For a hundred years now, we have been fascinated by DYSTOPIAS: nightmare-visions of environmental disasters, squalor, societal decline, or tyrannical governments maintaining complete control over a society—whether through brute force, propaganda, censorship or denial of free thought, brainwashing, or all of the above, leading to the complete loss of individuality.
But in this ever-expanding genre, there is one dystopian film that stands out as horrifyingly unique, breaking the mold, and creating a dystopian world unlike any other—except maybe, potentially, our own. Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film adaptation A Clockwork Orange follows the deviant peregrinations of a young criminal named Alex Delarge, as he navigates a dystopian of version of London, England. This video explores the nature of crime, government, and culture. Why does authoritarianism fail to create safety and prevent crime? Can democracies be totalitarian? What makes policing ineffective? How do liberals respond in a world where liberalism is falling out of favor? How does culture, art, and architecture reflect the character of a society? Are their similarities between A Clockwork Orange and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World? If so, what do these classic novels have to say about our own societies?