Why "A Clockwork Orange"

[herr_oberst]

Anyone else ever read or heard why this for a title?

I've never understood the meaning, Seems like even the author isn't quite sure. (My theory is that it was just syllables that sounded good to him; then when the book was a success maybe he felt obliged to define the title...? Just speculation on my part. . . )

Quoted from Wikipedia:
"(Anthony) Burgess gave three possible origins for the title:
* That he had overheard the phrase "as queer as a clockwork orange" in a London pub in 1945 and assumed it was a Cockney expression.¹ In Clockwork Marmalade, an essay published in the Listener in 1972, he said that he had heard the phrase several times since that occasion. However, no other record of the expression being used before 1962 has ever appeared.[3] Kingsley Amis notes in his Memoirs (1991) that no trace of it appears in Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Historical Slang.
* His second explanation was that it was a pun on the Malay word orang, meaning "man." The novel contains no other Malay words or links.[3]
* In a prefatory note to A Clockwork Orange: A Play with Music, he wrote that the title was a metaphor for "...an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into a mechanism."[3]

In his essay, "Clockwork Oranges," ² Burgess asserts that "this title would be appropriate for a story about the application of Pavlovian or mechanical laws to an organism which, like a fruit, was capable of colour and sweetness." This title alludes to the protagonist's positively conditioned responses to feelings of evil which prevent the exercise of his free will. To reverse this conditioning, the protagonist is subjected to a technique in which violent scenes displayed on screen, which he is forced to watch, are systematically paired with negative stimulation in the form of nausea and "feelings of terror" caused by an emetic medicine administered just before the presentation of the films."

[Mark Henry]

Because he couldn't call it "Fuch ing Wacked",

[GH85Carrera]

Good reply.

[azasadny]

Originally Posted by Mark Henry

Because he couldn't call it "Fuch ing Wacked",

I'm with you!

[imcarthur]

I saw it when it was released & at the time the movie was very shocking - almost visceral. You have to remember that this was the era when real violence hit the big scene.

And it caused a revival in interest in Beethoven as well . . .

Ian

[legion]

I like the movie, right up until the end where it omits the final chapter. (Which was also omitted from the original U.S. printing.)

To me, the whole point of the story revolves around the final chapter. Alex was punished in an attempt to make him good. Alex was rewarded in an attempt to make him good. Alex's free will was taken from him, and it still didn't make him a good person. In the final chapter Alex CHOOSES to be a good person on his own, for his own reasons, completely independent of all that happened to him.

[ramonesfreak]

i agree with your speculation. its a visually surreal and ambiguous attention getter of a title that matches up well with the uniqueness of the book that he just chose almost randomly

kind of like how the beatles named their album rubber soul...no thought or meaning about it at all. after saying it, it just works and works well with the material inside the sleeve

[JJ 911SC]

Originally Posted by legion

I like the movie, right up until the end where it omits the final chapter. (Which was also omitted from the original U.S. printing.)

I guess this is for show only...

[legion]

Originally Posted by JJ 911SC

I guess this is for show only...

That really doesn't have anything to do with it. The U.S. publisher thought the audience in this country was not sophisticated enough to "get" the ending, and would never buy that an unrepentant criminal like Alex would "just change his mind". It was purely a commercial decision designed to increase the book's sales. Working with a publisher (and also an editor) is part of the creative process, and these decisions are made thousands of times a day. Burgess agreed to this edit and it had nothing with suppressing his ideas, just trying to make better book. I'm simply of the opinion that this decision really destroyed the whole point of the book.

[davidbir]

Originally I recall Burgess claiming that it-A Clockwork Orange- was Cockney slang--as a born and bred Londoner I never 'eard anyfink like it!

In his autobiography-(long) .... He says about the movie "The writer's aim in both books[Clockwork Orange and Lolita] had been to put language , not sex or violence, into the foreground".
About the original English version and the removal of the last chapter in the US version: "Kubrick confessed that he did not know this version: an American though settled in England, he had followed the only version that Americans were permitted to know. I cursed Eric Swenson of W.W. Norton [Publishers]."

[Steve Carlton]

I'm happy with the ending in the movie. Seems unrealistic for Alex to decide to become good on his own. I think the main points are already made and the ending has little to do with them, anyway.

One of my favorite movies- seen it many, many times. Kubrick was a genius.

[davidbir]

I too am happy with the ending of the movie and despite watching the movie several times, reading both volumes of Burgess' autobiography, I have never read either version of the book!

[Steve Carlton]

When I read the book, I remember thinking it was exactly like the movie.

[GH85Carrera]

I wanted to see the movie when it first came out but it was X-rated (yes really) and I was not yet 18. Years later when I saw it I did not much care for it.

[the951racer]

Twisted fricken movie


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[Rot 911]

After seeing the movie one scene always comes to mind when I hear the song "Singing in the Rain" and it ain't Fred Astaire scene.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by legion

It was purely a commercial decision designed to increase the book's sales.

Yes, this is often the case.

Originally Posted by legion

Working with a publisher (and also an editor) is part of the creative process,

If by "creative process" you mean "creating a marketable product" you are correct again.

[foxpaws]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

I wanted to see the movie when it first came out but it was X-rated (yes really) and I was not yet 18. Years later when I saw it I did not much care for it.

I actually have the movie poster for the X-Rated version (which was pulled after less than a week into release - and re-cut for an R rating.) It was released before I certainly was old enough to see either version, however it has become one of my top 5 movies.

I actually like the truncated version - rather than the 'Alex goes good' version (which I have read). It is a far more powerful, and 'moral' story with the current ending. Kubrick made the right call.

Maybe I just don't like changing things to have 'it always turns out good in the end' endings. The ending to Spielberg's Minority Report (I adore Phillip K Dick) was awful - nothing like the story at all. Same with Spielberg's take on Super Toys Last All Summer Long (AI) - Kubrick would have made it into the dark story it really was - Spielberg gave the ending way too much 'light'.

[legion]

Nope, the original is better. It reinforces the point that "government cannot make people good". People are what they choose to be.

[foxpaws]

Legion - the fact that Kubrick's Alex reverts to his violent "per-condtioning" form is a far, far stronger statement than Burgess's statement where Alex that sees his old droog pal from the olden days, living the life of 'communal bliss' and decides that suburban path is the way for him too.

'I was cured alright'

In the movie, as it stands without chapter 21, the 'cure' is that Alex was able to think for himself again, society be damned. The implication of the ending of the movie is that the politicians were willing to let Alex be his old self again, as long as it made them (temporarily) look good (not to mention that they used Alex's conditioning and subsequent rehabilitation to settle a score against the writer). So Alex was being sarcastic, he was cured, alright - he was back to the same sadistic guy he was before.

It is a far, far stronger statement against government control than the 'oh well, I got better' ending in the British version of the book. The movie shows the real awful underbelly of government controlling our thoughts, controlling our free will, and the fact that people don't just 'get better' after government conditioning, and that even in government 'unconditioning' of little Alex he remains a pawn.

I think it reinforces how free will is a pawn of the government as it is portrayed in the movie.