In an attempt to derail any other hijacks of this Midnight Cowboy thread, I thought I would start this one.
Is A Clockwork Orange really a 2 hour rape fantasy?
I know that the film was banned in Britain, and I think it may still be - but I was under the impression that authorities were worried about copy-cat crimes. Was the concern over the sex or the violence?
Well, there certainly is a lot of raping and beating people… but it’s not just a big ol’ rape fantasy.
It’s very direct, though.
More of the latter than the former, really…there’s only the one “real” rape scene, plus a brief gangbang scene in one of the films shown to Alex as part of his treatment. The girl who is being assaulted by Billy’s gang almost gets raped, but she gets away when Alex’s gang appears. The sex scene with the two girls from the record shop is consensual.
No.
It was never banned. It was withdrawn, at Kubrick’s request (the exact reasons are not clear), and after he died was soon made available again.
It’s not ‘banned’ in Britain anymore. IIRC it was ‘banned’ because some Glaswegians (?) battered a tramp while singing ‘Singing in the rain’.
It was actually withdrawn in Britain by Kubrick himself over the violent homages that happened here and wasn’t released here again until after his death. It wasn’t a BBFC decision to withdraw it in Britain it was Kubrick himself. His estate realised after his death there was a quick buck to be made by a re-release.
(Pretty sure that’s roughly how it went).
As for the question - no it’s not a rape fantasy. Not at all.
Oh yeah, forgot that bit…of course it’s nothing of the sort. If anybody really thinks so, based solely on the film, I suggest reading the book. I don’t think it’s a perfectly-realised film by any stretch, and the book is a better way to get into the complexity of the dystopian world the story is set in, and also to grasp the social issues and questions being tackled.
Dave Kehr, when he was writing for this paper, put it into words way better than I’ve ever been able to.
The person in the Midnight Cowboy thread who called ACO a “two-hour rape fantasy” was speaking figuratively, in a deliberately provocative way. He has a point that the violation of Alex’s mind and the taking of his free will, which is the core of the story, is symbolically a counterpart to the physical violations perpetrated by Alex. But the leap from that to characterizing the film as a “two-hour rape fantasy” is a ludicrous stretch.
Alex bludgeoning the Old Lady in the mouth with her Phallus statue could be easily seen as symbolic rape.
If you think A Clockwork Orange is about the ultra-violence, I’d say you’re missing the point, and ought to do yourself a favor by reading the book.
Well of course it could, and it was probably meant to, but that hardly makes the entire movie a two hour rape fantasy. Just because a film portrays rape does not a rape fantasy make.
It was a very disturbing movie and it was meant to be, but if anyone thinks it was a 2 hour rape* fantasy, then they missed the movie somehow in their shock.
It was a movie about brutality, violence, rehabilitation, the future getting scarier, brainwashing, the government over-stepping the bounds and victims becoming as bad as those that assaulted them.
It was a great movie based on a great book.
Jim
Both the book and the movie were fantastic. A declaration that it is a two hour rape fantasy is some sort of condemnation by an emotionally damaged fragile simpleton. You may dislike or be horrified by the violence and misogyny, but no one I know or any person with any appreciation of cinema would make such a statement.
ACO, book and movie, has a clear if controversial moral: It is just as bad to destroy a monster as to create one. That’s what the story is about. This is driven home by the behavioral-modification treatment cutting off Alex from his one living link to humanity, his love of music. (In the book, all music makes him sick after the treatment.)
So you’re saying it is not a two hour rape fantasy nor is it porn, right?
I don’t have the book here, I think I know who I’ve lent it to…IIRC the corresponding scene is clearly about rape in the book. Because of the restrictions of film censorship at the time, the phallus statue was perhaps just a workaround.
That wacky Roger Ebert. (Full review here.)
I’m pretty sure he didn’t rape her in the book. There was definitely more Alex-on-cat violence in the book, though.
You do not RC. Alex does not rape the Cat Lady, and there is no indication that he intended to, though he does contemplate performing “the old ultra-violence” on her in the course of the robbery “if need be.” You are correct that the phallic statue was Kubrick’s invention; in the book Alex strikes the Cat Lady with a silver statuette of a female figure.