Viddy Well, My Brothers - A short piece about Clockwork Ultra

Peeling an MK- Orange

   Let me state now that I believe that the primary theme of Clockwork Orange is mind control.

   Allow me to quote from an interview with Kubrick regarding CO:

"The central idea of the film has to do with the question of free-will. Do we lose our humanity if we are deprived of the choice between good and evil? Do we become, as the title suggests, A Clockwork Orange? Recent experiments in conditioning and mind control on volunteer prisoners in America have taken this question out of the realm of science-fiction." 




   The similarities with MKULTRA (The documented CIA excursion into mind control) are ramapant.
The CIA pushed forward with MKULTRA with the idea that they were trying to keep up with Soviet and Chinese research demonstrated on POWs in the Korean War.


   Now, while I was researching the Clockwork Orange and Manson connections,

Michel Ciment: In your films the State is worse than the criminals but the scientists are worse than the State.

Kubrick: I wouldn't put it that way. Modern science seems to be very dangerous because it has given us the power to destroy ourselves before we know how to handle it. On the other hand, it is foolish to blame science for its discoveries, and in any case, we cannot control science. Who would do it, anyway? Politicians are certainly not qualified to make the necessary technical decisions. Prior to the first atomic bomb tests at Los Alamos, a small group of physicists working on the project argued against the test because they thought there was a possibility that the detonation of the bomb might cause a chain reaction which would destroy the entire planet. But the majority of the physicists disagreed with them and recommended that the test be carried out. The decision to ignore this dire warning and proceed with the test was made by political and military minds who could certainly not understand the physics involved in either side of the argument. One would have thought that if even a minority of the physicians thought the test might destroy the Earth no sane men would decide to carry it out. The fact that the Earth is still here doesn't alter the mind-boggling decision which was made at that time.

 

It's just my interpretation but it's just seems that Kubrick says one thing but means another. 'No sane man'? Was it the politicians that pushed to have the Hadron Collider move forward? I mean, after all, "...it is foolish to blame science for its discoveries..."

Then there's this piece that really snapped my head. Responding to a question about the level of violence in the film, Kubrick says:

"It is absolutely essential that Alex is seen to be guilty of a terrible violence against society, so that when he is eventually transformed by the State into a harmless zombie you can reach a meaningful conclusion about the relative rights and wrongs. If we did not see Alex first as a brutal and merciless thug it would be too easy to agree that the State is involved in a worse evil in depriving him of his freedom to choose between good and evil. It must be clear that it is wrong to turn even unforgivably vicious criminals into vegetables, otherwise the story would fall into the same logical trap as did the old, anti-lynching Hollywood westerns which always nullified their theme by lynching an innocent person. Of course no one will disagree that you shouldn't lynch an innocent person -- but will they agree that it's just as bad to lynch a guilty person, perhaps even someone guilty of a horrible crime? And so it is with conditioning Alex."

I feel like I'm hearing two very different things here. One is, that it was necessary to show the horrible things Alex does, in order to balance what the state does to him. If your goal is to show, "It must be clear that it is wrong to turn even unforgivably vicious criminals into vegetables..." then why do you need to make it difficult to see the State is '...involved in a worse evil...?" Am I missing something?

I also feel that Kubrick's answer is a powerful statement against mind control and the manipulation of public opinion, no matter what the motivation behind it. In the beginning of the interview with Ciment, he states,

 Is this what Kubrick referred to as a decision made by politicians? 

The shadow that MKULTRA casts is larger than many realize. 

So my point is, was Kubrick speaking from the viewpoint of a guilty conscience? Or as a possible victim or witness to other victims?