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http://dangerousminds.net/comments/still_ticking_stanley_kubricks_ban_clockwork_orange
After its release in 1971, Stanley Kubrick’s film version of A Clockwork Orange was linked to a series of violent crimes. The first was the murder of a tramp by a 16-year-old youth; the second involved another 16-year-old youth who, dressed in the film’s distinctive gang uniform, stabbed a younger boy; the third was the brutal and horrific gang rape of a Dutch girl by a group of youths from Lancashire, as they sang “Singin’ in the Rain”.
Sentencing the 16-year-old for assaulting a child, a judge described the attack part of a “horrible trend” prompted by “this wretched film”.
Following death threats and warnings from the police over revenge attacks, Kubrick asked Warner Brothers to pull the film from its UK release.
But banning the film didn’t have the desired effect, for when the film was eventually released in the UK on DVD, it led to another spate of copycat crimes, the most notorious of which, was the murder of a bar manager by a “Clockwork Orange gang”.
Whether movies can make people commit crime, is a moot point, but as director of American Psycho, Mary Herron points out in the documnetary, Still Tickin´: The Return of A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick’s film is a “dangerous work of art,” one that some have suggested seduce “viewers into its violent world and implicates them in its protagonist’s crimes.”
Produced by Channel 4, Still Tickin´: The Return of A Clockwork Orange examines the controversy over Kubrick’s iconic film, explaining the film’s “demonic level of attention,” and its influence on culture, politics and society, which led to the director’s self-imposed ban.
82_28 » Mon Oct 20, 2014 7:17 pm wrote:I appreciate your enthusiasm as far as Kubrick. Personally my faves are 2001 and 2010. Clockwork is perhaps the most repulsive thing taken artistically serious I have ever seen.
Like maybe ten years ago or so I went to a friend's halloween party. She had called me a few weeks prior, frantic that she had been raped. I of course was there for her. Her boyfriend was in Australia for like a year or something. Anyhow, she was in a sorority and who she was raped by was one of her boyfriend's frat "brothers". So I go to this party, against my little bit older than them sensibilities and I'm hanging out with her and others. And in comes a group of dudes dressed as droogs. She said, "that's the guy."
He came over to her and said in full droog regalia "I owe you an apology." I flipped out, but not to the point of escalating because I would have had my ass handed to me by many young bucks. So I went outside pissed, throwing shit, panting, staring off into space, hating humanity. She didn't know what I was so pissed about. When I explained it to her, she had no idea what CWO was. So I explained that the very fact a few weeks after he had assaulted you coming into your home dressed as a droog and then apologizing was the ultimate act of evil -- in fact beyond evil.
From that day on it solidified my hatred for A clockwork orange. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Sorry, clockwork can go to hell.
Jerky » Mon Oct 20, 2014 5:30 pm wrote:Not trying to be a Dawkins-level a-hole, here, but if the rape that your friend suffered was the kind of experience that she, herself, could brush off with just an apology - regardless of the appropriateness of the assailant/apologizer's costume choice - then maybe it wasn't exactly on the "Irreversible" scale of traumatic experiences? Also, correlation doesn't necessarily equate to causation. It is possible to be a big Clockwork Orange fan and NOT be a rapist. I feel stupid even having to point that out, but there you go.
Jerky
(Big Clockwork fan. Not a rapist)
To furthur broad up the discussion my example of the "immoral" director with "immoral" characters would be Tarantino. Except for the Reservoir dogs I find all the other of his work fairly weak and disgusting at a time.
(Wiki-weak, but it will suffice.)Burgess had arrived back in Britain after his stint abroad to see that much had changed. A youth culture had grown, including coffee bars, pop music and teenage gangs.[10] England was gripped by fears over juvenile delinquency.[9] Burgess claimed that the novel's inspiration was his first wife Lynne's beating by a gang of drunk American servicemen stationed in England during World War II. She subsequently miscarried.[9][11] In its investigation of free will, the book's target is ostensibly the concept of behaviourism, pioneered by such figures as B. F. Skinner.[12]
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