A Clockwork Orange (Controversies)

Stanley Kubrick's futuristic juvenile delinquency movie A Clockwork Orange (1971) is an adaptation of Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel of the same title. Film and novel tell the story of an extremely violent teenager who allows himself to be subjected to aversion therapy (making him unable to indulge his violent and sexual impulses) so as to get out of prison; he then becomes the target of violent attacks and political manipulation which in turn culminate in the removal of his psychological conditioning.  Drawing on new research in the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts London, Krämer's study explores the production, marketing and reception as well as the themes and style of A Clockwork Orange against the backdrop of Kubrick's previous work and of wider developments in cinema, culture and society from the 1950s to the early 1970s.