A_Clockwork_Orange

A Clockwork Orange August 26, 2012 A Clockwork Orange Sociology is the study of society. In my paper I want to use sociology to analyze a movie called A Clockwork Orange. I want to briefly summarize the movie, discuss how the movie is an agent of socialization, and analyze the movie using a sociological perspective. As I have stated in my introduction, sociology is the study of society. To delve in deeper it uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity. For many sociologists the goal is to conduct research which may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, while others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes. Subject matter ranges from the micro level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems and the social structure. The traditional focuses of sociology have included social stratification, social class, culture, social mobility, religion, law, and deviance. As all spheres of human activity are affected by the interplay between social structure and individual agency, sociology has gradually expanded its focus to further subjects, such as health, medical, military and penal institutions, the Internet, and the role of social activity in the development of scientific knowledge. The range of social scientific methods has also expanded. Social researchers draw upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques. The linguistic and cultural turns of the mid-twentieth century led to increasingly interpretative, hermeneutic, and philosophic approaches to the analysis of society. Conversely, recent decades have seen the rise of new analytically, mathematically and computationally rigorous techniques, such as agent-based modeling and social network analysis. Sociology should not be confused with various general social studies courses which bear little relation to sociological theory or social science research methodology. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology) At first when I watched this movie, A Clockwork Orange, I didn’t understand it. Watching it a few more times I have begun to understand what the plot of it was. For those of you that have never seen A Clockwork Orange it was adapted from a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The book is a satire portraying a future and dystopian Western society with a culture of extreme youth rebellion and violence: it explores the violent nature of humans, human free will to choose between good or evil, and the desolation of free will as a solution to evil. The movie and book are one in the same. The synopsis for the movie features disturbing, violent images, facilitating its social commentary on psychiatry, youth gangs, and other social, political, and economic subjects in a dystopian, future Britain. The movie’s star character is Alex (Malcolm McDowell). He is a charismatic, sociopathic delinquent whose interests include classical music (especially Beethoven), rape, and what is termed "ultra-violence". He leads a small gang of thugs (Pete, Georgie, and Dim), whom he calls his droogs, which is Russian slang for friend or buddy. The film chronicles the horrific crime spree of his gang, his capture, and attempted rehabilitation via controversial psychological conditioning. Alex narrates most of the film. There are three parts of the movie that are the main focal point. The beginning is introducing Alex and his friends and their vast love of chaos and violence. One night, after intoxicating themselves they engage in an evening of violence including beating an elderly homeless man, fighting a rival gang, stealing a car, then drive to the country where a man and his wife live and the gang proceeds to beat the man to almost crippling him and rape his wife all while seeming like it’s a game. The next day an officer visits him and lets him know that he is aware of his violent ways and warns him. Of course Alex doesn’t care and goes about his business. Because of his badgering of his friends and treating them like the dirt under his feet, they rise up against him and get him caught in the act of breaking and entering and beating a woman to death. He is arrested and charged with murder and is sentenced to fourteen years in prison. The second part of the movie is centered on Alex in prison and his participation in an experiment. Two years into the sentence man arrives at the prison looking for test subjects for the Ludovico technique. It is an experimental aversion therapy for rehabilitating criminals within two weeks; Alex readily volunteers. The process involves drugging the subject, strapping him to a chair, propping his eyelids open, and forcing him to watch violent movies. Alex, initially pleased by the violent images he sees, becomes nauseated due to the drugs. He realizes that one of the films' soundtracks is by his favorite composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, and that the Ludovico technique will make him sick when he hears the music he loves. He tries unsuccessfully to end the treatment. After two weeks of the Ludovico technique, the same man that recruited Alex puts on a demonstration to prove that he is "cured". He is shown to be incapable of fighting back against an inmate who insults and attacks him, and he becomes violently ill at the sight of topless women. Though the prison chaplain protests at the results, saying that "there's no morality without choice", the prison governor asserts that they are not interested in the moral questions but only "the means to prevent violence". The final part of the movie, Alex is released and finds that his possessions have been confiscated by the police to help make restitution to his victims, and that his parents have rented out his room. So now Alexis homeless. He encounters the same elderly homeless man from before, who attacks him with several other friends. Alex is saved by two policemen but is shocked to discover they are two of his former friends that had gotten him arrested. They drag Alex to the countryside, where they beat and nearly drown him. The dazed Alex wanders the countryside before coming to the home of the same man he crippled in a beating and where his wife died as a result of Alex and his friends raping and beating her. The old man doesn’t recognize Alex at first but as read about Alex’s treatment in the newspapers and seeing Alex as a political weapon to mess with the government, the old man intends to expose the Ludovico technique as a step toward totalitarianism by way of mind control. As the old man is preparing to introduce Alex to his friends, he hears Alex singing the same song that he sang the night his wife and him were attacked. This brought up of course, a lot of hurt and anguish. So the old man with the help of his friends, drug Alex and lock him upstairs. He proceeds to playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony through the floor below. Alex, in excruciating pain, throws himself from the window and is knocked unconscious by the fall. Alex wakes up in a hospital, having dreamt about doctors messing around inside his head. While being given a series of psychological tests, Alex finds that he no longer has an aversion to violence. The doctor that had done the experiments on him, arrives and apologizes to Alex, letting him know that the old man has been "put away", and offers Alex an important government job. As a sign of goodwill, the doctor brings in a stereo system playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Alex then realizes that instead of an adverse reaction to the music, he sees an image of himself having sex in the snow with a woman in front of an approving crowd dressed in Beethoven-era fashion. He then states, in a sarcastic and menacing voice-over, "I was cured, all right!" So basically, a bump on the head makes all those weeks of torture and making Alex see the light of his violent ways dissolved away. So the experiment was a failure. You can’t make a criminal change through experiments and poking and prodding inside their minds. Criminals will change because they want to or they have to in order to evolve with society. A Clockwork Orange is simply not a film that everyone will find palatable, but it does teach a valuable lesson about society. While the world in the film is a fantasy land of the future, much of what exists in the world of the story are merely exaggerations of what actually does exist in the real world: left wing politicians and right wing politicians perpetually at war with one another and that war leads to a decline in the culture of the societies they inhabit. A result of this societal decline is the widespread disaffection of youth .The character of Alex is the symbol of this disaffected youth culture. He is intelligent, highly literate, a deep thinker and a lover of the eloquent things in life, as symbolized by his affinity for Beethoven‘s music. However, because the society Alex inhabits has become corrupt and has lost all concern for its citizens, Alex decides to make his own rules within that society. From this, all morality becomes relative morality and convinces Alex that he can do whatever he wishes, including turning the commission of rape into a pastime and hobby. Much of the thematic concerns found in the film /novel can be seen in the works of Robert Agnew and his concept of The Strain Theory that is described in the following: Strain theory was developed from the work of Durkheim and Merton and taken from the theory of anomie. Durkheim focused on the decrease of societal restraint and the strain that resulted at the individual level, and Merton studied the cultural imbalance that exists between goal and the norms of the individuals of society. A Clockwork Orange demonstrates some of the central routes of deviance and the link between deviance and social elements that determine the acceptability of certain behaviors. The film, set in a futuristic setting, demonstrates the way gang violence and deviant sexual behaviors can become normative and how indviduals can be conditioned to through "aversion therapy" to move away from these normative behaviors. Two important themes are reflected in this film. Order in Society vs. Freedom of Choice is one. 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 freedom of choice and replacing it with prescribed good behavior. I feel like this is a conflict theory. In Alex’s world, both the unfettered power of the individual and the unfettered power of the state prove dangerous. Alex 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. Thematically, doctor stands on one side of Alex, supporting an ordered society, and the prison chaplain and the old man stand on the other, supporting freedom of choice, even with the negative consequences that go with it. The doctor argues that government should have the power to bring law and order to the streets, and that questions of individual liberty are insignificant compared with the values of safety and order. He cites the suffering Alex causes his victims as evidence for his argument’s merit, but the minister’s own misuse of power, such as hiring thugs as policemen and imprisoning political opponents, undermines his argument. The old man, on the other hand, argues for the protection of individual liberty, but he weakens his own argument with his willingness to sacrifice Alex’s life and liberty in order to further his party’s agenda. The prison chaplain seems more sincere in his defense of the right of individuals to make moral choices, equating the ability to choose with being human, but his willful ignorance of Alex’s true destructive potential makes him seem almost naïve. Throughout A Clockwork Orange, the film forces us to weigh the values and dangers of both individual liberty and state control, and consider how much liberty we’re willing to give up for order, and how much order we’re willing to give up for liberty. Another theme is The Necessity of Evil in Human Nature. The importance of evil as well as good in human nature is a fundamental theme of A Clockwork Orange. Alex is despicable because he gives free rein to his violent impulses, but that sense of freedom is also what makes him human. Unlike so many of the adult characters in the film, he, at least, seems exuberantly alive. When Ludovico’s Technique eliminates the evil aspects of his personality, he becomes less of a threat to society, but also, the film suggests, less human. He is not truly good because he didn’t choose to be good, and the utilization of that choice is vital to being a complete human being. Alex, with his many evil deeds, isn’t a traditional hero, and this is characteristic of and unique to Kubrick’s films. The good and bad in Kubrick’s characters are almost always inextricably intertwined. Through his characters, Kubrick suggests that dark impulses are a fundamental part of human nature. Human destructiveness and power-lust don’t go away with proper conditioning, except when that conditioning is so extreme that it makes us inhuman. Instead, we must decide how to channel those impulses, when to give them free rein, and when to suppress them by force. A Clockwork Orange illustrates the extremes of both freedom and suppression. In this paper I have touched on sociology and its meaning, what the movie A Clockwork Orange was about, and how this movie fits into society and culture. I believe this film expresses two important themes which are; order in society vs. freedom of choice, and the necessity of evil in human nature. Cite Works http://www.fandango.com/aclockworkorange_v10024/plotsummary http://movies.amctv.com/movie/1971/A+Clockwork+Orange http://radumoviephoto.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/a-clockwork-orange-a-kubrick-masterpiece/ Sociology: An Brief Introduction, Schaefer, Richard T.; ninth edition www.wikipedia.com