Get away with everything? No! The ethos of the movie would have no problem with an honest punishment or even execution of Alex which respected his humanity & free will. But debasing him to a human machine (the meaning of the title) is an abomination that is worse than the nasty beast that he is.
I’m not talking about the girls in the music store, but the rape you mentioned in the first paragraph.
Can’t speak to the book,I don’t agree that the movie was clearly about redemption. Seems to me that it was more about manipulation. Alex never seeks redemption and never finds it - the movie implies very clearly that he’s just as evil at the end of the movie as he was at the beginning. If he’s learned anything, it is to be more subtle and scheming.
Rather, Alex is both a manipulator and a victim of manipulation in various ways. The issues are whether any of the manipulations of Alex could be justified for some sort of greater good - taking away his capacity for violence by conditioning, using him for political purposes against those doing the conditioning, etc.
Some in the film, such as the priest, clearly state that it is wrong to do so, and many have taken that as the point of the movie, but I do not see it as being obvious - after all, in the end, Alex is free to be as bad as he ever was.
I did not get the sense at all that the filmmakers thought Alex ought to get away with his crimes. Rather, they were using the fact that he was in effect an unrepentant psychopath to illustrate the dilemma of whether the abuse/treatment he received could ever be justified even though he was an unrepentant psychopath.
Taking away his ability to appreciate his favorite music was just a way of illustrating the effect of the treatment on him, not intended to justify his crimes.
Uhhh… Star Trek: Generations?
You know, for as lovingly wretched as Tank Girl was, it simply would not have worked with anyone other than McDowell and Lori Petty. Their chemistry was pure magic.
Anthony Burgess repeatedly said that aesthetics and ethics have no connection.
The story isn’t so unrealistic; kids/criminals run wild while parents and the Mr. Deltoids are negligent and ineffectual. Then, to no-ones surprise, they cross an invisible but horrible line; beyond which the state’s remedy is cops beating them up. The only science-fiction addition is behavioral re-programing. Well, perhaps not entierly science-fiction
Slight highjack:
I did not read the book.
I saw this film on TV in the late 70’s, when I was in my early teens. I haven’t seen it since, and I forgot most of the details in the movie since then. At the time, I thought the message of the movie was of someone refusing to be conformist, and doing whatever they feel like whenever they feel like, and that that was ok.
Reading other people’s posts here make me realise that I got whooshed by a lot of stuff. 
Well, until Bob Guccione came along.
::d&r::
That’s another thing – neither Burgess nor Kubrick gives us any examplars in the story of whom we can say, that is a man, or is a what a man ought to be. All the developed characters, whether criminals or victims or authority figures, are more or less equally repellent – ineffectual, hypocritical, amoral, disgusting, or some combination of these. Even Alex’ parents make you want to pound them just for being such silly, pointless people. The only one with anything we might call a conscience is the priest; and he is nothing but a conscience, and is in all other respects a fool. Whether all that gives more or less force to his point here is debatable.
Why you gotta go besmirching TIME AFTER TIME like that?
Then you badly misread my post, because I did not mention “the rape” in the first paragraph. I was referring to the way rape in general was portrayed in the movie and how it differed from the book, not to one particular rape scene. IIRC there are 3-4 rape or near-rape scenes in the movie. As I said before, “At the very least the extent of Alex’s crimes was toned way down for the movie”. To my mind the most glaring example of this is how the movie changes a scene where Alex rapes two little girls to a scene where he maybe commits statutory rape (depending on the ages of everyone involved) with two willing teenagers.
I’ve always considered that intentional. (This is the guy who made 2001.) The society of CO is indeed stuck in the late '60s; it is a degenerative decadence with nothing to add to civilization but better drugs.
I never read the book but assumed that Alex’s parents were aging Carnaby Streeters.
A common imaginative failure in SF, even near-future SF, is to imagine contemporary trends continuing in an even-more-so way, without being derailed by cultural backlash or cultural just-getting-over-it.
Contextualize that for Yanks, please?
Carnaby Street, where many fashion fads, most famously the miniskirt, were born. It was around the corner from the Marquee Club, where many famous bands got their start. The whole area was the place to be in 1960’s London.
Alex’s parents did indeed look like aged Carnaby Streeters.
At his Kubrick analysis site Rob Ager posits that in the film, Alex fakes the results of the Ludovico technique and that the government minister also knows that the technique is a sham. Each is manipulating the other to mutually beneficial ends.
A few excerpts:
*"Alex’s motive for getting himself selected for the treatment was to escape from prison. He had already read about the Ludovico technique in a newspaper so had some idea of the methods involved, yet he feigns ignorance to the prison preacher, the doctors and through his narration to us, the audience.
In the book Alex spouts his own objection as the preacher and Minister debate the morality of the Ludovico technique, “Me, me, me. How about me? Where do I come into all this? Am I just like some animal or dog? … Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?” The last line in particular is crucial to the book’s themes, but Kubrick omitted it entirely. In Kubrick’s rewrite Alex fakes his sickness response, burps as he sits up (which he can do at will, as demonstrated during the police interrogation scene) then asks “Was it alright? Did I do well sir?” He knew perfectly well what was expected of him and he acted his part accordingly.
This indirect mutual agreement between Alex and the Minister was also communicated through a short verbal interraction in the prison courtyard. In the book Alex objects to the minister’s statements and is in turn chosen for the Ludovico treatment. Kubrick drastically alters this interraction by having Alex lie that he was imprisoned for “the accidental killing of a person”. The Minister is impressed with his ability to lie outright and responds “Excellent. He’s enterprising, aggressive, outgoing, young, bold, viscious. He’ll do.” Why would the Minister need a criminal who is “enterprising”? Because Alex is the type of lying opportunist who will pretend to go along with the Ludovico program, which will mutually benefit the Minister’s aim of clearing out prisons to make space for political offenders. Cutting down crime is merely an illusion he needs to fabricate to justify this policy and Ludovico is the propaganda tool he needs. Alex then responds by thanking the Minister for choosing him (this didn’t happen in the book). The Minister responds “Let’s hope you make the most of it my boy.” He’s basically telling Alex to put on the best act he can for the doctors and the press."
*
Ager offers reasons for Alex to keep up his act, even when confronted by Joe the lodger and the gang of beggars after his release:
*"Squaring off face to face with Joe the lodger, Alex stares at him fiercely with his left fist clenched for a good fifteen seconds. He has the urge to hit Joe, but there’s not even the slightest sign of a Ludovico sickness response until he raises his fist.
Alex is intelligent enough to know that hitting Joe will blow his cover, but his initial desire for violence was real and undiluted. So he fakes a sickness response to win sympathy. Joe rightly claims, “Oh look he’s weeping now. That’s all his craft and artfulness.” Alex plays a guilt trip on his parents and leaves, Kubrick adding a comical twist to his phoney victim performance via the use of weepy violins, over-dramatic drum rolls and an over-the-top outburst of crying from mother.*
(At the Thames) *Alex is recognized, but not by someone sympathetic to his act. The beggars attack him and, being unafraid of them in their aged weakness, Alex feigns his sickness response again … hoping that some sympathetic police officers will fall for the act instead. But Alex’s plan is thwarted again. The droogs he once bullied show up.
The beating and near-drowning Alex endures in the woods isn’t an act, nor is his response staged. Now he really is suffering. From here on the story progresses through a very different series of twists that are far beyond the scope of this chapter."*
I think the film ending works best without addressing the 21st chapter of the book - “I was cured alright” said over Alex’s adolescent fantasy is a perfect satire of the government’s crime reduction efforts - but I also like Burgess’ ending. I like to think that film-Alex eventually has the same outlook found in the 21st chapter:
*"Yes yes yes, there it was. Youth must go, ah yes. But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines…
That’s what it’s going to be then, brothers, as I come to the like end of this tale. You have been everywhere with your little droog Alex, suffering with him, and you have viddied some of the most grahzny bratchnies old Bog ever made, all on to your old droog Alex. And all it was was that I was young. But now as I end this story, brothers, I am not young, not no longer, oh no. Alex like groweth up, oh yes…"*
OK, how does the “faking it” theory fit in with Alex’s attempted suicide at F. Alexander’s house?
And am I the only one who believes, at the very end of the movie, Alex may well be cured? While at the end of Ch 20 in the book, he is fantasizing about cutting throats, in the movie, he dreams- not of violence & rape- but of laying back being ridden by a beauteous young devotchka with 'orrorshow groodies. Also in the movie, as he recovers in the hospital & the psychologist is getting his emotional response to the pictures, his attempts at violent responses are disorganized. Finally, he mentions dreams of people opening up his gulliver. Might they have been doing some neurosurgery to normalize his sexual & musical responses but cripple his violent ones? Hmmmm?
My bad, I assumed you were commenting on Ashley Pomeroy’s post simply because you quoted him.
My point however still stands: he’s shown as a rapist and murderer in the movie. Whether he raped two girls in that scene or not (and I think if you re-watch it, you will see it isn’t really all that equivocal - they are shown trying to put their clothes on and escape, albeit it is in fast-mo) hardly matters - the audence knows the guy is capable of rape, mutilation and murder for kicks, what does it matter if he rapes 1, 2 or 10?
Seconded. Love that movie. I watched it over and over when HBO had it in heavy rotation in the early Eighties.
I had the exact opposite take - to me it’s very clearly consensual. Especially if you watch it in slow motion to get it down to kind-of normal speed (which I swear I only did for analysis purposes, not to see more boobs). One of the girls even sits and watches Alex & the other girl for a bit. They get dressed to leave, and Alex talks to them and convinces them to stay. To me, it’s part of his manipulator personality, not his rapist personality.