instinct = insurrection (cont.1)
Published Monday, June 26, 2006 by christopher johnson | E-mail this post
continued from friday 23 june....
One of Kubrick's best examples of his commentary on the natural human state and its place in society is the 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange. The main character, Alex, is an ultra-violent, maniacal, animalistic sociopath living in London in the not-so-far-away future. He spends his days and hours with his three droogs, beating and robbing and raping and killing, with the most natural of ease and disaffection. This behavior continues unchecked - except for the occasional mutiny within in the group that Alex must supress - until one night Alex is betrayed by his gang, and captured by the police for murder. He then goes to prison, where he is eventually enrolled in a state program to "cure" the criminal mind with an experimental new technique. The result is that Alex has been rendered incapable of performing any violent or sexual act, for once the thought enters his mind, his body turns against itself in excruciating pain and sickness. He finds himself at the mercy (or lack thereof) of all the characters he previously hurt, until he can no longer take the torture and attempts suicide. This prompts the state to revert his social conditioning in a desperate act of 'damage-control', returning Alex to his natural state of ultra-violence and disaffection.
The moral of the story which Kubrick is cynically trying to convey is that the human is by nature, a violent and insurgent animal, and to remove that behavior is destructive and unnatural. Kubrick is presenting the notion that society, or the artificial system that we have created for ourselves to keep our violent, natural behavior in check, is actually the villain, and that it actually creates more harm than good. This concept can be seen in many aspects of the film, from the derelict urban social housing system, to the Nazi-esque prison system, to the faults of modern science and technology. Kubrick is not making the case that everyone should lose all sense of restraint, but rather he is suggesting that too much society (science, technology, law) is actually bad for the human being.
The mappings depict the relationships and actions of the characters in the key scenes throughout the film. All characters have a zone of influence, which may operate above or below the others'. There is a constant entity representing 'society', who's zone of influence contains anyone operating within 'normal' societal behavior. Anyone outside this zone might be considered 'deviant', but again these labels are part of Kubrick's cynicism. The running curves are mapping the intensity of 'violence' and 'fear', as well as the intersections of these states, for each of the main villains and victims in order to examine the relationships of action and reaction. Notice that the villains (deviant) tend to have more volatile curve relationships than the victims (normal).
Perhaps the invention of society allows those who are not so inclined to violence to flourish.
In anarchy, only the strongest and the most violent would prevail passing their genes onto the next generation. The more docile human gene would soon disappear while mankind becomes increasing violent with every generation.
With law, government and science, we are endeavoring the artitst, thinker and tinkerer to pass their genes onto the next generation, and by incarcerating the more violent of our species, their genes have less chance of passing onto the next generation.
In the end man moves to the next evolution depending on whose genes are passed on.