'A Clockwork Orange' Strikes 40
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/02/a-clockwork-orange-strikes-40/252430/
On Saturday, the New York Times ran an opinion piece about the concept of a morality pill, a theoretical-but-apparently-not-implausible panacea for humankind's ethical shortcomings. ThinkChicken Soup for the Absent Soul. Of all the possible meditations on free will and human reform, the one cultural allusion the authors made in the article was to A Clockwork Orange, referencing both the novel by Anthony Burgess and the film by Stanley Kubrick.
The article explained that Kubrick's film, which was released in America 40 years ago today, had set off a debate at the time over whether it would ever be virtuous or permissible to use science to deprive someone violent of free will. It's not surprise fact that this debate hasn't gone away, given that A Clockwork Orange has never gone away. The film's legacy has been chewed over plenty, and at 40, it remains many things: a cultural touchstone, a blueprint for artistic emulation and fashionable imitation. Decades later, the diffusion of the film's iconography through pop culture continues unrelentingly; its images have been copped and borrowed by everyone from David Bowie and Led Zeppelin to Madonna, Lady Gaga, The Simpsons, Usher, and Metallica.
And yet A Clockwork Orange remains in some ways misunderstood, and some of its innovations still haven't been given enough due: its strength as a genre-less film, its insurgent marketing plan, its stylized violence, and its unprecedented use of music, all of which shaped both film and pop culture as well as influenced society at-large for decades to come.
We can get a glimpse of the film's prismatic legacy in the rankings from American Film Institute, which, while not to be taken too seriously, speak to a broader misrepresentation of the film over time. For example: despite sharing very few traits with many of the action flicks or tense, slow-simmered classics that gum up the AFI Top 100 Thrills list, the film is ranked No. 21 on the list. And despite not being (by any acclamation) a science-fiction film, A Clockwork Orange is ranked No. 4 on the AFI Best Sci-Fi List.
*** love that movie.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Omission of the final chapter
The book has three parts, each with seven chapters. Burgess has stated that the total of 21 chapters was an intentional nod to the age of 21 being recognised as a milestone in human maturation. The 21st chapter was omitted from the editions published in the United States prior to 1986.[1] In the introduction to the updated American text (these newer editions include the missing 21st chapter), Burgess explains that when he first brought the book to an American publisher, he was told that U.S. audiences would never go for the final chapter, in which Alex sees the error of his ways, decides he has lost all energy for and thrill from violence and resolves to turn his life around (a slow-ripening but classic moment of metanoia—the moment at which one's protagonist realises that everything he thought he knew was wrong).
At the American publisher's insistence, Burgess allowed their editors to cut the redeeming final chapter from the U.S. version, so that the tale would end on a darker note, with Alex succumbing to his violent, reckless nature—an ending which the publisher insisted would be 'more realistic' and appealing to a U.S. audience. The film adaptation, directed by Stanley Kubrick, is based on the American edition of the book (which Burgess considered to be "badly flawed"
. Kubrick called Chapter 21 "an extra chapter" and claimed[2] that he had not read the original version until he had virtually finished the screenplay, and that he had never given serious consideration to using it. In Kubrick's opinion, the final chapter was unconvincing and inconsistent with the book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange#Author.27s_dismissal
