There was me, that is Tamler, and my droog, that is David, and we sat in our living rooms on Skype trying to make up our rassoodocks what Stanley Kubrick's a Clockwork Orange was really about? Free will? We didn't think so. Punishment? Yeah but what about punishment? And what about the old ultraviolence - can it still shock us in the modern age? Then suddenly we viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones and that the oomny just, like, press record and start the podcast. Slooshy well, my brothers, slooshy well.
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[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist, David Pizarro, having
[00:00:06] an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics.
[00:00:09] Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and
[00:00:14] knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.
[00:00:17] You know my feelings.
[00:00:19] Every day is a gift.
[00:00:22] It just doesn't have to be a pair of socks.
[00:00:27] Look, wait in!
[00:00:31] Anybody can have a very good man.
[00:01:12] Just a very bad wizard.
[00:01:15] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards.
[00:01:16] I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.
[00:01:19] Dave, we just had our 150th episode with Paul Bloom, and the response to it has been
[00:01:25] very good, although we did get a little blowback for one of our topics.
[00:01:31] So today, what should we do?
[00:01:33] Do you want to devote this episode to a more comprehensive deep dive on the hoax?
[00:01:41] Yeah, I have actually four pages of points that I'd like to make that just consist of
[00:01:47] my Reddit and Twitter responses that I'll read verbatim.
[00:01:51] Right.
[00:01:52] No, but I was actually thinking about how whatever 10 minutes we spent talking about
[00:01:59] that, I don't remember getting so much.
[00:02:03] But then I thought maybe the rationale that Neil deGrasse Tyson.
[00:02:09] That's it.
[00:02:10] And in both cases, I think sometimes people think that we must be against the general idea
[00:02:21] if we have any problem with the medium or the style of message.
[00:02:27] I was actually just joking about us doing a comprehensive deep dive on the hoax.
[00:02:32] Well, damn it.
[00:02:33] I got to burn my notes now.
[00:02:35] No, we got some blowback on that, and I would say that lower quality criticism of
[00:02:50] our stuff than we sometimes get.
[00:02:52] But yeah.
[00:02:54] Yeah, I mean, we could clarify things that people misunderstood, but that's going down a road.
[00:03:05] Yeah, go to the Reddit.
[00:03:07] If you care, go to the Reddit.
[00:03:08] Look at Twitter threads.
[00:03:09] I had a long conversation with Helen Pluck Rose.
[00:03:13] I think that's where I want to leave my thoughts about that.
[00:03:15] And I appreciate everybody, even if you were mad, like the fact that you took the time to complain.
[00:03:21] That means that you care a little bit.
[00:03:23] The fact that you took the time to totally mischaracterize our position.
[00:03:26] While complaining about that we were mischaracterizing the hoax,
[00:03:31] that's thank you for doing that.
[00:03:33] Absolutely.
[00:03:34] I don't mind it in the moment.
[00:03:37] I don't mind it.
[00:03:38] I agree.
[00:03:39] I'm just playing.
[00:03:41] All right.
[00:03:42] We did get one interesting email about a part of the podcast that honestly,
[00:03:48] I didn't even know if we didn't know if we wanted to do, which was when we were talking about podcasts
[00:03:53] and why the sort of level of discussion on podcasts seems better and more nuanced.
[00:04:00] And you're able to not just pound a particular perspective into the ground,
[00:04:07] but you actually can, that's my bird clock, but you actually can really should do something about that.
[00:04:16] I don't know what.
[00:04:17] It's in my recording studio.
[00:04:18] It's my bird clock.
[00:04:19] Anyway, so why does the level of discussion and particularly a certain kind of discussion
[00:04:26] that involves really entertaining objections and being able to have respectful disagreement?
[00:04:32] Why is that seemed so much easier on podcasts than in these other forms of media?
[00:04:38] And we got an email from Grace Lindsay, who is a host of the unsupervised thinking podcast
[00:04:46] that I thought was interesting and she agreed with our takes.
[00:04:51] But she also had another sort of cynical, more cynical explanation.
[00:04:55] She called it and I'll just read her email now.
[00:04:58] She says basically podcasts are as a format are kind of difficult to interact with.
[00:05:04] You can't quote a podcast the same way you can screenshot a paragraph in an article.
[00:05:10] In one way that's annoying, but it also means you can't tweet part of a podcast out of context.
[00:05:16] It's not the best example for our podcast when there's an actual Twitter account devoted to doing that,
[00:05:24] but in any case and you can't skim a podcast the way you can skim an article.
[00:05:29] It forces you to some extent to commit to it and so you're less likely to misunderstand it or respond quickly in anger.
[00:05:36] I also think a lot of people listen while they're out for a walk or doing the dishes,
[00:05:40] even if they have an immediate reaction they can't easily respond immediately.
[00:05:45] So it forces them cool down time.
[00:05:47] For example, this is the first time I'm emailing you but I've had many thoughts about things that you've said over the years
[00:05:53] that just didn't seem feel very urgent once I got home.
[00:05:56] So in some ways the things that make it hard to get a lot of listener engagement for podcasts are also things that keep them above the...
[00:06:07] Why can't I read?
[00:06:08] Are also the things that keep them above and out of the social media outrage cycles.
[00:06:14] Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:15] Well thanks Grace for sending it, like for emailing but I totally agree.
[00:06:20] I mean there's obviously multiple reasons for I think why we get this feeling that I really like this idea that you kind of commit to listening to a podcast.
[00:06:30] You're devoting an hour and a half listening to these people and it's not...
[00:06:38] It really is, you're gonna relate if you pay that much attention you're gonna...
[00:06:43] It's cause you relate.
[00:06:45] Yeah, you're going to be charitable because otherwise if you're not in the charitable mood you wouldn't devote an hour and a half to listening to people.
[00:06:54] Actually I think some of the times that we do get unfair criticism it's clear that a person was directed to a specific point in our podcast
[00:07:04] and then just has never listened to us before and so just responds to that which is a lot of articles right?
[00:07:11] Most articles are like that.
[00:07:13] You know, you don't know the author.
[00:07:15] But podcasts and their audiences are different.
[00:07:19] They know you, they've heard us talk for forever.
[00:07:23] More than most people I know have heard me talk in some cases.
[00:07:29] So like, you know, they're gonna have a more complex and charitable way of understanding you.
[00:07:36] Yeah, and I also like that cool down point because it is true.
[00:07:42] I listen to podcasts in the car, I listen to it while I'm cleaning the house or doing dishes.
[00:07:48] There's just no way I'm going to like walk over to my computer or sit down on my phone and actually say something.
[00:07:55] Like most cases of outrage if you give it a little bit of time you'll calm down.
[00:08:01] Yeah, exactly.
[00:08:03] Yeah, and this is also why I don't email as many podcasts that I listen to as much as I should is for exactly that reason
[00:08:11] which makes me all the more admire our, well this isn't the listener gratitude segment
[00:08:18] but it makes me really admire the listeners who do email us and interact with us even more.
[00:08:26] All right, let's move on to our main topic for today which is a movie episode.
[00:08:34] It had been a while.
[00:08:35] It's been a while.
[00:08:36] What was our last movie?
[00:08:38] God damn it, I don't remember.
[00:08:41] It was...
[00:08:43] God, what Mulholland Drive was 121?
[00:08:46] I know that.
[00:08:48] Was it that?
[00:08:49] We should have come prepared.
[00:08:51] Or just not in, ask the question.
[00:08:55] We don't know.
[00:08:56] We have no idea.
[00:08:58] Anyway, so today we're going to do Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.
[00:09:04] It's a classic.
[00:09:05] I'm pretty sure this has come up on a few lists and has been discussed before on the podcast to some degree.
[00:09:14] Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:16] We haven't talked a lot about it but by the way Mulholland Drive was our last movie episode 121.
[00:09:21] Really?
[00:09:22] Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:23] I'm just joking.
[00:09:24] God, so that's over a year ago.
[00:09:26] Wow.
[00:09:27] We don't do enough movies.
[00:09:29] That's my take away.
[00:09:30] That's my take home.
[00:09:32] So we both agreed though that this...
[00:09:36] I hadn't seen this movie in a long time and I take it you hadn't either.
[00:09:40] Not for a long time, that's right.
[00:09:43] I mean it's been at least 10 years probably for me.
[00:09:47] Yeah, I mean too.
[00:09:48] It's interesting.
[00:09:49] I mean it just has some really interesting philosophical ideas.
[00:09:52] So my experience of rewatching it was a little interesting and I think I got a little worried when I was rewatching it
[00:10:00] and I thought, do I really like this movie as much as I thought I did?
[00:10:06] It's just classic and I love Kubrick.
[00:10:09] And I was a little concerned that maybe I had...
[00:10:15] My memory had either made it better or I was a different person when I watched it the first time.
[00:10:21] And that changed though by the end and especially after reading some good articles analyzing it.
[00:10:29] I think I'm back to liking it but it's a more mature kind of liking.
[00:10:35] Yeah, I think there's a couple reasons why I had that same worry going into it and as I was watching it especially.
[00:10:44] Are these ideas kind of sophomoric?
[00:10:47] Are these ideas the kind of ideas that you would think are deep when you're in college or after college
[00:10:56] but then you take a couple philosophy classes or you become a philosophy professor I guess
[00:11:04] and some of the dichotomies that are being painted seem like caricatures or overly simplistic.
[00:11:13] There's definitely some elements of that but I actually think that some of that isn't the fault of the movie.
[00:11:24] It's the fault of college sophomores who interpret the movie a certain way
[00:11:30] and in fact a lot of people who interpret the movie a certain way.
[00:11:34] And one of the things I'm excited to talk about is this idea that I think that the movie is portrayed
[00:11:41] in a way that it's definitely not this simplistic defense of free will against.
[00:11:49] I definitely don't think it's that and I thought it was before coming into it.
[00:11:55] Exactly, I had that same thought that there is this sort of critical period
[00:12:04] at least for me in early college where you're exposed to a whole bunch of new ideas
[00:12:08] and everything is like wow that's deep.
[00:12:11] What if this world is just an illusion?
[00:12:14] How do I know that anything really exists?
[00:12:17] That kind of realization or what if we don't have free will?
[00:12:22] Not to knock on it, I think everybody you have to go through that
[00:12:26] but my thought was is this trite?
[00:12:29] So I agree with you though that I think and especially given what I think I know about Stanley Kubrick
[00:12:41] that that level of understanding the point of the movie is a very, very surface level.
[00:12:47] Like there's more going on.
[00:12:50] Should we go through it?
[00:12:52] Should we go through the movie?
[00:12:54] You want to give like the gist of it?
[00:12:57] I assume people have watched it.
[00:12:59] I mean it's a horrific young violent killer and rapist
[00:13:05] rapes and kills people in the first third of the movie, goes to prison
[00:13:11] and then is given this conditioning technique
[00:13:14] obviously if you haven't seen the movie you got to see it before this discussion
[00:13:17] is given this conditioning technique that makes him feel sick whenever he engages in acts of violence
[00:13:23] but also if he hears Beethoven that's by accident
[00:13:26] and then in the third part of the movie he's released
[00:13:29] and it sort of goes out in the world with that conditioning
[00:13:36] and yeah I mean like that's the basic plot of the movie
[00:13:40] but I think we should go through it more carefully
[00:13:42] and a lot of the thematic stuff will come out.
[00:13:46] Yeah, I just want to say only because it's top of mind to me
[00:13:50] and I don't want to forget to say it which is one general thing
[00:13:54] Malcolm McDowell is this movie.
[00:13:56] Malcolm McDowell is amazing.
[00:13:59] I mean it is yeah and well like I'll talk more about why
[00:14:04] but without Malcolm McDowell this movie would be very different
[00:14:08] and probably shitty.
[00:14:09] It's one of the greatest performances I've ever seen
[00:14:12] and I think it's in some ways underrated
[00:14:14] not that people don't think highly of it
[00:14:16] but people don't talk about it as one of the great performances
[00:14:19] and I think you're right like it like our last movie Mulholland Drive
[00:14:26] like the movie stands or falls on the performance of the central character
[00:14:32] and Malcolm McDowell knocks it out of the park.
[00:14:37] Like completely.
[00:14:38] Yeah because you can imagine a different actor playing it
[00:14:40] in a very very different way
[00:14:42] and it would be a completely different movie
[00:14:44] one that would be a lot dumber.
[00:14:46] He captures the tone of it perfectly like he captures the both stylistic
[00:14:51] and thematic tone of it the more sophisticated thematic tone of it
[00:14:56] absolutely perfectly and I also read that Kubrick just knew that this was his role
[00:15:03] right from the beginning there was nobody else he was going to even
[00:15:07] consider having besides him.
[00:15:09] Right.
[00:15:10] Okay so the first part is where you meet Alex who's the main character
[00:15:15] who it's not totally clear how old he is in the movie
[00:15:18] but he's definitely not 15 which he is in the book
[00:15:21] which sort of makes it a little different.
[00:15:23] He probably looks like what would you say he looks like?
[00:15:26] I would say he looks like he's 19.
[00:15:28] Yeah 19, 20, 18 somewhere in there.
[00:15:32] Late teens very early 20s.
[00:15:35] So it starts out in this milk bar
[00:15:40] I forget what it's called.
[00:15:42] Carova.
[00:15:43] Carova milk bar yeah with so it's Alex and he's like a gang leader of these
[00:15:47] droogs he calls them there's this great slang throughout that's
[00:15:51] partially invented by Anthony Burroughs wait Anthony Burgess.
[00:15:57] Burgess Anthony Burgess who wrote the novel that Kubrick stuck pretty close to
[00:16:03] actually and it's this is one of the few non-location which is weird for
[00:16:08] Kubrick that he did so much on location he's not usually like that but this is
[00:16:14] one of them and it's awesome the milk bar.
[00:16:19] It's incredible I mean so it's sort of a future dystopia I mean I don't think
[00:16:28] that it's the theme of the movie is a dystopia I don't think it's a dystopia
[00:16:32] film but it is intended to be some nebulous time in the future and so
[00:16:36] these droogs these gang members are wearing very weird outfits and the bar
[00:16:43] is like you know the design is just.
[00:16:46] But it also has like some 60 late 60s elements to it too so it's very much
[00:16:51] like a future version of the present moment you know and yeah the foot
[00:16:58] stools there are these women who are naked like those are like the coffee
[00:17:04] table foot stools that right it's like women in a crab position yeah and the
[00:17:11] thing that gives them their milk which is the like helps their ultra violence
[00:17:17] it's some sort of drugged up probably amphetamine laced alcohol or something
[00:17:22] I don't know comes out of a woman's breast you know like it's like a tap
[00:17:30] yeah yeah like at this point I should say like this is there is this was an
[00:17:36] X-rated film when it was released yeah I forgot that you you're introduced to
[00:17:40] him you see that he's that he's a narrating he does a voiceover and
[00:17:46] then you have this series of scenes which are kind of brutal like they're
[00:17:51] really really hard to watch but that first sort of it's exhilarating that
[00:17:56] first scene in the milk bar just the virtuosity of it but then you know you
[00:18:02] really get thrown into a bunch of scenes of just choreographed violence
[00:18:09] choreographed violence but like yeah not with except for maybe the gang fight
[00:18:16] it's it's not fun choreographed violence no not at all in fact you know I
[00:18:22] was watching some some people in reading about the film and some people were
[00:18:26] like oh you know nowadays everybody's completely desensitized of violence it's
[00:18:31] like much more a part of our whatever like our existence and I was like but
[00:18:35] not that yeah like I you know I could see a million action movies and horror
[00:18:40] movies and still have that sense and I've seen this movie before like at
[00:18:46] least twice if not more and I still find it hard to watch now this is
[00:18:51] a different level is that this isn't like John Wick or you know this isn't anyway
[00:18:59] so so first they go and they and it's and the people they pick are especially
[00:19:04] kind of heartbreaking too it's like a homeless guy who's just singing
[00:19:10] minding his own business singing drunk homeless guy singing his Irish tunes
[00:19:16] and they just kick the shit out of them in an alley and then they go where
[00:19:23] another rival gang led by Billy Boy is they're about to gang rape do the old
[00:19:28] in out in out to a woman and not out of any chivalrous attempt to save the
[00:19:36] woman but they they they just get into a fight with them pretty much for
[00:19:42] the hell of it just to get into a fight it sounds it seems like the woman gets
[00:19:46] off gets away but that's that's kind of reverse collateral damage that's collateral
[00:19:52] reward right they didn't want that and and that is just fun to watch like
[00:19:59] because it's to the thieving magpies by Rossini which is kind of an upbeat
[00:20:03] music and right upbeat classical music and and it really is choreographed
[00:20:09] and and I think one of the reasons it is fun to watch is because these are at
[00:20:15] least for me these are both you know bad guy idiots fighting each other you know
[00:20:21] they're gangs yeah right and so as they're fighting each other it's you know
[00:20:25] they're doing all kinds of moves they're jumping in the air they're
[00:20:28] doing drop kicks and it's all sort of set to that yeah that Rossini and
[00:20:32] that's that's about as fun as the violence gets yeah and then they go
[00:20:37] on this car ride which is a fucked up freaky car ride where they're driving
[00:20:42] it took me a little bit to get it because everyone's like going off the road and
[00:20:47] then you realize oh they're driving on the right but they're in England I know
[00:20:52] at first I was like why is everyone having to swerve right this kind of seems
[00:20:58] like it's their fault but but it's a really kind of the way it's shot
[00:21:03] this was the first time I realized we're really getting this whole movie from
[00:21:06] Alex's perspective I should have realized it before because he's narrating it
[00:21:11] but like everything is just kind of a skew in a way that it would be from his
[00:21:18] kind of point of view and so yeah and Cooper I was reading you know Cooper
[00:21:24] like shot he shot in these very wide lenses that kind of distort the image
[00:21:31] on the edges and that's that's Alex's view of the world which is really cool
[00:21:38] that car scene also is like you know it uses that old film technique of
[00:21:43] clearly running a projector in the back
[00:21:46] I know which is again I don't associate with Kubrick to like
[00:21:50] no it threw me off a little bit I mean I know this was in 72 right so
[00:21:57] so that definitely seems anachronistic especially given that 2001 came out the
[00:22:05] year before where like those those special effects were all practical effects
[00:22:10] and they stand the test of time like those are those are incredible incredible
[00:22:15] I just saw it like on the big screen and it was it was just like amazing
[00:22:20] it was the Christopher Nolan's my favorite thing he's done he restored the
[00:22:24] like 70 millimeter put it out over the sun
[00:22:28] oh yeah yeah yeah
[00:22:30] so then you have the they get to they do the what do they call it the old
[00:22:36] call it the old surprise visit
[00:22:39] and then you have the most notorious scene in the movie which is the
[00:22:45] the rape of the woman in her house with her husband
[00:22:51] the Alexanders well I don't know she took his last name but
[00:22:56] but you have this husband and wife old husband
[00:23:00] not very young wife but
[00:23:04] and they go in they force their way in and then they
[00:23:08] and he ties the guy up ties Mr. Alexander up
[00:23:14] and they rape Mrs. Alexander while he sings singing in the rain
[00:23:22] right right which was Malcolm apparently Malcolm McDowell's
[00:23:27] choice like his improv and it is although less choreographed it is
[00:23:33] dance like yeah so as he's singing you know on the beats of the song
[00:23:38] he's either you know like kicking kicking Mr. Alexander while he's down
[00:23:44] slapping her it's it's really hard to people say it's titillating and
[00:23:49] it's like he's trying to get the male audience like like excited
[00:23:56] and actually kind of root for Alex in this scene like I don't
[00:24:00] totally get that like I was kind of no I mean like the let there be yeah
[00:24:05] like let it be absolutely clear I think this is like a scene of
[00:24:10] as pure evil as you can get given their delight while they're doing it
[00:24:15] and of course it's sexual you know and they right they make it
[00:24:19] and and you know the way that he cuts her clothes to expose her breasts
[00:24:23] first like it's I suppose that could be titillating to somebody who's
[00:24:29] into rape but it's if anything it causes this weird weird conflict
[00:24:35] where you're like well normally when I see those images I am you know
[00:24:39] like I might be aroused at the side of a naked woman if that's what
[00:24:44] you're into but this is jarring it's jarring it is a conflict
[00:24:50] like it is because also at every level right it's also sort of just
[00:24:55] that same kind of virtuosic filmmaking that goes into pretty much
[00:25:00] every shot in the whole movie is is and the set is the set is you know
[00:25:07] their house is just kind of a masterpiece of production design
[00:25:12] like it has all this kind of modern art which is a very erotic sexual
[00:25:17] kind of you know I like it's sterile erotic but it's kind
[00:25:23] you know it's like breasts and yeah the whole movie is full of this
[00:25:29] sort of like the set decorations are all like you get this sense that
[00:25:33] in this culture is like you know it's a bunch of pervs who collect art
[00:25:37] I think that art was the vagina house right it was just all the
[00:25:41] ginas in the house like like the couch looked like a vagina there
[00:25:45] was like vagina sculptures there were yeah yeah again I think
[00:25:51] you're seeing this from how like I don't think we're supposed to
[00:25:54] think necessarily that's literally his there how their house looks
[00:25:59] as much as oh yeah I never thought about that I never thought about
[00:26:03] that because it does throw you off because you're you're always
[00:26:06] seeing a third person view yeah but but it is supposed to be
[00:26:12] from from his perspective you know speaking of 2001 the four
[00:26:18] guys move one of them has a stick I don't remember if it's
[00:26:22] things out of the middle yeah yeah and they I knowing Kubrick it
[00:26:29] must have been on purpose but they look exactly like the apes
[00:26:32] in or the proto humans in 2001 when they pick up the bone
[00:26:36] and start and start attacking the other the other tribe
[00:26:39] and and I couldn't help but think that there is there is
[00:26:45] something that links those two movies together I agree so so you
[00:26:51] have this scene I mean I don't know like it there are a couple
[00:26:56] things that I noted this time more than I had noted the last time
[00:27:01] or at least more than I remember noting when he is about to
[00:27:06] actually rape her you know up till now he's been cutting
[00:27:09] off the various parts of her clothes and singing he and and
[00:27:15] the husband who's old and kind of crippled is on is is wrapped
[00:27:21] up in some sort of tape and being held down by two other guys
[00:27:26] and and right they put a ball in their mouth and taping
[00:27:30] yeah they put a ball yeah so right before he's about to
[00:27:33] rape her he looks at the husband Mr Alexander Alex but but the
[00:27:39] way it's shot it's like he's looking right into the camera
[00:27:42] and he says video well my brother video well and it's like
[00:27:47] which means see in their slang it means yeah it means watch this
[00:27:53] see this see it well and it really is like he's saying that
[00:27:57] to us more than he I mean it's clear in the the the scene that
[00:28:02] he's saying it to the husband but the way it's shot it's like
[00:28:05] he's he's staring right at you as your watch right which I did
[00:28:11] not notice that really but it makes sense given that the
[00:28:14] opening shot is a breaking of the fourth wall shot where
[00:28:18] he's just directly looking into the camera with a voiceover
[00:28:22] I think that's your first clear signal that this is also
[00:28:29] implicating the audience in a serious way the people who are
[00:28:34] watching the movie the fact that he's looking at us kind of
[00:28:39] leering and telling us to watch this like you know it had a
[00:28:44] little it has a little bit of you know you like this even
[00:28:47] though you don't want to admit it you know that he
[00:28:49] thinks you secretly like it yeah right like whatever whatever
[00:28:53] we're feeling he's he's very much assuming like what you know
[00:28:57] you want to watch this so I'm not suggesting that he knows he's
[00:29:01] talking to an audience I'm suggesting more that this is a
[00:29:04] Kubrick touch yeah no yeah but maybe not because he's
[00:29:09] narrating it to an audience right like so he he knows
[00:29:13] he's narrating to an audience so actually I'm going to
[00:29:17] change my mind about that your humble narrator yeah your
[00:29:20] humble narrator yeah it's unclear it's unclear whether
[00:29:25] he's going back and forth breaking from narrating to us
[00:29:29] yeah but whatever it is I think Kubrick is definitely
[00:29:33] implicating the audience so we move on from that scene
[00:29:37] they go back to the milk bar like you get it's a weird
[00:29:40] like it's hard to figure out like what this society
[00:29:44] looks like because you don't get very many other people
[00:29:48] in the movie right but here there are these what he calls
[00:29:51] Sophisticos that are looked like these people that went to
[00:29:54] an opera or something they come by this milk bar sort of
[00:29:57] slumming it maybe and this woman just starts singing
[00:30:02] Beethoven's ninth the choral and he just is enthralled
[00:30:11] while dim less enthralled and that that gets a little
[00:30:17] there's a little dissension within the droogs at that point
[00:30:23] right right his gang of his gang of four and his love of
[00:30:28] Beethoven yeah I don't know what to make of it
[00:30:32] right he's his his love of music in general
[00:30:35] you know what Kubrick is trying to say about well like
[00:30:38] what he's what he's attempting to communicate to us about
[00:30:42] Alex yeah that he is such a lover of Beethoven I don't
[00:30:46] know if that's supposed to humanize him a bit I don't
[00:30:49] know if it's you know it's a very quirky thing for a
[00:30:52] psychopath who rapes and murders all night yeah to be
[00:30:55] to be so obsessed well I mean but one of the things
[00:30:58] is for whatever reason Beethoven gives him these
[00:31:02] violent fantasies and so whenever I was surprised I
[00:31:07] had sort of assumed that like the scenes of violence
[00:31:10] took place to Beethoven but they don't they take play
[00:31:13] like usually receive there's more Rossini in this
[00:31:15] yeah in this movie yeah it the scenes of violence
[00:31:18] don't take place to Beethoven it's his imagination
[00:31:22] like his when he just starts going through like we're
[00:31:26] gonna in the next scene actually he goes back
[00:31:29] home listens to Beethoven and then just this
[00:31:34] montage of just crazy sex and violence just goes
[00:31:41] in and that's like there's something about Beethoven
[00:31:44] that inspires that in him yeah by the way one of
[00:31:49] the coolest audio systems like that with a little
[00:31:52] mini cassette tapes and the little just lit up
[00:31:55] like so fucking aesthetically pleasing the
[00:31:58] production design is like a drop the mic kind
[00:32:01] of like this is you can't top this there's no way
[00:32:05] you can top this as is the sound and the use yeah
[00:32:09] the use of music is just you know but the house
[00:32:13] like his home is incredible like it's just like
[00:32:16] every part of it and you know his room every detail
[00:32:19] right and he lives in a shitty neighborhood this
[00:32:21] is supposed to be like a working class person
[00:32:23] and it's like yeah but he so he kind of just
[00:32:28] plays sick so he's clearly still going to school
[00:32:30] he plays sick the mother the parents are just
[00:32:33] these beleaguered weak parents who clearly don't
[00:32:36] run the house Alex runs the house and there's
[00:32:41] this very cool scene just a fucked up scene where
[00:32:44] he gets up he's in his like tidy whitey I don't
[00:32:47] know if they're white but they're they're like
[00:32:49] those kinds of underwear yeah and he's just
[00:32:51] wandering just wandering around his house just
[00:32:53] and he walks by a room and it's like you see
[00:32:58] you get a glimpse of like a guy there you think
[00:33:01] but you're not sure and then right as you're
[00:33:04] having that thought Alex has that thought and
[00:33:07] then just when it goes back to the room it's
[00:33:10] so perfectly shot and there's this guy named
[00:33:14] Deltoid who's we find out the headmaster
[00:33:18] of the school that he goes to and the
[00:33:21] school is supposed to be some sort of
[00:33:23] reform school and this performance by an
[00:33:26] actor named Aubrey Morris I like it's so
[00:33:30] weird it's so grotesque it's it's it's
[00:33:33] crazy grotesque is the right word and I
[00:33:37] find that that's actually his use of
[00:33:39] actors who are being grotesque in this
[00:33:43] in this movie like it so it's runs
[00:33:46] throughout I find the Mr. Alexander to
[00:33:49] be oddly grotesque I find the the
[00:33:54] the Reverend in prison is oddly grotesque
[00:33:57] yeah it's like this the people in the
[00:33:59] hospital the people like throughout yeah
[00:34:01] these are just and maybe it is Alex
[00:34:05] perspective on normal humanity there
[00:34:08] are all these the thing that popped into
[00:34:10] my head was how much the Cohen brothers
[00:34:14] have been influenced by the aesthetic
[00:34:16] for for this movie like you know in a
[00:34:19] movie like raising Arizona or Barton Fink
[00:34:22] they're like the real close-up they he
[00:34:25] uses close-ups and some sort of angle to
[00:34:29] just highlight the grotesqueness of the
[00:34:32] character and the performances are
[00:34:35] reflected too like this guy Deltoid
[00:34:38] is like yes yeah it's so creepy when
[00:34:43] he grabs him in the nuts yeah I can
[00:34:45] is in his briefs is like what the hell
[00:34:48] kind of person is this it's like you
[00:34:51] don't know who's the villain and I think
[00:34:54] that's actually something that we should
[00:34:56] talk about later when we get through
[00:34:57] this but like there's not many
[00:34:59] sympathetic characters in this movie
[00:35:02] at all and like you said you often
[00:35:04] don't know who's the villain no and
[00:35:07] and throughout as as Malcolm McDowell
[00:35:11] as Alex is interacting with people not
[00:35:14] during his violent moments when he's
[00:35:16] interacting with just normal other
[00:35:17] humans during his everyday life he is
[00:35:22] charming not not mean at all like what
[00:35:28] came to mind to me was Eddie Haskellish
[00:35:32] from Leave It To Beaver yeah exactly you
[00:35:34] know you just know he's up to no good
[00:35:36] but he's just polite on the surface
[00:35:38] and he's all smiles and he's a he was
[00:35:40] a good looking man and and you can you
[00:35:43] know Kubrick very much likes his look
[00:35:45] yeah when you said the use of the use
[00:35:47] of close-ups is grotesque with nearly
[00:35:50] everybody else but it's almost angelic
[00:35:52] for for Malcolm McDowell absolutely and
[00:35:55] he he kind of knows what they want to
[00:35:57] hear like he's very like he has a
[00:36:00] good understanding psychological
[00:36:03] understanding of what people want from
[00:36:05] him and he gives it to them when
[00:36:08] he's in when it's in his interest
[00:36:10] exactly all right let's go through this a
[00:36:12] little quickly then so he then goes to
[00:36:15] a record store a nice little in-joke
[00:36:18] 2001 space Odyssey soundtrack is at the
[00:36:21] record store there's these two girls
[00:36:24] who apparently are ten in the novel
[00:36:26] but here they just look like I did not
[00:36:29] know that yeah and they go home have
[00:36:33] a quick threesome they're sucking
[00:36:35] these popsicles and quick because he
[00:36:39] speeds it up quick yes quick threesome
[00:36:42] right it's not quick if you actually
[00:36:45] slow it down because it seems like there's
[00:36:47] like three or four goes hilarious is very
[00:36:51] on their clothes and take it off and it's
[00:36:53] to the William Tell oversource so it's
[00:36:55] like that then his droogs come over
[00:37:00] and they're pissed off because of Alex
[00:37:02] was and they're doing a they're like
[00:37:05] there's a little mutiny and so he and
[00:37:08] this is one of the scenes I remember
[00:37:10] really well when they're walking on the
[00:37:12] docks and like this is one of the image
[00:37:14] this movie leaves a lot of images that
[00:37:16] are ingrained on you before this was
[00:37:18] one of them where he just immediately
[00:37:20] kind of is walking on the docks with
[00:37:22] them and you don't have it and then
[00:37:24] all of a sudden he just you can see
[00:37:26] in his head and he's also describing
[00:37:28] it like no fuck this and he needs to
[00:37:30] just like exert his alphaness again
[00:37:32] exactly reexert his like
[00:37:36] unquestioned control over the group
[00:37:38] because they haven't fully said that he's
[00:37:40] not the leader anymore but he's just
[00:37:42] making sure that even just a hint of it
[00:37:45] is no fuck that yeah and
[00:37:49] and then that leads to them going
[00:37:53] to try to rob this cat lady and
[00:37:56] again that that this woman's house is
[00:37:58] the same thing it's all sexual
[00:38:00] kind of stylized modern art there's
[00:38:03] like a woman sucking a tit and
[00:38:05] yeah like one painting she has this
[00:38:08] huge dildo that becomes actually the
[00:38:11] murder weapon I don't know if I would
[00:38:14] call it a dildo when it's that big it's
[00:38:16] a sculpture's a phallic sculpture
[00:38:18] because you would call it a phallic
[00:38:21] sculpture right dildo sort of implied
[00:38:23] is you have a functional definition
[00:38:25] that's like a friend giant
[00:38:28] it's a but it's very funny the dildo
[00:38:32] also the way it rocks like a kind of
[00:38:34] jerk jerkily it like it has some filling
[00:38:37] inside of it that that when you rock it
[00:38:39] to one side all the weight goes to the
[00:38:41] other side and shifts it back so it's
[00:38:43] like it's like we both wobbling yeah
[00:38:46] and it's very like yeah it's a very
[00:38:48] kind of comic scene for actually most
[00:38:51] of it right like I mean she's she
[00:38:54] stands up to him she yeah she doesn't
[00:38:57] let them in so yes this right she
[00:38:59] she doesn't fall for the same ploy that
[00:39:01] that the Alexander's fell for because
[00:39:03] she read in the paper so she's savvy
[00:39:05] she knows she knows that she's in
[00:39:07] danger she calls the police he gets
[00:39:10] in anyway but she also just doesn't
[00:39:12] refuses to be intimidated like at any
[00:39:14] point in that encounter on she
[00:39:17] refuses to be intimidated by him she's
[00:39:19] like scolding him and yelling at
[00:39:21] him and there's this sort of comic scene
[00:39:23] of her holding the not the dildo the
[00:39:27] sculpture the sculpture and him sort of
[00:39:31] you know trying to dodge it and but then
[00:39:35] he ends up killing her with it right
[00:39:37] probably because she stood up to him
[00:39:39] like you know like had she been more
[00:39:41] docile she would have probably just
[00:39:43] gotten raped yeah but yeah were you
[00:39:46] gonna say it's not it's not clear
[00:39:48] that he wanted to murder her yeah I
[00:39:50] think he's gonna say that like I think probably he did
[00:39:53] just to get her off because she kept
[00:39:56] fighting and resisting and he's not used to
[00:39:58] that but and the plan was to break in
[00:40:01] to steal her valuables right it wasn't
[00:40:03] you know it wasn't that they were
[00:40:05] breaking into rape or necessarily although
[00:40:07] that might not happen anyway and then
[00:40:09] his droogs fellows are sick of being
[00:40:12] you know dominated by him and they
[00:40:15] set him up and let the police catch him
[00:40:18] that takes us to part two
[00:40:21] alright let's take a break and thank our
[00:40:23] sponsor and this is a sponsor Dave that
[00:40:27] even the people on reddit that always
[00:40:29] find something to complain about and we
[00:40:31] have a sponsor I don't think they can
[00:40:33] bitch about this one it is givewell.org
[00:40:37] Dave you know how when you teach
[00:40:39] Peter Singer famine affluence and
[00:40:41] morality all the students are looking
[00:40:44] for reasons to object to why they
[00:40:46] should give to charity and one of the
[00:40:49] biggest objections is well the
[00:40:51] charities are ineffective they're corrupt
[00:40:53] and I think the implication there is
[00:40:56] that they want to give to good charities
[00:40:58] but they have no way of trusting that
[00:41:01] the charities they give to are actually
[00:41:03] going to do the most good and this
[00:41:05] is what givewell does they help you
[00:41:07] maximize the good you can accomplish
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[00:41:30] exacting standards givewell is unique
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[00:41:59] that research is actually available
[00:42:01] for you if you want to take a deep dive
[00:42:03] and look it's not like you can't
[00:42:05] donate to your charity of choice
[00:42:07] right you have an ant with breast
[00:42:09] cancer or you love your American
[00:42:11] pet puppy you can donate to whatever
[00:42:13] you want but if you have that money
[00:42:15] and you're trying to decide maybe an
[00:42:17] additional place to donate to or maybe
[00:42:19] you actually think you want to make the
[00:42:21] most get the most bang for your charity
[00:42:23] buck give givewell a shot it is
[00:42:25] probably the easiest charity
[00:42:27] website that I've ever used it I
[00:42:29] literally was able to sign up in
[00:42:31] about 60 seconds maybe so all
[00:42:35] of it's information all of the
[00:42:37] scientific evidence for the programs
[00:42:39] all of the reviews and it publishes its
[00:42:41] models so if you're a nerd and you like
[00:42:43] that sort of thing you can take a deep
[00:42:45] dive into the details if you're interested
[00:42:47] but you don't have to all you have to do
[00:42:49] is spend a few minutes you can go to
[00:42:51] give well top charities they're right
[00:42:53] there on the list or you can even ask
[00:42:55] give well to use the money in
[00:42:57] whatever way they see fit which is
[00:42:59] what I did because I'm lazy so
[00:43:01] thanks to give well for sponsoring this
[00:43:03] episode of very bad wizards I hope
[00:43:05] you guys especially during the holiday
[00:43:07] and find it in your heart to help
[00:43:09] those who might be less fortunate than you
[00:43:11] and if you do consider using
[00:43:13] give well dot org
[00:43:15] and sorry intro to ethics
[00:43:17] students but you're going to have to come
[00:43:19] up with another objection to Peter
[00:43:21] singer
[00:43:46] I'm under the window
[00:43:48] like a
[00:43:50] game
[00:43:52] to gather data
[00:43:54] in the bus or
[00:43:56] navigator
[00:43:58] 16
[00:44:00] by the hour from the Africans
[00:44:02] but they won't let you push them one try
[00:44:04] to get fly almost had to muscim if
[00:44:06] I wanted to rob them I would have
[00:44:08] with the phone to the door and toe
[00:44:10] ass
[00:44:12] not waste not fun not they didn't see
[00:44:14] the bus
[00:44:16] space
[00:44:18] still
[00:44:20] see
[00:44:22] the
[00:44:24] not
[00:44:26] not
[00:44:28] not
[00:44:30] not
[00:44:32] not
[00:44:34] not
[00:44:36] not
[00:44:38] not
[00:44:40] not
[00:44:42] not
[00:44:46] should
[00:44:48] if we appreciate it even
[00:44:50] when the yet not
[00:44:52] but there
[00:45:04] means to think it
[00:45:06] means you care
[00:45:08] all the emails
[00:45:10] can email us very badwisers at gmail.com and if you want to engage in discussion with
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[00:45:27] it's about our show, reddit.com slash r slash very bad wizards, really, really
[00:45:32] good discussions that we also chime into every once in a while.
[00:45:38] You can follow us on Instagram, again very bad wizards is the username.
[00:45:43] If you care enough and would like to support us in more tangible ways, we
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[00:46:33] We love what we do and we put a lot of time and effort into it, but it
[00:46:38] really does keep us going.
[00:46:41] And we have a couple definitely in final talks to do a sequel with Natalia
[00:46:48] and Jesse on Twin Peaks focused on a few questions. You talked about maybe
[00:46:53] doing a Westworld.
[00:46:55] Yeah, with Paul Bloom actually. It might require a rewatch, but it would be
[00:47:02] fine. We'll find something to do with Paul Bloom.
[00:47:05] And then we said we were going to do and we will do a bonus
[00:47:12] sorry to bother you little segment.
[00:47:17] Yeah, we love our Patreon supporters. We really, really appreciate it.
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[00:47:27] these usurpers that come in and outrank us because of some trick that they do.
[00:47:37] Our numbers are good, but they're not reflected in that iTunes ranking.
[00:47:44] One last thing. My audiobook read by me, narrated by me for Why Honor Matters
[00:47:50] is coming out November 14th. So that's just over a week after this gets
[00:47:54] released. So please go buy that.
[00:47:58] I'm going to release a director's commentary track where it's just me talking over you.
[00:48:06] You had a commentary track over your audiobook.
[00:48:10] Yeah, I think that a lot of people would prefer that.
[00:48:16] It'll be like a YouTube video of me making gestures.
[00:48:20] Holding up signs, making wanking gestures.
[00:48:27] But if I do that, it will only be for our Patreon supporters.
[00:48:30] Absolutely. All right.
[00:48:32] Back to Clockwork Orange.
[00:48:35] Your humble podcasters are back and your humble narrator is going to prison.
[00:48:40] And it is a it's very funny like when he first goes into the prison,
[00:48:46] he looks like a little kid in a suit.
[00:48:48] Like he has his little tie and he looks like a kid that's been dressed up.
[00:48:54] And he goes into this to the and there you meet this warden
[00:48:59] who's played by the actor, Michael Bates.
[00:49:02] This was the first thing that like I remembered the first part of the movie
[00:49:05] pretty well with a few details.
[00:49:07] This was the first part that surprised me
[00:49:12] to the degree that it was going for kind of a comic effect.
[00:49:16] Like this was like a Monty Python skit.
[00:49:20] Absolutely. I mean, the prison throughout and the comedic sort of
[00:49:25] militaristic walks.
[00:49:28] Are you or have you ever been a homosexual?
[00:49:34] As my friend pointed out,
[00:49:36] he apparently is looking straight at his cock when he asks that.
[00:49:41] It's a great performance, a great comic performance.
[00:49:43] Friend, it really is like he's like John Cleese, like he goes in Monty Python.
[00:49:47] He goes through all the different maybe John Cleese based
[00:49:51] like some of his stuff on him.
[00:49:52] I don't know, but like he goes through all of his stuff and records it.
[00:49:56] And it's all very painstaking and all very Germanic in some ways.
[00:50:02] Painstaking is right.
[00:50:03] And this is where where I first thought to myself
[00:50:08] that.
[00:50:09] Kubrick is not afraid to
[00:50:14] not waste our time, but to not not satisfy
[00:50:20] the laziness of the viewer by skipping through all of that stuff.
[00:50:25] Yeah, right.
[00:50:26] Even when there's a scene later on when they release him and he's like,
[00:50:30] you know, signature here and here.
[00:50:34] I was like, Kubrick just actually wasted,
[00:50:37] you know, five minutes of my time
[00:50:39] while showing somebody sign a contract.
[00:50:41] No, absolutely.
[00:50:42] And it's interesting that he devotes this much attention
[00:50:45] to this element of it because he had to cut some stuff out
[00:50:49] to keep it within a reasonable running time.
[00:50:51] So it's kind of a great scene.
[00:50:54] You get a good you get Alex kind of sizing it up.
[00:50:58] At first, he just doesn't totally know what to make of this guy.
[00:51:01] And then he figures it out and what he has to do to keep this guy
[00:51:04] from yelling at him.
[00:51:06] And it's really funny.
[00:51:07] I mean, like that's one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
[00:51:11] So then you get this
[00:51:13] this prison in a lot of ways is like a school.
[00:51:17] Nobody looks that menacing, but
[00:51:20] to the extent that they do, it's like menacing like in a school like bullies.
[00:51:25] So there's this priest that comes and gives them a
[00:51:28] chaplain, the prison chaplain that comes and gives them a speech.
[00:51:32] And meanwhile, like the kind of there's like naughty kids,
[00:51:36] even though they're adults, but they're making lewd faces at Alex
[00:51:41] and the priest.
[00:51:42] And it really is delivering a hellfire and brimstone
[00:51:46] like sermon.
[00:51:48] And then you get the sense that Alex is settling in.
[00:51:51] He's been there for a couple of years.
[00:51:53] The priest loves him.
[00:51:54] He works in the library.
[00:51:56] He's playing the perfect choir boy at this point.
[00:51:59] Yeah. By the way, I remembered my thought.
[00:52:02] He gets 14 years, which sort of surprised me.
[00:52:05] It must have been like a charge of manslaughter or something
[00:52:08] because for for for murder, 14 years doesn't seem like a whole lot
[00:52:12] unless the Brits have a very different
[00:52:15] like penal system.
[00:52:16] I mean, we'll talk about this when we get to the philosophy behind this.
[00:52:19] But this was in the book is written in the early sixties.
[00:52:25] The movie comes out in early seventies before the
[00:52:29] retributivist revival and the harsh sentences.
[00:52:32] Like I wouldn't surprise me if that really was.
[00:52:36] Yeah, but I don't know.
[00:52:37] But you could also maybe it was
[00:52:40] pled down to manslaughter in some ways.
[00:52:42] She was like not self-defense exactly because it's not self-defense
[00:52:47] when you crash somebody's head in with a giant dildo, not dildo.
[00:52:53] Meanwhile, one of the funny things in the in the scene with
[00:52:57] he's in the library and he's he's now being the perfect choir boy for the
[00:53:01] for the priest.
[00:53:03] Right. He's talking about how much he loves reading the Bible.
[00:53:05] And you're like, oh, that's that's like a real real weird thing.
[00:53:08] And he fantasizes about people being crucified.
[00:53:11] Well, yeah, so hilariously,
[00:53:13] it's one of the funniest shots in the movie is that he's, you know,
[00:53:16] he's saying how much he loves reading the Bible.
[00:53:18] They cut to a scene of Jesus
[00:53:20] bearing the cross on his way to being crucified.
[00:53:22] And you're like, oh, wow, like is he actually touched by this?
[00:53:26] And then the camera pans over to the Roman
[00:53:31] guard whip the centurion soldier whipping him.
[00:53:34] And it's it's Alex like he's fan of the reason he loves the Bible is
[00:53:37] he's just taking delight in being the perpetrator.
[00:53:41] I imagine myself in the height of Roman fashion.
[00:53:45] Exactly.
[00:53:47] And then he talks to the priest.
[00:53:49] He's clearly like the favorite of the priest.
[00:53:51] He's got him completely hoodwinked and says he's heard about this new
[00:53:55] technique that can allow a man to be released very soon
[00:54:00] within a few weeks even.
[00:54:03] And the priest knows what he's talking about
[00:54:06] and and says to him.
[00:54:10] But here's the problem with that.
[00:54:11] The question is whether it really makes a man good.
[00:54:14] When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.
[00:54:19] And so this is the goodness comes from within.
[00:54:22] Yes, good.
[00:54:24] And and then Alex plays kind of innocent like he just doesn't.
[00:54:28] He thinks he can beat whatever this thing is and just says,
[00:54:32] I don't understand the wise and where force here.
[00:54:34] I just want to be good.
[00:54:36] This is where like this performance also kind of takes it up to another level.
[00:54:40] Yeah.
[00:54:42] Long story short, there's a bunch of scenes here, but he gets to
[00:54:46] be their pilot case.
[00:54:48] Is he the first?
[00:54:50] First, they say he says that there it's still at the experimental stages.
[00:54:55] And so we don't quite know whether that, you know, what kind of experimentation
[00:54:59] they've done on other people.
[00:55:00] But he is certainly the first full case that they tried out, right?
[00:55:05] The minister of the interior selects him and they're going to make him
[00:55:10] their first example of a successful treatment.
[00:55:12] Yeah. So they take him to the hospital from the prison.
[00:55:16] The warden clearly doesn't approve.
[00:55:18] And here's where you get this dichotomy between retributivism
[00:55:22] and what is allegedly a rehab rehabilitation approach to punishment.
[00:55:28] And the warden is on the side of he says, I don't approve of this.
[00:55:32] I for an eye, this new rule with reform and cure.
[00:55:35] He says it's grossly unjust as he's giving
[00:55:40] Alex over to the to the person.
[00:55:43] So you have the priest who's worried about it, that this technique is going
[00:55:48] to take away Alex's free will.
[00:55:50] And you have the warden who is worried that it's unjust,
[00:55:54] that it's not giving the prisoner the punishment that he deserves.
[00:56:01] And then you get the famous thing where it's really it's hard to watch
[00:56:05] it and take it seriously anymore just because of how much it's been
[00:56:08] parodied and how much.
[00:56:10] But the conditioning process of Alex with his eyelids
[00:56:14] peer to open and it's still, you know,
[00:56:19] the scene of the still shot, you know, seared in my head of him
[00:56:22] with his eyelids bright open, but still watching them do that.
[00:56:27] I mean, they did that. Yeah. Like there is nothing fancy.
[00:56:30] They apparently anesthetized his eyes, but it was still really painful.
[00:56:36] And I was reading that as they're applying eyedrops,
[00:56:38] that was a real doctor because they didn't anticipate that that's what
[00:56:41] they were going to have to do.
[00:56:42] But they just made that part of the scene.
[00:56:45] And he ended up getting injured.
[00:56:48] And this is also the first time that Alex doesn't seem like
[00:56:51] he totally knows how to read the situation or what's going on.
[00:56:55] Like I think he thinks as he goes in there,
[00:56:58] this movie has a lot of power struggles.
[00:57:00] And Alex is usually in the dominant position in the power struggle.
[00:57:05] But for the first and really was for the whole time in prison.
[00:57:10] Yeah. But for the first time, like he's out of his element
[00:57:14] and they seem like they're the ones who are kind of smug.
[00:57:18] And he's not, you know, he is he's all about smugness.
[00:57:22] But for the first time, he is a little unsure what's going on.
[00:57:26] Like he's putting on a front,
[00:57:28] but he doesn't know how to read the situation well.
[00:57:31] Well, yeah. And in fact, you know,
[00:57:33] as somebody watching the movie for the first time,
[00:57:37] you don't know what's about to happen.
[00:57:39] So he has no idea what this treatment entails.
[00:57:41] Yeah. And first time viewer has no idea what the treatment entails.
[00:57:45] And you're not even quite sure when they're doing it.
[00:57:48] They inject him with something.
[00:57:50] This Ludovico technique, as it's called,
[00:57:52] yeah, which is a classical conditioning where they essentially give him
[00:57:57] a solution that makes him nauseated and makes him panic.
[00:58:01] I guess nausea.
[00:58:03] Yeah, nausea being like the key element there.
[00:58:07] And they pair it with images of violence over the course of a few days
[00:58:11] so that the eventual goal of him feeling sick when he whenever he has violent thoughts,
[00:58:18] which just the intro psych professor in me wants to say,
[00:58:21] like that's wouldn't really wouldn't really work with nausea.
[00:58:25] Like aversion therapy like that.
[00:58:29] If you get nausea, you're never going to pair it to images.
[00:58:32] You're going to pair it to whatever you ate right before.
[00:58:35] Like that's like a well known finding.
[00:58:38] Oh, God, you're a disgust researcher and you have to.
[00:58:42] Yes.
[00:58:45] Well, suspension of disbelief for this.
[00:58:47] Yes. A couple of things about these scenes
[00:58:50] in addition to the kind of horrific part of it.
[00:58:53] They always talk to him like he's a little kid in a hospital.
[00:58:57] Like he's sort of asking like like a kid would ask about a shot.
[00:59:01] And they're talking, they even call him my boy a lot of the time.
[00:59:05] And it's very much like he's become a kid.
[00:59:09] They're infantilizing him or in a way that you do that to a kid in the hospital.
[00:59:15] Like you're trying to cure them.
[00:59:16] They don't know what's good for them.
[00:59:18] And so you tell them and that's I think part of that's deliberate.
[00:59:24] It comes across really clearly and it is one of the things that people have
[00:59:29] objected very strongly to rehabilitation approaches to crime,
[00:59:35] which is that they treat human being adults like their little kids
[00:59:43] and approach punishing them like you would approach punishing a little kid
[00:59:47] or curing a little kid.
[00:59:50] I hadn't thought of it that way.
[00:59:52] But it is interesting that over the course of the film up until now,
[00:59:55] he gets increasingly childlike.
[00:59:57] Yes. Right. He is a menace.
[01:00:00] The opening shot is him just being menacing and, you know, move over to when
[01:00:06] that he's first talking to the school master and to some extent his parents.
[01:00:11] And by the time he's in the hospital, he play and he Macdowell plays
[01:00:16] this little kid so well.
[01:00:17] So well. It's just he is it's delightful.
[01:00:21] You you don't even dislike.
[01:00:22] You could read it.
[01:00:24] Another, you know, a lesser actor would would come off as sarcastic and insincere.
[01:00:31] Yeah. And he is it's not even clear to me that he's being insincere.
[01:00:37] Like I feel like he's almost falling into that role.
[01:00:42] Me, you know, maybe for survival, but like that he really is
[01:00:46] like sort of delighted when they give him food in the hospital.
[01:00:49] And you know, right.
[01:00:50] I mean, that's the comp that's another complicated element that sort of throws
[01:00:54] a he is childlike in some ways.
[01:00:57] He really does think about violence in a childlike way.
[01:01:00] And like so they they do this technique where they make him feel sick.
[01:01:04] I guess we should say, although everybody knows this, I assume,
[01:01:07] I hope that what it's a byproduct kind of collateral damage of the
[01:01:15] of the technique that they had Beethoven playing during these scenes of violence.
[01:01:21] So not only does he feel nausea and panic and sickness when any thought
[01:01:27] of violence comes into his head or sex, but also when Beethoven plays
[01:01:32] and especially Beethoven's ninth symphony.
[01:01:34] Exactly. Which was ironically the ode to joy.
[01:01:38] Yes. And they they regret it.
[01:01:40] Like there's a shot.
[01:01:41] There's a scene of the people in the booth and they're like,
[01:01:44] why is he so upset about the beta?
[01:01:47] And he's like, oh, he loves Beethoven.
[01:01:49] And they said, oh, well, can't be helped.
[01:01:52] And then and then one of them says this is the punishment element, perhaps.
[01:01:57] Yeah. Well, we weren't going for this, but like now at least we could say
[01:02:01] that we've satisfied some retribution. Exactly.
[01:02:04] That was a very exactly like here.
[01:02:06] This, you know, these people want retribution.
[01:02:09] Here's a tiny little taste of that.
[01:02:12] And and he really gets upset.
[01:02:13] I mean, there is nothing that has upset him that much.
[01:02:17] You know, this gets back to the puzzle of why they make
[01:02:21] why either Burgess or Kubrick make this so central to his character.
[01:02:25] Maybe it's just to give him this one weakness.
[01:02:27] But there is even when he's caught by the cops, like there's,
[01:02:32] you know, like a true psychopath, sort of, he doesn't think in the long term
[01:02:36] and only reacts to things that are immediately happening to him.
[01:02:39] And when this immediately happens to him,
[01:02:40] it's like the greatest suffering that he has endured so far.
[01:02:44] Yeah. And in fact, that's when he begs them.
[01:02:46] Like he never begs people to stop, but he begs them to stop.
[01:02:51] And the way they talk to him, like, no, no, boy, you really must leave it to us.
[01:02:54] Like just it's so patronizing.
[01:02:58] Yeah. And then so finally it's done.
[01:03:02] And he it's this is again, very crazy
[01:03:08] scene where he's being presented to groups of luminaries
[01:03:14] and people involved, but it's a very small kind of audience.
[01:03:20] And it looks like like a kid's piano recital or a kid's, you know,
[01:03:24] and that's how it sort of played out where they show that he
[01:03:28] even when people are humiliating him,
[01:03:32] he won't fight back.
[01:03:34] And even when a naked woman, beautiful naked woman comes out,
[01:03:38] he won't try to rape her or attack her.
[01:03:43] Although he wants to do both of those things.
[01:03:46] Yes, he's reaching.
[01:03:48] He's reaching for her. Yeah.
[01:03:50] And then it's just crippled with sickness from doing it.
[01:03:54] And this is where like, you know, well, I want to go through the whole movie
[01:03:58] before we get into this.
[01:03:59] But this is where the whole they've taken away his free will.
[01:04:04] It really doesn't seem like they have.
[01:04:07] But let me put a pin in that as as recline would say.
[01:04:12] And and just the so the woman and the guy who kind of humiliates him
[01:04:18] in the in the presentation, they both give these bows, you know,
[01:04:22] like audience, it's like it's really fucked up just this whole thing.
[01:04:27] This is where the grotesquery of the whole thing just, you know, it's great.
[01:04:33] And then there's these questions afterwards.
[01:04:35] And the minister says choice, he must be he ceases to be capable of moral choice.
[01:04:42] That's the problem.
[01:04:43] And they say we are concerned with cutting down crime.
[01:04:47] And he'll be your true Christian.
[01:04:50] And it's like, no, he's not a true Christian because he's not choosing to do it.
[01:04:55] And they say the point is that it works.
[01:04:57] So here you have that strict kind of utilitarianism
[01:05:01] like autonomy, dichotomy that I think certainly understandably makes people
[01:05:07] think that this is the exact point of the movie.
[01:05:10] That and the fact that both Kubrick and Burris.
[01:05:14] Burgess Burgess, fuck, said it was.
[01:05:18] Yeah, I love.
[01:05:19] Yeah, I love when he's like choice, the boy has no real choice.
[01:05:22] Has he his insincerity was clearly to be seen.
[01:05:25] Right.
[01:05:25] Yes, but it works.
[01:05:27] It's yeah, the point is that it works.
[01:05:30] Yeah. And that's what you hang your head on.
[01:05:31] That's that's that's that's what I thought the movie was about.
[01:05:36] OK, so then he goes home again, dressed like a boy when he goes back to his home.
[01:05:43] And this is another just larry is seeing.
[01:05:49] His parents are there and they just have another son.
[01:05:55] He's it is.
[01:05:57] There's a point I want to make about all this stuff at the end
[01:05:59] that that I think is is is something that I came to.
[01:06:06] But yes, it is.
[01:06:08] He's like a great other son, too.
[01:06:10] He's like really they've bonded with this like adult human male.
[01:06:14] You know, he's like completely he's taking up.
[01:06:15] He's like my room like, you know, he's taking over his room.
[01:06:21] This whole scene reminded me.
[01:06:22] I don't know if you've seen the Wallace and Gromit like TV shorts.
[01:06:27] I've seen some of them.
[01:06:29] Yeah, the penguin, the one with the penguin, where the penguin kind of comes
[01:06:33] into the house and gromit like penguin kind of takes gromits place
[01:06:37] and gromit comes back and it's exactly like that.
[01:06:41] I mean, I don't know, maybe maybe Clockwork Orange inspired
[01:06:45] that kind of dynamic.
[01:06:47] But that's what it made me think of is, you know, you have these well
[01:06:51] meaning but kind of clueless parents, the the smarter son.
[01:06:57] And then like this new usurper.
[01:07:00] It really makes you wonder, like, where did they find this?
[01:07:02] Yeah, where did they find and he's really mean to Alex
[01:07:07] and the parents just kick him out.
[01:07:09] Like they don't kick him out because they don't have the balls to do that.
[01:07:11] But they just make it clear that he can't come home
[01:07:15] because they've paid Joe has taken.
[01:07:20] And Joe is like worse than Alex.
[01:07:22] There's no way you're happy that Joe is treating Alex like this.
[01:07:26] Like, he's not wrong.
[01:07:28] You know, he's also not wrong.
[01:07:29] He's like this guy's a monster and you're like, oh, but wait, no,
[01:07:33] he's a fucking murderous, right?
[01:07:36] I know this is where that conflict comes in
[01:07:39] and like this is something definitely Kubrick is doing where he makes.
[01:07:44] It's not that he makes Alex all that sympathetic.
[01:07:47] He just makes all the other characters less sympathetic or more unsympathetic.
[01:07:53] I think this Joe guy is like a total villain in that scene.
[01:07:59] Yeah.
[01:08:00] And then he also gives a little retributivist dig in there.
[01:08:04] He says, it's only right that you should suffer to proper.
[01:08:08] I don't think our English accents are very good here.
[01:08:12] So then you have a bunch of scenes that are just mirrors
[01:08:15] of the first part of the movie where he goes out to the street
[01:08:22] and he runs into that homeless guy by coincidence
[01:08:26] and the homeless guy recognizes him.
[01:08:28] He actually gives the homeless guy money this time,
[01:08:31] but the homeless guy recognizes him.
[01:08:33] And then with his all dirty, homeless gang as he calls it,
[01:08:37] I forget the he they beat they beat his ass.
[01:08:42] And right as they're finishing beating his ass,
[01:08:45] his two drew underlings turns out to be cops and they come in
[01:08:52] and they torture him, take him out to the woods
[01:08:56] and like drown him in water.
[01:08:59] This is another great Kubrick touch.
[01:09:01] When he's in the water, you hear what's going on,
[01:09:07] including the music and everything as if it's like you're
[01:09:11] dunked in the water.
[01:09:12] I didn't catch that.
[01:09:14] Yeah, it's very cool.
[01:09:16] And then they kind of torture him and almost kill him.
[01:09:21] And then he just staggers into a house
[01:09:25] and that happens to be the house home with the sign home
[01:09:29] where he did the first home invasion.
[01:09:33] Right.
[01:09:33] Yeah, let's talk about this scene
[01:09:35] unless you have something to say about the other scenes.
[01:09:37] Yeah, no, I don't think I have much to say about those other
[01:09:39] scenes than what you said, which is that they mirror this
[01:09:43] and this time this time Alex is the victim.
[01:09:46] Yeah, he's the defense.
[01:09:47] He's the defenseless victim in this case.
[01:09:50] There's there's a little mini theme that I think emerges,
[01:09:54] which is that this is very much a
[01:09:58] like youth hating old people.
[01:10:01] There's this there's a dichotomy
[01:10:03] like old people are really just the enemy.
[01:10:06] Like from Alex's perspective,
[01:10:08] being old is just a bad in and of itself.
[01:10:12] Like it's a celebration of youth and a disdain for every person
[01:10:16] who's who's of any advanced age.
[01:10:20] Well, it's because I don't think the young people come off great either.
[01:10:24] In my they hate they hate the old people.
[01:10:26] Right. They hate them. Yes.
[01:10:28] Yeah, that's right.
[01:10:29] Right. So so now this Mr.
[01:10:31] Alexander is in the wheelchair, right?
[01:10:34] Yeah. And he welcomes
[01:10:38] Allison doesn't recognize him.
[01:10:40] Again, this is the this the symmetry of this movie is amazing,
[01:10:45] both in the composition of the shots,
[01:10:47] but then also just the structure of the plot.
[01:10:50] I found it hilarious, by the way, when we first see
[01:10:53] the Mr. Alexander at home with the big muscle bound guy
[01:10:58] in the short shorts next to him.
[01:10:59] I'm like, wait, is the weightlifter the gay weightlifter?
[01:11:02] Yeah, you get that's what it seems like,
[01:11:05] because he certainly is dressed like that.
[01:11:08] Right. The wife who got raped, by the way,
[01:11:10] even though she wasn't murdered, she ended up dying so she's not there.
[01:11:12] Right. Like probably died and dying from
[01:11:17] just complications or suicide.
[01:11:20] I think it's maybe implicated by the way,
[01:11:23] that actor who plays the gay weightlifter.
[01:11:27] Do you know this? Darth Vader.
[01:11:27] Darth Vader, yeah.
[01:11:29] Yeah, I was going to say it.
[01:11:30] Yeah, the guy in the Darth Vader suit, not James Earl Jones.
[01:11:35] It's not James Earl Jones.
[01:11:37] One thing that I think has played more in the book,
[01:11:41] you get hints of it in the movie, but he,
[01:11:45] the Mr. Alexander is really
[01:11:49] opposed as a writer to the new techniques
[01:11:54] of this new ministry.
[01:11:55] I mean, you get that he's opposed to it,
[01:11:57] but I came across this quote from the book
[01:12:02] and I don't know if I don't think this is in the movie.
[01:12:04] This was in my research after watching.
[01:12:07] This is a quote that he's writing
[01:12:11] when he's always on his typewriter,
[01:12:12] to attempt to impose upon man
[01:12:15] a creature capable of growth and capable of sweetness.
[01:12:19] To attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate
[01:12:23] to mechanical creation.
[01:12:25] Against this, I raise my sword pen.
[01:12:30] Oh, that's interesting.
[01:12:30] But you know, and that is the meaning of a Clockwork Orange,
[01:12:33] right? The title that's never really explained in the film,
[01:12:37] but it is a machine with the skin of a human.
[01:12:41] Right. Right.
[01:12:43] But it's interesting, and this is, I guess, true in the book, too,
[01:12:46] that like against this, I raise my sword pen like this guy is not supposed
[01:12:50] to come off that great either.
[01:12:52] In spite of the fact, you know, like it's just so bombastic
[01:12:57] and ridiculous, you know, right?
[01:13:00] So there is this moment when when he,
[01:13:03] you know, Alex has recognized him from the beginning.
[01:13:07] Mr. Alexander at one point, and this actually, you know, he tricked me,
[01:13:12] recognizes him and you think, oh, shit,
[01:13:15] he knows that this was like, but no,
[01:13:17] he recognizes him as the victim of this ludovico technique
[01:13:20] and is just delighted at the opportunity that he will have to expose
[01:13:24] expose this inhumane technique to the world.
[01:13:28] So yeah, you do interpret it that way because I,
[01:13:32] you know, when you first see his expression
[01:13:35] and again, he's being shot in this grotesque way.
[01:13:38] But when you first see his really weird,
[01:13:42] when you first see his expression, it looks like he
[01:13:46] like my initial reading is it doesn't make,
[01:13:50] it doesn't it's not consistent with what follows
[01:13:53] is he recognized him and then pushed it down
[01:13:58] so that it wouldn't be obvious that he recognized him.
[01:14:01] And then you realize
[01:14:04] probably that's almost certainly that's not the case
[01:14:08] because he is typing and sort of getting people to come over
[01:14:14] and he's very excited and and also just the scene
[01:14:19] where he definitely does know who that is is so kind of shocking.
[01:14:23] But then one way of reading it is at some level,
[01:14:26] he totally I was going to say that I was going to say that
[01:14:29] because it is it's it's not like Kubrick to pull
[01:14:34] such a cheap trick on you where where
[01:14:39] like the gag that he recognizes him so clearly is then just turned it
[01:14:43] into no, no, he just recognized him.
[01:14:45] I think that that this is
[01:14:48] I mean, maybe that's not a cheap trick anyway,
[01:14:50] but it does seem to me that that there is a deeper sense
[01:14:53] in which he recognized him that he has not yet
[01:14:55] yeah, like himself consciously realized.
[01:14:59] So then Alex really fucks up like
[01:15:04] this is this is not Alex like actually if you were going to nitpick
[01:15:08] about certain parts of the movie,
[01:15:11] but he's in the bath.
[01:15:14] They're taking care of him and he starts singing, singing in the rain,
[01:15:20] which by the way, I have not read the book.
[01:15:23] Given that Malcolm McDowell improvised it,
[01:15:26] improvised that couldn't I wonder how it would have been resolved
[01:15:32] without that?
[01:15:33] I mean, would it have been a different song or would it have been
[01:15:35] a phrasing of some sort?
[01:15:38] Well, so this is the thing that's a little strange about this whole ending
[01:15:43] that again, I didn't fully remember.
[01:15:45] It's not totally clear that they did anything different
[01:15:49] than what they were going to do had they not had he not
[01:15:54] recognized who Alex was, right?
[01:15:58] Their goal was to make him a martyr.
[01:16:01] And so it's possible that they were going to
[01:16:05] that when he was calling those people,
[01:16:08] this is what they were going to do from the beginning.
[01:16:12] And it's going to be an expose.
[01:16:14] They were going to demonstrate what suffering he would go through.
[01:16:18] Yeah, I think you're right.
[01:16:20] It would have just been with less revenge in his eyes.
[01:16:23] Yes, right.
[01:16:24] And it's not even totally clear whether the other people even knew
[01:16:27] what they were doing at first.
[01:16:28] You think, oh, they're in on it like in on the revenge.
[01:16:33] But but it's not totally clear that that's true.
[01:16:35] Yeah, I think that, you know, at first I was thrown off.
[01:16:40] I was like, oh, so at some point in between when he called them
[01:16:44] and when they came, that's when he discovers.
[01:16:46] And so I thought, well, maybe then he just said, no, no, come,
[01:16:48] just play along with it.
[01:16:49] But he's actually the rapist of my wife.
[01:16:53] But no, I think you're I think you're right because the way in which
[01:16:56] they ask him questions as journalists is straightforward.
[01:17:01] Like there's no hint that they are, you know, holding this secret.
[01:17:06] What like why would they even take part in a plan like that?
[01:17:10] Why not just put them up in the room?
[01:17:11] Yeah. And they were and they yeah, they ask him about the Beethoven and they
[01:17:16] and again, they're treating him like the people in the hospital did,
[01:17:20] which is ironic given that they're supposedly against that whole approach.
[01:17:26] And yet there's still everybody's treating Alex
[01:17:28] like this mechanical object rather than right using him as a mere means as you.
[01:17:36] I didn't think about this until you said that
[01:17:40] that if you're going to be nitpicky,
[01:17:43] do you think that at some level Alex wanted to be punished?
[01:17:47] And that that's why he started singing, singing in the rain?
[01:17:51] I had no idea.
[01:17:53] It's blatant. It's a really blatant.
[01:17:55] Even if singing in the rain popped into his head because of that memory,
[01:17:59] right? We've not seen him sing singing in the rain.
[01:18:01] And during you know, what would be one thing if he was always singing it?
[01:18:04] It was only during that thing.
[01:18:06] Maybe it popped into his head because he was remembering the attack,
[01:18:09] but to not have the thought that singing it would
[01:18:13] would actually tip off this guy like maybe at some level
[01:18:18] he himself realizes that he hasn't properly been punished for his crime.
[01:18:23] It's not consistent with him being a true psychopath,
[01:18:26] but but you know, this isn't reality.
[01:18:29] I mean, so it's unlike Alex either way, right?
[01:18:34] Like it's unlike Alex to make a dumb mistake like that.
[01:18:37] Like he's usually savvier than that.
[01:18:39] You could argue that maybe he was just so like he'd just been
[01:18:43] like at his head dunked in water and beaten with a stick.
[01:18:49] And so maybe he just slipped up
[01:18:52] it's also unlike Alex, I think at any point in the movie to really feel any remorse
[01:18:58] and even at any level. Right?
[01:19:01] Like OK, here's here's the thought that I just had
[01:19:04] that might be an interesting take on this that I don't think I endorse,
[01:19:07] but I'll toss it out there anyway.
[01:19:09] The Ludovico technique actually worked
[01:19:14] to make him develop some sort of conscience.
[01:19:19] And that his singing, singing in the rain is a reflection of him
[01:19:23] sort of wanting to get caught.
[01:19:25] We only get sort of a little hint before he then commit suicide
[01:19:30] or attempts attempts to kill himself and then has the therapy undone.
[01:19:35] Yeah, we only got a little smidgen of the fact that,
[01:19:37] hey, maybe this Ludovico technique actually worked to give him
[01:19:40] a sense of right and wrong.
[01:19:41] And maybe he's feeling guilty about being in this guy's house,
[01:19:45] you know, being in this guy's house,
[01:19:46] but we'll never really know because they stopped it.
[01:19:49] They stopped it.
[01:19:49] Yeah. So one piece of evidence for your that view,
[01:19:55] which I which I think is really interesting is that
[01:19:59] he actually gives the homeless guy money.
[01:20:01] Yeah, that's right.
[01:20:03] So there's another piece where he shows kind of,
[01:20:08] you know, he didn't have to give the homeless guy money.
[01:20:10] He could have just told him, I don't have anything and moved along.
[01:20:15] But again, you don't know if he's just doing it to get him out of his face
[01:20:18] because he's so upset about what his parents did or.
[01:20:22] But it would be an interesting take that like the very opposite of the view
[01:20:25] that this is some, you know, some cry out to like the
[01:20:30] this is not how morality ought to work.
[01:20:32] That in fact, he had internalized it because in fact we are clockwork oranges.
[01:20:36] Right. I mean, yeah, no, I mean, this I had thought of this for the future,
[01:20:41] like what happens if this had gone on for the future?
[01:20:44] We have to talk about obviously the fact that there is this missing chapter
[01:20:50] book, but we'll talk about that towards the end. Anyway, let's wrap this up.
[01:20:54] They put him up in the room, play Beethoven's ninth lock the door
[01:20:59] and he commits suicide, which was kind of or he tries to commit suicide,
[01:21:03] which seems like it was their plan and they fucked up because he lived.
[01:21:07] And so then he goes to the hospital.
[01:21:09] The great shot by the way of him, the first person shot of him falling.
[01:21:13] And so it's actually was really fucking distressing.
[01:21:15] Yes. Yeah. That's Kubrick, like he knows what he's like.
[01:21:19] He is a total master.
[01:21:21] Like, yeah.
[01:21:22] Also just great shot of those symmetric speakers pointed up at the ceiling
[01:21:26] with that cool and other cool high five system and camera pans up
[01:21:30] to the to the other floor and you see Alex just fucking going crazy.
[01:21:36] I mean, setting aside 2001, which is its own category of
[01:21:41] visual awesomeness.
[01:21:44] Yeah. Is this his most this seems like the most well
[01:21:49] directed Kubrick movie, like or the most Kubrickie Kubrick movie in terms of his.
[01:21:56] I mean, I don't know.
[01:21:57] Maybe the shining has some of this, but just so virtuosic
[01:22:05] on a scene to scene shot to shot basis.
[01:22:10] It's that.
[01:22:10] So I think that in terms of his visual design and the music,
[01:22:20] yeah, there there is nothing like those two movies.
[01:22:24] I don't know that they're the, you know, that that I would put a clockwork orange.
[01:22:30] It's it's not necessarily my favorite.
[01:22:32] Like, I like probably Doctor Strange love better.
[01:22:35] And I like, yeah.
[01:22:37] I love the killing is that what it is?
[01:22:39] Yeah, that's great killers or the killing, the killing.
[01:22:42] Yeah, there's so then the power dynamic shift at the end where Alex knows he has all the.
[01:22:51] And again, he's still being childlike, but he's back to being in control,
[01:22:56] childlike in that scene with the minister.
[01:22:58] He's opening his mouth like a baby bird to get fed by the minister.
[01:23:03] And I mean, this is just again, like unbelievable performance by Malcolm Mcgow.
[01:23:09] Exactly, because it's not mockery.
[01:23:11] You would think what he's doing is mocking.
[01:23:13] He's not.
[01:23:14] He is falling into this role as if this were his.
[01:23:17] Yeah.
[01:23:18] And he's just taking advantage of the fact that, oh, I care.
[01:23:21] I have the cards now and I'm going to make this guy grovel a bit.
[01:23:24] He needs me and I'm going to make him grovel.
[01:23:26] You get you clearly find out from the dialogue that they have undone the
[01:23:32] Ludovico technique or at least tried to.
[01:23:36] And then because it was, by the way, a PR disaster and we see this montage
[01:23:41] of newspaper headlines, old style newspaper headlines about what?
[01:23:46] And then they bring in these speakers to show that it is over
[01:23:51] and they play Beethoven's ninth.
[01:23:54] And there is this last shot of, it's a great, I mean, of him just getting
[01:24:03] written by this naked woman with, and this was something I recognized
[01:24:09] for the first time.
[01:24:11] So the people surrounding him who are politely applauding
[01:24:15] in his fantasy of just having sex with this woman, they're dressed up
[01:24:20] like it's the Ascot opening race in My Fair Lady.
[01:24:26] Like they're just, it's just those people.
[01:24:29] So it's like this, yeah, like again, it's like his fantasies are all
[01:24:34] bound up in movies and then the final last line I was cured all right.
[01:24:41] Do you know, I just thought of this now, given what we were just
[01:24:46] talking about, in my memory, his final scene, his final fantasy is
[01:24:54] rape and it's not at all.
[01:24:58] He is having, he's just having sex.
[01:25:01] Yeah, he's just having sex with the woman on top.
[01:25:04] So maybe he is cured.
[01:25:07] He's not fantasizing about violence.
[01:25:10] Is there no more, there's no other montage of any kind of
[01:25:14] violence or anything?
[01:25:17] I mean, that's the scene I remember.
[01:25:19] But I feel like he is, oh yeah, I feel like there is something.
[01:25:26] I think there is.
[01:25:27] Okay.
[01:25:28] That's the, that's the long summary, but I think there's a
[01:25:32] lot to talk about in terms of thematic philosophical stuff.
[01:25:37] Yeah.
[01:25:38] And, and the summary gave us a chance to talk about a lot of
[01:25:41] the details, but, but take a step back.
[01:25:43] Yeah.
[01:25:45] I mean, I, so I agree with you that it is a bit of a red herring
[01:25:50] that this is all about free will and whether or not, you
[01:25:55] know, it is humane to do this.
[01:25:59] I mean, it's clearly part of it is that, but the bulk of the
[01:26:03] movie is more about, you know, I don't know, it's just
[01:26:08] about this character and his love for violence.
[01:26:10] But here's, here's what I can't shake.
[01:26:14] This is Kubrick's one and only comedy.
[01:26:18] Uh-uh.
[01:26:19] Doctor Strange Love.
[01:26:21] Oh yeah, Doctor Strange Love.
[01:26:22] Yeah, yeah.
[01:26:23] So, so, but my main point being this is actually a comedy.
[01:26:29] Oh, okay.
[01:26:30] Like you're right.
[01:26:31] It's not considered a comedy.
[01:26:33] No, not at all.
[01:26:35] It's a mon, it's considered a monstrous movie with this
[01:26:37] deep philosophical implication.
[01:26:39] I say, watch it as a comedy and it's hilarious.
[01:26:42] Yes.
[01:26:43] Absolutely.
[01:26:44] I mean, like the end, like kind of obviously comic in many
[01:26:50] scenes, especially after the.
[01:26:52] Yeah.
[01:26:53] Ask people though what they remember.
[01:26:55] And I guarantee you that most people who have seen the movie
[01:26:58] a long time ago will not repeat to you the comedic
[01:27:01] elements.
[01:27:02] No.
[01:27:02] Like, and I think that that is, I think Kubrick pulled
[01:27:06] the fast one.
[01:27:07] He's like, I'm going to make a comedy that has actually
[01:27:09] like really fucked up violence in it.
[01:27:12] But this is just going to be a comedy.
[01:27:13] It's actually lighthearted in this way that is jarring
[01:27:17] because of the juxtaposition of not lighthearted stuff.
[01:27:20] But I think again, if you, if we think about this from
[01:27:23] Alex's perspective, it's a comedy in a classical sense,
[01:27:28] traditional sense where it has a happy ending from
[01:27:32] his point of view.
[01:27:34] And there's a lot of people who looked like they were going
[01:27:38] to get the upper hand and they don't in the end.
[01:27:44] They all get punished.
[01:27:45] They all get humiliated.
[01:27:47] They all get, like you get the sense that the
[01:27:50] Andersons have been or the Mr.
[01:27:53] Anderson and his crew have been put away somewhere.
[01:27:57] You don't know exactly what, but they've been put
[01:27:59] away somewhere so that they can never harm Alex.
[01:28:02] From Alex's perspective, he has taken nothing seriously.
[01:28:07] He's barely even dreadful of consequences and his
[01:28:12] his view of these people in the world are that
[01:28:17] they're pretty much idiots and caricatures and
[01:28:19] that's how it's filmed.
[01:28:21] And the surprise, you know, the comedic elements
[01:28:24] of the film become far less surprising if you
[01:28:29] understand it is all sort of the hilarity from
[01:28:34] Alex's perspective.
[01:28:35] Like I'm going to, you know, like the delight with
[01:28:38] which he engages in the violence makes it seem
[01:28:41] like this is, you know, if a psychopath wrote a
[01:28:44] comedy about his life, this might be what it looks
[01:28:47] like. Yeah. Right.
[01:28:49] Because why would you?
[01:28:50] Yeah. Because why would you be jarred and disturbed?
[01:28:53] He doesn't feel that.
[01:28:54] So like let me include the rape scene.
[01:28:57] Yes.
[01:28:57] Because I was dancing.
[01:28:58] That's kind of funny.
[01:28:59] I was singing and dancing.
[01:29:01] No, that's right.
[01:29:03] Like I totally think that's true.
[01:29:05] And it's interesting to sort of try to delve
[01:29:08] into why Kubrick decided to present it that way
[01:29:11] when I don't think that you would necessarily
[01:29:14] take that from the book.
[01:29:15] Let me let me talk.
[01:29:17] I want to get back to that because I think
[01:29:18] it's relevant to this.
[01:29:20] So so the general sort of view of this movie
[01:29:24] is that this is a defense of free will
[01:29:29] and a reaction against the rehabilitation
[01:29:33] techniques that were gaining prominence
[01:29:38] at that time in the middle of the last century.
[01:29:40] And that the purpose of the film is to show us
[01:29:44] that our that our defense of human autonomy
[01:29:48] is so strong, our commitment to human autonomy
[01:29:51] is so strong that we were going to recoil
[01:29:55] at the restriction of Alex.
[01:29:58] Alex's free will is his autonomy,
[01:30:02] even for somebody that's so violent
[01:30:05] and such an obvious psychopath
[01:30:07] who causes so much harm and so dangerous.
[01:30:10] Right. Yeah.
[01:30:11] That's I think the sort of standard
[01:30:13] interpretation of it.
[01:30:14] And I think we've probably even said this
[01:30:16] before in the podcast that like you find
[01:30:19] yourself rooting for Alex or at least
[01:30:22] feeling sorry for him, even though he's done
[01:30:23] the most vicious things and it's been thrown
[01:30:25] in your face that how vicious he's been.
[01:30:28] But that's how attached we are to free will.
[01:30:31] Yeah. So I need to give some credit here.
[01:30:35] On the rewatch, that didn't seem right to me,
[01:30:38] but I didn't exactly know why.
[01:30:40] And then I read this article about it
[01:30:42] by Greg Sorzo from a website called
[01:30:48] Culture on the Offensive.
[01:30:50] And he made of I think of what is a fairly
[01:30:52] obvious point that people don't seem to get,
[01:30:56] which is Alex's free will is intact.
[01:31:00] The entire movie, right?
[01:31:03] He is even though he's given this technique,
[01:31:08] the technique doesn't change his desires.
[01:31:11] It doesn't change his values unless what you're
[01:31:14] saying is right sort of at the end of the knit.
[01:31:16] It doesn't change his second order desires.
[01:31:19] It doesn't change anything.
[01:31:20] All it does is give him a different choice
[01:31:24] when he wants to rape or assault somebody.
[01:31:29] Like, do you want to do this or do you want to feel sick?
[01:31:33] And he will choose probably because the sickness is so great.
[01:31:39] He'll probably choose.
[01:31:40] But that's just a kind of coercion
[01:31:42] that is in any punishment system.
[01:31:46] Right?
[01:31:46] Like if he's in prison, it's worse.
[01:31:48] This is hand, it's handcuffs.
[01:31:50] This is this is just these are fancy handcuffs.
[01:31:53] Or or it's like somebody following him around
[01:31:55] and beating his ass whenever he wants to commit a crime.
[01:31:59] Right.
[01:31:59] So then you say, but we still recoil again.
[01:32:03] Like we still think that they're doing something immoral to him.
[01:32:06] And so then he makes this point that the thing
[01:32:09] that's immoral and the thing that we recoil against
[01:32:13] has nothing to do with the restriction of his autonomy.
[01:32:16] It's that he he it's the same thing
[01:32:19] that we were recoiling against when Alex was the perpetrator
[01:32:22] rather than the victim.
[01:32:24] It's the fact that he's being beaten
[01:32:27] and tortured when he's defenseless. Right.
[01:32:30] And this this is a form of constant punishment for him.
[01:32:36] Yes, like he literally can't defend himself
[01:32:38] and he happens to come across the very people
[01:32:42] who would want to torture him in because of what he's done to them.
[01:32:47] And so like, of course, we're going to recoil to that
[01:32:49] not because his freedom has been restricted,
[01:32:53] but because here's a defenseless person getting tortured.
[01:32:57] So then also the person said, look, imagine that he had
[01:33:01] been given a more sophisticated aversion therapy.
[01:33:05] Wouldn't have to be that much more sophisticated.
[01:33:07] Number one, it allowed him to defend himself
[01:33:10] when he was being attacked.
[01:33:12] It only made that sickness come into play
[01:33:15] when he was unprovoked, when he was attacking somebody unprovoked.
[01:33:20] And number two, it didn't trigger when he listened to Beethoven.
[01:33:23] Right. Right.
[01:33:24] Like would we have that same kind of recoil
[01:33:28] or would we have that same like this is immoral?
[01:33:32] I don't know.
[01:33:33] Like, I don't think necessarily we would.
[01:33:36] Right. Like it's he still gets to do everything,
[01:33:39] except commit horrible crimes.
[01:33:43] And so like he gets to make tons of other moral choices.
[01:33:48] He gets to do anything except do the thing that, you know,
[01:33:52] that that he was going to be put in prison for a long time
[01:33:56] to prevent him from doing anyway.
[01:33:58] So house arrest kind of.
[01:34:00] It's like having an ankle. Exactly.
[01:34:02] It's an ankle bracelet for the mind.
[01:34:03] So, yeah, no, I totally agree with that.
[01:34:06] And I actually don't think I ever.
[01:34:11] Oh, it's hard to remember.
[01:34:12] I don't think I ever felt.
[01:34:16] As if this was a horrible thing to do to somebody.
[01:34:21] I mean, aside from like the unintended, like what you say,
[01:34:24] like that that the removal of autonomy just.
[01:34:29] Even though I took it as that,
[01:34:30] I took it as they were telling me in the film,
[01:34:33] look how horrible the removal of autonomy is.
[01:34:35] And never I don't know.
[01:34:37] It never struck me as that, like something to be outraged about.
[01:34:41] And I think that the reason is because of what you just said and what what.
[01:34:46] What's this guy says?
[01:34:47] Yeah, scores scores.
[01:34:48] Yeah, yeah, I'll put a link to that.
[01:34:51] It's exactly right. Right.
[01:34:53] I mean, here's here's where I think maybe
[01:34:58] and I haven't read the article, maybe the worst of it is.
[01:35:02] To be able to be punished for your thoughts is a different kind of punishment.
[01:35:06] And that might be what people are responding to so that at the
[01:35:10] at merely even fantasizing or intending without actually acting,
[01:35:16] you are you are sick.
[01:35:18] Maybe that maybe people feel like that's you're now inside my head.
[01:35:22] Do we ever see him get sick just from fantasizing?
[01:35:29] I don't think no, no.
[01:35:31] But but presumably the images of violence.
[01:35:35] Yeah.
[01:35:35] In the room and I take it that what, you know, he's
[01:35:40] I don't know, you know, he's formulating the intention.
[01:35:42] So it's not like it's not like a reward punishment therapy
[01:35:46] where if he does punch somebody, he gets like a shock.
[01:35:50] It's actually preventing him from.
[01:35:53] So I take it that as he's formulating his intention to attack somebody,
[01:35:56] that's when he starts getting sick because he never can actually behave in that way.
[01:36:01] Yeah.
[01:36:02] I mean, we don't get many details about this, but
[01:36:06] but it's interesting that they didn't have a mirror scene of him putting on the
[01:36:12] headphones and trying to or I guess he couldn't listen to Beethoven.
[01:36:17] But yeah, but maybe the fact that, you know, Beethoven, those were the things
[01:36:23] that sent him into the fantasies in the first place and he can't listen
[01:36:27] to that.
[01:36:27] So maybe he can't get the fantasies that way.
[01:36:30] But even that is like a byproduct of the technique.
[01:36:34] And you could certainly imagine a technique that allowed you to have the fantasies.
[01:36:39] It just didn't allow you to have.
[01:36:41] I mean, it's conceivable.
[01:36:42] I don't know.
[01:36:42] I don't know if any of this is empirically plausible in any way.
[01:36:46] But yeah.
[01:36:47] And and it may very it may very well be that that's not even what
[01:36:52] what the technique as described is intended to come across.
[01:36:55] But like I'm trying to get at what people might think they might
[01:36:59] they might think rightly or wrongly that this is more intrusive in that it is
[01:37:04] it is punishing him for not acting.
[01:37:09] Right?
[01:37:10] It's almost pre crime, but it's like right, right, right before.
[01:37:14] Not like right.
[01:37:15] Not like, but in the same way that if, you know, you put a tail on him or
[01:37:21] somebody or if you put an ankle bracelet or, you know, like or like
[01:37:25] with the child molesters, if you put like something on their dicks.
[01:37:29] But I guess people have a problem with that too.
[01:37:32] But but that's like it's it's I think that's the actual difference.
[01:37:36] Like if you have somebody following you around,
[01:37:39] it's they're going to have to see you actually start doing something.
[01:37:44] It's going to be it's not going to be that the formula.
[01:37:48] He does start doing it.
[01:37:49] Like remember, he reaches for the woman.
[01:37:52] Yeah, yeah.
[01:37:54] Yeah, but I took that as being like he's trying to fight against the sickness
[01:37:59] that's already creeping in at his thoughts.
[01:38:00] Like he's like struggling against it.
[01:38:04] Heroically.
[01:38:06] I'm going to touch that.
[01:38:08] But I agree either way, I agree that it's that it's not really a case
[01:38:11] where he doesn't have autonomy.
[01:38:13] He has at least not autonomy in in the way that I think upon reflection,
[01:38:17] most people would consider being autonomous.
[01:38:19] He still he is constrained in the way that prison constrains you.
[01:38:24] In less of a way that prison in less of a way than prison strains you.
[01:38:28] Yeah, because his it is way more autonomy than he would have if he was in prison.
[01:38:34] Like way more.
[01:38:35] There's just very specific things that he that he can't do or maybe think about.
[01:38:40] But but it's the defenseless part that I think is driving a lot of it.
[01:38:45] You're right.
[01:38:45] So like the fact that anybody, if I saw him walking down the street,
[01:38:48] I could place a Beethoven and put him in a crippling
[01:38:50] Yeah.
[01:38:51] Like state of like near suicidality or actual.
[01:38:56] So then the the article, this is a long article
[01:38:59] and I don't even know if I read the whole thing carefully, especially this part.
[01:39:05] But he's like, OK, so then what is the movie about if it's not about
[01:39:10] what everybody thinks it's about?
[01:39:13] And what he was saying is that you have to think of this movie
[01:39:18] as a comment on counterculture, you know, really look at that society
[01:39:23] and look at what the movie is saying about the society.
[01:39:29] The kind of decadence, the kind of erotic art about youth in the late
[01:39:35] sixties and the way they had sort of taken control of certain things
[01:39:39] or there was a fear that they had taken control and that they had all
[01:39:42] the power and so that really this is much more of a period piece
[01:39:51] in that sense, then where you have sexual liberation
[01:39:56] and you have free love and hippies and all of that has a kind of element
[01:40:02] in the movie like it's already been sort of entrenched
[01:40:06] and internalized by the society, all this stuff.
[01:40:11] And this is the result of it.
[01:40:13] So I'm actually going to I pulled up that article.
[01:40:15] I'm going to quote from it.
[01:40:19] The main visual storytelling technique of a Clockwork Orange
[01:40:21] is to present its narrative in the context of a garish,
[01:40:24] brightly colored post sixties dystopia.
[01:40:27] Characters were interesting and exaggerated variations
[01:40:30] of op art psychedelic and hippie fashions.
[01:40:32] This is not a typical Orwellian dystopia that consists
[01:40:35] of a helpless population terrorized by some totalitarian government.
[01:40:38] This is a society that manifests the degree of social freedom
[01:40:41] that realizes much of what sixties counterculture wanted to see in mainstream society.
[01:40:47] So for recreational drug use and very
[01:40:52] lack standards about sex is it is it's just exaggerating.
[01:41:00] Sorry, it's almost like a reductio.
[01:41:01] If this is what you want.
[01:41:03] Yeah, right.
[01:41:04] And that's that's a really interesting way to view this as a kind of comment
[01:41:10] on the society, you know, that the movie was actually made in,
[01:41:14] which is 10 years after.
[01:41:16] As the article points out, Burgess definitely wasn't commenting
[01:41:22] on that because it was he wrote it in the early sixties
[01:41:25] before that kind of hippie counterculture had existed.
[01:41:29] And Kubrick is is if anything, he's known for taking
[01:41:34] works of art and making them very much his own.
[01:41:38] Yeah.
[01:41:39] Like he does not like he didn't give a fuck about like whether or not
[01:41:43] the original authors cared for his interpretation.
[01:41:46] No, certainly not in the case of the shining.
[01:41:48] But but but in this case, he stuck much more closely to the plot
[01:41:55] and the script like in the dialogue.
[01:41:58] But just because I think it's so fucking good.
[01:42:00] It's interesting that he is he might be like, you know, they
[01:42:06] describe him as essentially carrying around the book
[01:42:10] using it as as rather than a script, just sort of like, OK,
[01:42:15] in this scene, we want to recreate this.
[01:42:17] So it's interesting that he might be able to tell a slightly
[01:42:19] different story with emphasis and visual storytelling
[01:42:23] that is so close to the book that one has to really think about
[01:42:26] what what Kubrick is saying.
[01:42:29] Yeah, right.
[01:42:30] By his with his technique with his technique.
[01:42:33] Exactly. And like the ways in which he's he's being faithful
[01:42:39] versus the ways in which he is departing from the book.
[01:42:44] Just one last thing about the philosophy and then we should talk
[01:42:46] about the sort of big departure from the book.
[01:42:51] The theme of approaches to punishment and the philosophy
[01:42:54] of punishment that is if you wanted to critique the movie
[01:43:01] for being sophomoric, could you do it not in terms
[01:43:07] of presenting its thoughts on freedom and free will and autonomy?
[01:43:13] But in its kind of caricature of the retributive approach
[01:43:17] versus the utilitarian approach, the retributive approach.
[01:43:21] You have all these people saying, I for an eye, you should get
[01:43:24] what you deserve, you know, and then you have the utilitarian
[01:43:28] approach modeled by these rehabilitate rehabilitation
[01:43:33] technique people who just want to do the cheapest, most
[01:43:36] effective way of reducing suffering and reducing
[01:43:40] violence in the community.
[01:43:42] I mean, it's not necessarily superficial or simplistic,
[01:43:45] but it really is kind of the extreme, somewhat caricatured,
[01:43:51] whether it's intentional or not, somewhat caricatured versions
[01:43:55] of those philosophical positions on punishment.
[01:43:59] I mean, I think that that's it's not it's not wrong
[01:44:02] that this film tackles that.
[01:44:04] And and I think maybe, you know, we're a little bit jaded
[01:44:07] because, you know, we've spent 20 years talking about this stuff
[01:44:11] and it might seem simplistic to us, but not to other people.
[01:44:13] And I think that that's hence the emphasis in, you know,
[01:44:16] in this symmetrical structure that you were describing,
[01:44:20] the middle point is that argument.
[01:44:23] Yeah. Right.
[01:44:23] It is very much that we're not concerned with motives.
[01:44:27] No, he's insincere. That's not true goodness.
[01:44:29] That is at least one level at which this the the movie
[01:44:34] is still trying to to, you know, hold on to that theme
[01:44:40] in the book.
[01:44:41] And I think that it.
[01:44:43] But that's a different that's different than the free will thing.
[01:44:46] Like the different.
[01:44:48] It's no, no, it is different.
[01:44:49] It's it's yeah, you're right.
[01:44:51] It's it's but it is utilitarian in the response
[01:44:55] that who gives a shit about intentions?
[01:44:57] All we want is a cessation of behavior and this is works.
[01:45:01] The point is that it works.
[01:45:02] You know, we're not concerned with motive.
[01:45:04] Right.
[01:45:05] And and a deontologist really wants, you know,
[01:45:09] the extreme deontologist wants it to all be suffered.
[01:45:12] Of reason, but but even like a character of virtue theorist
[01:45:15] would at least want it to be a reflection of the true self.
[01:45:18] And Alex is true self.
[01:45:19] But that's still different, right?
[01:45:21] Like the retributivist here wants Alex to suffer
[01:45:26] for the crimes that he did.
[01:45:29] Yeah, you're right.
[01:45:29] I'm wants to.
[01:45:31] I'm really deontology into into retributivism,
[01:45:35] which is certainly consistent with it.
[01:45:37] But yeah, it is it is this desire for punishment to
[01:45:44] and I have used examples like this
[01:45:46] when I'm trying to like teach in seminars where I say,
[01:45:48] you know, imagine there is a child molester
[01:45:50] and, you know, we've developed this new pill
[01:45:52] that just completely removes all desire
[01:45:55] to ever touch another kid again.
[01:45:56] But he's, you know, victimized whatever 30 kids
[01:46:00] and is imprisoned for 20 years.
[01:46:02] Would you give him the pill and just let him go?
[01:46:05] Right. Just to boil down that intuition.
[01:46:08] Do you want Alex to suffer?
[01:46:10] Yeah. And the child molester is a good way
[01:46:14] of teasing those two things apart
[01:46:16] because nobody says in the case of the child molester,
[01:46:19] no, I want him to choose not to want to molest kids.
[01:46:23] I like I want that to be free choice, right?
[01:46:26] Yeah. The resistance to that has nothing to do with
[01:46:30] like you're restricting their free will
[01:46:32] because nobody gives a shit about like restricting the free will
[01:46:35] of a child molester to molest children.
[01:46:37] It's I want them to suffer for having molested children.
[01:46:42] That's right. That's right.
[01:46:44] This movie isn't, you know, it what makes me think
[01:46:48] at least it's not a very good presentation
[01:46:51] of this sort of classic debate is that Alex suffers.
[01:46:54] Not only does he spend time in prison,
[01:46:59] but he is then the technique itself is making suffering.
[01:47:02] But I guess that's the point of them saying, well,
[01:47:05] there's your retribution, right?
[01:47:06] When he's no right.
[01:47:08] And again, they will they will save like a good utilitarian.
[01:47:11] This is much less suffering than he would experience in prison.
[01:47:16] And it's also much less expensive
[01:47:20] if we can do this.
[01:47:21] And so all of a sudden people are only spending
[01:47:23] like a month in prison rather than right 15 years or 25 years.
[01:47:29] And and yeah, the movie then doesn't really take a stand on on the debate.
[01:47:36] It just says like ironically, turns out this is even worse suffering
[01:47:41] than you know, than than anticipated.
[01:47:44] The technique itself is like driving him mad into suicide.
[01:47:47] Like so it wasn't it wasn't a utilitarian model.
[01:47:51] Well, right.
[01:47:54] Well, sorry.
[01:47:55] And there's multiple ironies because
[01:47:58] like it also gives almost perfect retribution to every one of his victims.
[01:48:03] Right? It gives a retribution.
[01:48:06] Like the homeless person got beaten up.
[01:48:10] Exactly.
[01:48:10] Like by and now the homeless person and his gang get to beat him up.
[01:48:15] Right.
[01:48:16] And the woman gets raped and tortured and driven to suicide.
[01:48:22] And so he then also gets tortured and driven to suicide.
[01:48:27] And it's like it's literally like retribution as you draw it up in the
[01:48:33] serious.
[01:48:33] Hammurabi, Hammurabi like style.
[01:48:35] Yeah, I for an eye.
[01:48:36] Yeah.
[01:48:37] It is it is a it is all comeuppance.
[01:48:40] It's nothing but comeuppance and justice in the truest sense of retribution
[01:48:45] where it's like for, you know, like for like kind for kind.
[01:48:48] But that's why I think
[01:48:50] it's too sloppy a presentation of those two two views to really be taken seriously
[01:48:56] as a philosophical argument.
[01:48:57] I agree.
[01:48:59] And so I do think that the more definitely the more interesting thing
[01:49:03] once you get past that surface of it, you know, it's it's, you know,
[01:49:07] there's something there about about.
[01:49:11] I don't even know, you know, part of me thinks
[01:49:14] there's not even something that's that deep a commentary.
[01:49:18] It's rather a.
[01:49:22] Kubrick taking us through a journey where we are made to be
[01:49:26] to have oddly ambivalent feelings about violence, like a comment on
[01:49:32] on the you know, I am going to make you weirdly
[01:49:37] like my protagonist, even though there's no doubt in your mind that he's evil.
[01:49:42] Yeah.
[01:49:43] And and, you know, Kubrick was definitely using shock tactics,
[01:49:48] especially at the time.
[01:49:49] And I don't think the reason was to make any.
[01:49:54] I don't I'm not at least I'm not convinced that it was to make anything
[01:49:58] deeper than a claim about what an artist can take you through.
[01:50:02] Is it's more about what you experience through the viewing of this movie?
[01:50:06] Really? No, that's right.
[01:50:08] And the way in which he's he's putting us on this roller coaster
[01:50:13] of how do I think about this is through the depiction of the other
[01:50:18] characters in the world and the sort of the stylized performances.
[01:50:24] And like it's a dark world, too.
[01:50:27] It's like a weird, you know, it's a dark, weird fucking world.
[01:50:31] Like it's like so just everybody is just looks like you're viewing
[01:50:37] them through some altered lens and their performances like that.
[01:50:41] And they're like just the parents, like the parents are.
[01:50:46] Are just totally strange.
[01:50:49] And and then there's the droogs and dim.
[01:50:52] He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:50:55] Yeah, like with this odd echolalia,
[01:50:57] like just repeating everything the other guy is saying.
[01:50:59] Yeah, yeah.
[01:51:01] It's it's weird.
[01:51:01] You know, this is this is what people have said about, you know,
[01:51:06] many sort of of the modern dramas, but certainly the sopranos
[01:51:11] and maybe Breaking Bad is that you are.
[01:51:13] But David Chase was explicit about this.
[01:51:16] He wanted us to at some point he was frustrated that everybody
[01:51:22] was unwilling to condemn Tony.
[01:51:24] Right.
[01:51:24] He was testing us like harder and harder by making Tony do some
[01:51:28] pretty fucked up shit and still realizing that the audience was
[01:51:32] unwilling to turn on Tony.
[01:51:34] And I think he presented him as a sympathetic character in the beginning
[01:51:37] or at least as a mixed character and was somewhat shocked by the
[01:51:41] by the fact that the audience seemed to respond so positively to him.
[01:51:47] And I feel like that's what Kubrick is doing with us.
[01:51:51] I think it's different because I'm never.
[01:51:55] So with Tony Soprano and with to a lesser extent,
[01:52:00] Walter White and Breaking Bad, definitely a lesser extent,
[01:52:04] Walter White, but you actually really like them throughout.
[01:52:08] And I never liked Alex in the way that I liked Tony Soprano.
[01:52:13] Like I never felt he was charismatic and kind of funny.
[01:52:17] Well, there's no. Yeah, there's no depth to his character.
[01:52:20] Yeah. I mean, part of that is a movie, not a TV, but part of it is
[01:52:24] the acts of violence are more unforgivable from the very beginning.
[01:52:31] Like just you can't get on his side after the.
[01:52:36] I mean, honestly, for me, it was like the beating the homeless guy.
[01:52:40] Never mind the gang rape of the woman and the home invasion.
[01:52:44] Like just like taking that homeless guy and kicking the shit out,
[01:52:48] stomping him for no reason.
[01:52:50] Like you just can't get on the side.
[01:52:53] Even if you're just kind of admiring his.
[01:52:56] You kind of admire certain aspects of him.
[01:52:59] But Tony Soprano, you got kind of attached to.
[01:53:02] No, yeah, he's a great.
[01:53:03] He's just a great. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:53:05] No, I agree.
[01:53:06] And and I agree that there is some some some way in which if that's
[01:53:11] if that's what Kubrick wanted, he wouldn't have opened
[01:53:15] with such cold violence.
[01:53:17] Yeah, I mean, it's unrelenting at the beginning of this movie.
[01:53:20] It's yeah. Yeah.
[01:53:23] He's you know, he is a psychopath.
[01:53:26] You know, there's the way psychiatrist
[01:53:28] diagnosed psychopathy is they give him a score on this on this
[01:53:31] in depth interview, but you get a score of up to 40.
[01:53:34] And he's like a true 40, like what they would call like the most
[01:53:39] zero zero compunction, zero remorse,
[01:53:42] zero ability to to take the perspective of others or feel their pain
[01:53:48] from the get go.
[01:53:49] And this is why I think why would Kubrick do this?
[01:53:52] And why would he have Malcolm McDowell give such an electric performance?
[01:53:57] It is that he is making us feel something.
[01:54:00] He's making us almost feel like, hey, the via like I can make
[01:54:05] surprise, I can make you consume horrific moral acts
[01:54:10] just because I have a guy wearing cool false eyelashes
[01:54:13] and doing a little dance. Yeah, right.
[01:54:15] Vidi well.
[01:54:17] They get it.
[01:54:18] It's not been him who said that, right?
[01:54:21] Yeah, Vidi well to us. Yeah.
[01:54:23] And and so much of the backlash, you know, it's not like I don't want to talk about
[01:54:27] what, you know, whether it's, you know, it's
[01:54:31] it's morally horrendous to do this as an artist and, you know,
[01:54:35] whether this is misogynistic because of all the rapes.
[01:54:39] And certainly I agree that all of the acts that are represented in the film
[01:54:43] are just true evil, right?
[01:54:45] There's no I don't think Kubrick is pulling any punches by saying
[01:54:48] like by presenting these in a positive light.
[01:54:51] He wants them to be purely condemnatory acts like these are these are wrong things.
[01:55:00] But he's he's fucking with your moral sensibilities
[01:55:04] by presenting them in such an aesthetically pleasing fashion.
[01:55:10] I don't know. Yeah, no.
[01:55:11] I mean, and I like like what you said before,
[01:55:15] it's not totally clear why he's doing it.
[01:55:17] It doesn't have to be clear why he's doing it.
[01:55:19] You wouldn't want it to be that he has some sort of agenda
[01:55:22] that he wants to press about something like he's doing it
[01:55:26] because he's Kubrick and because it's coming out of him, you know, like.
[01:55:29] Yeah. And no, exactly.
[01:55:31] Kubrick is an artist.
[01:55:33] Let's talk about the last chapter of the book.
[01:55:37] So the book has a last chapter in the British version
[01:55:43] and now I think in the American version,
[01:55:44] but originally not in the American version.
[01:55:48] The second to last chapter is sort of what you see in the last scene of the movie.
[01:55:52] I was cured all right.
[01:55:54] And then two years pass and he actually just becomes a good person
[01:55:59] spontaneously, right? Which sounds horrible.
[01:56:03] It sounds like it sounds like it ruined.
[01:56:06] Am I am I right?
[01:56:08] And Kubrick even even apparently even after he found out that
[01:56:11] that's how the book ended.
[01:56:12] He was apparently it's not like I would have done that anyway.
[01:56:16] And apparently he didn't know that that was the last chapter
[01:56:20] because he he had the American version.
[01:56:23] But am I am I recalling right that that the last chapter was added
[01:56:29] at the at the request of the publisher?
[01:56:31] No, it was the opposite.
[01:56:33] The American publisher refused to publish the last chapter.
[01:56:38] He thought but I thought the original chapter was added as
[01:56:43] but I could yeah, I could have been misreading that.
[01:56:45] So the reason it's not in the American version is because the American
[01:56:48] I know this for sure that the American publisher just said, no,
[01:56:51] this is terrible ending.
[01:56:53] You're ruining your whole book and I'm not.
[01:56:57] Yeah, but that maybe the maybe.
[01:56:59] That can stand.
[01:57:00] Yeah, but I thought that that that he had included
[01:57:04] that horrible ending chapter because originally the British I don't think so.
[01:57:08] You look at interviews with him and he's like, I this is what I wanted
[01:57:11] like this. This is yeah, I think you're right.
[01:57:14] I think I think I missed I just misread something.
[01:57:16] It's it's my this. Yeah.
[01:57:18] Can you imagine like everything?
[01:57:20] It's worse in the movie.
[01:57:22] It would be worse in the movie like you have that scene.
[01:57:25] And then it's like two years later and he's like, you know,
[01:57:29] it's so ridiculous.
[01:57:32] Yeah, that never has a never has a popular press publisher made
[01:57:37] a better decision than those Americans.
[01:57:39] Like, wait, it's like the opposite of a Hollywood ending.
[01:57:43] It's like, I'm not fucking up this book.
[01:57:46] You have a great book here and you're not fucking up.
[01:57:49] Yeah. And I know that Burgess has had second thoughts about
[01:57:53] the way his interpretation, the way the book that he interpreted the book
[01:57:59] even originally, I think he did write it with that kind of
[01:58:03] this is a champion of freedom in mind.
[01:58:07] Yeah.
[01:58:08] Certainly, that's how like every interview he presented it.
[01:58:11] But I think he had some second thoughts about it towards the end.
[01:58:17] I mean, I can see somebody like, I mean, just even me, right?
[01:58:22] So suppose that I had the chops to write a novel
[01:58:25] and I decided that I was going to write a novel about this evil person
[01:58:29] and I was going to describe these horrific things.
[01:58:31] I might be tempted to solidify the point
[01:58:36] like or like undo it for the reader or or if what I'm trying to emphasize
[01:58:41] is good, that like thinking that I needed to reemphasize it at the end
[01:58:45] as a sandwich, you know, like up and and it takes it takes guts
[01:58:50] to allow the reader themselves to reach that conclusion.
[01:58:55] Yeah.
[01:58:56] That this is still undoubtedly an evil person. Right.
[01:59:00] And actually, like it makes more sense that it's a defense of free will
[01:59:05] with that last chapter. That's when it makes some sense.
[01:59:08] It's like, yeah, you don't like he can come to this on his own.
[01:59:13] You don't need to change him and it's better when he comes to it on his own.
[01:59:19] But like you you certainly in the movie and I don't know about the book,
[01:59:24] you certainly don't get the sense that he's ever going to
[01:59:28] couple years down the line without this technique, just become a better person
[01:59:32] once he gets a little older.
[01:59:34] Now, maybe Burgess's point was actually there's no reason not to think that kids
[01:59:39] like when you're because he remember he was 15.
[01:59:42] If you're a 15 year old little fricking psycho,
[01:59:45] you can become like a decent person once you have a job and some responsibility.
[01:59:50] And so maybe that was the idea like, you know, it's amazing how
[01:59:54] how the same same tale, same structure,
[01:59:58] same detail, same scenes can become a very, very different story.
[02:00:03] That yeah.
[02:00:05] And omitting that final chapter turns it into
[02:00:08] not only a bleaker portrait of perhaps,
[02:00:12] you know, the capacity to to become good,
[02:00:17] but also into a condemnation of of if that interpretation is right,
[02:00:22] condemnation of the excesses of
[02:00:26] culture at the time. Yeah.
[02:00:28] And and and a rehabilitation, right?
[02:00:30] Yeah.
[02:00:32] And that's, you know, it's rare that I have not read the book,
[02:00:36] so I don't know how good it is compared to the the film.
[02:00:40] But Kubrick is the rare director who can make films that are better
[02:00:45] than the original books.
[02:00:46] I think the book is really good.
[02:00:47] I feel like I had it at one point.
[02:00:49] I think Eddie Namious gave me the book possibly.
[02:00:54] I think he did.
[02:00:55] And like he this was when we were battling.
[02:00:58] I was anti free will.
[02:00:59] He was pro free will.
[02:01:01] He gave me the book with the final chapter and like
[02:01:05] and I either read the whole thing or I read a lot of it.
[02:01:08] And it's a it's it's amazing that whole voice,
[02:01:13] that Alex voice is in the book so clearly.
[02:01:16] And it's kind of brilliant the way that he does that.
[02:01:21] So I will say, like just as a is just
[02:01:26] as the little like pieces that we didn't get to talk about,
[02:01:30] just really quick comments that the music I love Beethoven's ninth.
[02:01:34] It's one of my favorite pieces of music.
[02:01:37] And I know that's low hanging fruit to say that like, but it's
[02:01:40] it's worth its reputation.
[02:01:41] It deserves its reputation.
[02:01:42] I think it's beautiful.
[02:01:43] And at the point where I was watching them playing the ninth
[02:01:49] with, you know, scenes of concentration camps, I turned to my friend
[02:01:53] and I was like, it's a sin to like put Beethoven's ninth next to the images.
[02:01:58] And right after that, he screams out, Alex screams, it's a sin.
[02:02:04] He's like so outraged.
[02:02:07] What? And then I imagine like I know singing in the rain is like your favorite
[02:02:11] movie and probably ruined that for you.
[02:02:15] Is that a movie? Is that a thing?
[02:02:21] But but again, just like master of his craft in the way that he used music
[02:02:25] that the synthesizers of the theme sounds so great.
[02:02:30] And then he he then at the second half of the movie turns the ninth
[02:02:34] into a synthesizer piece like it goes. It's just it's amazing.
[02:02:37] Everything is distorted like visually.
[02:02:41] The audio like everything has this kind of distorted craziness.
[02:02:46] Yeah. All right.
[02:02:49] All right, Jesus.
[02:02:53] That's it for us next time.
[02:02:55] Let's do another movie sooner than like a year from now.
[02:02:59] Oh yeah. And sorry, Joel, you got your own podcast.
[02:03:02] We didn't include you.
[02:03:03] Yeah, fuck you, Joel.
[02:03:06] Joel talked shit about me in his most recent episode.
[02:03:08] So I'm going to say it here.
[02:03:09] I want to punch you on the back of the head.
[02:03:13] All right, join us next time on Very Bad Wizards.
[02:03:18] Cue the music.