Listening to Stanley Kubrick (21 page)

Advertisements for the film seem to make an ironic connection between Alex’s love of music and the other activities he enjoys. The tagline on one movie poster reads: “the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven.” Music is tied into Alex’s feelings of power, and far from being a passive interest, it is part of his violent rituals. In Burgess’s novel, Alex—during a quiet moment alone at home—muses over an article he read: “Modern Youth would be better off if A Lively Appreciation Of The Arts could be like encouraged. Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more civilized. Civilized by syphilised yarbles [testicles]. Music always sort of sharpened me up, O my brothers, and made me feel like old Bog [God] himself.”
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Because this connection between music and violence is made so explicit, even in the film, the viewer is made to wonder how Alex developed his tastes. They were not instilled in him by his parents, nor were they born of peer pressure; Alex’s friends seem ignorant and indifferent to the music Alex loves. When Dim gives a raspberry to a woman singing in the Korova Milkbar—Beethoven’s Ninth in the film and an aria from the fictional opera
Das Bettzeug
in the novel—his slight is punished swiftly and violently by Alex. His parents (Alex calls them Pee and Em) are portrayed as weak-willed, sniveling creatures who listen to silly pop music. Alex’s teenage rebellion forms him into his parents’ opposite: the thundering id to their cautious, timid egos and the cultured prince to their blue-collar, middle-class kitsch. The girls Alex meets in the record shop also seem ignorant about everything but pop music, “Who you getten, bratty? . . . The Heaven Seventeen? Luke Sterne? Goggly Gogol?”
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Even highly educated people in the novel and film, as represented by Dr. Brodsky, profess ignorance of music. Alex complains about the use of Beethoven as the soundtrack music for the Ludovico films to which Brodsky explains that the only thing he knows about music is that it’s good for heightening emotion. Alex, in both film and novel, plays the role of music critic. He is the only one for whom classical music is special, even sacred, but the reader or viewer can only speculate how it came to be so important to Alex and so intertwined with his violent impulses.

Music may read as a symbolic representation of Alex’s free will since his ability to listen to music is lost as a side effect of the Ludovico treatment. Or perhaps Alex’s love of music is his only redeeming characteristic, the one thing he shares with the rest of humanity. It certainly allows the viewer to forge a connection to Alex, even subconsciously. From Kubrick’s point of view, the score allows the audience to enjoy the music, even when we are upset by the scenes accompanied by the music. Furthermore, Kubrick’s use of music allows characters to participate in a visual dance. In an interview with Penelope Houston, Kubrick comments on the choreographic connections of image and music:

In cinematic terms, I should say that movement and music must inevitably be related to dance, just as the rotating space station and the docking Orion space ship in
2001
moved to the “Blue Danube.” From the rape on the stage of the derelict casino, to the super-frenzied fight, through the Christ figure’s cut, to Beethoven’s Ninth, the slow-motion fight on the water’s edge and the encounter with the cat lady where the giant white phallus is pitted against the bust of Beethoven, movement, cutting, and music, are the principal considerations—dance?
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Like the spaceships in
2001
, Alex dances through
A Clockwork Orange
. Violent fights take place against the backdrop of music and enemies circle each other as if waiting to partner up, but in the latter film, we aren’t shown peaceful docking maneuvers set to a famous waltz, we get loosely choreographed crime, sex, and conflict.

Henry Purcell:
Funeral Music for Queen Mary

Appearances:

0:00:10–0:00:53 Credit sequence

0:00:54–0:02:24 Opening shot in the Korova Milkbar under Alex’s expository voiceover

0:13:23–0:14:38 Alex and his friends return to the Korova Milkbar

0:16:55–0:18:48 Alex walks home (he whistles the main theme and it is picked up by the score)

1:24:04–1:26:16 Testing the Ludovico treatment’s effectiveness

1:38:58–1:43:26 Alex is attacked by his old friends

2:02:18–2:04:20 Alex is in the hospital

Wendy Carlos’s realization on the Moog synthesizer of the march from Henry Purcell’s
Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary
begins the film, and the title cards are cut to structural points in the music. When the last credit card has flashed, the first shot is of Alex, sitting in the Korova Milkbar, looking boldly at the audience. During the long dolly out, the first voiceover begins as Alex explains who and where he is and introduces us to his friends Pete, Georgie, and Dim. In the credit sequence and the opening shot, the march serves structural, aesthetic, and political functions: the visual cuts coincide with the musical cadences; the march introduces the strange and perhaps “futuristic” sound of the Moog synthesizer and seems to evoke a sense of doom; it perhaps suggests a death knell for some kind of governmental authority. The sense of doom is enhanced by the short quote of the
Dies Irae
plainchant in the excerpt.

The
Dies Irae
is a chant and poetic text from the Roman Catholic Requiem mass. Wendy Carlos’s inclusion of it is appropriate in the sense that this was intended as a funeral march. The
Dies Irae
will be discussed in detail in chapter 6. Carlos appropriately revisited this chant for the score of
The Shining.

Purcell’s march also adds “Englishness” because it is by British composer Henry Purcell, in a highbrow, early Baroque style that anticipates Alex’s anachronistic musical tastes. The music, although distorted, adds to the “courtlike mood.”
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Henry Purcell (1659–1695), arguably the greatest native English composer of the Baroque period, wrote his
Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary
in 1694, when Queen Mary succumbed to an outbreak of smallpox. Kubrick did not acknowledge the possible political meanings of the work, but his use of it in the film suggests some understanding of these ideas.

The Purcell march appears in scenes in which characters demonstrate authority of some kind. At the beginning of the film, Alex is in control of everything. He holds the audience’s gaze, speaks to them via voiceover, and holds court in the Korova Milkbar. His droogs are his subjects and the street is his kingdom. When Alex walks home, he whistles the theme to himself as the march continues playing on the soundtrack. The music is not sourced at that point—it doesn’t appear to be coming from anywhere on-screen—but the synchronicity of Alex’s whistling along with the piece shows that either Kubrick shot the scene to that piece or made sure it fit after the fact. The march reappears as the gang heads back to the Korova Milkbar for a drink after a night of ultra-violence. After the Ludovico treatment, Alex is subjected to a number of tests in front of an audience. When the topless woman sent to entice Alex comes through the curtain, Purcell’s music starts again, this time because
she
holds the power in the room. There are various reaction shots of the audience and of Alex, wide eyed and speechless at her approach. When the funeral music reappears much later in the film, it is changed, with percussive hits added to mirror the beating Alex is getting from his former droogs. Alex is no longer in control; the Ludovico treatment has rendered him utterly helpless, unable even to defend himself. Georgie and Dim, now members of the police force, occupy places of authority and the change in the music reflects the violent way they choose to practice this authority. The return of the music also ironically underscores Alex’s lost power. Purcell’s march also suggests that the government has taken control and autonomy away from everyone. Alex is made helpless, the beautiful woman is the tool of the doctors who are, in turn, tools of the government. In this political system, everyone is turned into a clockwork orange.

Edward Elgar:
Pomp and Circumstance

Appearances:

1:01:35–1:03:30 Minister of the Interior visits the prison looking for a subject (March no. 1)

1:07:25–1:09:52 Alex is taken to the Ludovico treatment center (March no. 4)

Kubrick used the music of another great English composer, Edward Elgar, in scenes dealing with the Ludovico treatment. Two of the marches from Elgar’s
Pomp and Circumstance
appear in the film. The first march of the set accompanies the scenes of the Minister of the Interior choosing Alex as the first subject for the Ludovico treatment, while the fourth march appears when Alex is transferred to the Ludovico clinic. Of the marches written for
Pomp and Circumstance
, marches 1–4 were written before the First World War and embody an unabashedly patriotic spirit. Elgar, one of the first composers to record his works onto gramophone records, recorded the first and fourth marches of
Pomp and Circumstance
in 1914. The marches were released during World War I with the following liner notes:

At a time when patriotism is welling up in the breast of every British-born citizen, Elgar’s super-patriotic suite is doubly welcome, especially a performance conducted by the great composer himself. In “Pomp and Circumstance” Elgar reaches great heights of national feeling. The patriotism of the artist shows itself as vividly in this work as in his acceptance, despite his age, of an active part in protective work during the war. . . . No one can listen without experiencing feelings of noble patriotism, such is the nature of its immediate appeal. Every Britisher should possess this unique record.
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The trio section of the first march has become known in the U.S. chiefly for being the music played at graduations. In hearing this march accompanying the scenes of Alex being chosen for, and entering the Ludovico treatment, the viewing public would see the process as a kind of rite of passage. Alex is leaving the state jail and moving on. His trip to the clinic is an event sanctioned by the government; he is a test case for the minister’s solution to crime. The patriotic feeling of the piece would then seem ironic, given that the government is sending Alex off for what amounts to government-approved torture.
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There is no doubt that Kubrick was aware of the use of the march in the United States and the United Kingdom. Since the
Pomp and Circumstance
marches are not mentioned by Burgess in the novel, they were probably chosen by Kubrick for their association with graduation, as Alex moves from one phase of his punishment to the next. Even though the country in which
A Clockwork Orange
takes place remains unnamed, certain aspects of the film, including British actors and locations, must lead the audience to assume the action takes place in England.

Rossini: Overture to
The Thieving Magpie

Appearances:

0:04:35–0:09:44 Alex’s gang happens upon members of a rival gang, led by Billyboy, who are attempting to rape a woman at the derelict casino; there is a fight between the gangs; when the police sirens are heard, Alex’s gang escapes in a stolen car

0:33:26–0:43:38 Alex begins a fight with his own gang because they have challenged his authority; the gang betrays Alex

Gioacchino Rossini’s Overture to
The Thieving Magpie
(
La gazza ladra
) is not one of the pieces Burgess included in the novel, but it occupies about a minute and a half more screen time than Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The overture to the opera, which was composed in 1817, accompanies important scenes of conflict in the film and first appears as Alex and his droogs encounter a rival gang led by Billyboy. In the film, the scene begins with the camera lingering on a fresco on the wall of the theater and slowly panning down past the proscenium arch and onto the stage itself. This graceful motion is accompanied by two sounds, the overture to Rossini’s opera and the screams of the woman Billyboy’s gang is attempting to rape. Here are Billyboy and his droogs, stripping the clothes off a screaming young woman and trying to force her onto a mattress on the stage. The audience for this act of violence is Alex’s gang. When Alex interrupts the proceedings by insulting Billyboy’s masculinity, “come get one in the yarbles [testicles], if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou,” the woman is forgotten and the gangs begin to fight in the theater. What follows is a scene of stylized violence that is similar to a clichéd saloon fight of a Hollywood western: bodies fly through the air, and the participants break chairs, bottles, and panes of glass over each other’s heads and shoulders.
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It is no accident that Kubrick has chosen to set the action in an abandoned theater that Alex calls the “derelict casino.” In the novel, the rival gangs meet at the Municipal Power Plant, not exactly a theatrical location. But one may argue that the gang lives in a world that is nothing but theater, with masks and costumes that flaunt their “inauthenticity.”
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The boys wear these masks and special clothes (and makeup in the film) while indulging in ritualized behavior and speaking in their own argot. The combination of the abandoned theater and the opera overture make the scene feel like a play-within-a-play; the actions of the characters are violent, and instead of a beautiful singing voice to go with the music, there is a girl screaming for mercy.
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