The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

A Clockwork Orange
67
somebody in a chair and weld their eyes open, and then all of a sudden they
would be a model citizen.
That’s a pretty powerful concept for a movie. I think it still is. There’s the
quaint ’70s style of it all, but I think it’s a powerful movie about rehabilitating
criminals. Can you? And if you could, would you?
There’s also this friction between the quick-fix totalitarian state and the
desire for order, which is what Burgess was reacting against. He was
living among the mods in London. There was a bunch of fiery rhetoric
around the violence. Was it responsible to release this? Kubrick himself
pulled the movie from distribution in London, fearful of copycat
crimes and whatnot. Is there any kind of violence in films that you
might regard as socially dangerous?
Dahl: Well, my point of view about it is this: I hardly ever blame the artist
for making the artwork or the desire to make the film. I have a bigger issue
with the companies that put it out there to make a profit. I think they have
to take more responsibility for the public’s reaction to artwork, because
they’re the filter. An artist is going to do what an artist is going to do.
Before, a painter made a painting and stuck it into a gallery, or somebody
wrote a book. Now, when you’re talking about mass media as a conduit to
millions of people, I think the people running the companies have to be
the final filter on what people see and what they don’t see.
That is what this film is addressing: Do you want heads of corporations
or politicians deciding what we see or don’t see?
Dahl: Well they do anyway, don’t they? Of course they do. Whatever the
company, corporation, or government—they are final arbitrator of what people
see. I suppose you can point to the artist and say, “Why did you make
that?” But I think with artists, I don’t even know if they really know what
they’re making sometimes. Ultimately, I think the responsibility to society is
from the companies that pay for the film, put it out there, and profit from it.
You’re echoing something that Kubrick said about artists and what the
different causes of violence are. He says, “To try to fasten any responsibility
on art as the cause of life seems to me to put the case the wrong