Originally, Anthony
Burgess released his novel A Clockwork
Orange in 1962, well before the Summer of Love. The book was inspired by
the published results of a series of scientific experiments exploring social
conditioning. Kubrick discovered the book some years later and was both
fascinated and inspired by the multiple ideas the novel put
forward as how politics would take advantage of social conditioning. When Kubrick’s film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange was released in 1971,
its portrayal of vicious youth, extreme violence, and political manipulation
stuck a nerve. People saw a future they didn’t
like. If you place the iconic imagery and the violence aside, A Clockwork Orange still serves as a
portent to how political factions do their best to mold the minds
of the public. The only catch now is that their methodologies are
subtler and far less obvious than the conditioning chair we
see in A Clockwork Orange.
