Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The Individual and Control: Analysis of A Clockwork Orange




The Individual and Control: Analysis of A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange presents us with a violent and dangerous criminal, Alex. But are his terrible ways really his own fault? By looking at the film and the main character through the lens of essays by Louis Althusser and Randy Martin, we are given the impression that the filmmaker believes the individual is not at fault for his actions; rather, a society which is disinterested in the individual is what produces violent citizens.

By approaching A Clockwork Orange thorough the lens of Louis Althusser’s essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” we feel that although Alex is clearly a violent and immoral person, this is not his fault. Althusser points out that the individual is the creation of the state. The state must be inherently violent if it creates the conditions/situations which create violent individuals. The state, by its very nature, creates individuals like Alex: “It follows that, in order to exist, every social formation must reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as it produces, and in order to be able to produce”.

To Althusser, schools are largely what create the persons in a modern society, “But no other Ideological State Apparatus has the obligatory (and not least, free) audience of the totality of the children in the capitalist social formation, eight hours a day for five or six days out of seven”. We certainly see how Alex’s authority figures have contributed to his behavior. In a scene with Mr. Deltoid, he chides Alex for his poor behavior but then violent hits/grabs Alex’s groin. With these as examples, it is any wonder, then, that Alex repeats these behaviors in his everyday life. That he uses sex and violence, often together? The Ludovico technique might have been an overt way for the authority to control Alex’s actions, but they had also subtly created the person who he was before the treatment as well. The society has made him the way that he is, and then brands him a criminal for it.

What should be done with criminals is a political matter, one which often generates a lot of controversy. One of the key phrases in Randy Martin’s essay, “Where Did The Future Go?” which relates to A Clockwork Orange is this: “Rather, politics, the sort brought by these imperial liberations, looks increasingly like war, and war is conducted as an exercise in managing risk.”. Both the treatment which Alex endures and the brutality he suffers at the hands of the police seem more like acts of war than anything else. Both involve violence and great discomfort to Alex. And especially the Ludovico technique is a war-like act committed in an attempt to manage risk, an attempt to control the criminal element for the supposed betterment of society. The controllers of society do not care about what they are doing to the criminal, as he does not matter.

This idea is also found in Martin’s essay, “the present incarnation of military dominance stands apart as an empire of indifference”. The men in charge are initially indifferent to Alex’s emotions. He pleads with them to not take away his ability to enjoy Beethoven, and they do not care. His distress and his desires are immaterial, all that matters is they are allowed to control his mind and turn him into a good citizen. Once he has had the treatment and is released back on the street a couple years later, they do not make sure he is integrating back into society. It is only once he nearly dies that they are forced to realize what they have done and try to make amends.

Both essays lend the idea that those in charge of society control the individual for those their purposes. Martin’s essay focuses on the lack of caring for the individual (in the film, Alex). When we consider that Althusser’s essay implies that those who control society are what made him a monster in the first place, this becomes even more horrible. First they create a violent individual, then they take away his free will and they don’t care about his individual wants,. Only once he nearly kills himself do they realize that they have done anything wrong and attempt to “un-do” their control of Alex. Of course, we know that removing the overt form of control has not truly “fixed” Alex, he is still whom society made him, which is why his final sarcastic words are so chilling: "I was cured, all right!"

Works Cited
A Clockwork Orange. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Malcolm McDowell and Patrick Magee. 1972. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007.
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”. April 1970. Marxists Internet Archive. 6 October 2009. .
Martin, Randy. “Where Did the Future Go?” 2006. Logosjournal.6 October 2009. .

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