Stanley Kubrick’sA Clockwork Orangeas Art Against Torture

• Published in: Screening Torture p. 143
• Main Author: Carolyn Strange
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Columbia University Press 18.09.2012
• Subjects: Anthropology; Applied anthropology; Art criticism; Art genres and movements; Art history; Art theory; Arts; Axiology; Behavioral sciences; Correctional institutions; Correctional system; Crime; Criminal justice; Criminal law; Criminals; Criminology; Cultural anthropology; Cultural studies; Ethics; Film criticism; Film studies; Human behavior; Human populations; Law; Liberalism; Morality; Movies; Normative ethics; Outsider art; Persons; Philosophy; Political ideologies; Political philosophy; Political science; Population studies; Prison art; Prisons; Sexual violence; Social sciences; Torture; Violence; Violent crimes
• DOI: 10.7312/flyn15358.10

Between the publication of Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange¹ and its film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick in 1971 “the golden age of American film violence” emerged, as film critics have noted and as moral guardians decried at the time.² When the U.S. Motion Picture Association of America revised its film classification code in 1968 and effectively expanded the range of films adults could watch in public, filmmakers, led by Sam Peckinpah, seized the opportunity to depict violence more graphically than it had previously been screened in mainstream theaters.³ At the same time sexually confronting films, such as Midnight Cowboy