A Clockwork Orange

"A Clockwork Orange warns against the new psychedelic fascism -- the eye-popping, multimedia, quadrasonic, drug-orienting conditioning of human beings by other beings -- which many believe will usher in the forfeiture of human citizenship and the beginning of zombiedom."  -Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" is the most controversial film ever made. In the year of its release, it caused so much copycat mayhem from its stylized depictions of dystopian violence, sexual assault, and human conditioning in the name of social order, that Kubrick personally pulled the film from circulation, an unprecedented action for a filmmaker even to this day. It was banned in many countries, particularly Britain, until the 1990's, a sign that its impact was far-reaching and continually relevant. Yet, despite its infamous reputation, "A Clockwork Orange" is still a profoundly misunderstood work, one that has a meaning diametrically opposed to its unfortunate misinterpretations that caused real violence and critical scorn. The film does not glorify violence; it dissects brutality by examining it from the eyes of the evil beholder. Furthermore, Kubrick finds forms of brutality at the center of human nature, political structure, and "high culture." Whether a society embraces a conservative or liberal social structure, it cannot escape the intrinsic brutality that underlies civilization and its correlative methods of forced assimilation. Violence can stem from both radical liberalism, which values unfettered freedom of expression which leads to a totalitarianism of impulses, and radical conservatism, which values total social control by the state. The ultimate irony is that in human civilization, the social cure for brutality seems to be more brutality. In the case of the film's main character, Alex Delarge, the ultimate act of conservative brutality is the removal of individual moral choice in the name of curbing undesirable social actions.  

"A Clockwork Orange" has one of the best, if not the best, opening scene of any film. It is poetic, visually arresting, and sets the themes for the entire movie. We are introduced to Alex Delarge, one of cinema's first antiheroes, intensely and confidently gazing at the audience, teeming with impulses and barely containing his delightful thoughts of drug-induced "ultra violence." As the camera moves backward, we see that Alex is in a "milkbar" surrounded by similarly dressed gang members, other customers wearing various outfits, and bouncers standing near the entrance. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the bar is the presence of tables and milk dispensers shaped like naked, submissive women. The bar acts as a microcosm of society and its social and political underpinnings. As we will see, Alex and his droogs represent unchecked brutality and sit atop a pyramidal visual structure in the scene. This pyramid formation shows the factions on the political spectrum. They sit across from each other in opposition as they vie for their visions of society. With brutality at the apex, hippies sit on the left and Nazis on the right. Additionally, at the bottom of the formation, two bouncers of different races stand in opposition, whites on the right and blacks on the left. Finally, caught in the middle of these warring groups are women, who exist as inert sexual objects and milk dispensers. With Alex staring at the audience and we staring at Alex, the scene acts as a mirror in which we can see the true foundation of society: radical political ideologies of power and control that cause perpetual social violence. Throughout the film, Alex will be the leader of and pass through several hierarchies, eventually becoming a pawn in a societal battle for a governing ideology.

The physical and cultural setting of "A Clockwork Orange" is crucial to understanding its main themes. The film takes place in the "near future" and seems to have fallen into decay. Alex walks through littered streets and buildings that have been laid to squalor. Garbage is strewn in the streets. Doors are ineffective. Elevators are not operational. Buildings are graffitied. In general, public space is desolate and dangerous. It is also a degenerate world in which gangs are free to roam and wreak havoc. The first few scenes of the film depict Alex and his droogs assaulting other gang members, beating a homeless man for being old, joyriding in a stolen car, and entering homes in order to pillage and sexually assault unwitting victims.

What kind of society produces these deplorable conditions and high rates of violent crime? The answer, which can be gleaned from the physical surroundings and artistic culture within the film, is surprisingly a liberal society in which freedom of expression seems to have no limit---an uber version of the counterculture movement in the 1960's. Throughout the movie, we are shown people who adorn themselves and their homes with loud, hyper-stylish accoutrements. Young people in gangs wear costumes with accessories including fake eyelashes, cod pieces, and bowler hats. Likewise, even some older people like Alex's parents and the droog's victims wear bright wigs and live in homes with modern, flashy decor. In the opening scene, the milkbar is very colorful, chic, and overdone. Alex tells us that he and his friends are drinking "milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom," a signal that drugs have been legalized in this society. Finally, the background is full of hypersexual artwork like graffiti, ceramics, and even furniture that depict sexual organs. A clear example is that tables and milk dispensers shaped like naked women in the milkbar. Additionally, Alex's room is filled with sexual imagery including a poster of a nude woman and a snake, which acts as a convenient phallic symbol when it approaches the poster. Alex's last victim, the cat lady (a women in a house surrounded by cats, which is itself sexually suggestive in its symbolism), has a house adorned with many pieces of sexual art, including erotic paintings like a ceramic in the shape of a penis. Finally, on the walls of Alex's apartment building, vandals drew penises on a wall containing nude paintings of men. Thus, judging from the liberal culture depicted in the film, it is the increased freedom of expression that has lead to society's moral and physical decay.

An interesting juxtaposition in the film is the pairing of brutality and hypersexuality with the high art of a decadent liberal society. In Kubrick's view, as in "2001: A Space Odyssey," both civilization and barbarism can coexist, even foster one another. When Alex and his droogs fight a rival gang led by Billy Boy, the brawl is set to classical music, Rossini's "The Thieving Magpie," and becomes a cartoonish display, almost like an artistic performance. At the milkbar, when Dim, one of the droogs, rudely interrupts a woman elegantly singing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," Alex hits him with his cane and raises a drink to the woman, showing deference and respect to high art. For Alex, Beethoven's music, particularly the ninth symphony, is both violent and sexual, a reflection of his impulses. It is fitting that Alex loves Beethoven because the composer's music is a reflection of his own anger and frustration at his progressing deafness. Moreover, German composers like Beethoven and Wagner were a favorite of the Nazis, who played both at state affairs like Hitler's birthday and even in concentration camps. Alex explicitly describes the ninth symphony in sexual and violent terms: "Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!" As Alex listens to the ninth symphony, a montage of images involving violence, Jesus's crucifixion, and explosions are shown along with Alex dawning bloody fangs. Likewise, in a later scene, we see Alex having a menage-a-trois with two women to an accelerated version of the William Tell Overture, again mixing art and pleasure.

In the more graphic examples, Alex breaks into a house with his droogs and rapes a woman in front of her husband while performing an exuberant rendition of "Singing in the Rain." Later, when Alex breaks into the cat lady's house, he exhibits a rush during the crime and frolics to classical music before he bludgeons the woman to death with a giant ceramic penis. It is worth noting that the cat lady defends herself with a bust of Beethoven, creating a battle involving all of Alex's favorite pleasures: violence, sex, and art. Finally, during the Ludivico treatment, Alex is shown violent films and sees the barbarity and sees them as beautiful. He exclaims,"The sounds were real horrorshow. You could slooshy the screams and moans very realistic, and you could even get the heavy breathing and panting of the tolchocking malchicks at the same time. And then, what do you know, soon our dear old friend, the red, red vino on tap, the same in all places like it's put out by the same big firm, began to flow. It was beautiful. It's funny how the colours of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen." For Alex, violence, sex, and art are all intertwined because they represent unbridled pleasure and pure artistic beauty.

It is a liberal society with few limits on expression and pleasure that increases crime and disorder, a society in which someone like Alex thrives. The distractions and consequences created by liberalism's freedoms and subsequent opulence undermine a society's ability to control its populace. As the old transient tells Alex before he is beaten mercilessly by the gang: "It's a stinking world because there's no law and order anymore...What sort of a world is it at all? Men on the moon, and men spinning around the earth, and there's not no attention paid to earthly law and order no more."Alex's life of almost total freedom will be contrasted later when he enters the penal system for reformation and imprisonment arising from the Ludivico treatment. As Kubrick demonstrates later in the film, it is a decadent liberal society that gives rise to totalitarian solutions.  

One of the main conundrums in "A Clockwork Orange" is how to keep society safe from a sociopath like Alex. How do you even understand the depth of his evil tendencies? Where do his impulses come from and why can't he control them? When Alex feigns sickness to avoid school, a correctional officer visits him and asks this very question:"We studied the problem. We've been studying it for damn well near a century, yes, but we get no further with our studies. You got a good home here. Good, loving parents. You've got not too bad of a brain. Is it some devil that crawls inside of you?" In the film, Kubrick dissects Alex's penchant for evil and forces the audience to see the world from his perspective. In fact, the entire movie is from Alex's point of view as the "humble narrator." We see Alex's exhilaration of perverted sex, theft, violence, sexual assault, and dominance. Thanks to his charm and talents for manipulation, Alex is a likable character. Although he commits atrocities, he does so with great elegance and finesse, making them high art. During the infamous scene in which Alex and the droogs terrorize a couple by beating a man and raping his wife in their home, we can see the experience through Alex's eyes. The horror is juxtaposed with giddiness and dancing (hence, "Singing in the Rain"), a combination that creates a sublime balance of revulsion and beauty. For Alex, his assault becomes daring high art in a society that obsesses about free expression. Not only does this scene help the audience see the world as Alex does, it manipulates their emotions by making them feel guilty for sharing Alex's perverted view. Could there possibly be a little bit of Alex in all of us? Much of "A Clockwork Orange's" controversy came from commentators who accused the movie of stylizing, even glorifying violence. This view, however, misses the above intention to dissect Alex from his perspective and to demonstrate the Alex lurking within the audience.

The question of how to protect society from people like Alex reveals hierarchies within society and the brutality needed to maintain them. In the film, we are shown hierarchies on a small scale like Alex's dominion over his droogs and then the larger hierarchies that underlie the power of the state over its citizens. As the movie progresses, we see hierarchies which differ in size, sophistication, and language (Alex and his compatriots talk in a fictional dialect called "Nadstat") but they all share brutality as a method of control. Additionally, there is a competition in the film between the violence in youth culture and the violence systematized by the older generation who run the state and seek to protect the older population. When Alex approaches a drunken old man living on the street, he asserts, "One thing I could never stand was to see a filthy, dirty old drunkie, howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blurp blurp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking, rotten guts. I could never stand to see anyone like that, whatever his age might be, but more especially when he was real old like this one was." When the elderly man is asked about the current state of the world, he replies, "It's a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old, like you done. Oh, it's no world for an old man any longer." Later in the film, when Alex is "cured" by the state and is attacked by several old homeless people (including the very same transient that he assaulted earlier), he says "It was old age having a go at youth, and I daren't do a single, solitary thing, O my brothers, it being better to be hit at like that than want to sick and feel that horrible pain." Alex understood that the tables had turned and was unable to resist his reckoning with the older generation. Within Alex's hierarchy, he and his droogs beat the old man because they had power, particularly in numbers. Alex, who is representative of the youth culture, was incarcerated and cured, only to find himself under the power of the older generation and establishment hierarchy. Additionally, it is worth noting that Alex's youthful aggression is punished by the state with "sanctioned" methods of conditioning and violence, while the heinous crimes against Alex perpetrated by the state go unpunished except by a dip in public opinion. Thus, one could argue that Alex's assault on older people is a way of balancing the unchecked aggression of the state on its citizens. In the end, despite the alleged differences, both hierarchies of the young and old utilize the same violent methods of control.

The film opens on Alex's territory and power structure. He is the clear leader of his droogs. They battle with other gangs for power and take what they want by force, whether it be material objects like cars and jewelry or sexual dominance (as in the rape scene). As Alex explains when his droogs later challenge him: "Haven't you everything you need. If you need a motor-car, you pluck it from the trees. If you need pretty polly, you take it." Notice the dehumanizing pronoun "it" that he gives a woman. The full expression of Alex's personality and his gang hierarchy is to follow base impulses. Throughout the film, Alex shows his dominance and preserves his hierarchy with pure violence or violence with sexual overtones. In the first example, taking advantage of his greater numbers (a boon that will be reversed later), Alex and his droogs beat up a homeless man. Afterwards, Alex and company interrupt a rival gang while they are attempting to rape a young girl. Alex taunted the gang's leader, Billy Boy, by questioning his masculinity and power. Alex says, "Ho, ho, ho! Well, if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou!"Alex and his droogs then fight the rival gang and, as we learn later, put their competitors in the hospital. Soon after, they steal a sports car and drive erratically, dominantly running others off the road. The gang drives to a private home and again uses their numbers to overwhelm the couple inside. When the group returns to the milkbar, Alex chastises Dim by hitting him with a cane after he rudely interrupted a woman singing Beethoven's ninth symphony. When Dim protested, Alex answers, "For being a bastard with no manners, and not a dook of an idea how to comport yourself public-wise, O my brother." Again, while Alex has his barbarous tendencies, he balances that with an appreciation of high art. He essentially uses violence to preserve  his "civilization" and way of life. He follows up his rebuke of Dim by adding,"Watch that... Do watch that, O Dim, if to continue to be on live thou dost wish." Finally, Alex's dominion can also be seen as he saunters around a local record store, surveying his territory dressed in elegant regal attire. The camera moves out of Alex's way as he walks forward, as if respecting his authority. The music in the background is Beethoven's ninth symphony remade using a moog synthesizer and further adds to Alex's kingly presence. He confidently approaches two women, both of whom are suggestively licking a lollipop, and talks them into a manage-a-trois. Alex does not deny any of his impulses and he wants to keep it that way.

Alex's most significant demonstration of power comes when the rest of the group rebels from Alex's authority and tries to instill "a new way." The droogs approach Alex in his building and air their grievances to him, which include Alex constantly chastizing Dim, the desire to commit crimes with higher monetary pay outs, and accusations that Alex "thinks and acts "like a child." In effect, the droogs differ with Alex on his whole hierarchical philosophy, preferring a democracy to run their group rather than an authoritarian at the top. Moreover, they are more interested in long term monetary benefits than Alex's impulsive delights. Alex answers his droogs with his philosophy of instant gratification: "And what will you do with the big, big, money? Have you not everything you need? If you need a motor-car, you pluck it from the trees. If you need pretty Polly, you take it." For Alex, the pleasure is the crime and mayhem itself and not the monetary benefits.

Alex temporarily goes along with the "new way," but quickly reasserts his power by using violence against his droogs. As the group walks menacingly by a marina, Alex explains to the audience, "As we walked along the flatblock marina, I was calm on the outside, but thinking all the time. So now it was to be Georgie the general, saying what we should do and what not to do, and Dim as his mindless greeding bulldog. But suddenly I viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones and that the oomny ones use, like, inspiration and what Bog sends. For now it was lovely music that came to my aid. There was a window open with the stereo on and I viddied right at once what to do." Suddenly, Alex assaults his fellow droogs by hitting them with his cane, throwing them in the marina, and causing pain with a knife. Alex's violence restored his power. His followers fall back into line in a very uncomfortable scene in which Alex thinks to himself: "Now they knew who was Master and Leader. Sheep, thought I, but a real leader knows always when like to give and show generous to his unders." Alex follows his thoughts with a question to his droogs: "Well, now we're back to where we were. Yes? Just like before and all forgotten? Right, right, right." As we find out, the droogs continue their mutiny by sabotaging Alex at the cat lady's house by breaking a milk bottle over his head during their escape, causing Alex to get caught at the scene.

When Alex is caught by the police, he enters the more sophisticated hierarchy of state power. Previously, he had been under supervision of the school system and the corrective officer who visited his home when he feigned illness. This supervision was light and ineffective as Alex easily committed crimes without facing consequences. Alex's supervisor, who is clearly frustrated at his inability to control the teenager warns him that his next stop would be jail: "If you've no respect for your horrible self, you at least might have some for me whose sweated over you. A big black mark I tell you for every one we don't reclaim. A confession of failure for every one of you who ends up in the stripy hole." While at Alex's home, the corrective officer identifies himself to Alex as "the one man in this sore and sick community who wants to save you from yourself." As he says those words, the officer forcibly grabs Alex's genitals as if he is pretending to castrate him. Later, when Alex is in custody, the corrective officer visits Alex and seems gleeful that he will be incarcerated and move up the correctional hierarchy into the criminal justice system. He says, "Well, it's happened, Alex boy, yes. Just as I thought it would, yes. Dear, dear, dear. Well, this is the end of the line for me... the end of the line, yes." After informing Alex that his victim had died, the correctiion officer hands him over to the next level in the chain and spits in Alex's face with contempt.

Alex enters a new level of state hierarchy, one in which the control and level of violence has increased. Even during his interrogation, Alex is assaulted by the inspectors when he resists control. Additionally, later in the film, Alex is beaten mercilessly and almost drowned by his former droogs who have now ironically become part of the state hierarchy as policemen. The same violence that Alex and his droogs used in their youthful power structure was now institutionalized into state power. When Alex looks at his former droogs who are now police in disbelief, Georgie says "A job for two, who are now of job age. The police," while Dim answers "Don't call me Dim no more, either. Officer, call me." In a scene that shows Alex's reversal of fortune, he is attacked by a number of old homeless men who now outnumber him, including the old man who Alex and the droogs attacked in the beginning of the film. The establishment hierarchy, represented by old men, now had control of Alex. After he enters the criminal justice system, he is immediately stripped of his identity and forms of expression. He gives up his clothes, privacy, possessions and is given a prisoner number (655321) as a new identity. Alex must answer personal questions about venereal diseases, his sexuality, body lice, and is even stripped naked for an inspection of his rectum. It is also suggested that Alex may have been raped in prison, as his youth makes him desirable both sexually and for dominance. In total, notice the rigidity and the obsession with exaggerated protocol exhibited by the prison guards. The prison has draconian procedures to control the actions of the incarcerated---they must follow painted lines on the floor, answer superiors using the word "sir," and march in formation outside and dress in uniforms. Contrary to the liberal society Alex thrived within, prison represents the annihilation of personal freedom and expression.  

Yet, there is also a reformative element in the criminal justice system. While in jail, Alex befriends a priest (or at least pretends to befriend him) who tries to guide him to better moral choices. In a sermon to his imprisoned congregation, the priest asks:

"What's it going to be, eh? Is it going to be in and out of institutions like this? Well, more in and out for most of ya! Or are you going to attend to the Divine Word and realise the punishments that await unrepentant sinners in the next world as well as this? A lot of idiots you are, selling your own birthright for a saucer of cold porridge! The thrill of theft! Of violence! The urge to live easy! Well, I ask you what is it worth when we have undeniable truth - yes! Incontrovertible evidence that Hell exists! I know! I know my friends! I have been informed in visions that there is a place darker than any prison, hotter than any flame of human fire, where souls of unrepentant criminal sinners like yourselves...!"

According to the priest, every man has a choice between good and evil. Still, the priest evokes hell as a punishment saying, "Don't you laugh, damn you, don't you laugh. I say like yourselves--scream in endless and unendurable agony. Their nostrils choked with the smell of filth, their mouths crammed with burning ordure. Their skins rotting and peeling. A fireball spinning in their screaming guts." The priests uses fear to control the wayward prisoners. The priest tries to indoctrinate the prisoners with acceptable morality with biblical texts and hymns like the following:

I was a wandering sheep.

I did not love the fold.

I did not love my shepherd's voice.

I would not be controlled.

I was a wayward child

I did not love my home

I did not love my father's voice

I loved afar to roam.

When Alex inquires about the Ludivico treatment, a conditioning process that forces one to be good, the priest replies with one of the central themes of the film: "The question is whether or not this technique really makes a man good. Goodness comes from within. Goodness is chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." While I believe Kubrick sides with the priest on that point, the film makes it clear that there is no goodness within Alex from which he can make a choice. In fact, impulse and pleasure is Alex's inspiration for action. Not only does he indulge in evil acts, he perverts seemingly good or innocuous things and extracts the evil from them. As discussed earlier, Alex listens to Beethoven's ninth symphony and has fantasies of pain, death, and the destruction of others. While in jail, he assures the priest that he's reading the bible daily, yet, ironically, he is most interested in the sex and violence in the bible:

"I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns and I could viddy myself helping in and even taking charge of the tolchocking and the nailing in, being dressed in the height of Roman fashion. I didn't so much like the latter part of the book, which is more like all preachy talking than fighting and the old in-out. I liked the parts where these old yahoodies tolchock each other and then drink their Hebrew vino, and getting onto the bed with their wives' handmaidens. That kept me going."

The problem with the priest's view that humans can choose goodness is that some people, like Alex, seem to lack it completely. How then can he be truly reformed when his natural state is evil? Moreover, how far can a state go to preserve order over its citizenry? The state's answer is the Ludivico treatment, a process by which a person is given a nausea-inducing medication while he watches films of violent and sexual activities. The goal is Pavlovian: when the criminal attempts to engage in violence or deviant sexual action, he becomes deathly sick, preventing any unlawful event. The treatment itself is purposely traumatic and a form of torture. Not only does Alex get sick while watching subversive films, but he is strapped down in a chair with his eyes forcibly held open by an apparatus so he can't look away. Interestingly, Alex also comments that even the people acting in the films are subjected to violence at the hands of the state. He says, "This seemed real, very real, though if you thought about it properly you couldn't imagine lewdies actually agreeing to having all this done to them in a film, and if these films were made by the good, or the State, you couldn't imagine them being allowed to take these films, without like interfering with what was going on." Similiar to Alex's simple hierarchy of power before his incarceration, the state has also systemized violence and torture though with a higher level of sophistication for what they deem is a higher purpose.

After his treatment, Alex is paraded before a crowd by the minister of the interior who wishes to show how he and his political party will stop crime. The minister comments, "Prison taught him the false smile, the rubbed hand of hypocrisy, the fawning, greased obsequious leer. Other vices it taught him, as well as confirming in those he had long practiced before. Our party promised to restore law and order and to make the streets safe again for the ordinary peace-loving citizen." At the demonstration, Alex is subjected to both violence (a man hitting him) and sex (a beautiful, topless woman) and becomes ill and helpless upon exposure. In effect, to control his impulsive actions, Alex is completely stripped of his natural human drives to defend himself and to procreate. This reality is partly what the priest was referencing when he said "When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." Man's evolution has been a balance between civilization and barbarism, a teetering scale of primitive drives for sex and violence and the need for order and control. Ironically, the state in "A Clockwork Orange" perpetuates what it seeks to eradicate. Violence is needed to end violence and Alex suffers at the hand of the Ludovico treatment and is even punished by it. When he begins to suffer at the thought of Beethoven being included in his collection of images and sounds meant to make him sick, Dr. Brodsky comments how this rehabilitation had turned to punishment: "It can't be helped. Here's your punishment element perhaps. The Governor [who commented that morality should be "an eye for an eye" instead of rehabilitation] ought to be pleased. I'm sorry, Alex, this is for your own good, you'll have to bear with us for a while." Likewise, Dr. Branom answers Alex's complaints about feeling ill by saying, You felt ill this afternoon because you're getting better. You see, when we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy that's all. By this time tomorrow you'll be healthier still." Healthy and more stable through violence. Branom also rebukes Alex's complaints because the treatment was "his choice"---an untrue assertion given the fact that the procedures of the treatment were never fully explained to Alex. Tyranny by controlling information.

In what is clearly a form of totalitarianism, the state has taken total control over a citizen's free human expression because he could not control those very expressions himself with choice. Ironically, the Ludivico treatment pits Alex's natural urges against each other: pain and self-preservation in opposition to violence and sex. Still, Alex's savage thoughts and drives are not really diminished as much as his externalization of those thoughts are controlled. A telling example is when he is approached by a topless woman and has the following thought: "And the first thing that flashed into my gulliver was that I'd like to have her right down there on the floor with the old in-out, real savage. The thoughts of rape remained but acting on the thought was prevented. Likewise, during the treatment, Alex breaks down during his torture and yells, "You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultra-violence and killing is wrong and terribly wrong. I've learned my lesson, sir. I see now what I've never seen before I'm cured, praise God! I see that it's wrong! It's wrong because it's like against like society. It's wrong because everybody has the right to live and be happy without being tolchocked and knifed." Alex was not yelling because of a moral epiphany or change in thoughts; he was yelling to escape torture. The ethical quandary between actions versus thoughts is best exemplified in an interchange between the priest and minister:

Prison Chaplain: The boy has not a real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. The insincerity was clear to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.

Minister: We are not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime and with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the heart at the thought of killing a fly. Reclamation! Joy before the angels of God! The point is that it works."

In the film, there is a binary between the possibility of redemption and the necessity of total control. Ironically, the same free will that gave rise to unfettered impulses in an overly liberal society was also the priest's mechanism of reformation. Not wanting to wait, the state stepped in and neutered Alex's ability to act.

Despite the fact that the Ludivico treatment seemed successful, there are a few reasons to suspect that Alex's nausea reaction might be fake, a possibility that would add another wrinkle to the film.  First, he is tremendously manipulative and deceitful, a character with a history of feigning a horrific car accident to gain entry into people's houses, fooling a priest into believing that he was reforming by reading the bible, and instilling guilt in his parents when they rented his room during his absence. In the scene involving Alex's parents and their new renter named Joe, notice the exaggerated violins playing in the background and the excessive crying as Alex says that his homelessness "will lie on their consciences." Joe says in return, "Look, he's weeping now. But that's all his craft and artfulness." Overall, Alex is so manipulative that one can even question whether he is manipulating the audience through his narration to paint himself as sympathetic. Second, earlier in the film, Alex forcibly belches in the face of an inspector at will. Is it possible that his belching during his alleged nauseous attacks is an act? Third, there are many instances when Alex is exposed to something sexual or violent and does not become sick. He seems to become ill only at opportune moments like during the minister's demonstration, when he was pummeled by a crowd of homeless men, and when he wanted to manipulate his parents. When Alex returns home, he sees erotic art on his parent's home and even gives his father a "love tap," both of which do not cause him to become ill. Likewise, when Alex becomes angry at Joe, he switches to a fighting stance with his fish clenched and body turned ready to strike. Yet, he only gets sick when he attempts the actual punch. Wouldn't the sustained thought of violence make him nauseous? Moreover, when Alex stumbles upon the home of the writer whom he attacked earlier in the film, he is strangely unaffected by the home and when he gives a reprisal of "Singing in the the Rain," the song that emboldened his most heinous violent and sexual acts of the film. The song profoundly disturbs the writer when he recognizes Alex and the associated disturbing images of the past, but Alex, who is nauseated by Beethoven's ninth, fails to have any reaction to the other music associated with his actions. Furthermore, when Alex is taking a bath in the home and singing, his face and crotch are covered with a washcloth and sponge respectively, conjuring images of his crime when he worse a mask and a cod piece. Was that symbolism that he was still the same droog?

A counterargument to the idea that Alex is faking is that the action is what creates the sickness and not the thought or intent. After all, when the minister discussed the treatment, he empathized that stopping crime was more important than changing motives. Furthermore, if Alex is faking, why did he actually try to commit suicide later in the film when hearing Beethoven's ninth symphony? When Alex speaks up in the prison line and gets chosen by the minister for the Ludivico treatment, the latter uses interesting words that suggest he knew Alex would play along with the experiment if necessary. The minister says of Alex, "He's enterprising, aggressive, outgoing, young, bold, vicious. He'll do...This vicious young hoodlum will be transformed out of all recognition." Describing Alex as "enterprising and bold," seems to be an odd choice for someone chosen to be on a trial run for conditioning, especially one that has so much political importance. In any case, whether Alex is faking or not, Kubrick's point is that controlling action, either through conditioning or creating an interest to do so, is made possible by totalitarianism. As long as Alex appeared to control his actions, the experiment would be a political success for the minister and a way out of prison for Alex.

When Alex shows up at the home where he committed his crimes against the husband and wife, his violent indoctrination inspires the liberal writer and unknowing victim, Mr. Alexander, to use Alex's story as fodder against the conservatives in power. Mr. Alexander expounds his belief that the country was headed in a totalitarian direction:

"I tell you, sir, they have turned this young man into something other than a human being. He has no power of choice any more. He's committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good... He can be the most potent weapon imaginable to ensure that the Government is not returned at the next election. The Government's great boast, as you know sir, is the way they have dealt with crime in the last few months. Recruiting brutal young roughs into the police, proposing debilitation and will-sapping techniques of conditioning. Oh, we've seen it all before in other countries. The thin end of the wedge. Before we know where we are we shall have the full apparatus of totalitarianism. This young boy is a living witness to these diabolical proposals. The people, the common people must know... must see! There are rare traditions of liberty to defend. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go! Oh, yes ó they will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be led, sir, driven... pushed!!!"

There is a twinge of irony in the liberal writer's tirade that conservatism was leading to totalitarianism. Tellingly, he also said that people must be "led, driven, and pushed" into accepting more liberal policies of free expression. Likewise, he also supports weaponizing people for political ends. The ultimate irony comes when the writer realizes that Alex was the hoodlum who attacked him and his wife and then plots revenge against him. Alex's rendition of "Singing in the Rain" conjures up pure terror for the writer. In this case, the victim was conditioned by Alex's violence and had his own Ludovico-like reaction. The maxim that violence begets violence once again manifests as the writer hatches a scheme to both kill Alex and use him as a political martyr for liberalism. Sitting at a table, Alex is surrounded by liberals in a ratio of 4:1, a common theme when one hierarchy has power in the film, and drugged. He is locked in the attic and forced to listen to Beethoven's ninth symphony to both make him suffer and commit suicide to help the political cause. Alex jumps out of the window, but, as we quickly learn, does not die. In the end, even liberalism, which wanted to overthrow the conservative criminal justice system based on violence and control, used the very same violence to further its end. Despite being liberal, Mr. Alexander could not contain his bloodlust to punish the criminal that hurt him personally. For Kubrick, these different political ethos have the same ends.

The ending of "A Clockwork Orange" is the most beguiling part of the film, particularly for many critics who called the finale confusing and disjointed from the rest of the story. However, if one espouses that the film is largely about state power and individual expression, the ending is a strong affirmation of the general theme. First, as Alex awakes and the nearby doctor emerges from a curtain with a naked woman, it reminds us that all humans, however civilized, have drives towards sexuality and indecency. Second, a psychiatrist gives Alex psychoanalytic tests that demonstrate his return to sexual and violent impulses without nausea. Third, when the minister of the interior visits Alex, he literally and figuratively spoonfeeds him. Besides his dinner, Alex is fed his expected cooperation with the state to be a lead part in their political theater. Because of a shift in public opinion, the Ludivico treatment became extremely unpopular and cost the conservatives votes. Just as the state used Alex to support their conditioning treatment when political opinion called for a reduction in crime, the state uses him again but for the opposite purpose, to demonstrate the kindness of the state to someone they have wronged. In return, Alex gets a government job and salary, freeing him to sell the conservative brand as safe again. In a quote that the minister could have made before or after Alex had the Ludivico treatment, he says, "Alex, you can be instrumental in changing the public verdict. Do you understand, Alex? Do I make myself clear?"

Not only is it horrifying that state methods of power can fluctuate according to public opinion (torture and mind control were morally acceptable until the public changed its opinion), the end of the film questions if any methods, besides maybe the priest's fruitless attempt at reformation, can be called "moral." At three points in the film, the leaders of hierarchies like Alex, the governor, and the minister combatted changes in their power structures referred to as "the new way," "a new view," or "the new understanding," respectively. Alex fought the new way by pummeling his droogs into accepting his power. The governor overseeing the prison complained that society was moving from "an eye from an eye" to the reformation of criminals. He says, "If someone hits you, you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State very severely hit by you brutal offenders not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into good." Finally, after public opinion dictates, the minister creates a new understanding with Alex to change the political opinion of his party. In the film, there is no unquestionable morality or structure that is immutable and not subject to change for the purpose of political opinion. The freedom of expression of the populace gives rise to changing methods of control. As an adviser tells the minister when discussing the Ludivico treatment: "If the polls are right, then we have nothing to lose."

When a totalitarian society arises from either an excessively liberal or brutally conservative state, they use violence and fear to create citizens into "A Clockwork Orange," a natural organism that has been made unnatural on the inside by excessive tampering and added mechanisms of control. Kubrick's film gives audiences an overview of how both individual human beings and their civilizations use violence to retain power. This film is very ahead of its time, even predictive of our current political environment, one in which hyperpolarized political factions battle for supremacy and seek to win at any cost, even at the peril of their own citizenry. "A Clockwork Orange" is not only a movie about the nature of a sadistic man named Alex Delarge; it is about how a society with teetering political interests (freedom of expression vs. total control) creates and then destroys their citizens. In the very last frames of the film, we see Alex and a willing girl having monogamous sex while victorian onlookers stare quietly in approval. Perhaps this is the middle ground for Alex or his true "cure:" acting out his natural impulses in the socially acceptable ways of the time, a balance between expression and control. When Alex says his last words, "I was cured alright," he sarcastically admits that any "cure" is temporary depending on the circumstances and who is in power. Alex ended up in the same place where he started: teeming with impulses. The difference, however, is that now his behavior was a sign of government success rather than failure, a switch from government control to sanctioned expression. Alex was considered human again, but for how long? I guess it depends on the next election.