"A Clockwork Orange" - Crime and Nourishment! Quiz

Answer: Dim

I'll quote direct from the opening of the book, which was slightly condensed for the film: "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening." The movie thought it unnecessary to clarify the reason for Dim's sobriquet.

In the third act of the film, it's Dim, the group's bruiser, and Georgie, who turns out to be rather resentful of Alex's leadership, that make their way into the police force.

The last we see of Dim, he's telling Alex, "Don't call me Dim no more, either. Officer, call me." But we will say more of Officers Dim and Georgie when we get there.

Answer: Horrorshow

Like a fair number of Nadsat words, "horrorshow" is essentially the way an English teenager might mishear a legitimate Russian word. In this case the word is "khorosho", which just means "good". At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, let me point out that using "horrorshow" in this way is hardly unprecedented among The Kids Today (whenever "Today" happens to be for you). Compare "wicked", "sick", "gnarly", or simply "bad" from real-world slang.

But the inversions and perversions of sense we find in Nadsat are far wider-ranging than this example. Sex crimes are given cutesy names like "the in-out in-out"; a profusion of Cockney rhyming slang makes the lexicon seem cryptic instead of cohesive; random words are adulterated to baby-talk, like "eggiwegs", "gutsiwutts", and so on and on.

It lends itself to an ironical, detached, and sarcastic (or sarky!) way of talking.

Answer: Goggly Gogol, Johnny Zhivago, The Heaven Seventeen

Looking at the over-the-top, neon-tinted, Googie look of the record store, I gather that popular music has taken a turn for the in-your-face in the world of "A Clockwork Orange". Another hint, perhaps, is that Alex woos them by promising the "angel trumpets and devil trombones" of Beethoven at his place - presumably the other groups include neither. The script says the hallucinatory, high-speed sex scene that follows has the girls (sic) "zonked by the booming, all engulfing sound of Alex's incredible Hi-Fi".

Goggly Gogol and Johnny Zhivago both look like allusions to Russian lit (the author Nikolai Gogol and Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago"). Heaven 17 and Johnny Zhivago are both monikers taken up by real acts, the former comprising several ex-members of the Human League. They're not all the store sells, though. Front and center can be seen a vinyl soundtrack to a film called "2001: A Space Odyssey". Wonder how that got there...

Two of the sets I made up; the third (the one including Babymetal) I don't particularly mean as an insult, except to Babymetal, which is as "metal" as Guinea pigs are pigs.

Answer: A milk bottle

This bit of politics gives us a good deal of insight into the workings of the hooligan gangs when they aren't going around molesting, burgling, and beating. First of all, there's little honor or even friendship among these thieves. The droogs visit Alex, where Georgie makes it clear he'd like to move into more elaborate criminality - proper heists rather than grab-and-go ultraviolence. Their interaction is full of innuendo and posturing - the kind which Alex is wont to use in basically every interaction he has (look how he addresses his P.R. officer, Deltoid) - but in this case, it just annoys him. "This sarcasm, if I may call it such, does not become you, O my brothers. ... There's been some very large talk behind my sleeping back, and no error." Georgie's veiled threats stir Alex to retaliation: when the group are walking together, he lashes out against his droogies, throwing them in the water. Alex thinks he's reasserted himself, but it's anything but: the other droogs use this confidence to lure Alex to a remote house, where - WHACK! - he's left where the cops can nab him.

(It's the catlady - that's what she's credited as! - who fends off Alex by whacking him with the Beethoven bust, right before he hears the sirens and runs out to get proper whacked.)

Answer: He wants more room for political prisoners.

When he visits the yard, the Minister seems to bait Alex into volunteering for the Ludovico. "The government can't be concerned with outmoded penological theories. Soon we may be needing all of our prison space for political offenders. Common criminals like these are best dealt with on a purely curative basis." What's more, he thinks that techniques like the Ludovico will clear out cells quickly: "Full implementation in a year's time. Punishment means nothing to them, you can see that... they enjoy their so-called punishment." That finally baits Alex to step out of line and say that he agrees with the Minister.

We get very little direct information about the political situation in "A Clockwork Orange", but there are lots of clues to be gleaned. For one, the infiltration of Russian culture and language, not to mention the Soviet-sounding relish for political imprisonment, suggest the encroachment of a totalitarian ideology. Then there's the fact that thugs like Dim and Georgie are getting jobs in the police. It seems likely that the Minister's goal is to actively promote unease - possibly to secure the upper-class vote, or as the catlady calls her ilk, the "real people".

Answer: He searches Alex's room.

The Minister of the Interior visits the prison after Alex has begun asking about the Ludovico Technique. Just prior to his visit to the yard, the Minister inspects the prisoner's rooms and spots a bust and a framed photo of Beethoven.

The team who designs Alex's Ludovico films (and there are clues that they are deliberately designed - they feature men wearing costumes rather like Alex's, and the only music used happens to be Alex's favorite symphony) uses what they know about him to make them as offensive as possible. One of the doctors overseeing his treatment looks quite pleased . When he begs them to stop, they tauntingly ask him, "You've heard Beethoven before? You're keen on music?" Dr. Brodsky then says, "It can't be helped. Here's your punishment element perhaps." I find it striking that a therapy which should, in principle, remove the need for punishment still takes pleasure in its administration. After all, it was this same minister who was complaining the problem with punishments is that the prisoners don't dislike them enough...

The prison library appears to be extremely barebones. When Alex walks through it with the father, all we can see are religious volumes, and no music of any kind.

Answer: The prison's Chaplain

Throughout the movie, it seems like the prison's Chaplain is the one good-hearted chap who has anyone else's interest in mine. Although Alex was definitely kissing up to the Chaplain for his own gain, the Chaplain reciprocates with sincere concern for his well-being. In response to the Minister's call for questions, the Chaplain stands up and says, "Choice! The boy has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice."

Dr. Branom and the Minister both are all too happy with the results of their experiment. In reply to the Father's comment, the Minister says to the audience that "we", meaning the luminaries in attendance, "are concerned only with cutting down crime". The crowd applauds this. But as I've pointed out elsewhere, it seems like his government is certainly going to INCREASE crime - a way to galvanize his constituent, perhaps?

Alex's parents, far from being disgusted, seem all too happy to be done with Alex. When he returns unannounced, they're actually upset he's come back - we see they have new, illicit décor and a strapping young boarder, Jerry, who (it seems to me) is the reason Mrs. de Large feels confident wearing dyed hair and bright red latex. Maybe he thinks dentures are chic.

Answer: Scientists prodding his brain

The cheery, grape-haired therapist - who keeps a smile on her face even when Alex rattles off violent, inane, pre-Ludovico answers to her psychiatric questionnaire - maintains her indifference when Alex brings up his dream. The dream is exactly what's happened to him: the Ludovico therapy, or torture if you like, is nothing more special than the use of emetics and film to force a desired reaction in the subject. Meanwhile, Alex doesn't seem to be aware of his regression to his earlier state, which leaves him completely open to Pavlovian conditioning, yet oblivious (except on the subconscious level) that he has been made susceptible.

On the other hand, from the viewpoint the Government (who don't REALLY seem to care about keeping the streets safe), all evidence of lasting damage from the Ludovico is gone. How could the press possibly make the story out to show Alex as a victim? Not even Alex seems to realize he's been traumatized. "I was cured, all right."

Answer: Mr. Alexander, the writer

So much for dissident writing. "There is a certain man - a writer of subversive literature - who has been howling for your blood. He's been mad with desire to stick a knife in you, but you're safe from him now, we've put him away. ... We put him away for his own protection." Of course, early in the film, before Mr. Alexander recognizes Alex, the writer is elated he's stumbled onto his threshold - elated because Alex will be a perfect demonstration of the state's brutality and the clockwork-personality they demand of offenders. "He's committed to socially acceptable acts," Mr. Alexander says to his friends on the phone, "A little machine capable of only good...

He can be the most potent weapon imaginable to ensure that the Government is not returned at the next election." Yes, or the ultimate weapon to ensure they KEEP power! It would be nice, wouldn't it, if Alex could decide for himself which he should be!

Answer: False

It seems that all the pain Alex suffered and all the therapy he endured was for nothing, in the end. Not even the punishment has stuck with him. Actually Alex tells us that he *can* enjoy Beethoven still, it's only the Ninth that makes him retch. Yet after his fall - perhaps a part of him dies then, symbolically - the Minister rewards a smiling Alex, the horrorshow cooperative malchick, with giant speakers that blast the Ninth.

It feels excruciatingly cruel to take away one of the lad's only healthy outlets under the guise of "rehabilitating" him. Smiling or not, it seems like Alex has lost some bit of his soul.

The smarmy boy who liked Beethoven, who turned into a merciless criminal, finally ends up a gladhanded ward of the state, the very government that trained him to be powerless in resisting it.

Not a man who enjoys music, but a thing who responds positively to it.