Source: This article was written for The Film Society by Mary Bralj (1996-7 member). Mary was asked to write the article after one of those great discussions where Mary gave everyone a glimpse of her unique perspective on A Clockwork Orange. Mary grew up in the south of England and saw the film when it was first released. Read and Enjoy!!!(Esther Speight).
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange was made in 1971. Some of you may be seeing it for the first time, while for others this may be a repeat viewing. However, I suspect that few of you would have been around for the opening night, being either unborn or unaware 26 years ago. It is for this reason that I have been asked, as an Ancient, to say a few words of introduction in order that you may gain a glimmer of insight into why this film had the impact it did, and to set it in the context of its time.
It never was, and never will be, an enjoyable film. It was made to shock a spaced-out society into an awareness of what the future could hold if the attitudes then present were taken to their logical conclusion. Today, much of the film’s horror lies in the fact that their future is now our past and that many of its predictions have proved correct. Even so, inured to violence as we are by the prevailing fashions for sex and mayhem in our entertainment, it still has the capacity to make some people physically nauseous, and its hero makes Freddy Kruger seem like a character from Goosebumps. Consider then, the impact on audiences who, by today’s standards, were almost naive.
1971. The hippie culture was in full swing. All you needed was Love and flowers in your hair. Love-ins, Happenings, Purple Hearts and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and the whole world was going to Pot. The Flower Child was not only spared the rod, the damn thing was flung out of the window. Those who were not active participants in this culture were still subject to its ramifications. "Doing your own thing" became not merely O.K., but was positively promoted by psychologists and educators, and the Baby Boomers turned into the "Me" generation with the fondest good wishes of the authorities. The hippie movement, initiated in the U.S. as a reaction against the Vietnam war, rapidly spread to other Western countries, even those who took no part in that conflict.
Yet despite the size and influence of the hippie movement it would be wrong to think that everyone was included. The vast majority of people led ordinary, "normal" lives. Jobs were plentiful and you could walk out of one in the morning and into another in the afternoon. People, for the most part, had money in their pockets, food in their stomachs and roofs over their heads. The ONLY people who lived on the streets were winos and derelicts, and even they kept pretty much to their own particular haunts. People dressed well, if sometimes wierdly, in new clothes, and visible signs of poverty could only be found in the worst slum areas of cities. Society was affluent. Children went to school, stayed home in the evenings, and were tucked up in bed by 9:30. Except in America, TV was broadcast in black and white, and the Brady Bunch and Westerns filled prime viewing spots. Films could only be seen at cinemas since home VCRs were yet to be developed and I can well remember the sensation caused by the first instant replays of sporting events when video recording technology was first employed by TV stations.
In films, TV and the theatre there was virtually no nudity, certainly it was never full-frontal, and definitely, definitely no explicit sex. To be an unwed mother was a cardinal social sin, and a girl who found herself in that unfortunate predicament was either forced to the altar or hidden away in shame, usually in institutionalised homes where her child was taken from her at birth, sometimes without the young mother even having seen her baby. Not that that stopped the enjoyment of the pleasures of the flesh, it took AIDS in the 90s to do that, but the result was often a visit to back-yard abortionists, who operated with crochet-hooks or wire coat hangers, and who charged a king’s ransom for their unsanitary, often fatal, illegal practices. Sex was a very dirty word. Other words, comprising 4 letters, were also never uttered in polite company. In print they were replaced by asterisks or a dash, and were never used in film or TV scripts, although live theatre was allowed more lee-way. Pop groups had their songs banned from air-play for using them.
Music was the great divider of youth culture. The Mods and Sharpies danced to the Merseybeat, their icons were Twiggy, The Beatles and Julie Christie and they rode mopeds or drove Minis. The Rockers dug Elvis and Suzie Q, wore hair grease and leathers, and rode motor bikes or drove gas-guzzlers. Hippies were into Nature, wore long hair, long skirts and long beads, idolised Bob Dylan and used public transport. Although meetings between groups sometimes led to violent confrontations there were no gangs whose aim was solely to terrify others. The Bovver Boys, with their shaven heads and steel-caps were yet to come.
Youth has always rebelled against authority, but young people in the late 60s, early 70s, were generally law abiding and respectful of the police. Considering what they could get away with doing to you if you cheeked them, this was prudent. The same held true for educators, since corporal punishment was still the norm in schools, particularly for boys.
In the early 70s nobody had dreamed of Feminism. Women were second-class citizens who were expected to fill the Victorian idea of a home-bound wife and mother. If she did have paid employment her options were strictly limited to shop, office or factory, at least for the middle-class majority. The quivering mother of A Clockwork Orange would not have caused the repugnance felt by many modern women who see the film. It is only 20–20 hindsight that enables us to see the irony and degradation.
This period was a great time for experimental psychology. New theories and treatments for social disorders seemed to follow one another with bewildering rapidity. The catch-cry, "There are no bad children, only bad parents" was touted loud and long. Like all such catch-phrases it was simplistic, but it managed to lay an enormous burden of guilt on the shoulders of the average lay parent. There were many who, through fear of doing the wrong thing left themselves vulnerable to manipulative offspring. Some just gave up the battle, like the family in this film.
When I first read the book, then saw the film, many aspects seemed totally incredible. Surely no group of boys would ever set out deliberately to vandalise and assault? It seemed too bizarre. In those days shopping complexes were barely in their infancy and cinemas were grand, single-theatre edifices, usually erected in the 30s and 40s, and well attended. Home video machines and PCs were science fiction, and the spectre of the abandoned opera house seemed similarly unreal. The skin-head gangs were just beginning to form in Manchester, but to the rest of the country they were considered to be simply an aberration of that area of England and could not possibly spread. How wrong we were! The overt sexuality of some of A Clockwork Orange’s scenes also rattled people. It seemed to be pure fantasy that restaurant tables were made to look like naked women. Nowadays, of course, you can get the real thing!
Modern techniques of special effects and the taste and stomach for absolute realism in our films have hardened us to the sight of dismemberment and mutilation, but the conditioning scene in Clockwork is still gut-wrenching. The film still shocks, not so much because of broken taboos — do we have any these days? — but because of the portrayal of mental and emotional abuse and violence.
It forces the whole question of human rights, for where is the line to be drawn between the rights of the individual and the rights of society for protection against anti-social behaviour? Is “brain-washing” possibly a legitimate method for dealing with recidivist offenders, given that we are all “brain-washed” by our upbringing anyway. How much freedom should be given to the few at the expense of the many?
The answer to these questions are still being debated, which is why A Clockwork Orange is as valid today as a quarter of a century ago. The true horror of this film for me is that despite the warnings it gave we are still debating. I am hoping its messages will not be so ignored by this new generation of sufferers.
Mary Bralj
