In A Clockwork Orange, Alex’s favourite things are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven. It made me think about how everything evil stems from something good. Rape is a branch off of sex and Beethoven is a brilliant composer of beautiful music. In the movie, after Alex has been “rehabilitated”, his favourite things turn against him and end up causing him the most pain. When he tries to be violent, abuse a female or listen to his favourite composer, he experiences pain at such a level that it ends up causing him to attempt ending his own life. This made me think about the dystopic genre and how whether in book or movie form, the authors and directors choose to make the topic all the more real by having our favourite or most trusted things/ people turn against us in the future. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred loves Luke but ends up growing suspicious of him as men begin gaining the upper hand and the concept of “making love” becomes nothing more than attempting to breed. Women need men in their lives and sex is a natural part of life and yet they were the two man things to be altered in the future as shown in both A Clockwork Orange and The Handmaid’s Tale.
While both the movie and the book have a very twisted concept of sex and it’s purpose, the women are treated very differently. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the Handmaids are basically used as sex slaves but instead of being used for pleasure, they are used so that they may become pregnant. A woman’s worth in the society of Gilead is determined by her “role”. The wives live very sheltered lives with no responsibilities or goals. The Aunts are respected and aren’t bothered but the Handmaid’s are at the bottom of the chain.
In both my lit. circle novel and the movie portray the future in a very frightening light by taking the things that we generally associate with comfort and love and distorting them to portray fear and control.
What I find most interesting about the movie is that is actually doesn’t show a lot of reasons as to why the people are besides Alex and his gang. It shows the people as being very wary (unwilling to open their doors at night etc.) but it doesn’t show why because their don’t seem to be many psychotic hooligans running around besides Alex and Co. If there were, Alex’s crime would not have been such a big deal in the newspapers etc. because his crimes would have been common. The way I see it, they are attempting to improve their way of life but don’t quite know how to go about it. For example, after Alex gets out of treatment and realizes that the two guys he used to wreak havoc with have become policemen, he can’t believe it, but the reason was that the government was trying to integrate them and give them a role/ purpose in society. It was a nice thought, but clearly was not a good idea. This was a major difference I saw between my book and the movie. In the movie, they are attempting to keep order in society in a more normal way whereas in The Handmaid’s Tale they try to maintain order by assigning roles and using extremely harsh punishments for those that attempt to rebel.
