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1 - A Clockwork Orange … Ticking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2010

Robert P. Kolker
Affiliation:
Chair of the School of Communication and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology
Stuart Y. McDougal
Affiliation:
Macalester College, Minnesota
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Summary

In June 1995, Bob Dole – would-be president and a politician who has been insulated from the world for many years – attacked Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers as a violent assault on Republican fantasies of home and family. The film, Dole said, is one of “the nightmares of depravity” created by Hollywood and popular culture that threaten “to undermine our character as a nation.” In 1996, shortly before the political convention that nominated him, he praised Roland Emerich's Independence Day – a film that proposes, with all the manipulative advantages of the Hollywood style, now tricked up to digital perfection, pasteboard heroic figures fighting against evil alien invaders – as a film that upholds those values that Republicans hold dear.

When A Clockwork Orange appeared in 1971, it was attacked as an unmediated celebration of the violent young self, as a provocation to youthful viewers to imitate what they saw on the screen. There were – on the streets of England – acts of violence that seemed to be based on the film (just as there was at least one such act in the United States after the release of Natural Born Killers). A British judge – prophesying Bob Dole some twenty-five years earlier – said the film was “an evil in itself.” Its creator, Stanley Kubrick, a man noted for his willful repression of a public persona, was moved to write a letter to the New York Times defending himself.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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  • A Clockwork Orange … Ticking
    • By Robert P. Kolker, Chair of the School of Communication and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Edited by Stuart Y. McDougal, Macalester College, Minnesota
  • Book: Stanley Kubrick's <I>A Clockwork Orange</I>
  • Online publication: 29 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615306.002
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  • A Clockwork Orange … Ticking
    • By Robert P. Kolker, Chair of the School of Communication and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Edited by Stuart Y. McDougal, Macalester College, Minnesota
  • Book: Stanley Kubrick's <I>A Clockwork Orange</I>
  • Online publication: 29 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615306.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • A Clockwork Orange … Ticking
    • By Robert P. Kolker, Chair of the School of Communication and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Edited by Stuart Y. McDougal, Macalester College, Minnesota
  • Book: Stanley Kubrick's <I>A Clockwork Orange</I>
  • Online publication: 29 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615306.002
Available formats
×