Hacker Cinema
A Clockwork Orange
1971 · Film · 137 min
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
In a near-future Britain, young Alexander DeLarge and his pals get their kicks beating and raping anyone they please. When not destroying the lives of others, Alex swoons to the music of Beethoven. The state, eager to crack down on juvenile crime, gives an incarcerated Alex the option to undergo an invasive procedure that'll rob him of all personal agency. In a time when conscience is a commodity, can Alex change his tune?
23 positive8 negative4 mixed76 neutralfrom 111 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
114 comments on Hacker News
If you're just having fun with it, there are a whole bunch of other things that produce interesting options, like asking it to theme according to a movie (think Clockwork Orange, Backrooms, anything with a strong aesthetic), or throw screenshots and photos at it and use it as a "design system" (magazine/print layouts can work well with this on stronger models).
I think it is like around 2010 or so I use to upload just this god awful music to early Sound Cloud because it was easy to make music with a DAW.
I even remember being on a psytrance production music mailing list 25 years ago and 95% of the tracks people posted were absolutely terrible, including myself.
I have seen a few incredible pieces from AI video but most has just not been that interesting. Then even the incredible pieces are 5 second one offs. No narrative, no continuity. I think of a random, real 5 second clip from Clockwork Orange with no backstory or context in the movie, who cares? Even the most visually interesting scenes wouldn't make sense and would be boring.
Right now it seems like we are at the stage of sampling random 5 second clips from early sound cloud and concluding this is the artistic utility of an entire new technology like DAW software and VST synths. That is obviously absurd.
"They also made a movie called This is England which straightforwardly depicts young English nationalists"
Not sure who you think "they" are but "This is England" is superb. It deals with a lot of issues, way beyond just nationalism and the like.
Perhaps you would like to fix your gimlet gaze on "A Clockwork Orange" and deliver a further withering critique.
A simple explanation regarding the increase of the number of nationalists within England is the population has increased. QED.
Doesn't matter: the types of people criticizing such a decision happens to also be the type of people who have zero compassion for the victims of crime. "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent" and all that comes to mind.
Rehabilitation at all cost / dubious redemption is the subject of the satire movie "A clockwork orange".
HN shall upload and upvotes articles like these, implying inmates are suffering horrible injustice in red states. But same HN shall not upvote any article about a blonde woman ukrainian refugee getting slaughtered in the neck and dying while hearing the last words "take that white girl".
Poor criminal: he now has to go the prison's library to read and cannot receive books and magazines directly.
Such injustice.
Certainly you have your Clockwork Orange movie theater setup in your house right?
I can't.
I have a go to list of positive things to think about.
I have physical tactile things (a small rock I carry around) that brings me joy when I touch it because it reminds me of good times.
It is very easy for me to get stuck in negative thought loops, and no matter how many things I see / feel / hear / ... it doesn't get better (at least in the short term).
The question your asking to me is akin to "can't people control what they see" thinking it's like a movie you can choose to go and attend, when instead it's like "A Clockwork Orange" where in fact I do not get to control what I see.
>Might only be available in Europe & Africa though.
Yep. We just need to move Manhattan there. Problem solved.
It's crazy how some people think there's no solution when the solution is "clear as an unmuddied lake...As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer."[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)
If you're only interested in great movies, no others allowed, then the top 50,000 is bound to disappoint as there aren't that many great movies yet. Setting it to 10k this is what I got in my first 5 (well spread) clicks:
- Ikiru (1952): A fantastic movie, also in the above list
- A Clockwork Orange (1971): Alright, nobody is going to believe these are random if I keep pulling these...
- Tracks (2013): Haven't seen this one, doesn't seem particularly astounding but I'd probably watch it, especially if my wife was wanting to watch something we haven't seen together.
- Songbird (2020): This one looks a bit garbage to me, probably wouldn't watch.
- Osmosis Jones (2001): Watched a few times, maybe a bit of nostalgia but it has been a few years so I would throw this up. Not deserving of the top 1000 by any means... but also not Leprechaun 5: In the Hood (2001).
And that seems pretty reasonable. I'm only about 800 movies in (since I've started tracking), of those only ~400 are in the original 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list. To me watching straight through the various compendiums of the best movies is actually more dull than mixing in other things like the latest pop films or some stuff that wouldn't make many "top" lists but isn't necessarily bad. It's a bit like touring the best restaurants in a new area - if you do them all in a row then you just lose some of the feeling of variety. I doubt Tracks will leave an impact on my soul to the level of Ikiru, but I still want to watch things like that often.
I guess we're also going to have to ban movies like A Clockwork Orange then. Stanley Kubrick and all the other people involved in production? 100% bad people.
Careful on that slippery slope, you might fall and break something!
Kubrick frequently uses a two act - Barry Lyndon where he rises from nothing to peak at the exact midpoint and then falls to nothing at the end, or Clockwork Orange where he does a bunch of horrible things in the first half and the consequences are mirrored around the midpoint of the movie.
> "Game Transfer Phenomenon"
There was a phrase for this in the "old days" too, it was called "Lost in Make Believe".
As pointed out in numerous other comments, this phenomenon is not limited to video games. It can also happen after seeing movies, or even reading books. Especially with long series of books, I knew several people in high school who started living "The Lord of the Rings" and even "Clockwork Orange".
There are significant differences though:
1) As mentioned in the article: the extreme realism of video games
2) Often under emphasized: the amount of a person's waking hours spent in the activity
3) Of very serious consequences, i.e. modern incel-ism: the extreme violence of many video games
4) Something certain to get me downvoted: the significantly increased susceptibility to "Lost in Make Believe" of people raised in the internet/"phone" era (this point is very intertwined with point 2)
I can see how these factors can cause the "Lost in Make Believe" phenomenon to be much more serious with a modern gamu than with previous media. The extreme violence is certainly not unique to games either, books and movies also exhibit it, and bad behavior from role playing Clockwork Orange could rival Grand Theft Auto in some people.
You're thinking about this all wrong.
When the NSA declares for the dictator the fact they see everything is a great and easy vector for protest.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/22/business/facebook-content-moderators-kenya-ptsd-intl/index.html
Everything is backdoored. We can traumatize them to death. They've hooked themselves up to US! TO US!? Can you fucking imagine?
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2493842/a-clockwork-orange-and-other-movies-with-terrifying-eye-scenes
Any time you see a PSA about security in the next few months just picture the last sad little lickspittle training their psyops AI to pump this shit out and Tulsi Gabbard in latex with a whip standing behind him. He's shitting himself. She's sending pictures of his console to the signal chat.
*I swear I'm not bugging the scotch. This is just fucking hilarious timing.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-national-security-agency-tim-haugh-ec08b455e2c1112f5c6bb1881fad73e2
There is a lot of truth to that, and it applies to many of the other films people have mentioned in this thread.
It's easy to see why someone would find aspects of 'Saving Private Ryan' attractive (eg: Private Jackson, the sharpshooter), and it doesn't require much imagination to see how aspects even of Nazi villains can be attractive (they had the best uniforms).
It's more difficult to see how 'Born on the Fourth of July' would leave anyone - even a sadist - enthusiastic about war.
It's not like Kubrik's 'Clockwork Orange' in which some of the violence, in a sick way, empowers the main character.
Instead, the main character pathetically bumbles into shooting people he doesn't mean to, is shot himself, and turns into an angry loser in a wheelchair (until he finds his calling as a peace activist).
It's subtle in how it delivers it's brilliance: A Clockwork Orange.
Warning: spoilers follow that do not diminish the knock out punch this work delivers: It's written in it's own language, a mixture of Russian and UK slang, which one cannot read at first. About 3 chapters in, the language clicks and then a good reader starts the book over from the beginning. It is a popular book due to the film, and the ultra violence depicted within, but it is also ground breaking philosophical literature because the main character is a hardened criminal and is the narrator, he spends the entire novel explaining his philosophy of life, which by the end of the novel you realize is the same philosophy of modern politics, and the UK edition of the novel ends with the entire novel being the story of a senior member of parliament's youth origin story.
The fact that the novel is in a fictional language increases the reader's submersion in the story line, creating one of the most impactful novels I know.
Another great read, much shorter, more like getting into a street brawl: Notes From The Underground by Dostoyevsky. Practically the creator of self critical essays, and often the first read for people interested in Existentialism.
Anything from the "Beat Generation" authors, anything from Philip K Dick, anything from Herman Hesse.
I will have to watch it again. I only watched it once when it came out, at a time when Clockwork Orange was my favorite movie.
I remember it being beautiful and interesting visually(and of course the incredible backwards opera music ritual scene) while missing the plot so completely after reading this article and some of the comments.
> I recall Kubrick being bothered by the heavy censorship and editing by the UK film board, I wonder if we will ever get to see those removed scenes, what, and why they were removed etc.
I don't believe Kubrick had particular problems with the British Board of Film Censors.
The BBFC never censored A Clockwork Orange, for example. They passed it without cuts, though they had seen a pre-print of the first completed half of the movie as was the custom, and had been concerned that it might not get certification. The censor commended the final movie.
Kubrick personally pulled it from distribution in the UK, after they had passed it and it had a limited release.
https://www.bbfc.co.uk/education/case-studies/clockwork-orange
The BBFC do not and did not edit films. They are not a government body. They did once call themselves censors (the words of the acronym changed in the 80s), but the point of the BBFC was that the film industry was censoring its own work proactively, and maintaining their own certifications, to avoid government doing it. Similar to what the MPA(A) did.
They still sometimes suggest edits that would keep a film within a particular certification.
In the case of Eyes Wide Shut, it wasn't the BBFC that made any decisions to edit and cut that film; Warner Bros themselves did, based on the US classification they were aiming for.
> Kubrick died within a week of the film release, perhaps he knew too much, perhaps not.
Or perhaps, after a stressful filming, editing and production schedule, a 70 year old man had a heart attack in his sleep.
Thanks for sharing that!
imo the manga is often better the the anime adaption even if they replicate everything 1:1
A bit off topic but I found the text version of clockwork orange very hard to read and not nearly as entertaining as the movie - still an impressive piece of art.
Agree. Also, Kubrick's other works strongly emphasize lighting, composition, music, and effects over plot. Just look at Barry Lyndon's candlelit scenes (which look like paintings by the Dutch masters), Eye's Wide Shut's Christmas lights, Clockwork Orange's use of Beethoven, or 2001's match cut from a bone to a spaceship. You can't achieve those in a book, because they are purely audiovisual phenomena. And movies have different constraints: like time limits.
King doesn't have to worry at all about what the score is, or how to film a wall of blood. It's simply not part of the medium. The requirements and constraints are completely different.
For convenience, I asked ChatGPT to create this table, which summarizes how many times each movie has been mentioned in this conversation so far. It got a few counts wrong (as usual), but it still gives a good sense of the frequency. I hope it can be useful to someone:
| Movie | Number of Mentions | |-------------------------------------------|---------------------| | The Matrix | 9 | | Lord of the Rings Trilogy | 8 | | Pulp Fiction | 8 | | Alien | 7 | | Fight Club | 7 | | Ghostbusters | 6 | | Die Hard | 5 | | Back to the Future | 5 | | Inception | 5 | | Star Wars Trilogy (original) | 5 | | Groundhog Day | 5 | | Terminator 1 & 2 | 5 | | Jurassic Park | 4 | | The Thing | 4 | | The Fifth Element | 4 | | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | 4 | | Ghost in the Shell | 4 | | Interstellar | 4 | | Casablanca | 3 | | Office Space | 3 | | Shawshank Redemption | 3 | | The Godfather Trilogy | 3 | | The Blues Brothers | 3 | | Blade Runner | 3 | | Mad Max: Fury Road | 3 | | Unforgiven | 3 | | Total Recall (1990) | 3 | | The Crow | 3 | | The Princess Bride | 3 | | Akira | 3 | | The Big Lebowski | 3 | | Guardians of the Galaxy | 3 | | American Psycho | 3 | | Indiana Jones Trilogy | 3 | | Kiki’s Delivery Service | 2 | | Ratatouille | 2 | | A Clockwork Orange | 2 | | Mission Impossible (various) | 2 | | Casino Royale | 2 | | Skyfall | 2 | | Ferris Bueller's Day Off | 2 | | Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan | 2 | | Apocalypse Now | 2 | | The Shining | 2 | | Groundhog Day | 2 | | Donnie Darko | 2 | | Dune (2021) | 2 | | Gladiator | 2 | | Predator | 2 | | Seven/Se7en | 2 | | The Dark Knight | 2 | | Snatch | 2 | | Prometheus | 2 | | Schindler’s List | 2 | | The Wolf of Wall Street | 2 | | Dr. Strangelove | 2 | | Silence of the Lambs | 2 | | Kill Bill | 2 | | Real Genius | 2 | | Top Secret! | 2 | | Tenet | 2 | | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | 2 | | The Adjustment Bureau | 2 | | The Expanse | 2 | | Pulp Fiction | 2 |
What a great question! Many interesting movies to check out in these comments!
My own list, I re-watch movies the same way I re-listen to music, often to get in a particular mode of thinking, as they become familiar, I mostly daydream while appreciating some particular concept and whatever new minutiae, or ways of understanding, creeps into my mind.
Hackers - 30+ times, for dreaming about a world that never was and never will be, for reminding myself how cool computers used to seem.
The Crow - 20+ times, for thinking about the world
Koyaanisqatsi - 15+ times, for thinking about my life in the world
Alien - 10+ times, for thinking about the future that passed us by
Terminator 1 and 2 - 10+ times, for examining a time that never was, or passed me by, and because Arnold is awesome!
A Clockwork Orange, 10+ times, to reflect on violence and aesthetic
Event Horizon, 10+ times, mostly for the aesthetic, and who dosen't love spaceships from hell ?
1984 - 5+ times, for thinking about humanity and society
Requiem for a Dream - 5+ times, for thinking about the value of life, and what society is
Once upon a time in the west - 5+ times, for thinking about loss, revenge and justice
Genocyber - 5+ times, to think about what life is for anyway
Stalker - 5+ times, frankly, mostly to look at the pretty pictures.
Lots of other amazing movies, I probably forgot some (time to watch again?)
Bonus:
TV Shows I've watched more than 10 times:
Star Trek TNG
Neon Genesis Evangelion
A Clockwork Orange is a really great example of how ultra-violence in film doesn’t age well. In the past I could watch the events in the rich folks’ home and understand the actions the Droogs took were bad, thus they deserved their respective punishments. I felt able to discuss their punishments and whether it was okay for the state to enact violence in response to violent offenders. But now… that scene absolutely horrifies me,- the sheer wanton violence of it is just too much and as such I’ve stopped watching the film entirely.
All that has changed in that time, I think, is that I’ve grown older (approx. 20 years). Presumably in that time I’ve better learned about the long term impact of violence. Perhaps I’ve become more empathetic as I’ve matured. Either way, it culminates in no longer being able to recommend A Clockwork Orange as a “must watch”.
(I’m being sensitive around potential triggers in my description of the scene).
I saw "Psycho" probably over four decades ago. I think I came to it from its reputation — a terrifying film for its time, Hitchcock, apparently a scary shower scene... I would not have judged it when I was that age as to whether it was "self-actualizing art" or not (whatever that means).
My only recollection was that I found the ending shocking and unexpected.
Learning about it afterwards, I see how there were interesting aspects of "Psycho", particularly for its time, that went over my head when I was young: that the "protagonist" at the start of the film stole money and so should not have been sympathetic, that they switched protagonists half-way through.... It was a departure for sure for Hollywood.
I have been working through the "1001 Films to See Before You Die" for a few years now and so have come upon films like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" at an age now where I seem to have lost my patience for depictions of cruelty.
I liked "A Clockwork Orange" when I was younger, like it less now.
Another example, I had heard about "Pink Flamingos" from its reputation but only saw it recently due to its being on "1001 Films". Hard pass on that film too (although I like some of John Waters later films).
Kubrick’s results were all over the map. He made maybe three great films:
Dr. Strangelove
Full Metal Jacket
A Clockwork Orange
A bunch of not bad films:
2001
Lolita
Barry Lyndon
The Shining
Spartacus
One real turd of a film:
Eyes Wide Shut
And a bunch of forgettable filler:
All the other films he made.
Compare this to the Anti-Kubrick, Clint Eastwood, who made:
Unforgiven
Mystic River
Million Dollar Baby
Letters From Iwo Jima
Gran Torino
And a bunch of okay films:
Pretty much everything else
And it’s pretty obvious that you don’t need to be an abusive taskmaster like Kubrick to make great art.
Here's my take as a person with two linguistics degrees, one of which had a big computational focus on historical change:
The person who constructed the languages eschewed using the literary influences because he didn't believe that the phonemic inventory would be consistent over tens of thousands of years due to prior information that we have about diachronic change in language families.
What he fails to take into account is the fact that the wide availability of audiovisual distribution of language has a conservational effect that we've not really seen before. So for instance, while there is a large variety of English dialects in the US, "Broadcast English" and "General American" are quite stable and broadly available.
What they've done with the constructed languages of Dune would be like if they made a new Clockwork Orange movie without any of the Nadsat dialect. It robs something from the original text, all so a hobbyist can make something internally consistent that he's personally satisfied with and that may be marketed to future consumers. That sucks.
Disappointed to not see A Clockwork Orange and Thamesmead
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)
A Clockwork Orange has been cited in a murder case. It is not the first time[1] mentions a number of cases linked to the book or movie, including this one:
> Arguably the most notorious of all is Peter Foster, who the British press dubbed the ‘Clockwork Orange killer’.
> Foster would beat and torture women and was found guilty of murdering two of his former wives. A court heard how he would dress up as the film's protagonist, Alex, and become violent when he heard the film’s theme song.
[1] https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/a-clockwork-orange-cited-abner-aquilina-dembska-murder.929314
I've always interpreted the movie differently, and in relation to the other Kubrick movies (for example Barry Lyndon). I think Kubrick was fascinated by the relationship between violence and success- a nihilistic view of humans as eternally engaged in a violent struggle to subdue each other.
A Clockwork Orange is not about a happy ending in which a young, violent and brilliant teenager finally decides to get an apartment and a job; it's about that teenager realising that he can channel his violence in a much more productive way. Or to put it more clearly: the minister that spoon-feeds him at the end is a psychopath possibly worse than Alex- but one in a suit, with vast resources and power, because he uses violence in a more covert and clever way. So the growth of the main character that we expect at the end of a good story is there, it's just not a happy ending (for us).
I remember when, in our high-school english class, the teacher asked us to reflect on Chapter 21 of A Clockwork Orange and a girl in the back of the class interjected "but there's only 20 chapters in my book!". Turns out the school had both the English and American editions co-mingled.
The omission of that chapter in the American book and Kubrick's adaption undercuts the whole point of the story in my opinion. When the film ended, I felt like my time had been wasted and that I'd been dragged back to the beginning all over again.
Here's a quote from one of the greats that comes to my mind whenever an author says "I regret creating that" (and that includes you Sir Tim Berners-Lee)
"You know, Nietzsche didn’t, you know, from his drawing room give birth to a century of cannonade, slaughter, concentration camps, CIA subterfuge, the raping and the murdering of nuns, the bombing of continents, the despoiling of beaches and the ruin of a planet! Four or five pedants do not have that much power, and never have." - R. Roderick Clockwork Orange (and the lesser Kubrick film) was what it was. It's still powerful and relevant today.
In fact I watched it recently to steal a sample for a track I'm working on... "When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man"
Still potent stuff.
Modern American printings do now include the final chapter. Described on the back cover as "includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition, and Burgess's introduction, "A Clockwork Orange Resucked"".
The "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" introduction is from November 1986. It covers the reasoning behind the shortened American edition[0], Kubrick's film, and his own feelings on the 21st chapter[1]. I think the final paragraph summarizes it well "Readers of the twenty-first chapter must decide for themselves whether it enhances the book they presumably know or is really a discardable limb. I meant the book to end in this way, but my aesthetic judgement may have been faulty" (Burgess xv).
[0] "I needed money back in 1962, even the pittance I was being offered as an advance, and if the condition of the book's acceptance was also it's truncation - well, so be it" (Burgess x-xi)
[1] "There is no hint of this change of intention in the twentieth chapter. The boy is conditioned, then deconditioned, and he foresees with glee a resumption of the operation of free and violent will. [...] The twenty-first chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation [...] The American version or Kubrickian Orange is a fable; the British or world one is a novel" (xii)
Have you ever seen A Clockwork Orange? That, imho, is overflowing with pathos. If you do not feel moved by Alex's actions - sympathy, empathy, revulsion, and more - then I'd be curious to know what films do elicit an emotional response from you?
We started to get a lot of the classic movies in the 70s (Taxi Driver, Godfather, Star Wars, Halloween, Blazing Saddles, Rocky, Alien, Clockwork Orange, Exorcist, Jaws, Apocalypse Now just to name a few) and the 80s went absolutely wild and - particularly - far more broad. The kids films from the 80s didn't really exist before then (outside of Disney).
In the 50s/60s there were less (but still some of per personal faves) and the dominant genres (Westerns particularly) have been out of fashion for at least 40 years now.
This would be a much better TV series script than that "The Good Doctor" crap. No offense to all the "The Good Doctor" fans. (We all have our own "crappy" stuff we like)
Society would improve if we could turn these high skilled individuals into productive law abiding citizens without having to go through A Clockwork Orange kind of "reeducation".
>It's a constant discourse in my country to think of today as "dangerous" and idealize some earlier decades where you'd "leave the door open" while by all metrics crime was actually higher.
This highlights a great point about past media. Films like The Warriors, Class of 1999, and even A Clockwork Orange play into this notion that juveniles have become worse and worse and we can expect a hellscape from future generations of young people.
Truth, though, is that Gen Zs are so laughably well behaved compared to those my age were that we finally have a period where this genre simply has no place. I hear things from my nephews and nieces about "staying home for the weekend" and think of all the money my sister wasted on a home security system to make sure they don't sneak out and get arrested all the time like we did. Leave that door wide open with soundproofing and they still have no desire to sneak out, especially because nobody else their age is out anyway.
I think you're right. I left out some context which is that this was a conservative oil company and I was a liberal city slicker environmentalist who hates oil but was willing to put up with it for a few years for the paycheck. My boss was the tough ex-military country guy, and my co-workers were somewhere in between - nerdy engineers, but more country types.
When out for beers, he said his wife does horseback barrel racing and I said I used to do that as a kid and it's a cool sport. He just replied, "Hah, I find that hard to picture" and got some chuckles from the other guys before changing the subject, not following up to learn more. He asked what our favorite movies were and everyone received approval except when I said A Clockwork Orange, he said that was weird.
I was already masking HARD to fit in at this company. Another coworker had already outted me as an atheist as a joke at a weekly meeting. I didn't find that funny, my boss's boss in the room had previously invited me to his church as had another coworker.
I used to like this job under my old boss. Now it hurt and I didn't want to be there anymore, but the paycheck was so good I knew I'd never earn that much again in my whole life. Once I started hating my boss, I may have been "silent quitting" without realizing it. I blame him and he blames me, I don't know.
Really? A Clockwork Orange, Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, and Star Wars all feel the same to you?
I think Stanley Kubrick's films alone are more different to one another than half the Hollywood films made today.
> During the magnetic-stimulation treatment, Peter was shown pictures of drugs and encouraged to reflect on the harmful consequences of his addiction. The hope is that his brain’s reward circuits—a complex network of interwoven brain regions that control pleasure-seeking behaviors—will get reconfigured in ways that ultimately alleviate cravings and strengthen self-control.
Sounds like a scene right out of “A Clockwork Orange” [0]
[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/
My favorite piece of hers has always been the 13 minute version of Timesteps from the Clockwork Orange movie. Some of her works are on Spotify.
so, we should be living the movie A Clockwork Orange?
I used to watch Koyaanisqatsi in the Valhalla, an "encore" cinema in Glebe (Sydney, Australia). This, and Spinal Tap, and 2001. Oh, and A Clockwork Orange. This is back when VHS players were a luxury item, and seeing old movies was difficult or impossible. The Valhalla also ran controversial new movies, which usually meant gay themed like My Beautiful Laundrette, which mainstream cinemas would not touch.
The Valhalla published 3 month (or 6 month, I don't remember now) calendars that were about the size of a tabloid double-page spread. They were a common sight on fridge doors.
I get the sense that you would like some adult themes, but not too slow?
Top of my mind (and in no specific order) would be:
- Dark City
- The Thirteenth Floor
- City of the Lost Children
- Tron (original and maybe new one)
- Interstellar
- Inception
- A Clockwork Orange
- Her (very relevant to our times)
- Dune (2021 version)
- Brazil
- The Martian
- Children of Men
- Edge of Tomorrow (most like Marvelverse on this list but still very good)
- Moon
- Twelve Monkeys
- Upgrade
- The Fifth Element
- Contact
- Okja
- District 9
- Predestination (very relevant to our times)
- Serenity (but might need some prep from the tv show before watching)
- World on a Wire
- The Abyss
- Minority Report (very relevant in our times)
- The Fly
- Videodrome
- Equilibrium
- Strange Days
- The Andromeda Strain (relevant after Covid)
- eXistenZ (trippy but I loved it when it came out and was only around your sons age)
- In Time (interesting class dynamics on display)
- Enemy Mine
- Franklyn (some interesting takes on mental illness)
- The Arrival
Not to mention the movie Grease lol. 1978. Humans have als ways been a mix of social and antisocial. Or think of A Clockwork Orange, 1962, presenting an anxiety of youth gang violence.
I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film production I can't believe it was even made.
One day I looked up the soundtrack at the local record store and bought it..."Composer Wendy Carlos" huh, never heard of her and couldn't find anything really other than contributions to Clockwork Orange and Hooked on Bach and not much else. I moved on.
Later, when there was more Internet to be had, I decided to look up Wendy and was shocked to learn she was trans. It started me down a journey of reflection, challenging my upbringing, and reexamining many "truths" that I had been taught. Along that journey I learned about the tragedy of Alan Turing and other stories.
Wendy's music planted a seed that significantly transformed my inner life, much for the better. It helped me develop significantly in my thoughts on freedom, empathy, justice and the kind of future world I'd like to live in and leave behind.
In 1982 it took a lot of daring for a Disney exec to green light bringing her music to their audience. This was during an age of great an unjust moral panic on a variety of topics.
for reference: I remember my mother receiving a letter from her pastor outlining why "Back to the Future Part II" was the work of Satan and they should never allow it in their household. The central argument was a table that counted the number of time the seven dirty swear words were mentioned in the movie, challenged its rating, and attributed the low rating (PG I think) to a conspiracy by Satan worshipers to corrupt God's youth. This was 1989.
Yeah.
Spartacus: Swords and sandals.
Paths of Glory: WW1 anti-war.
Strangelove: I don't know what genre that was.
2001: Space opera.
A Clockwork Orange: Dystopian sci-fi.
Barry Lyndon: Picaresque costume drama.
I haven't checked, but I think the gaps between his movie releases roughly doubled with each release.
There are some scenes in these movies that scream "Kubrick". There always seems to be a perspective shot in which the camera is pointing down the centre of some tunnel or corridor. In Paths of Glory it's a trench; in 2001, it's the aisle of the shuttle. It's usually some grand corridor.
These AB tests where they force you to engage in some new medium of content that they want you to become accustomed to is reminiscent of that scene in A Clockwork Orange where they force Alex to watch film of violent images.
https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/treatment_aclockworkorange.jpg
Although this was actually intended to be a punishment.
Is the outcome ever a refusal to classify them at all though?
I think even when some films (e.g. Clockwork Orange at first I believe?) were banned they were still rated by the BBFC, it was councils that banned cinemas from showing them locally?
I get what you're saying (I worked in fiom and tv for eons before switching out), but you can't really do it like that. Comparison needs to include both what the movie was built on, leading to it, and then also to consider directors own body of work leading to it. That takes into account period of work and release as well. What came after (not immediately) is not relevant to the work itself since it's out of period (in future). To even start talking in this direction you'd have to invoke, serially, works like Clockwork Orange, American Graffiti, Taxi Driver, and then Midnight Express to even start outlining the silhouette of what is to come.with Blade Runner.. and that's just a start since Ridley Scott's path is a bit unusual, and that movie's genesis especially so (see Legend he did sonce it's close to the period). That only covers the basics of the basics of discussing of what and specifically why this particular work is the way it is and why emulating the moves later (2049) didn't yield the same.
Edit: typing on mobile. Screw it, I hope it's at least somewhat readable.
It's been a while since I watched the movie, but in "A Clockwork Orange" IIRC they were a hallucinogenic (probably acid) to enhance the horror of what he was being forced to watch, to further traumatize him against the images of ultraviolence in a negative way. so that when he had the desire to carry out acts of ultraviolence after the 'treatment' he had flashbacks to the horrific visions he was subjected to. And being in eyedrops had the dual purpose of not letting his eyes dry out while he was unable to blink due to his eyelids being clamped open (this was a treatment, not a torture...)
The logo does indeed look like a reference to the movie, but A Clockwork Orange is originally a book. Highly recommended btw.
It's a reference to the film A Clockwork Orange (also where the name "viddy" comes from). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LudovicoMalcolmMcDowellAClockworkOrangetrailer.png#/media/File:LudovicoMalcolmMcDowellAClockworkOrangetrailer.png
In my teens I spent a whole paycheck on the Stanley Kubrick DVD box set. In hindsight this was dumb but then again all of the films are amazing.
The set: Stanley Kubrick Collection (Lolita / Dr. Strangelove / 2001: A Space Odyssey / A Clockwork Orange / Barry Lyndon / The Shining / Full Metal Jacket) https://www.amazon.com/dp/6305440093/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_4XQ999X4XZC1T0K6HY3N?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
I looked through their soundtrack discography before putting the reply together, and while those were all successful movies, but I didn’t consider them to be on the same level as the Blade Runner or Gallipoli soundtracks which, to me, are amazing in their own right. (Carlos’ A Clockwork Orange naturally goes into the same category).
it has the same signature mechanics but it's really the plot that ultimately gets people to watch it, I mean if Clockwork Orange's main plot descended into some weird orgy ring for the rich (I admit Korova Milk Bar was a prelude to a certain degree), without any identifiable struggles of the common human experience, it might have been written off.
The problem in my view is that EWS's failure was in that most people just didn't identify enough with the characters or their struggles other than a superficial 'affluent married couple with divorce lawyer on speed dial with illuminati'.
In fact, it's just become a favorite topic of conspiracy theorists that have largely decoupled from the story line, and in my view, simply did not do Kubrick justice since an artisan or creator's final work is always scrutinized. I remember large parts of the movie being edited out which allegedly enraged Kubrick and put him at odds with producers.
Those are all pre-modern people before the invention of vaccines and antibiotics and who had terrible health and suffered by now preventable childhood diseases. Their 35 is not our 35. Shakespeare, I believe, wrote about joint pain, aging, and losing his memory and mind at 35, which is not typical of a modern 35 year old. Substance abuse and artistry go hand in hand and a lot of these artists were addicts and drunks who badly damaged their brains. Many of them had mercury poisoning from medical treatments of their day and other edge cases not common today.
Not to mention these people were elite global competitors, so if they felt less sharp at 35, that means they were merely just the top 1% instead of being the top .1%. They still were amazing thinkers and producers after 35.
Just off the top of my head, Stanley Kubrick's career peaked with his decade plus long Lolita, Strangelove, 2001, and Clockwork Orange period in the 1960-70s, which was around his 30-40s. Then nearly 20 years after Lolita, well into his 50's he made The Shining, which is considered an important American film, perhaps not as groundbreaking as the others, but something miles ahead of his younger competitors. So even as these people supposedly age out of their peak years, these super high performers are still amazing. The Oscar winner that year? Kramer vs Kramer, a largely forgotten piece of art and "safe pick" that played to social issues of the time. The best screenplay? Breaking Away, a completely forgotten movie. The Shining is still a beloved classic, cultural icon, horror master-class, an iconic actor's defining role, and a movie studied in film school religiously today and for the foreseeable future.
Then almost a decade later in 1987 at age 59, he directed Full Metal Jacket, a lesser work, but considered one of the best anti-war films, arguably stealing or matching the crown from beloved critic favorites like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter, long after the 60s and 70s fad of anti-war movies faded away and Vietnam a now faded memory and during the right-wing, pro-military, pro-interventionist foreign policy Reagan administration. This was a bold and provocative move you'd associate with a younger director trying to get attention and not a man close to retirement. So even "old" Kubrick was competing on a world class level and doing interesting and challenging things.
A genre horror film from a famous director who hasn't delivered a great film in a decade? An anti-war film in the late 80s on the tail of Top Gun? Both of these genres were fads once and decidedly uncool at the time of their release. This on paper sounds almost foolish, but in practice, an artist of his calibre pulled off something very special in both cases.
For modern people, career peaks are mid-30s. The "wisdom" of two hundred old plus composers and poets is a nice toilet read but isn't scientific at all. Science has its own ideas about aging:
The journals Psychological Science, Science Direct, and Harvard claims various mental peaks come later in life. New vocabulary peaks at 67, learning new information at 50, concentrating at 43, learning new faces 32, etc.
https://nextluxury.com/mens-lifestyle-advice/what-age-do-men-peak/
So yes 35 is not only a good age, its the start of a peak, and a 35 year old modern worker has still another two decades of high performance waiting for them.
> The same way free-to-air TV pays for itself - adverts. Either a couple of ad breaks in the film, or rotating watermarks on screen throughout the film.
Please no. Watching La vita è Bella[1] or a Clockwork Orange[2] and being interrupted by an ad for toothpaste or a theme park would muddy the experience. That model would make most good films unpalatable. Were that the only legal way to consume movies, piracy would continue to exist for cuts without ads.
Do note that the US model of having ad breaks during an episode of a TV show isn’t in use all over the world. In Portugal, breaks happens between episodes but are longer.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Is_Beautiful
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)
In moderation, maybe. I can make a good case that the greatest movies of all time were made in the 70s because of that freedom. Jaws, space odyssey, clockwork orange, alien etc
>Ratings for sporting events are down dramatically
I think maybe some of the kneeling and other political / social virtue signalling by sporting codes are having an effect too.
I know I am fed up. The same ideology is broadcast at work, on the news, on art/film/theatre/books, social media and now sports. I feel like the protagonist in "A Clockwork Orange" with my eyelids stapled open and being force fed a mind virus.
I don't think digital itself is the problem. Rather, much like the music industry, the knowledge of how to monetize most efficiently has killed creativity to a great extent in mainstream culture. You can make a hundred Eyes Wide Shuts and you wouldn't get the profit of The Avengers.
I'd also note that a passion for film has been culled out of the Hollywood management class almost entirely. They are running corporations, not film studios, unlike some older generations. Not to say that profit wasn't an important motivator ever since film began, but it was never the sole reason for funding movies across the industry like it is today.
It's also very sad that taste in movies will be fundamentally altered by this period. Taste for complex movies needs to be formed - in a world of Marvel movies, it's very hard to even understand what is good about a film like A Clockwork Orange or Birdman.
I would definitely put Andrei Tarkovsky in the same league of Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch. Watching movies such as Solaris, A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blue Velvet etc. feel like watching a beautiful and masterpiece art.
Visually, Satyricon was one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen in my life, but also one of the most boring.
If you're looking for films full of sex and violence in ancient Rome watch Caligula[1] (starring, appropriately, Malcom McDowell in a role not too different from the one he played in A Clockwork Orange). Unfortunately, apart from the sex and violence this film doesn't have much going for it. But I'd still rate it far higher than Satyricon, except on the visual level, where the latter film has few equals.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula_(film)
The classic dystopias in literature described a supposedly future time, in order to criticize the present. The classics: Clockwork Orange; Farenheit 451; Brave New World; 1984.
Now there's a new trend in this genre, where a supposedly possible future time is described in order to glorify the present, and defend it against all possible change, good or bad, because "it could become worst". Handmaid's Tale is a good example. It makes catholic religion look so good it's sad. The total absence of criticism towards a religion tied with the institutional rape of thousands of children[0], and hatred of women, for instance, is absurd. And the fact is the raping is still going on as you read this. Of course this is only a single point of failure and absurdity amongst many others. Whilst Huxley, Orwell and others were driven by passion and rebellion against injustice and misery and desire to change life, low quality scripts like the one on this TV series are clearly motivated by making money while surfing/exploiting current social media cultural "trends". Disgusting.
0: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44209971
Compared to Midsommar, Audition, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Antichrist, A Clockwork Orange, American History X, or The Human Centipede?
Yeah I would describe GTA as pretty tame compared to those movies some of which have broken through to the mainstream. The average horror movie is more violent and gruesome than even the worst we see from video games.
The Witcher and Mass Effect? Those are adult games with very lame sex scenes all of which are consensual. I don't see that as particularly scandalous.
> Film was scary too at one point.
And there have been many film-inspired murders. the mass shooting inspired by the Dark Night. John Hinckley’s assassination attempt on Reagan ( inspired by Taxi Driver ).
John Lennon’s murder was inspired by The Catcher in the Rye!
Here’s a link to some:
https://www.newsweek.com/nine-horrible-real-life-crimes-were-inspired-movie-or-novel-583828
And remember, not all such incidents are famous. So doubtless there are more.
There are sick people in the world who are indeed influenced by all sorts of media.
this was the key idea behind A Clockwork Orange.
Whether such media influences “healthy” people is another question.
Based on a quick search, that does not seem to be true. The title of the movie comes from the title of the book it is based on. The book's author has given some explanations for the origin of the title that do not involve Glasgow trains. [0] It seems the name for the subway comes from the movie. There also seems to be some dispute about the usage of that name for the Glasgow subway. [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(novel)#Title
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Subway#Nicknames
I’m from Glasgow. Completely random fact ahead:
The underground in Glasgow was comprised of orange trains. They “ran like clockwork” and had the nickname “the clockwork orange”, which is where the Stanley Kubrick movie title came from. Allegedly.
Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, Forman’s Amadeus, again Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, Antonioni’s Blowup, De Sica’s Miracle in Milan are some of the first films that come to mind and wish more people came to enjoy them
Does anyone have an example of a book they love that was turned into a movie or TV series that they also loved? I find it is generally not the case.
A Clockwork Orange... the movie was OK, but the book was much much more enjoyable IMHO.
Lord of the Rings... I would say I enjoyed the movies a lot.
Altered Carbon... I liked the book a bit better, although the writing wasn't the greatest.
Watchmen... the graphic novel was much better and enjoyable than the movie.
The Clockwork Orange (1971) An interesting movie about society and the nature of morality
he was making a reference to A Clockwork Orange...bit of the ol' Ludwig Van.
referring to how the character murders people or has threesomes in the film to a symphony.
Insert image of Clockwork Orange film scene where a machine holds your eyes open and forces you to look.
It seems very strange in the first paragraph to claim that 1984 has "outlasted in public awareness" three other books that are very much still in public awareness. Also, in terms of enduring effect, I'd wager that a lot more people have seen the film A Clockwork Orange than have read 1984.
> A Clockwork Orange was, however, a box office success in the US and was nominated for the Oscar for best picture in 1972 (losing to The French Connection).
The original release in the US in 1972 was rated X. It's one of only two X-rated films to receive a nomination, the other being "Midnight Cowboy."
Kubrick pulled the film from the UK after receiving threats to himself and wife.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)
clockwork orange, the book, has 21 chapters. for whatever dumb reason, burgess' american publisher decided to omit the last chapter on publication. burgess believes this entire subverts the book's message, making it say the opposite of what he meant it to say. alas, it appears kubrick's treatment in the film also omits the last chapter.
burgess wrote at length about this in "rolling stone" back in the day. i kept that particular issue all these years because i think it's an important story. i can't find a copy of it online, though. the story is somewhat covered in the wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#Novelist's_response
... which also mentions that american versions of the book after 1986 restore the final chapter.
I can't speak about his other work, but A Clockwork Orange would be timeless even without the Kubrick movie. It is such a special language he invented, and I find such bold experiments quite rare among the literature I read.
On the cover of my book they quote William S. Borroughs: "I do not know any other writer who has done as much with language... a very funny book". And he is quite right (at least with the first part).
When I read "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess, I found myself using many words from the slang language he invented, an amalgamation of Russian and English. (The slang language got minimal treatment in the film, you'll have to read the book). I'll have to read The Wake to see if it happens again. I still remember "horrorshow", it means good or cool, comes from the Russian "khorosho".
to prevent people watching or reading or thinking or smelling things we do not like
If a person ever finds himself supporting the distribution of a snuff film, that person might do some introspection and ask how he got to that point. Because that view is straight out of A Clockwork Orange.
Classical music in film and tv more commonly signals erudition, not simply villainy. When there is a class conflict involved In film, the higher class characters are more commonly the villains, and an appreciation for classical music signals their remoteness.
Philadelphia uses Hanks’ appreciation for opera to signal his class status, not villainy. Silence of the Lambs uses music and food same way.
Making the direct hop to villainy is too simplistic, and pointing fingers at Clockwork Orange is absurd. That film’s synthesized classical music is used to draw a parallel between the commodification of violence and the commodification of culture more broadly.
The Author and I obviously have different definitions of classical music.
They point out a 'villain' playing Bach. But to me, the whole film score is classical music. Yes the film is about an evil thing but the music conveys other things.
He identifies A clockwork Orange as a turning point . I could point to a host of 70s and 80s film that had classical music scores, Star Wars, Indiana Jones etc, etc.
I'll admit 'pop' music has become more popular in recent films, but classical music is still really good at communicating certain moods, including but not necessarily villainy.
I found a much subtler message hidden in that episode, very similar to all the other similarly subtle messages sprinkled throughout the show.
Everybody there was acting perfectly predictably, and rationally, and the consequences for the behavior displayed were eerily similar to what they would have been without all the technological pomp.
The technology winds up simply making the normal progression of the events of life happen just a bit faster. Hard working, social people that you would expect to be successful still become successful, and entitled people like the protagonist of the episode has that entitlement drawn out far more quickly than we would ordinarily see.
There's no dystopia, just unfamiliarity with the setting that the show exploits to dramatic effect to make you think it's dystopia. But if the world of Black Mirror is dystopic, then you can level the same charge at today's technological milieu, and yesterday's, all the way back to sharpened sticks and stones. Technology doesn't destroy our humanity, it amplifies it.
Real dystopic fiction, like 1984 or A Clockwork Orange, is dystopic because it magnifies the human selfish instinct such that it turns into the villain of the story. But Black Mirror contains no grand villain, just plain old ordinary drama. The characters fight each other, not an immense system that's hellbent on destroying human dignity.
Tarkovsky's my favorite director, but I really did not like Solaris. For me, Tarkovsky's Stalker is the infinitely better film.
The Man Who Fell to Earth, Primer, Videodrome, Blade Runner, Brazil, A Clockwork Orange, Open Your Eyes (aka Abre Los Ojos), and Empire Strikes Back would be others I'd put on my favorite scifi movie list.
All of the movies by him that I’ve watched are brilliant.
Dr Strangelove is my favourite movie. The Shining is excellent, A clockwork orange, Barry Lyndon, 2001, Eyes Wide Shut ...
He was also a fantastic photographer.
Videodrome has faded from my memory. All I remeber is how I felt watching it. Like A Clockwork Orange, Dead Ringers, and Blue Velvet, I'm not sure I ever want to see it again.
A film I don't often see mentioned but that I still think is a good watch is Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Only that's not the case at all. Popular cinema and TV are bursting at the seams with antiheroes. From Clockwork Orange through Hannibal Lecter to Sopranos, Dexter, Breaking Bad...
Most authors complained about it yes. Burgess accused Kubrick of not having understood a single word of "Clockwork Orange". Nabokov was the most gracious when he said that while Lolita was a very good movie, he didn't recognize his original work at all :)
I think it's a very difficult exercise to adapt a novel. Should you literally put on the screen what is written in the book ? What's the point ? You're not creating much. On the other hand, if you deviate from the original work, fans start attacking you for "betraying" the spirit of the book.
A Clockwork Orange is supposedly loyal to it's source material, the American edition of the novel.
> This plot discrepancy occurred because Kubrick based his screenplay upon the novel's American edition, its final chapter deleted on insistence of the American publisher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#Differences_between_the_film_and_the_novel
Kubrick was fairly known for heavily adapting the novels he used for inspiration. There are huge differences between the novel "Lolita" and Kubrick's adaptation. Same with "Shining" or "Clockwork Orange".
TBH, I'm really happy we didn't get a version with voice-overs and all. Hard to imagine a concept of "documentary" would have been better than what we ended up with.
I know I am supposed to find it deep and like it to the bitter end. And boy have I tried.
There'a lot of Kubrick I don't get. I have actually read A Clockwork Orange, the novel, and liked it despite its Burgessian lapsed catholic babble, but I intensely dislike the movie.
And don't get me started on The Shining.
Watching movies has to be one of my most inspiring accidents. In 2017, due to some external circumstances [1], I watched maybe 50+ movies on the IMDB top 250 list. Kubrick is definitely my favorite director that I didn't know about before. His stuff takes some time to digest, but they are definitely worth watching. Besides 2001, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket are all worth watching. I have to re-watch Dr. Strangelove at some point because last time I didn't finish it.
The other director that I think I started to 'get' (however hard to believe) is Coppola. I didn't get Godfather before that at all despite having watched the movie 3 times. After the second Godfather movies, I started to see the Godfathers as human and empathize with them ("Yes, I can totally see myself doing that"). I haven't read the novels, however, I hope to get to the novels at some point.
At the same time, when I re-watched Tarantino's movies, I became less impressed in his style. After gore and somewhat snarky theme, I failed to see anything else. I still equally love Coen brothers regardless of how many times I watched their movies.
My old boss who owned a wine importing business used to tell me when you have tasted enough wine, you will know what good wine is like without having to describe it. After watching 50 movies or so, there was a moment when something started to 'click.' I think it gave me inspirations to do take notes of human feelings and emotions and empathize with them. I am more inspired to produce meaningful software that does not have to be technically challenging to write, and write blog posts that are not about technically hard/clever code. After watching "Sunset Blvd," I decided that money was never my problem, so I think less about money.
I'm 30 now and have always been a nerd before. Good movies have partly changed my life.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360380
> The only reason I watch their movies is because with the help of their fans, they have created an artificial monopoly around their persona and I am basically forced to watch them.
I think I've seen that scene... Clockwork Orange, right? http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/clockworkOrangeVidi.mp4/view
Perhaps... perhaps you might choose a different phrasing than "forced to watch"?
An example that gave (and still gives) me the creeps: A guy seeing videos with lots of blood (vino) and a gang rape (the old in-out)
And then, what do you know, soon our dear old friend, the red, red vino on tap, the same in all places like it's put out by the same big firm, began to flow. It was beautiful. It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen. Now all the time I was watching this, I was beginning to get very aware of like not feeling all that well, and this I put down to all the rich food and vitamins, but I tried to forget this, concentrating on the next film which jumped right away on a young devotchka who was being given the old in-out, in-out first by one malchick, then another, then another...When it came to the sixth or seventh malchick, leering and smecking and then going into it, I began to feel really sick.
From Clockwork Orange
People had the same complaint about the space program in the 1960's. That it was feel good fluff. That it was a boondoggle with no substance.
And if you watch old movies, you'll hear it echoed it many places.
Clockwork Orange has the quote from the wino:
Men on the moon? And men Spinnin' 'round the earth? And there's not no attention paid to early law and order no more?!
I don't really agree. I think it's of profound importance to solve the problem of being able to sustain life in an artificial environment.
If we can confine ourselves within an encapsulated environment, and keep ourselves alive by recycling all biological exhaust, and drawing energy from highly durable, efficient power sources, and/or solar power, we can roll those capabilities into ways of life that dramatically reduce human impact on their surroundings. The two concepts are related, because space travel involves the problem of trying to replicate a sustainable terrestrial environment through artificial means.
I could say the same about a few psych experiments that were actually conducted. The Stanford prison experiment [0] seems rather awful, and it actually got released as a thriller this year [1].
But this particular one seems to be much like Clockwork Orange and Human Centipede, staring into one another's eyes and speaking candidly.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stanford_Prison_Experiment_(film)
I remember reading that Netflix practically ignores what you rate shows when generating recommendations, that using what you actually watch is much more accurate. You may have gave A Clockwork Orange 5 stars, but you binge watches Jersey Shore.
I imagine the same applies here. You might say height isn't a factor, but only picked men over 6'.
Ok good idea, I just followed you on Twitter ;)
But if you're interested in different perspectives from your own, isn't this part of your, well, interests? Do you still need to break out of that?
Personally I see the "filter bubble" as a non-issue. Partly because people will go with their interests no matter what. Forcing them to see everything else reminds me of this image
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#/media/File:Clockwork%2771.jpg
Author here. I wasn't sure if it was bad etiquette to submit my own article to HN but decided in the end that it might actually interest the community.
For fans of metal and sci-fi, I should mention that Dutch musician Arjen Anthony Lucassen does much more than just write science-inspired metal operas for Ayreon. He also has another project called Star One[0], where each song is based on an iconic sci-fi movie, book or series (Blake's 7, Doctor Who, Dune, Alien, Star Trek, A Clockwork Orange...).
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_1
You're objections are all fine, but post hoc as they are additional qualifiers that seem driven more by personal preferences than anything which can be used as a more objective criterion. You believe that I should be able to "connect the dots" in the same way that you do, but when there are so few dots, it's easy for one person to see Ursa Major, another a dipper, and a third a plow.
My entire point is that your data points are too vague and have multiple reasonable interpretations, and that it's possible to make it more rigorous.
You did not specify what "mythologize" means. I interpreted it mean "the subject of a biopic" produced by a movie studio for the big screen. You give a dictionary definition, but that doesn't define what it means to 'mythologize' someone in a movie, or determine if some group is excessively or under-mythologized. Is a biopic about Plato mythologizing Plato? Which groups do or don't need mythologization? Are British biopics over or under represented?
You believe that a movie about the Nobel Peace Prize winner Joseph Rotblat is likely about to "pass judgement on all the other guys who didn't leave the Manhattan Project" and not about the events that lead to his getting the Peace Prize. I have just watched the film, and it does not do what you pessimistically assumed.
You believe that a movie about research which is usually interpreted as a caution against the implicit acceptance of authoritarian roles, is actually about research about the "the horrible things this white guy did to people".
(You write about Milgram's 'inhumane experiments'. While he worked to understand why humans might do things that are inhumane, the people being "shocked" were actors. It was emotionally stressful, certainly, though as http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4346260/ comments, "Milgram invoked post-experimental survey data and psychiatrists’ reports to demonstrate that most participants were glad to have participated and that none had been harmed". It adds careful qualifiers to that interpretation. What part of his experiments do you consider to be 'inhumane'?)
And you don't like moves that are well-regarded by those in the social justice movement. Nor, if I understand your objection to "A Dangerous Method", is a film acceptable if it has a female actor on the movie poster, even though your original criteria asked about "the regular white guy scientists .. we've mythologized", and not movies which only mythologize regular white male scientists. This feels very might like raising the goal posts.
Again, this is acceptable. You get to define your own coding criteria, so long as it's transparent enough that others can have a hope of reproducing it.
It does mean that "Dr. Strangelove" (1964), which is about white men bringing nuclear destruction to the world, where one of the main characters is handicapped, and is well-loved by the anti-war crowd, is an example of movie that you think puts straight white males in a bad light. "A Clockwork Orange", "Brazil", and "1984" all portray white men in oppressive positions of power. As reactions to authoritarianism is the topic of Milgram's work, these also seem to fall into your pattern.
Again, perfectly acceptable. Once you define your criteria, it can be applied more rigorously against a longer period of time, to see if there's a trend.
Of course, it ends up with strange problems, where "Wrath of Khan", which has the Indian character Khan Noonien Singh (played by the Mexican actor Ricardo Montalbán) on the movie poster, so doesn't count as a white, straight, male movie. Ghostbusters II (1989) has a black man on the movie poster. Tony Stark in the "Iron Man" films has a chest injury which requires him to wear a regulator for his heart, so is handicapped. "Star Wars" (1977) also had a woman on the movie poster.
As "Dr. Strangelove" and these examples show, this "pattern" you've identified, of sometimes having non-white, non-male, non-straight, or handicapped actors, has been around for a long time. It's not clear that it's a new thing, and seems to match the secular trend since the 1960s of letting people besides white, straight men have the positions of power in US politics, science, and other fields.
You said "I was hoping you would notice from context I was referencing male scientists who were publicly disgraced as people, not as fraudulent scientists.", in regards to "publicly disgraced in the past year (offhand I can think of 3)".
I believe you are limiting the topic to people who have not been disgraced for scientific reasons but because of other events in their lives. That is, despite that some of the disgraced people I mentioned committed no crime, their social ostracism isn't the right kind of social ostracism for you. I presume the only criteria you accept is that the person must be criticized for racist, sexist, or similar reasons?
With that qualifier in mind, I assume you mean Watson, Taylor, and Hunt. Do note that Watson has been disgraced "as a person" for years for his racist and sexist views.
For example, in http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fury-at-dna-pioneers-theory-africans-are-less-intelligent-than-westerners-394898.html from 2007 titled "Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners" and subtitled "Celebrated scientist attacked for race comments: "All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really". This caused people to, for example, cancel his visit (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7050020.stm) and "Because of the public controversy, on 18 October 2007, the Board of Trustees at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory suspended Watson's administrative responsibilities." Indeed, the reason why he sold his Nobel Prize last year was to make money, because he had been ostracized for years, and wanted the money.
Thus, only two of those have happened this year, and not the three you suggested. Or are you thinking of someone else? If so, who?
Other similarly personally disgraced scientists include Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize winner and well known HIV/AIDS denialist, climate change denialist, and believer in astrology; and William Shockley, a Nobel Prize winner also known for his racist views and support for eugenics.
Of course there have been few women who have won the Nobel Prize, so with only 4 examples of male Nobel Prize winners ostracized for their views, we would not expect there to be a female winner similarly ostracized. Thus, lack of such a counter-examples is completely expected from the statistics.
Since you include astronauts as a field of science, it's easy to point to Lisa Nowak, who has been personally disgraced for her attempt at kidnapping Colleen Shipman, who pleaded guilty to charges of felony burglary of a car and misdemeanor battery, and who was discharged from the Navy in under other than honorable conditions. However, part of that was quite clearly illegal, so may not constitute the right kind of disgrace "as a person" that you are looking for.
But these are events that hit the big time news. What do you know about scientists who aren't Nobel Prize winners, and who aren't on world-wide TV?
That's why a more rigorous search is needed. Retraction Watch and Science magazine both use the phrase "disgraced" in reference to scientists, and have a more complete coverage of what goes on in science. Do note that those science oriented sites don't use "disgraced" to refer to the racism and sexism of Watson, et al., so the term "disgraced" is itself rather ill-defined.
For example, in http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2013/10/special-report-can-nsf-put-right-spin-rotators-part-2 a co-worker says of Anja Strømme “She feels abused and disgraced, and it should have never happened”; do we accept that this is a case of being disgraced? If not, what constitutes a sufficient level of disgrace?
Or, if many male scientists thought it was disgraceful that a woman like Lise Meitner should work in physics, and snubbed her socially and in her career, is that really disgraceful? Or do you require that someone be successful and famous first, before being disgraced?
If your definition is so strict that only a few people over the decades meet the definition, the it's hardly a useful definition, is it? Who else can you think of that have been disgraced? You make it sound like something that's happened more than a dozen times, so it shouldn't be hard to come up with more examples, no? Based on those numbers, how many women do you think should have been disgraced by this time?
"Sometimes I wonder how many things could have gone differently."
I'm a firm believer that awesome always finds a way, but I love these stories of seemingly small decisions ("I could’ve spent the $500 on something other than a Rift. I could’ve stayed in bed") being major turning points in someone's life.
For me, a pivotal moment was Stanley Kubrick's removal of A Clockwork Orange from circulation in the 1970s, and its subsequent posthumous re-release in 2000. My university cinema had a showing one night; this gave me time to kill on campus after the library closed; during which time I saw a job-board ad for work in a real estate firm.
The job led to a management position post-graduation, which turned into State Operations Manager for a large franchise group, which turned into the business coaching career I've had for almost a decade.
If Kubrick hadn't pulled the film? If he had died a year earlier? Maybe I would have leveraged my journalism degree into that profession instead? From little things, big things grow...
I was referring to the film version of A Clockwork Orange, which does have a rape scene, but not of the two teenagers from the record shop. The book is another matter though (not that I can remember it clearly, haven't read it for at least 2 decades..).
EDIT: Actually, this is cleared up above, which is fortunate since I appeared to be asleep at the wheel when I wrote my original response ;)
> Is it going to be illegal (once again)?
It wasn't really clear in your comment so I figured it would be good to chime in and mention that the movie wasn't actually banned by any government but rather Kubrick had it pulled:
"Kubrick asked Warner Brothers to withdraw the film from British distribution, disliking the allegation that the film was responsible for copycat violence in real life"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#British_withdrawal
Technically it was illegal to distribute the movie in Britain for 27 years, but it was purely a copyright / distribution rights issue. You may have known that but it's such a huge myth that it was actually banned for content that I wanted to fill in some gaps.
I think they [the author] are intentionally exploring it. In fact, a good portion of the article is on the definition of "depict"[1], which would probably include books by most people's understanding. The other point is being available online - which books are via kindle and other services.
> Also falling into firmly into this category is Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange". Once again, it's available for Kindle, it definitely depicts rape, and it's read world-wide by millions.
This is both a book and a film - extremely famous, and has a rape scene. Is it going to be illegal (once again)?
Earlier, in the same section he says:
> Given that many contemporary novels (and less-contemporary) novels do deal with sexual abuse and rape, some of which explore the idea of "rape fantasy" (Herein referred to by the more accepted name, "ravishment") between consenting partners means that a large portion of those with an interest in BDSM and kink will fall into this category.
So, whether novels will be included or not, there is definitely already media which is currently legal and consumed by law abiding citizens who have no predilections or desires to rape anyone that may suddenly become illegal. This is a problem, in my opinion.
I'm glad I have the first and second amendments... for now.
[1] http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/depict
A Clockwork Orange springs to mind.
Most folks I know who have actually watched it think it's horrific (at least in parts). It was banned for a long time due (IIRC) to the fact that you could watch it 'straight' and see it as glorifying all sorts of stuff. Especially when you take into account that the second half of the film is about government conditioning and then un-conditioning our anti-hero, so that by the end he's once again able to commit atrocities.
When I first saw the film Clockwork Orange many years ago, I found Ludovico Technique very disturbing. Now it's just another day on the internet. "Amusing Ourselves to Death" is a great book, but I haven't read it in so long I can't say if it's still relevant or just come to pass and now unremarkable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludovico_Technique
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
Well I do think violent films are called out, though definitely less often because games are relatively new. IIRC there were many people attempting to link the Columbine shooting and the Matrix, which had just been released.
I must say I can't watch films like Se7en, American Psycho, Requiem for a Dream, Clockwork Orange without being thoroughly disturbed; this is true to a lesser extent with novels, but I can control virtually everything about the experience. I guess what I'm trying to say is it wouldn't surprise me at all if any number of these media encouraged past people to commit crimes, but that doesn't imply they wouldn't have done anything had they not seen/read/played whatever inspired them.
Torrents don't consist 90% of those things either. The largest audio torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/100/0/5 is a sample library for use in creating your own songs. The largest video torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/200/0/5 is a collection of the X-Files TV show; #2 is a collection of 50 classic movies (A Clockwork Orange, American Beauty, Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now, and so on) --- the movie equivalent of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The largest software torrents on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/300/0/5 are chess tablebases --- used for research into the game of chess --- Microsoft Windows 7, and auto repair software called Alldata. The top "other" torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/600/0/5 is a preservation copy of GeoCities, which contained the full weirdness of the late-90s web in miniature, and after a duplicate of the same torrent, #2 is an archive of chemical journals.
I think what you're probably thinking of is not library shelves but library checkouts. And I think that you'll find that library checkouts did consist 90% of trashy paperbacks, the text equivalent of pop movies, back when people got that kind of stuff from libraries instead of online.
That's an opinion(so of course it can't be wrong) that I have heard, it is being debated fairly intelligently downthread along with a debate about the fantastic King of the Hill and Office Space.
Here is a list of movies that critics and non-critics consider to be much better post WWII satires than Idiocracy, according to internet ratings of these movies. Note: many of these are more humorous and brutal while being less crude and light-hearted than Idiocracy. Also many have plot, emotion, and deep characterization.
Films: American Psycho, A Clockwork Orange, Fahrenheit 451, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Dr. Strangelove, Office Space(also Mike Judge)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire
My main problem with Idiocracy as a satire is that the message it sends is flatly incorrect, because the rules of their world are not the same as ours. It is a satire of some alternate universe in which we are not living, it has no applicability for the world we live in.
Film's message: "If our societies ever end up giving a competitive advantage to low IQ people, time travel will be necessary to correct society's decline."
The truth:"If our societies ever end up giving a competitive advantage to low IQ people, natural selection will take care of it, since intelligence seems to be a competitive advantage for apes."
I think the true message is also a better call to arms for both intelligent people and unintelligent people. The movie Idiocracy seemed like it was made to be consumed by the citizens of the low-IQ world, in both plot and acting. I do enjoy its light-heartedness.
Much more realistic are the famous dystopian texts, especially Harrison Bergeron: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
Very good implementation.
But please change the title to "500 best movies according to IMDB & RottenTomatoes".
I mean, look here: http://5000best.com/movies/Stanley_Kubrick
Clockwork Orange is 46th, 2001 is 211st, and Lolita (Kubrick's version), 1018th. Best movie that poor, not-so-much-talented Kubrick has apparently made is Strangelove, which is 32nd "best movie ever made".
It's very informative to know what IMDB thinks (for one thing, you know what movies to skip), but basing our "best movies" list on what they think is not all right.
Except for movie posters Clockwork Orange. Aliens. Star Wars. Love the black.
I posted this on the site, posting it here too:
I would say a better metric would be "How much did you enjoy this film?" vs "How good is this movie?"
I've been grappling with this problem since subscribing to Netflix, wondering how I should rate a movie I personally did not enjoy that I also felt was incredibly well made. For example, "A Clockwork Orange" is an incredible movie by all means and I would give it 97 stars out of a hundred.... but I hated every single second of it. It's gruesome, sadistic, dark, miserable, and disgusting. But it was undeniably well made.
Rewatchability sucks in the aspect because many movies can't be rewatched, while still being both splendidly produced and enjoyable. Let me make this clearer with examples: "The Sixth Sense," "Rear Window," "The Accused," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "12 Angry Men," "Apollo 13..." The list goes on and on. There are great movies that just don't rank so highly because they're SUSPENSEFUL and that suspense doesn't translate will into rewatches. Rewatching suspenseful movies will make them seem boring and long-drawn.
Rewatching feel-good movies ("Seven Pounds," "How To Train Your Dragon," "Blind Side," etc.) however, is just as good the second time if not better.
tl;dr the rewatchability index will be heavily skewed towards feel-good favorites and epics, and away from dark, gritty, mysterious, and suspenseful. Not a good index.
The world also needs more poster re-designs for Kubrick movies. Here's my ideas for 2001, remember that scene at the beginning on a space station? That would make a good poster. What about Clockwork Orange? They could use the Ludivigo exterior in a poster too. I mean, why did they not originally do that?
Yes, the parents in A Clockwork Orange! Or pretty much everyone in the "It's a Good Life" episode of Twilight Zone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Its_a_Good_Life_(The_Twilight_Zone)
That episode also made it into the Twilight Zone movie directed by John Landis.
See you next Wednesday!
Hey, I'm not assuming that brilliant and artistically valid video games with adult content can't exist. I'm just cynically pointing out that they're incredibly unlikely to actually get made.
Movies are a very different sort of art form, with a very different sort of maturity level. Also, I think it's easier to have explicit (or weird) sex in a movie without it becoming pornography [ * ] than it is in a video game since in a video game you are the protagonist. A Clockwork Orange is (I assume) rated NC-17 due largely to its rather nasty rape scene... try imagining a video game version of that and you can see we've crossed the line from Serious Art to Fucked Up Shit.
Anyway, anyone who wants to develop an effectively NC-17 rated game is welcome to write one for the PC (or Mac, or Linux!) where there are no gatekeepers to stop you. I have difficulty imagining what a non-sucky one would look like, but maybe I just have a limited imagination.
[ * ] Oh, and if people want to make games which are just pornography I don't have a problem with that... except that I suspect they'll wind up as bad video games and bad pornography.
I wonder how long it will take for someone to comment on.... there, that was fast. A Clockwork Orange. brilliant movie/book.
My entire career came about because the Australian Government banned Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. It was finally released in 2000 - I was a journalism student at the time, and the university cinema was playing it. In the time between my final class and the film beginning, I was killing time in the student union building.
They had a jobs board in the building, and I read one asking for a 'casual sales administrator' ('saturday girl') in a real estate office. Figuring real estate was a practical life skill to learn through a part time uni job, I noted the details and applied.
Being brilliant, I got the job, fell in love with the property industry and on graduation decide to pursue it rather than journalism. That led to a few promotions, and directly into the field of training business owners in the real estate industry, which then led me to my current career (business coaching).
If it weren't for the ban and subsequent delayed release, I might be a working journalist! And to think I've been railing against the Australian government's draconian view of censorship.
Edit: Feeling happier already.
Oh, one more: A Clockwork Orange. The book is much better than the movie. It's nicer if you haven't already seen the movie and got Stanley Kubrick's acid-trip biasing your perceptions..