06-12-2005, 10:47 PM
I agree with Sleeper and Arpi.
Alex, in A Clockwork Orange, may be evil, and cruel, but, two things 1) the movie takes place in the future, the people you are watching have morals that have degraded to almost non-existance. 2) there is no set hero/enemy, good/evil stuggle, he is not in battle to defeat a villian, or a hero. We are watching not just this man, but all the things around him, his environment, how he is allowed to continue to torture and hurt people for the fun of it all because no one is willing to stop him, until his droogies turn on him. The story isn't about him being this awful person, but about him becoming a clockwork orange, a living thing forced to become something he is not for a greater common good. He wins in the end because he embraces the rape and ultraviolence once again, and is happy.
A villian is only a villian depending on your point of view. In A Clockwork Orange, everybody but Alex should be considered a villian, because we are seeing Alex's life played out before us, not someone who is the antithesis of Alex, nor or we generally looking down upon a larger circle of people.
Alex, in A Clockwork Orange, may be evil, and cruel, but, two things 1) the movie takes place in the future, the people you are watching have morals that have degraded to almost non-existance. 2) there is no set hero/enemy, good/evil stuggle, he is not in battle to defeat a villian, or a hero. We are watching not just this man, but all the things around him, his environment, how he is allowed to continue to torture and hurt people for the fun of it all because no one is willing to stop him, until his droogies turn on him. The story isn't about him being this awful person, but about him becoming a clockwork orange, a living thing forced to become something he is not for a greater common good. He wins in the end because he embraces the rape and ultraviolence once again, and is happy.
A villian is only a villian depending on your point of view. In A Clockwork Orange, everybody but Alex should be considered a villian, because we are seeing Alex's life played out before us, not someone who is the antithesis of Alex, nor or we generally looking down upon a larger circle of people.