Joe Steigerwald
Science Fiction 319
Visual essay 2
Beware the Medium
The use of time/speed manipulation in A Clockwork Orange(1970, Stanly Kubrick, Great Britain) is used to create a “fantastic” and future world that is separate from the “real” world but at the same time reflective of it. The use of the technique in the film is self-reflexive, as if to point out the capabilities of the technology of film editing to influence the way people view a reality. It is a “look what I can do” statement by the film while implying that this very media technology has influenced the world of the future. Scott Bukatman mentions “the meaning of science fiction film is often to be found in their visual organization and in the inevitable attention to the act of seeing, and this is where the special effects begin to take on a particular importance.” (1)
Some instances in the film where time is manipulated are when violent scenes are presented in slow motion, such as when the main character, Alex, gets beaten by policemen, and when he beats his “drogues” to assert his role as their leader. However, during a sex orgy the speed of the film is increased. The film is actually pointing out the capabilities of film editing and special effect technologies to create an intimacy with violence and a loss of intimacy or callousness towards sex. This would be an example of film technology’s ability to cause a deviation or perversion of basic humanity. Ideally violence should not be something one embraces or is familiar with, and sex is meant to be a moment of intimacy and expression of human love, and not emotionally detached. This obvious clash is meant to make the point of the special effects apparent.
This brings up the question: how is the depiction of sex and violence in A Clockwork Orange different from a film that revels in the two as a means of entertainment? Stanley Kubrick brings attention to the sex and violence by juxtaposing sounds and images such as the beating and raping of a woman over the song “singing in the rain,” and through the speed manipulations used to present sex and violence. He portrays them in a manner that is synonymous with enjoyment, but purposefully creates a conscious feeling of enjoyment where there shouldn’t be, a use of the uncanny. The speed manipulation techniques as well as sound image juxtaposition present sex and violence in a way that imply enjoyment but also detachment in that through the very emphasis on sex and violence we are told to be wary of how we view sex and violence through the film medium. He is bringing to our attention the way in which humanity can interact with film technology and be influenced and even perverted by it. The film uses speed effects to present an intimacy with violence and detachment from love, but through this very presentation reminds us it should be the other way around. That is were the difference lies from films that use sex and violence as a form of mindless entertainment.
The film contains a scene were Alex is receiving the Levitico treatment, which causes him to be repulsed by violence and sexual perversion, and also takes his free will. While strapped into a machine he is forced to watch a projected film of Nazi propaganda over the sound of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Eric Faden points out this phenomena of the “old as new” motif common in 20th century media technologies:
“In the 1930’s Walter Benjamin noted that new technologies always emerge in the form of old technologies and asked ‘when and how will the worlds of form that have arisen in mechanics, in film, machine construction, and the new physics…make what is natural in them clear to us.’” (2)
Kubrick seems aware of this trend and this sequence is a direct reference to it and reference to the way he presents the time altered scenes: with a clash between enjoyment and repulsiveness, ultimately leading to a heightened conciseness of the way the images are perceived. It also is a reference to the capability of the film medium to “brainwash” and therefore alter ones humanity through film and sound technology. The film tells us to be aware of the way perversion is packaged as entertainment, reveals the ugliness of what is often seen as entertainment while being aware of its attraction, and illustrates humanity’s vulnerability to it’s effects.
(1) Bukatman, Scott “Zooming Out: The End of Offscreen Space.” The New American Cinema. Edited by Jon Lewis. Duke University Press (1998): 248-272.
(2) Faden, Eric “Chronophotography and the Digital Image: Whoa...Déjá Vu!” Arret Sur Image (Francois Alberta, Andre Gaudreault, and Marta Braun, eds.
Lausanne Switzerland: Payot, 2002) 335- 345
