. Spinning .

Brian at Storytellers Unplugged recently watched the movie and his post gives his thoughts on the superiority in many ways of Burgess’ novel on which it is based.  This reminded me of my reading the book late last year and my subsequent purchase of the movie.  I’d done a presentation highlighting some of the scenes and compared the two versions although unfortunately, the presentation got hung up on technical difficulties with the equipment and it was never seen. 

I am still intrigued by the method and means of storytelling, and Brian’s post will serve as a reminder to get this project in a form that can be viewed online as A Clockwork Orange is an excellent example of the pros and cons of film versus book.

Somewhere between the last few pages of the novel and the desire to see the movie I was struck with the brilliant idea of putting together a presentation of sorts for our writers group to illustrate the changes story can take under the influence of different mediums. 

So I got me a mic, and I’m fiddling in Word to record portions of scenes that correlate to the movie where this impact is particularly vivid.  I’ve typed up a passage in Word, added a recording of my reading of the passage, and recorded it over and over again, trying to lose the munchkinesque quality of my voice tone on any recording medium, but it’s not working well.

Imagine, if you can, a Munchkin straight out of Oz, high on funny flowers reading Alex’s bliss as he masturbates and listens to a violin concerto with the Macon, Georgia Philharmonic as background.

Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea.

Have you noticed that you can take a picture of your kitchen or whatever room when it’s in particularly bad shape–in the middle of pie-baking with flour dust everywhere, or like my living room with the book stacks–and yet it still comes out (with a good lens and software) looking clean?

This is what I’ve noticed in watching A Clockwork Orange versus reading the book.  There must be a concentrated effort on the part of the film maker to perceive and reveal what a general concensus of readers would envision.  "Dirty" doesn’t come through easily on film unless specific technical properties are employed such as graininess or softening or color value.  Otherwise, the crispness of high quality film methods make it look "falsely" dirty; set up or staged so to speak. 

From the author’s description of the prison or the streets I established a specific image in my mind–based of course on my own experience and influences.  The movie image didn’t jive with my own.  The prison looked like a castle in some scenes–those lovely stone walls and arched doorways.

I’m wondering if, while film is taking away a good deal of the writerly aspect of story by defining image, there is not still some amount of perception left to the viewer.  Beauty still is in the eye of the beholder, so that even a specific chair can be seen in different ways:  comfortable or not comfortable, purple rather than blue, too contemporary or too traditional, etc. 

It is indeed interesting to poke around the notion of perception.  And then, I suppose, know that no amount of narrowing a field of information can completely exclude argument.

Watched a bit more of the film, and immediately felt better about something that had bothered me in the book–nitpicky close reader that I am (or, if I missed it, inept close reader, blah, blah).

When Alex is in the medical facility and undergoing the Ludovico Treatment, he is being forced to watch violent videos.  He cannot move his head and his eyelids are clamped open.  Reading this, I thought, hmmm; don’t his eyes dry out?  Well, in the movie, there’s an assistant constantly applying eyedrops. 

Now if I missed this–and when I get back into the house I’ll check the book–then my whole epiphany here is wasted.  But I’m thinking that not only does this show the possibility of video allowing more indepth accuracy that in text may come off as too much "tell" vs. show (video being a natural for that advantage) as well as weighing down a story with details when only one medium is used (versus targeting different senses simultaneously) it also may reveal that in switching to another medium, flaws, or just opportunities to clarify are discovered and covered.

Malcolm McDowell, by the way, is superb in this characterization.

Finally got a chance to viddy the first half of Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange this afternoon.  Real horrorshow stuff. 

I’m finding that I really don’t remember seeing it, and I’m wondering if I was spaced out back in ’71 because I usually remember movies very well.  For the first viewing (now, on DVD–kinda neat watching a movie on the laptop!) I’m just watching it through without referencing Anthony Burgess’ book at all.  But I am finding that the music, as someone suggested, is a very large part of the impact.  Alex and two teenyboppers romping naked to the William Tell Overture is definitely more effective with a/v effects.

There are some ironic elements to watching a 1971 movie DVD on my laptop in 2006, as the main character of Alex in his future world, sticks a cassette tape into a player to listen to Mozart.

As is my method, after finishing Burgess’ novel I sought further insight via lit reviews online.  One thing (among several) I missed was the apparent significance of the musical arrangement style used in many of the phrasings and structure of the text.

Overall, it was pretty straight linear narrative, following a timeline from here to there, presented in three sections of seven chapters each.  Each section flowed one from the other, separated by Alex’s escapades, his time in prison and rehabilitation procedure and then his freedom, and in the third, his life changes as impacted by the prior two years covered in the previous sections.

In drawing a story arc, I would claim that it steadily rises, plots rising in tension until he is caught.  But that, I do not feel, is the climax.  I would think that it perhaps spikes with each of his acts as they worsen in evil, the getting caught, the incarceration, the possibility of freedom, the rehab procedure, the freedom, the being turned away from his home, the abduction by the rebellion, and the attempt at suicide.  There, I would think, is the major climax, brought about as his freedom of choice to perform this one act that is the only violence that he can hope to accomplish–one against himself. 

The following sequence of his hospitalization, his return of free will, may indeed be considered an anti-climax.  From there, we get another dose as he changes and decides to leave his old ways behind.  Both areas, and perhaps the suicide decision as well, are offered as resolutions to the story.  Yet Burgess has carried it out to a further, major change in the character’s life.  Even so, this final resolution, Alex thinking of finding a wife and having a son, has been left open as to the ultimate future for Alex, as well as the future of society itself.

Unanswered questions; the best form of unresolved resolution in fiction, if not in life.

Very strange that the American publisher should want to cut out this final chapter.  There is resolution here, and a good one wherein Alex grows weary of his ways and seeks a family and continuity of the life cycle of mankind.  He puts it all down to "growing up" though I can’t seem to see that as the message of power in this novel.

My curiosity is peaked at the question of leaving the story where Alex is bound to go back to his ways.  Is this a message in itself from the "higher powers"?  Did the U.S. version require that edge to leave us standing upon?  Were we supposed to give up all hope, or was it to rile us into action, or, what it merely a trend of the times.

Interesting questions very boldly brought up by Burgess as to society versus the individual.  And the law as a protector/enforcer was never presented as uncorrupted or even useful.  Is this future society just another room of history, decorated same as the last, preparing the paint in the same shades to color the next? 

Good book.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to hunting down the video.

From what I understand in an introduction by the author, Anthony Burgess, this novel ends at Chapter 20–at least for lily-livered 1961 America.  Without knowing what that edited out by the publisher last chapter (21) will bring, let me remark on where the story leaves me had it ended here.

Alex, no long loved by anyone, used by both government and rebellion as a poster boy for crime-stopping measures by destroying freedom of choice, decides to take his life and unfortunately is thwarted by his selection of too short a building.  But whatever has been done to him while he lies in a coma has negated the sensations of pain and nausea that were part of the "cure."  The government has won, or so they think, and the rebellion of those opposed to the process of which he had been a victim have been beaten and jailed.  Of course, his own tendencies to slash and stomp have never been changed, so now he’s free to do whatever he pleases.  Here, he has been assured that he has recovered, and he asks that they play for him Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, his favorite.

Oh, it was gorgeosity and yumyumyum.  When it came to the Scherzo I could viddy myself very clear running and running on like very light and mysterious nogas, carving the whole litso of the creeching world with my cut-throat britva.  And there was the slow movement and the lovely last singing movement still to come.  I was cured all right.  (p. 205)

Leaving it here, we see a circle that Alex has come through that ends where it began.  Freedom of choice is inviolate, and so is the power of the government to control people’s minds.  They are of course taking advantage of the opportunity to quelch public opinion by "curing" Alex of what had been done to him.  What their plan is for controlling his later behavior is still a question.

But, Alex is free.

So Alex has been sensitized to violence.  There is an ethical question here of course, as his total feedom of choice has been compromised permanently by the procedure he was subjected to at the prison.

Alex does try to go back to his prior life, but a child’s worst nightmare is real:  His parents have rented out his room while he’s been gone.  His former mates and enemies have become policemen, a strange turn of events when they are called to the scene where Alex, in a bar, is beaten up by older men.  Of course his friends haven’t changed; they simply can do legally what they did before–beat up on their captives.  When Alex, broken and bloody, stumbles into a house looking for help, he finds it.  But it is where he and his cohorts have beaten and raped before, though the man doesn’t recognize him.  The man also is anti-government, and is thrilled to find Alex who represents victimization by the government.  Once more, Alex cannot escape.  He fails at a second suicide attempt.

Alex’s despair is over the loss of his former life, and that includes his parents, any form of friendship or love, and his ability to enjoy as well as get money from bullying others.  He feels abused and alone, though others are anxious to use him to protest government power.

So which is right?  If Alex was left alone, there’s no doubt he would be up to his old life and likely imprisoned again.  But that would be up to his own choice to do.  As he is, he cannot help but change, forced by the changes made to his mind.  However, he is allowed to be free–at least to change, and he is not a threat to society.  Interesting questions here as to the rights of the individual versus the whole.

Brings to mind Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, and for now, Alex is the scapegoat, held as a poster child for the future of crime and punishment.

I don’t believe that Burgess is giving us just the usual youth rebellion, but rather a social comment on a move towards violence through the freedoms granted within a civilized society.  Alex, the narrator and bad boy, has turned sly; he knows right from wrong.  He exercises his freedom of choice by seeking out pleasure, despite the damage to others, and keeps pushing the ticket to obtain greater thrills.  Beethoven and Mozart brought him the same bliss as beating, stealing and rape, and so it is obvious that he picks and chooses what pleases him.  What this young generation has done is gone beyond the control of a society grown complacent and tolerant, one that has fought for freedom of choice.  Now, they don’t know how to handle the outcome.

The process that Alex undergoes is one that uses punishment of pain and nausea via association so that Alex in effect, has lost freedom of choice as far as doing good or bad, though the choice is still his to do bad if he is willing to suffer the horrible effects.  While incarceration certainly is a deterrent, as long as one doesn’t get caught, one may be willing to risk it.  Even the death penalty seems an unlikely possibility when one is enjoying the fruits of one’s deeds.  But what has been done to Alex is immediate.  He’ll suffer if he so much as thinks about evil (shades of Catholicism here).

It hasn’t however changed his desires.  It has just overcome his desire to rape and pillage and burn with the stronger desire to avoid feeling bad.  And that is, feeling bad physically; they still haven’t changed what he’d really like to do.

How different is this then castration?  How are the rights of individuals to do evil protected versus the rights of the larger society to be safe?  How valuable then is freedom of choice?

Very interesting section here; Alex is in prison and is going to be allowed out early under a new program of rehabilitation called the "Ludovico’s Technique."  Well Alex is of course all for it, oblivious to the warning signs of sympathy he gets from the jailers.  As it turns out, it involves his being strapped into a chair and wired up, his head held secure and his eyelids clamped open so that he can watch a few hours of films of violence in these sessions.  He’s turned off in the very first showing, which is extremely graphic, though nothing much worse than what he’s already done himself out on the streets.  What’s interesting is his attitude:

Then there was the close-up gulliver of this beaten-up starry veck, and the krovvy flowed beautiful red.  Its funny how the colours of the like real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.  (p. 118)

At the time this book was written violence was just starting to become a major topic on the news, the Vietnam war hadn’t quite started, but the youth were organizing themselves into protesting groups against injustices they were becoming more aware of through the medium of television.  Movies and TV dramas were beginning to touch the edge and break through the relative complacency of the 50s, a time after WWII where life was good again, and besides, no one saw real war and murder on TV as they did in the 60s.  Heck, we saw JFK get shot; we saw his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald get shot on live TV newscasts.

So where is Burgess leading us?  While there’s no doubt that the media has taken the mystique, the horror, the blood and guts and shown the world reality, and in so doing, has anesthetized us to a degree, is the opposite possible by the use of media once again?

These questions have been tossed around since the time of movies and TV, and especially have come to the forefront once again in the violent nature of some video gaming.  I’ve always held that children can separate reality from acting in the pretend world of tv, and yet there’s the blending of the two by the news coverage of horrors that are no worse than the imagination itself.

A Clockwork Orange is likely one of the first novels to come out around this transitioning time in history.  Story worlds that encompass the audience, breaking down the fourth wall.  Maybe Burgess is planning on showing us how to rebuild it as well.

Sitting here, still plattied in my robe, slooshying to the von of the cars of the vecks ittying to rabbit in the factory.  My glazzies viddying the leaves, peeting coffee, a cancer in my rooker and my gulliver wondering what’s a starry ptitsa to do with the day.

Well I must admit, the language is starting to get to me.

But there were the golosses of millicents telling them to shut it and you could even slooshy the zvook of like somebody being tolchocked real horrorshow and going owwwwwwwww, and it was like the goloss of a drunken starry ptitsa, not a man.  (p. 77)

Roughly translated:

But there were the voices of cops telling them to shut it and you could even hear the sound of like somebody being hit real bad and going owwwwwwwww, and it was like the voice of a drunken old woman, not a man.

Certain words in particular bug me:  goloss (voice), slooshy (hear), malenky (small).  There’s a slight possibility that it is because they’re close to Polish, a language I can sing and pray in but don’t speak.  Burgess has taken some liberty with Russian and Slavic words as well as English (viddy–see or watch; I’m guessing from video).  And in truth, as I get used to them and immediately understand their meaning, I realize that it is the words themselves, the syllables, the sound of them that bothers me. 

But this is the voice of the narrator, and the slang is a very important part of him.  It does add to the cockiness, the aloofness of the character.  The starrys (old people) do not speak this way and by the way, it’s a real pleasure to hear them speak now and then.  So the credibility is not a problem, yet it sounds forced.

Something this brings to mind in my own writing is the slightly more formal, stream of consciousness writing that I sometimes post here.  It may be lyrical prose, but it’s certainly not something that anyone would want to suffer through an entire book.

Interesting thought, without looking ahead into the book:  If the character of Alex does change–and he may be at a turning point as he’s just been arrested from breaking and entry and assault of an old woman (starry ptitsa)–will his language change as well?  Has any book been written that specifically makes this a part of the structure, likely from childhood to grown-up?  Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury comes to mind, as Benjy and Caddy start as children and grown to adulthood during the terms of the novel.

Interesting development, although not at all unexpected.  Alex is the natural leader of his small group of miscreants.  He attacked the weakest (minded) member of the group for making comments about a girl singing that Alex actually enjoyed listening to.  The next day, Alex stays out of school, hooks up with two ten-year girls, gets them drunk in his room and rapes them.  That evening, the boldest of his friends attempts to straighten out the group dynamics and threatens Alex’s leadership.  They have a knife and fist fight, it’s quickly over, and Alex has reestablished his dominance.

Two things here that follow human nature no matter what state society is in:  First, rebellion against authority creates new subdivisions of society.  However, it never takes very long to form a new pyramid of authority and control over its members.  Secondly, I’m noticing that while leaders need people to lead, they are more likely to not only be able to control a group, they also are those most capable of being alone. 

Challenge is also a natural instinct it would seem.  In the animal world, the old bull is constantly proving himself worthy to garner the harem.  Perhaps cavemen acted the same way.  It preserved the safety of the group as well as naturally creating the strongest genetic lineage. 

But evolution and civilization has restricted our natural instincts–though it certainly hasn’t been eliminated completely by language.  Listening to the political debates lately, we have learned to cut and parry and dance around with words rather than limbs even in our more democratic societies.  Wars can be bloody or bloody minded, but the challenge of leadership is a constant.

Burgess has presented an outrageous future world, and pushed us into it where we stumble about wondering, what the hell happened?

There is a schism of wide proportion between the young generation of Alex’s contemporaries and the old, the starry ones that is just a parentage away.  These are the ones upon which the young feed, their elders.  Though we don’t have a clear picture that all Alex’s generation are this uncaring, this violent–though there seems to be places where they all meet and gather so it has become an established standard of sorts.  And maybe they’re not all that uncaring, but seeking a meaning to life that has come to be disregarded or merely taken for granted.  Screaming in the guise of repulsive behavior is often the response.  This, from Alex to visit by a school official who has come to his home to see why he isn’t in school and to supposedly warn him to keep on the straight and narrow:

But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick.  They don’t go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop?  If lewdies are good that’s because they like it, and I wouldn’t ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop.  And I was patronizing the other shop.  More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty.  But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.  And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines?  I am serious with you, brothers, over this.  But what I do I do because I like to do.  (p. 46)

Alex’s worry it would appear, is that if he does not behave as he does he falls into society’s trap.