A CLOCKWORK ORANGE: Living up to the Expectations of Youth
"Goodness is something to be chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man"
- Prison Champlain, A Clockwork Orange, 1971
A Clockwork Orange is a story about antagonist to society. The viewer is meant to relate to characters that are in truth hooligans. The “hero” is an individual that is generally unlikeable. But as the film progresses the victims of the first half of the film, that were prayed upon by Alex, are revealed to be just as cruel and uncaring as he was. It becomes easier for one to believe that Alex is in fact an hero, or more accurately an anti-hero, someone just trying to su
rvive in a world that rejects him for the shear fact that he young.
An anti-hero is a character that is not necessarily driven by pure lack of moral fibre, but is just motivated by a different honour code that clashes with what is perceived to be right by society. And though at first glance in A Clockwork Orange, Alex and his crew are portrayed as villains, it is revealed through the rest of the film that it is society that made Alex the way he is. The way that youth are perceived, and the way that Alex is treated by adults directly influences how Alex responds. His parents are in denial, and no one will give then a chance to be good, so they become what they are told to become, angry and ultraviolent. This is also a result of how desensitized society as a whole has become to violence, which does not just relate to the youth in this film.
Once Alex becomes “cured” he falls victim to the cruelness of the society that created him. Turning Alex into the victim of the true villain of A Clockwork Orange which is the society that created him then tried to fix him with out fixing itself. This is the major theme of ACO. Things are not always as they appear. Just as a Mozart loving hooliga
n trying to take part in an ideal society that he has never experienced, and that is revealed to have never really existed. Alex’s cruelty was a survival mechanism in an ultra cruel world, which once stripped from him almost led to his demise.
Architecturally, because it was his environment that was in fact the “villain” there is a surreal, disconnected aspect to the settings in the film. Everything is rough, and run down. In the area that the hooligans hang out, are highly sexualized. The hospital and prison are cold and sterile and always set up in an audience / performer setting (Alex in normally in the performing seat after he leaves his gang) revealing societies want to examine but not self examine.