J.F. is joined by Mark and Thomas to talk about the Trump mug shot and why it reminds them of Kubrick's ' Clockwork Orange' and why they don't like it. Plus, they talk about why they think Trump looks like Alex DeLarge in the movie.
00:03:06.020I mean, Trump kind of looks like, you know, Alex DeLarge and his droogs just broke into his apartment or raping his wife before his very eyes.
00:04:22.720So I believe he's he's Alexander the Great.
00:04:27.380And he's I he's also a bit of a mirror image of in the film, Frank Alexander, who's the writer who gets cuckolded in the most unimaginably bad way by the droogs in one of the early scenes.
00:04:45.540And it's he also lives at home, which is, you know, there's a kind of Freudian element, Oedipal element to that.
00:04:53.780But I think we were Mark and I were talking about this and we we don't have a definitive reading.
00:05:01.340But I think behavioralism is a kind of I mean, I think Kubrick probably himself didn't like someone like Skinner.
00:05:14.460And I think Kubrick is, you know, a Freudian.
00:05:18.500He is interested in Nietzsche and all.
00:05:21.180He's just a different type of person who would not respond to behavioralism and Skinnerism.
00:05:28.220So Skinner wrote a book called like Beyond Freedom and Dignity, I believe, where he was suggesting something.
00:05:35.680I mean, he I don't he wasn't suggesting exactly a Ludovico technique, but he was suggesting that you could, in effect, train people like dogs to, you know, if you sit, you get a treat.
00:05:49.140If you chew up my socks, you don't get dinner, you get, you know, disciplined in some way.
00:05:59.060And he he took this as a this almost all encompassing way of understanding human behavior.
00:06:05.840And, yeah, I think someone like Kubrick definitely is reacting against it.
00:06:10.020But my my view of it is is kind of twofold.
00:06:15.320There's this connection between Alex and Beethoven, obviously.
00:06:20.660And there's a connection between Frank Alexander, the writer, who's a kind of libertarian.
00:06:26.920He's kind of like you, basically, I think.
00:06:29.460I think I think he is you right wing libertarian who hates the public and, you know, the people, they will they will sell the tradition of liberty for quiet life.
00:07:10.760He has he's he's almost a human bust of Beethoven.
00:07:13.720And he also his doorbell is the I don't know if you caught this, but his doorbell is so his doorbell is the opening line of the Fifth Symphony.
00:07:26.920So both of them are kind of like in also Beethoven's connected to Hitler.
00:07:33.560So the they start playing the Ninth Symphony when in that very famous scene.
00:07:40.100And I'm sorry if I'm leaving anyone behind here who hasn't seen the film, but I imagine most of you have seen it.
00:07:46.860The famous scene where they're playing the Ninth Symphony as a background score.
00:07:52.360They're like, are you referring to the background score?
00:07:55.940They're they're playing it as a background score to what are kind of Linny Rief and Stahl esque, you know, images of Nazi rally and then actually like bombings of Poland.
00:08:08.540And I think there might have been historical Holocaust imagery in there as well.
00:08:14.540So what I think Kubrick is suggesting as a sort of Freudian or Nietzschean is that in a way, there's no difference between Beethoven and Hitler.
00:08:28.660The only difference, there's no essential difference.
00:08:31.660The only real difference is that Beethoven is a kind of sublimated martial domineering attitude that you you either write a symphony or you invade Poland.
00:08:42.880But there's some type of masculine force, life force that is pumping through the veins of both Beethoven and Hitler.
00:08:53.820And obviously, one is preferable to the other, but they're but they are the same thing.
00:08:58.600And that, you know, I think that Kubrick is probably pretty ambivalent about Alex, Alex, Alex LeGrand, Alexander the Great.
00:09:56.140So in one scene that you might remember, he, you know, a naked woman just walks before him and he's kind of reaching up to her breasts.
00:10:05.460But then he he cowers down because he's feeling all these the sickness because he's associated in a behavioral like method sex with nausea, nausea, death.
00:10:18.120And so he's kind of, I think in some way that Kubrick is very ambivalent about Aryan power and it might need to be, it needs to be contained and it might.
00:10:41.560I mean, it could take the form of, you know, becoming Beethoven or it could take the form of being kind of modified and pacified through the, you know, the modern welfare state or Christianity.
00:10:53.560And he becomes a Christian that's actually said explicitly, he said, he is a good Christian who will always turn the other cheek.
00:11:03.640So Kubrick is kind of suggesting that Christianity is a way of making the Aryan good.
00:11:10.560But I think there's also another aspect of, of like a punishment where, you know, they say at one point, the, the behavioral scientist, who's a kind of stand in for BF Skinner, he, he says, you know, well, he's, he's associating Beethoven's ninth symphony with, with Hitler.
00:11:31.560And, uh, he says, well, it can't be helped.
00:11:35.060Perhaps this is part of the penal aspect of this.
00:11:38.300He's like, I'm sorry, boy, there's nothing that can be done.
00:11:42.140And so what he's kind of telling is maybe you might need to take away Beethoven.
00:11:47.400Like you, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
00:11:50.840You can't like, you know, there, there's that kind of thing of like, um, and many people said this, um, including like Jewish conductors or Israeli Jewish conductors, like Berenboim or something.
00:12:01.560Of, you know, you know, Richard Wagner, he was the worst man of all time.
00:12:28.140And the other interesting thing about it is that it's the immediate followup to 2001 and Kubrick was after 2001, obviously huge budget and Kubrick wanted to make a Napoleon movie, but they were having a huge cash crunch in Hollywood.
00:12:50.980Probably like what we're going to see, you know, in, in, in the coming years where they just can't afford this stuff.
00:12:57.760And so they, they had this low budget.
00:12:59.580So I think in a way, a clockwork orange is kind of his Napoleon film.
00:13:03.960And he would have, he was thinking through these issues.
00:13:07.240And I, I think he probably would have had a similar message if that Napoleon film had been made.