Discussion Film / AClockworkOrange

I've removed an entry under Broken Aesop. Here it is:

• Broken Aesop: The film's message is broadly that it's wrong to rob the free will of any man, even the most evil, and that society in the pursuit of justice and/or revenge can lead victims to potentially become as bad as their oppressors and start The Chain of Harm. The point falls flat for the following reasons:
  • Alex gets beaten and attacked after being robbed of his free will (when he is weak) rather than when he is strong and can fight back. This ends up saying that it's wrong to attack the weak but not that it's wrong to attack period, as opposed to if Alex was attacked when he was strong and able to fight back on his own (which would send a more pacific message, fitting with the Christian themes of the film).
  • Likewise, post-Ludovico Alex gets attacked by a drunk beggar and his fellow gang-members, and the writer, but is never attacked and assaulted by any of his female rape victims who have a much stronger claim for justified revenge and self-righteous retribution, and as such this makes the film's sympathy rather more easily achieved.
  • The writer is likewise painted as a hypocrite and a caricature of the same (a facet not introduced in the earlier scene) to make it easier to root for Alex, when it would send a stronger message if he was really righteous, insisting that it would be wrong even for him to do this.

Point 1 asserts that the film is saying it's only wrong to attack the weak. I don't think that follows. Alex's assault on his fellow droogs isn't portrayed positively; it's what leads them to betray him. The brawl with the rival gang isn't portrayed positively; they all come across as the monstrous sociopaths that they are.

Point 2—the rape victims may have a "much stronger claim" for retribution, but the writer and the bum have pretty good ones. The bum was brutally beaten. The writer was left a paraplegic, with his wife Driven to Suicide. T Hose are pretty good claims to revenge.

Point 3—surely the writer being a hypocrite for wanting revenge doesn't undermine the point of the film, whether you "root" for Alex or not. The message is that violence is abhorrent and the quest for revenge is wrong.

Alex's surname

>In the novel Alex has no surname given but at one point, he calls himself "Alexander the Large" in an allusion to his penis after he injected himself with an aphrodisiac. However the film makes De Large an actual surname, revealed while he's in custody being processed for prison.<

In the book, he is addressed by this surname while in Jail. His self-awarded nickname "Alexander the Large" references this.