The French Connection) and reinvigorated sales for recordings of Beethoven's ninth symphony. Later, a censored R-rated version was also released in the US; both the original X-rated and the later R-rated version are today available on VHS and DVD. Notably, the MPAA has since reclassified the X-rated version of the film to R. The film was rated C (for "condemned") by the United States Catholic Conference's Office for Film and Broadcasting because of its explicit sexual and violent content (such a rating conceptually forbade Catholics from seeing the film so rated; the "condemned" rating was abolished in 1982, and since then films deemed by the conference to have unacceptable levels of sex and/or violence have been rated O, meaning "morally offensive").
In Britain the sexual violence in the film was considered extreme at the time, with the press blaming the influence of the film for an attack on a homeless person. It was widely believed that Kubrick's annoyance at this response led to him withdrawing the film from distribution in the United Kingdom. However, in a television documentary made after Kubrick's death, his widow Christiane confirmed rumours that Kubrick had withdrawn A Clockwork Orange from UK distribution on police advice after threats were made against Kubrick and his family. (The source of the threats was not discussed.) That Warner Bros. acceded to Kubrick's request to withdraw the film is an indication of the remarkable relationship Kubrick had with the studio, particularly the executive Terry Semel. Whatever the reason for the film's withdrawal, it could not easily be seen in Britain for some 27 years, until after Kubrick's death.
In 2004 the magazine Total Film named A Clockwork Orange the eleventh greatest British film of all time.
Spin-offs
Seven years prior to Stanley Kubrick's production of A Clockwork Orange, Andy Warhol had produced a low-budget, artistic version, titled Clockwork (also known as Vinyl). Reportedly, the only two recognizable scenes are those where Victor (Alex) wreaks general havoc and undergoes the Ludovico treatment.
After Kubrick's film was released, Burgess wrote a Clockwork Orange stage play. (Reportedly, he modeled one of Alex's early victims on Kubrick.) In the stage version, Dr. Branom "defects" from the psychiatric clinic when she realizes that the treatment has destroyed Alex's ability to enjoy music. This version also restores the novel's twenty-first chapter, ending with Alex deciding to start a family.
There is also a pornographic spin-off, entitled A Cockwork Orgy. In this version, Alex is a female (Alexandra), the Korova is just a regular, run-of-the-mill bar, and there is no prison chaplain.
Unrealized adaptations
Members of The Rolling Stones proposed to film their own adaptation before Stanley Kubrick decided to do so. Other unrealized versions were to contain girls in miniskirts or senior citizens instead of the teenage rowdies.
Soundtrack
As with most major movie releases, a soundtrack was issued for A Clockwork Orange. It may be considered to be a monumental album in that it contains a "first": the song "March From A Clockwork Orange" was the first recorded song to feature the use of a vocoder. It is available on the Warner Bros. record label. The soundtrack is cited as the reason that many Synth Pop bands formed. The track listing is as follows:
- "Title Music From A Clockwork Orange", Walter Carlos
- "The Thieving Magpie (Abridged)", A Deutsche Grammophon Recording
- "Theme From A Clockwork Orange (Beethoviana)", Wendy Carlos
- "Ninth Symphony, Second Movement (Abridged)", A Deutsche Grammophon Recording
- "March From A Clockwork Orange (Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement, Abridged)", Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind
- "William Tell Overture (Abridged)", Wendy Carlos
- "Pomp And Circumstance March No. 1", Sir Edward Elgar
- "Pomp And Circumstance March No. IV (Abridged)", Sir Edward Elgar
- "Timesteps (Excerpt)", Wendy Carlos
- "Overture To The Sun", Terry Tucker
- "I Want To Marry A Lighthouse Keeper", Erike Eigen
- "William Tell Overture (Abridged)", A Deutsche Grammophon Recording
- "Suicide Scherzo (Ninth Symphony, Second Movement, Abridged)", Wendy Carlos
- "Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement, (Abridged)", A Deutsche Grammophon Recording
- "Singin' In The Rain", Gene Kelly
Three months after the official soundtrack was released, composer Wendy Carlos released a version (Columbia KC 31480) containing unused cues and other musical elements which had not appeared in the film. Kubrick had only used part of Carlos's Timesteps, for example, and the synthesizer rendition of the Scherzo from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony had been shortened. In addition to these materials, the second soundtrack LP contained a synthesizer version of Rossini's La Gazza Ladra, for which Kubrick had used an orchestral performance. In 1998, a compact disc was distributed containing a new, digital remastering of the synthesizer material. The CD contains Carlos's compositions, including those Kubrick did not use, and the cues Biblical Daydreams and Orange Minuet which the 1972 LP had not included.
It is interesting to note that Wendy Carlos had composed the first three minutes of Timesteps before reading Burgess's novel. Originally, Carlos had intended Timesteps to introduce a rendition of the Ninth Symphony's Choral movement, played with a vocoder. Timesteps was completed roughly the same time Kubrick had wrapped photography for his film; it and the vocoder performance of Beethoven's Ninth became the foundation for Carlos and Kubrick's collaboration.
Influence
Both the story and individual elements have had a strong influence on popular culture in general and popular music in particular, although this is probably due to the movie's popularity rather than the novel's. Perhaps most notably, the 1980s British electropop band Heaven 17 took their name from an eponymous band in the book. Although the British dance act Moloko's name simply means "milk" in Russian, it was adopted indirectly from Nadsat in which it has the same basic meaning, but also refers to a milk drink with admixed drugs. References in pop music abound outside the English-speaking world as well. In 1988, the German punk rock outfit Die Toten Hosen released their breakthrough concept album Ein kleines bisschen Horrorshow (a reference to Alex's Nadsat phrase a bit of [the old] horrorshow [ultraviolence]), having been involved as musicians in a German stage production of A Clockwork Orange. In 2002, Poland's alternative stars Myslovitz released an album entitled Korova Milky Bar, a reference to the place where Alex and his friends meet to consume their drug-enhanced moloko. The Streetpunk/oi band Lower Class Brats has maintained a theme of both the film and the book in the band's lyrics, merchandise, and even the members's tattoos. Countless other references can be traced in books, movies, and even computer games.
Alternate usages
- Clockwork Orange is also a nickname of the Glasgow Subway, the SPT metro line of Glasgow, Scotland.
- Clockwork Orange is also the name of a supposed(?) 1970s hard-right-wing MI5 operation led by one Colin Wallace, designed to discredit the Irish Republicans, Harold Wilson and his Labour Party, and the Conservative's leader Edward Heath, ultimately putting Margaret Thatcher in power. ([1] (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=3637), [2] (http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/sstate3.htm). The name was used on the floor of the House on February 1, 1990. [3] (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm198990/cmhansrd/1990-02-01/Orals-2.html))
References
- A Clockwork Orange: A play with music. Century Hutchinson Ltd. (1987). — An extract is quoted on several web sites: [4] (http://pers-www.wlv.ac.uk/~fa1871/burgess.html), [5] (http://pages.eidosnet.co.uk/johnnymoped/aclockworktestament/aclockworktestament_anthonyburgessonaclockworkorange_page2.html), [6] (http://kubricks0.tripod.com/burgesam.htm).
- Burgess, Anthony (1978). Clockwork Oranges. In 1985. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0091360803 (extracts quoted here (http://pages.eidosnet.co.uk/johnnymoped/aclockworktestament/aclockworktestament_beingtheadventures_page1.html))
- Vidal, Gore. Why I am 8 years younger than Anthony Burgess. United States p. 411.
See also
External links
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A Clockwork Orange
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