Code In A Clockwork Orange

Code and Cinematic Signs of A Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick is famous for his dark humor movies. He used a lot of codes and signs to express his stylish aesthetic violence and sexual implications in his movies. A Clockwork Orange can be considered as one of the best among them.

In the opening milk-bar scene with the mannequins, the bar is full of sexual imagery. The film continues this motif throughout, combining sex with violence as the social norm. Alex’s parents are completely docile and impotent, having no idea of the actual state of world affairs. Strangely, Alex has an affinity for Beethoven, which often plays ever scenes of violence on sex, including rape scenes.

The main character Alex is a good way to start. In the film,

Zooming out from a close up of Alex, we see two fibre-glass nude women sculpted and positioned as tables, upon which Alex has propped up his feet. Zooming further out we find the Korova milk bar is full of these nude woman shaped tables. There are other naked mannequin women leaning forward on their knees and lit from below by rows of light bulbs attached to large boxes. Dim fills a glass with milk from the breast of one of them. And she is in the gesture of a slave as her hands are chained together. Dim talks to her as he would a real woman. The red phallic handle used to pour milk from her breast is positioned directly beneath her spread legs, along with two red buttons, a metaphor of aroused male genitalia. She and the other statues are obviously symbolizing sexual submission or sex

Characters who believe themselves to be enlightened leaders of their own power pyramids are living a delusion. They’re worshipping a divine light that doesn’t exist. In the Ludovico stage demo Alex even referred to the single spotlight source as “the like light of heavenly grace”. This concept comes directly into play during Alex’s attempted suicide. The writer, who we’ve already identified as an animated bust of Beethoven at the apex of a pool table pyramid composition, is staring upward, not at Alex in the attic, but at the only light source in the room - an electric light bulb. He is insanely worshipping a false source of divine light. Interesting also is that in our final view of Alex in the hospital he gradually rolls his eyes toward a single light bulb above him. Like the writer in the pool room, he appears to be taking insane pleasure from a source of artificial