A Clockwork Orange(1971)
dir. Stanley Kubrick
State violence dressed up as your rehabilitation.
Where to watch: Rent/buy: Apple TV, AmazonLetterboxd ↗
In a near-future Britain, teenage gang leader Alex is imprisoned for ultraviolence and subjected to an experimental state conditioning program meant to strip him of the capacity for violent choice. Adapted from Anthony Burgess's novel.
Why it’s here
Punk in refusing to resolve the discomfort — Alex is a monster, and the state's "cure" is its own kind of monstrous. Pedagogical in forcing the question of whether choosing evil is more human than being engineered into goodness.
Where This Film Lives
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess
The state cured his violence. Now he can't choose anything.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Black Skin White Masks
Frantz Fanon
What colonialism does to the mind of the colonized.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
Ronan Farrow
He had the story. NBC killed it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Dumbing Us Down
John Taylor Gatto
NYC Teacher of the Year quit. Here's what school actually teaches.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Friday Black
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
America is the dystopia. These are the documents.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro
Love story on borrowed time.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood
The end of the world, engineered.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler
Faith, fire, and future California.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST