Stanley Strangelove

Gabriel Serrano

A01376608

I just couldn´t disagree more with Pauline Kael’s opinion about the “A Clockwork Orange” movie. In my very own and personal point of view, Stanly Kubrick’s adaptation of the original novel by Anthony Burgess is nothing but extraordinary. I mean, the way in which he was able to express how our society really is, that we are nothing else than robots that follow not only our government’s will as if it was absolute, but the boundaries society has agreed we are supposed to stay in and follow blindly without making any question at all, and everyone who thinks different, disagrees and starts questioning all those things that chain us is considered an anarchist. And also how our society was able to ignore everything out of line or unpleasant that happens outside our happy bubble where everything is perfect and peaceful, living like if nothing was happening out in the real world, leaving us defenseless against anything out of our daily routine, like in the book’s case Alex and his gang interfering with other people’s monotonous life.   

Although, Kubrick’s movie is extremely graphic and way much more explicit than the book, it is not because the book didn’t counted with that kind of violence and sexuality but because it is a movie, and if he wanted to capture what the book represents he had to do it as detailed as he could. All the ultra-violence, the rapes and “immoral” things happening all along the book and movie is nothing more than a reality of the world in which we live, so any kind of censorship would be a hypocrisy, and since due to our daily life entertainment we are more than used to physical violence, there’s no reason at all to consider it in any possible way an insult or insolence. With that being said, I truly think there’s not existing reason to consider both, movie and book less than works of art.