A Clockwork Ideology

Earlier this week I was watching A Clockwork Orange, a film about British scoundrels that engage in their so-called “ultra violence.” Through the first half of the film it was very clear that the main character Alex and his band of “droogs” prided themselves on living a counter hegemonic lifestyle. The group had full disregard for any sort of laws or common ideologies. They believed that everything was theirs for the taking. It was not uncommon for them to steal, beat up someone just out of dislike and skip school. They further created a counter hegemonic lifestyle by creating their own slang that is both hard to understand and unlike any other kind of language. At one point in the movie the main character Alex is caught and is sentenced to 15 years in jail for murdering a woman. Alex decides to reform his ways and after two years in jail he undergoes a severe new treatment that forces the subject to change his ideologies and conform to the hegemonic view of society unwilling him by making him feel sick every time he sees a violent image. This new treatment exemplified how the government tried to control the views of its people with images. Alex passes through the treatment but has lost all capabilities to act out on his own terms, because whenever he is confronted by a counter hegemonic want he feels seriously ill and is unable to act on it. This creates a situation where Alex feels completely helpless to others and feels that all he has left is to kill himself, he attempts this but fails. The government is blamed for his attempted suicide. The government tries to glaze over this accident by doing experimental surgery on Alex’s brain, further controlling him with hegemony. The final scene is of a delirious Alex shaking hands with a government official and media taking pictures to put a spin on the terrible accident.