(May 2, 2024 ● Oslin Pierrette)
The menace of society of the modern age, the land absent of law & order, full of lawlessness & absurdity that’s rising from the youth. The youth of the modern age seem to be more and more coddled and spoiled. They were tended not really to their needs, but to their every want, every desire, pacified for far too many years, comfort and pleasure at every step of the way. What you get is entitled bratty youth & bratty young adults. They have no sense of impulse control, they have no sense of struggle or suffering. They were coddled and protected from the pain. And they haven’t been taught the manners of law & order, to respect & care for your parents, family, and neighbors of the community. They weren’t taught the importance of that, or heavily ignored it. Then to leave the kids to their own constant leisure, especially in the new age media, that is riddled with sex, violence, chaos, and absurdity, this is the media they’ve consumed, the world they know. What you have created are the most senseless, violent, malevolent, sadistic, absurdly lawless menace to societies. You have created a society that breeds narcissism and sociopathy. That’s what A Clockwork Orange speaks to, to live in the age where the youth has turned to spoiled brat menaces, due to the fault of this new culture that extremely coddled and comforted the youth for far too long. And hasn’t nurtured them to grow and develop into competent and good humans for society. They don’t walk around with how other people feel, there’s no compassion, no empathy. They aren’t connected, they grew up in a coddled society, they don’t understand the pain of the struggle, the hungry, poverty, ailments, the sick. If at my every call or cry, you tend to my every want, I don’t know the ways of not receiving what I want, so I look at the world as my playground.
That’s what you see in this film, a group of teenage kids or entitled bratty young adults terrorizing society, they are menaces. Look at the nice watch on that person’s wrist, knock the vino out their nose and take it. Homeless man begging for change, yuck, look at that filth, I despise seeing them. Let’s brutalize this underhuman filth. That girl has a nice pair of knockers and pussy, just grab her to enjoy a nice session of in-and-out, let’s go fellas. You see the terrorization these menace have on society, you see how they view the world. They just don’t have the mechanism to internally account how other people feel about the pain and torture they are enduring from these sociopaths. They don’t have an ounce, not even a little drop of empathy, it seems to be that mechanism is corroding within the youth. Look how they objectify everything they view, in such a surfaceable manner. A watch is not a sentimental personal belonging of another, that someone might of worked long and hard for, it’s a shiny cool thing of their liking they want to simply take. The homeless man isn’t someone who has dealt with enough in life, they aren’t someone who deserves a break or has been starving, suffering, and drowning for however long. Homeless man is just a filthy underhuman laying on the street, that deserves to be brutalize. A woman’s body is not of her own to give consent to, not someone with feelings or well-being to respect. It’s something with boobs and pussy that brings me pleasure, and would be great if I enjoyed it, her consent if it’s a yes or no is nonexistent, just take the pleasure as I please. These sociopathic youth is so detached from the experience of others. If you never had a job, you don’t know the grueling pain it is sometimes to even get yourself a nice piece of luxury or gift for yourself. If you don’t understand why someone can be homeless, and that can be anyone in that predicament, even you. You may not understand why you should have grace, and be understanding to the old man, give him a break, and spare him some change. If you never received the word no, if you were given your every desire, if you lose and corrode the ability to care an have empathy for others, and if you grow seeing the sex, violence, and chaos on TV and media, some of those people will grow to be senseless sexual offenders of women of their interests, with no care of how they feel about it, even may sadistically get off on their resistance and power they have over them.
I know this is all sick, all vile, all heinous, but what if this is truly the growing modern age and reality. I remember when I first watched A Clockwork Orange years ago. I understood some aspects of it, but I thought it was a senseless violence movie that didn’t feel like it had connection to the real world. It felt too absurd, a hyperbole, and a bit childish that Stanley Kubrick made this. But what I didn’t understand, that this is the reality of the world, and it’s growing at terrifyingly rapid rates. I just wasn’t exposed to this truth at the time. It’s not that this was a surreal and absurd movie, it was more an accurate depiction of reality, and reality is shifting into absurdity. I see this amongst the youth, they are getting coddled and convenienced at every step of the way. They don’t know the mechanism of no, they are getting coddled and pleasured at every step. Their parents have been heavily stripped of the mechanism to discipline their own child, and if they try, they face the risk of the consequences of disciplining their own child. Also child care is decreasing, family size is shrinking, so parents and adults are focused on work and other duties, kids are left more to their pleasurable autonomy. They live within the new age technocracy. Parental influence weighs extremely less than new age technocracy and media influence. Where today they consume the endless loop of extreme violence, unlimited viewing to sex even in virtual reality, lot of nothingness absurdity, and just pure chaos. You see the effect it’s having on the youth, they are morphing into what they consume. You see kids nowadays that walk around with an insane amount of artillery that can wipe out a whole block or school. You have people on the streets absolutely detached from the well-being of a woman, they will catcall them in the most degrading of ways, and if they don’t get what they want, women may face the most vile and heinous of consequences for owning their consensual rights. You see it, women are beaten up, knocked out with bricks or skateboards, stabbed up, or even shot at, all in the most heinous of ways. You see it, and it’s like how can someone commit such vile and heinous acts. You need to be completely detached from humanity and empathy, and that sociopathy is becoming a very commonplace thing, a terrifying sight. Many become defenseless and powerless to violence and dangers of going outside. People are randomly pushed onto train tracks to their death. People are being robbed of their cars they need for work and vital travels, by kids who just want to joyride and even compelled to crash it, run off and laugh, just for the simple thrills of it, or to post to social media for trivial likes and views. I lost my car and access to goto work, because kids wanted to have fun, how deeply annoying it is to have to see that reality, that’s happening at an alarming rate. Then to go back to the kids with the crazy artillery. Just say you are held up by one, with a gun pointed at you, how scary that is. They don’t have the mind to have clear thoughts, no impulse control, little to no understanding of consequences, it may be a trivial exciting experience they wanted to mimic from the media they consume, the rite of passage to embody the idols they look up to. When you’re at the mercy of that, you are in front of no mercy, no sense of reason or rationality, there’s nothing you can do, but hope his decision isn’t to pull the trigger or that they miss. To be a victim of the modern age of growing sociopathy amongst the youth, it’s paralyzing to go outside in some places. There’s no law & order, no codes to abide by for these kids, so for many there’s nothing you can do to ensure you’re not affected by the violence, it’s just pure chaos & absurdity. Going outside is just a risk and game of roulette, hopefully you don’t cross paths with your demise. That’s the growing reality for many. The system of protection is being more and more deactivated, within the diminishing codes of law, order, respect, and care amongst communities, and lawlessness is growing.
An interesting part of the film was when this lawless group crumbled, more-so their leader. Alex, the leader of this droogie crew. He ruled with an iron fist, with viciousness. The flaw when you rule over hell, you rule by instilling paralyzing fear, in hopes they’re too scared to stand up to you, keep the subordinates in their place. The problem with that, they aren’t loyal to you, they’re scared. They don’t respect you, they probably don’t like you, they just tolerate you as the leader right now for their own safety, it’s in their own interest not to disobey the leader. But in that first chance they get the opportunity to cleanly take you out, good chance that might happen. That’s what happened at one of the home invasion murders, as the cops were coming, they hit him on the head with a glass milk jar, and left him behind to deal with the consequences of the police. There’s no honor amongst thieves, there’s no loyalty or codes to hell. Fear is not a good foundation to build trust and assurance. When you rule with a brutal iron fist. You may have people who resent you who wait for the day that you’re gone or they can take you out themselves. You created a lawless world, and you can become a victim in the monster & beast you created. But this is the type of system an entitled sociopathic brat would create, a totalitarianism system, that is reflected from himself. And this film speaks to that, the spoiled and corrupt world this is becoming, because of sociopathic types like these manufacturing a world to their liking, the world is their sadistic greedy playground. A world where I don’t need impulse control, I don’t need permission, I thrive off my power over the masses, I can have all I desire, the world is my playground. To ensure this, I must destroy everything that threatens my position, even the slightest ounce of insubordination must be corrected, everything must be corrected to my liking. A type of world that breeds paranoia because you think there’s no one to trust, everyone is out to get you, a lot of projecting of their own insecurities. That’s what happens when you rule over hell. But these are the types of systems entitled bratty sociopathic spoiled arrestedly developed adults, basically children create. There is no development into a competent adult when you’ve been pampered and convenienced all your life.
Now Alex is in jail, and he gets what seems to him an opportunity of a lifetime. The new experiment that can scientifically reform criminals. An alternative to jail time, who wouldn’t choose that if they had a 10+ years sentence. Alex goes through the excruciating experiment. It’s basically the attempt to ingrain the mechanism of guilt, but really a negative painful stimulus to wrongdoing.
You will see footage of wrongdoing, and go through excruciating pain, so when you’re out in the world, you have a negative stimulus that will stop you from said immoral action. This is one main reason this film was so amazing and posed a beautiful question, can you cure evil, wrongdoings, and sociopathy.
Can you reform these people to work within the confines of law & order? That is an important question to ask. The experiment seems to somewhat work, when he tries to do something of wrongdoing, he is met with this deep revolting feeling of sickness, that stops him from immoral actions. So basically, he is saved and cured from being evil, right? Like the priests said, he isn’t cured, he’s just blocked from choosing wrong. You’re not a man if he doesn’t hold the mechanism to choose, but basically you’re not human. You’re going against nature. One of our most fundamental elements of being human is our choice. If you don’t have that, maybe you aren’t the most functional person for society.
But that didn’t matter, he was deemed fit for society, which is absurd. Alex talks as if he is better and cured, and excited to live life. It’s absurd because he murdered someone senselessly. Just because they “cured” you, doesn’t mean you deserve a second chance immediately when they deemed you reformed. You have committed an immoral heinous action, you must atone and repent for your faults and wrongdoings. You shouldn’t have this gleeful look on your face like you’re happy to live life again, absent of repentance, because they deemed you reformed. You are not reformed, you are left off the hook.
He is free from prison and the experiment to live his life. You see he still has that snarky snobby attitude. This person wasn’t made good by curing his wrongdoings, he’s just surfaceably been blocked from doing wrongdoing, basically allergic to it, that’s it. It isn’t this deeply intuitive understanding of why I shouldn’t do wrong. But he goes home to deal with all the consequences he has left behind. He goes through this journey of getting what you had coming to you. His room getting taken over, no more free hand out living.
Then cross paths with the homeless man he attacked, and a group of the homeless attacked him, and he can’t retaliate because of the sick feeling he doesn’t want to experience from the experiment. He runs into some of the old droogies in the group who he used to pick on, they brutalize him. Then he coincidentally stumbles upon the house of the woman he raped and beaten that led to her death later on, and the husband who was beaten and to watch it all. They tortured him until he tried to take his own life. But he is saved by the grace of chance & possibility within life, it definitely isn’t God, at least he wouldn’t be the first choice to have grace for. He has finally dealt with the consequences of his own actions. This might make him see that his own actions are wrong. This life changing experience might change him. And what do we see, that he is the same snobby little brat that he was from the beginning, except he probably sees more that it is a forgone conclusion of that. All the crying, apologizing, and screaming that he understands what he has done is wrong, is all a facade, all a lie. He doesn’t have any sense of contrition, there is no remorse. There is only the sorry for himself that he got caught. He plays the role of remorse and reform, so he can receive what he wants. This is how Kubrick ends the film, with a dark bleak outlook. He didn’t go through any change, he is what he is, an evil sociopath, and maybe there is no changing that, and this might be what humanity is riddled with. Also the luxury he gets presented with, he was given a silver spoon after committing his immoral actions, the spoiled get more spoiled, the rich get richer type of attitude. This is just modern age reality.
This was a beautifully crafted film by Stanley Kubrick, I just love this honest bleak depiction of the way of the world. I see now why this is one of the greats. Amazingly crafted in every way. Perfect film, perfect movie.