A Clockwork Orange - Criminology in the Big Screen

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A CLOCKWORK ORANGE CRIMINOLOGY IN THE BIG SCREEN

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Rita Pereira

Criminology, May 2013

Teacher Guilherme Marques Pedro

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Crime films as a whole can be seen to make use of, exemplify and give voice to wider assumptions, concerns and anxieties about social life, social

disorder and social change.

Rafter, 2000 This essay intends to demonstrate how the film A Clockwork Orange can be seen to show the way occidental society perceives crime, and how it goes hand in hand with the evolution of criminological approaches throughout History. In order to do that it will cover the three main stages of both the picture and any common crime: the background from where it arises, society's reaction to it (imprisonment) and the final attempt to cure the main character's penchant for violence. It is a type of analysis that is most relevant to a complete understanding of crime as seen through the lenses of the community when this community is most exposed: while producing works of art and entertainment whose main goal is not to teach a criminology class. This art of masses goes so far as to shape our framework of thought and concepts of good and normality. But can it also be the other way around — can it be the mirror on which the penal movements we have experienced as a society are reflected? THE BIRTH OF CRIME AND ITS BACKGROUND (ALEX, THE CRIMINAL1)

"Is it some devil that crawls inside of you?" Most films of what is generally called legal cinema revolve around courts and judicial processes. The case of A Clockwork Orange is an exception, as we never actually see the judicial procedure that must have taken place. In this sense it defies the usual categorization by genre: what is it, a drama, a thriller? Can it also be a comedy? Be that as it may, it is uncontroversial that it can integrate any legal cinema list: it depicts a very complete picture of crime and its complexities, from the point of view of a very special character, Alexander DeLarge. The film opens with a zoom out of Alex and his group, whom he calls his "droogs" (throughout all the film he is the narrator, and his language is the very peculiar language invented by Burgess, the Nadsat). They are drinking a glass of milk in a bar, where they decide to go out and do, in the words of Alex, some of the "old ultra-violent", which turns out to be molesting an older man (an alcoholic vagrant)

                                                                                                               1 For the subtitles I will borrow the terminology used by Gehrke, characterizing Alex as "the criminal", "the convict" and "the patient".

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under a bridge, getting into a fight with a rival gang and finally driving (in a stolen car) to a couple's house, where they rape the woman while brutalizing the man. Without going any further into the narrative we can already dive into one important aspect: that of the motivations behind these crimes. From the very beginning we understand Alex is not being led by his friends, nor does he appear to have some ulterior motive, such as revenge or stealing for living. His family is introduced to us: a couple with no apparent economical problems, living in a "municipal flat block", and providing Alex with all he wants — Beethoven's music tapes, a pet snake, a room with a number combination lock. The school of thought that studies the criminality of behaviour related to social disorganization apparently cannot help us here, since Alex's background is wealthy enough and seems socially integrated. There is, however, a peculiarity visible throughout the whole film, regarding his family. When we first get to know them, we see his mother knocking on his door and trying to make him get up to go to school. We know he had just arrived some moments ago from the night of violence described above, but we realize she does not know it, nor does she seem too preoccupied when Alex excuses himself from school because he is supposedly sick (although he has not gone to school the whole week). She rapidly withdraws from his room and goes to the kitchen to make breakfast, as she must be ready soon to go to work. His father is there, eating (it is the first time we see him), and he asks for Alex and wonders where he could be spending his evenings. The mother replies "like he says, is mostly odd things he does", then adding "helping like, here and there, as it might be". The oblivious state these parents are in is shocking, especially when we learn that Alex has already been in a corrective school and is now supervised by a man whom he calls his "post-corrective advisor". Alex appears as a menace on the loose, with no one to tame him: his advisor cannot do more than warn him, and his parents do not make any efforts to be more present in his life, their interference being limited to question him lightly, unconcerned even with the fact that he is (and this they know for sure) missing school.

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The film intends clearly to leave us pondering the weight of Alex's relationship with his parents in his inclination towards crime. In the tradition of Durkheim’s thought, criminality can be a consequence of the lack of social organization in the sense of rupture of the social link that bonds individuals in organizations such as family. Shaw and Mackey (Clive R. Hollin, 2007: 86) associate delinquency with the loosening of social controls, like the educational system, family and the church: with their influence diminished, people do not feel the need to comply with rules set by the same community to which they now do not feel associated. This kind of anomie can be especially influential with adolescents, as they are more inclined to have problems in their relationships with parents and school, and more vulnerable to the pressures of group behaviour and the search for the ultimate adrenal rush. T. Hirschi, in his book Causes of Delinquency (1969), explored precisely this side of delinquency. He thought we should look not at the question "why do certain individuals commit crimes" but rather "why do most people respect the law", for most people would naturally commit crimes in order to satisfy their desires and innate egoism, but are prevented of doing so by the community. Alex is an adolescent integrated in a gang, where he is listened to and obeyed, and with whom he shares a common language, filled with mannerisms. Another way of better understanding his behaviour is Gabriel Tarde's imitation of deviance theory, according to which the criminal tries to imitate someone he admires, whether it is a figure of authority or simply his peers. This phenomenon can be related to that of gangs, "informal social groups" that "have no membership rosters, no organizational charts, no constitutions and bylaws, no written criteria for membership or for acceptable or unacceptable behavior" (Malcolm W. Klein, 2000: 111). They form another type of social structure that replaces those of the rest of the community, enabling its members to escape the social constraints imposed by the outsiders and build a system of norms of their own. The film does not explicitly endorse these ideas as much as it implies them, by way of the dialogues between the characters and the general feeling we are left with after being presented with Alex's circle. In the mouth of the old man at the beginning of the film we ear that "It is a stinky world because there is no more law and order

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about it", as plausible a discourse as that of any old man referring to the loss of values of the current generation. Alex's post-corrective advisor, on the other hand, mentions that he does not understand what "is wrong with you all" ("you all" being young delinquents), then adding "We have been studying you for some time but we get no farther with our studies. You have a good family, good brain… Is it some devil that crawls inside of you?" It is a line by a fictional character, but it could easily have been the complaint of any law-abiding real citizen perplexed by the reasons that motivate those who become criminals. THE PANOPTIC PRISON (ALEX, THE CONVICT)

"Crime in the midst of punishment" Alex is finally caught after entering the house and gymnasium of an older woman and killing her (accidently, it appears, because he only wanted to maim her in order to steal her belongings). His gang — the true authors behind the crime and responsible for his arrest as a revenge for the way he treated them — escapes, and he is presumably taken to trial (which we never see) and then prison. Here is the first sequence where Alex is portrayed not as a delinquent and a criminal, but almost as a victim. To begin with, victim of the terrible conditions of the facilities, also not expressly revealed to us but hinted at by the sterile scenarios and overcrowded areas. Victim also of the senseless violence of his warders. They are proud of their army-like discipline and brutal humiliation of the inmates, and we see it mainly when Alex is first admitted to the prison and is ordered to undress and stand while his anus is scrutinised and he is being asked about personal ideas, such as religion or his sexual orientation. Finally, victim of the other inmates, specially those he calls "perverts". The prison, as a physical institution, is similar to the famous Panopticon first envisioned by Jeremy Bentham. It is used as a means for the enactment of power, a disciplinary mechanism that facilitates the control of a few over many. We never see

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Alex in his cell, only in common areas such as the courtyard and library, but we have no difficulty in imagining, from the aerial view presented in the film, that its cells are "like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible" (Foucault, 1995: 195). Once again, what we merely deduce from what is shown is converted into the lines of the characters: when visiting the facilities to choose an inmate to take with him for the "Ludovico technique" experiment (which we will explore below), the Minister of the Interior expresses his negative view on prisons and the gathering of inmates together, saying that it only results in "concentrated criminality. Crime in the midst of punishment." The prison's director agrees, adding that in order to improve things "we need larger prisons, more money". The agent of the government is then adamant: "The government can be no longer concerned with outmoded penological theories (...) Common criminals like this are best dealt with on a purely curative basis. Kill the criminal reflex, that's all". Panoptic prisons are now the enemy, in the words of this character; the public opinion suffers a transformation in the film analogous to that experienced by criminological theory in real life, a shift from the classical to the positivist theory, from searching the solution to crime in the law and the criminal system to look for it in the criminal individual himself. AVERSION THERAPY AND FREE WILL (ALEX, THE PATIENT)

"Goodness is chosen" Having heard there is a way of being released of prison earlier than expected, Alex manages to be the one chosen by the Minister of Interior to be submitted to the new experiment against criminality: the Ludovico technique. This method consists in drugging him and then making him watch violent films, forced by a straightjacket and clamps in the eyes (for preventing him from shutting them). At first Alex is even enjoying the films, displaying images of actions very akin to his own (beating, raping,

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etc.), but at some point he starts feeling sick and wishes they would stop showing those images. As he is submitted to more than one of those sessions, we are told that he is not the first one to be feeling those effects, and that they comprise some kind of body paralysis and "deep feelings of terror and helplessness" (one of the earlier subjects has supposedly described it as "being like death"). The purpose? Creating an inevitable connection in the body and mind of the subject between violence and sickness, forcing him to associate the practice of those actions with the illness that follows them. As a nurse puts it, it is the body that now responds to violence, and in this way the criminals are "cured", since only those who are not healthy do not feel terror and nausea towards violence. It is not such a surprising idea, nor an unreal one: it has been studied under the name of "Behaviorism". Though not a criminological concept, it can also be a criminological method, using conditioning mechanisms to force on criminals the behavior deemed appropriate. One easy way to understand it is thinking about Ivan Pavlov's experiment on dogs: a certain stimulus causes the individual to behave in a certain way. In this particular case, the stimulus is an unpleasant sensation, which forces the individual to refrain from behaving in a violent manner. This is "aversion therapy", an example of criminal behaviorism. It works by "pairing stimulus that elicits pleasure with a noxious stimulus (typically a light electric shock or a noxious odor)" (Vito and Maahs, 2011: 120). Its main advantage, as presented by its defenders, is its simplicity, which makes it easy to use in different types of environments, even within families (as the non formal contract decided between parents and child about chores to complete and behaviors to avoid). Behaviorism may seem the magical solution to the crime problem, but it has two unavoidable limits: a functional and an ethical one. The functional limit is very unsurprising, once we think of it: if we are able to condition a particular behaviour, it is only natural that that behaviour can be conditioned back. In other words, the same method applied to conditioning — repeated stimulus — can be used to overcome the conditioned behaviour. The fact that it is a solution that can wear off makes it an unreliable one. But our film does not explore this side of behaviorism, suggesting

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only at the end that Alex is back to his usual self after trying to commit suicide; it is the second limit we talked about, the ethical one, that really matters. In fact, Alex's free will is affected, since he cannot freely choose to behave as he would like, the wave of sickness that overcomes him being too strong to bear. That raises a philosophical question, one that is very relevant in the field of criminology: is it fair or just to deprive a man — any man, even a criminal — of his free will? These concerns are addressed in the film through the character of the priest in the prison. Ever since Alex told him of his wish of being submitted to the treatment he told him that it wasn't the treatment that would make him a good person: "Goodness comes from within. Goodness is chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man." Later, upon the admission of the doctors that Alex is cured and is now "impelled towards the good by paradoxically being impelled towards evil" he confronts them with the fact that he has no real choice in the mater, "he ceases to be a wrongdoer but also a creature capable of moral choice." It is evident for all that Alex's new behaviour is not the result of his good intentions, quite the contrary; it is because he feels the urge to commit violent acts that the physical sickness appears, inhibiting him from doing so. Besides, with conditioning he lost also the possibility of hearing his beloved Beethoven without being sick; he was not only deprived of his will but also of some non-violent personal characteristics. Why is this so important to criminology? For the reason that no policy against crime is adequate if it violates the inner core of what it means to be human and a free individual of our community: our human rights and dignity. That is the boundary upon which we build our legal system, and agree to be submitted to penal rules. This type of "totalitarismo mental" (Rivaya and De Cima, 2004: 321) is not admissible. Once more, the film accompanies this trail of thought lived by our thinkers, and so it ends with the recovery of Alex after the public reaction as expressed by captions of newspapers: "government accused of inhuman means in crime reform", "doctors blame government scientists for 'changing Alex's nature'". The fictional community of the film, as our real society today, does not view techniques like Ludovico's as desirable or morally acceptable.

CONCLUSION The great thing about cinema — besides popcorn — is that it allows different interpretations and opinions, depending on the spectator, the mood he is in, his age, his experience in life. A clockwork orange is a perfect example of that, any analysis of it being necessarily incomplete such is its complexity. Nonetheless, if we see it through criminological lenses it is undisputable that it is a story of crimes and punishment, depicting "the simultaneous interplay of multiple and sometimes contradictory psychological impulses, giving a fuller, deeper, and more complex view" on crime (Rafter and Brown, 2011: 65).

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The aim of this essay was to demonstrate how this cinematic narrative parallels historical criminology discourses, displaying "key theoretical propositions and analytical schemata through which criminological perspectives describe and explain law-breaking behavior" (Tzanelli, Yar and O'Brien, 2005: 99). Films do not only reproduce dominant perceptions of crime, but also criticize and revise them — as this essay tried to show, with the sequential evolution of crime fighting policies seen on the screen and accompanied by characters voicing those transformations. Like the Law, Cinema is really nothing more than a particular way of looking at and portraying life.

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