Jorge Loser Madrid
Madrid
Updated Thursday, January 25, 2024-21:33
The Algeteño group Los Nikis may have been aware of the epilogue of the novel
A Clockwork Orange
when they sang "Alex, everything has changed a lot, it is no longer fashionable to clash", imagining a tame future for the violent protagonist who contemplated a change that really already had imagined its original creator, although it did not appear in
Stanley Kubrick
's famous film
. Now it is back in the spotlight thanks to the delivery of a new series of art documentaries dedicated to great novels that caused a scandal when they came to light, because they were misunderstood or ahead of their time, such as Nabokov's
Lolita
, another adapted to the cinema by the filmmaker. Filmin shows us
Anthony Burguess, beyond A Clockwork Orange
.
This recent study examines the origin and legacy of the book, originally published in 1962, based on a new reflection by the author,
an unfinished manuscript that was discovered in his apartment in Rome in 2019
. This kind of "lost sequel", written between 1972 and 1973, seemed a response to the controversy and hostility towards the author after the premiere of the 1971 adaptation, gutting how the idea of his story had arisen from the sociocultural context of the Kingdom. United in the 50s and 60s, marked by American influence and the end of the colonial Empire.
A crisis that caused the emergence of a nihilistic youth
, whose rebellion was embodied in the form of violent and elegant bands, the
Teddy Boys
, seed of future
mods
and
skins
.
The eternal problem of drug consumption, the creative energy converted into a destructive impulse, the seed of rebellion defined by Burguess was
a reflection of the anti-authority movements of the 60s
, but it also drew a dangerous fantasy that propagated a mistaken idea of the intentions of the text for decades. Tormented by accusations of advocacy of violence in his work, the writer set out to make a personal essay about it, which
serves as the skeleton of the documentary
. There is also extensive archival material from the author and interviews with professionals that offer multiple readings of an artifact that has penetrated pop culture with a persistent misunderstanding about its content.
A Clockwork Orange
has not been the only novel that has been interpreted in a biased way to end up being reappropriated even by extremists. As with
Fight Club
, there is confusion about the representation of the protagonists and identification with them ends up resulting in a complete loss of the essence of the whole.
The documentary does not mention that the film was censored in several countries and that it was largely a consequence of the truncated vision of the work
, since the first part, which covers the misdeeds of Álex and his gang, always absorbs all the attention and the memory of the experience.
Usually there is a tendency to give less importance to the second half, which shows the violence exercised by the State against deviant individuals, the terrible
Ludovico
method , inspired by real Pavlovian conditioning programs and which gave early warning of the MK Ultra project, the tactics of the Chinese government with the dissidents or even the infamy of Guantánamo. A convenient concealment that suggests the system itself use the most aggressive part of the work to justify even more pressure measures,
using fear and scandal as a lure
. Burguess never hid the fact that his intention was, in fact, moralistic and stated that violence is part of the capacity of the human being as an individual, and the freedom to make decisions should never be deprived.
"In many ways, the book is me, it reveals an inner battle against this force: Evil"
Anthony Burguess
This is what he meant by the "mechanical condition",
the perpetual conflict between good and evil, the fear of irrational violence
. He even goes so far as to describe at times that "In many ways, the book is me, it reveals an inner battle against this force: Evil." And it is here that
light is offered on the author's personal history
, marked by several tragedies, among them, an attack on his wife that is not very different from that of the writer in
A Clockwork Orange
, something that the text does not hide, since The novel he is writing in fiction is the very novel that is in our hands,
a meta-literary message that really explained that the first victim of evil, and of his own work, was himself
, with his creation literally attacking him.
Burguess
thus defined his new essay as "a great philosophical statement about the contemporary human condition", revealing that among
the excess, the horrible description of rapes and beatings, there is a timeless concern for the world
to come and a profound humanism. A world of "phenomena control" in which the mechanical, including the real model of the Ludovico program, would manage to tame the organic. Which for him would lead to the disappearance of both "evil" and "good", since one cannot exist without the other, and
human beings are only human because they have the ability to choose
.
By inhibiting the evil in Álex, the show also stifles the good in him, his artistic potential tied to his love of music. Hence the conflict with the use of Beethoven to inspire his most abject outbursts, giving a nuance to classical music opposite to what parents told young people who read the novel. Another detail revealed in the documentary is that Álex and his gang not only embody British youth, and hence the famous slang
nadsat
as a way of bringing down the Iron Curtain, a generational echo that represented that the unrest of the youth was so great in the East as in the West.
A new visionary echo of the entire movement that would spread throughout the world two decades later. Punk , the ultimate expression of individualism that the novel presented, the opposite of the neo-Nazi movements that appropriated that first part of the work without understanding it, which also took notes on what Burguess reflected, including Johnny
Rotten
's way of speaking. It has something of the nerve that challenges Álex's authority. The double edition of
A Clockwork Orange
is known , with or without the final epilogue, which showed a reflection by the protagonist in which he learned and abandoned his criminal life. The reason that one version or another exists is that
Burguess left the final choice
, the ultimate expression of the meaning of the novel about freedom of decision brought to real life, to the editors of each country.