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KUBRICK CONTRA NIHILISM: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Much critical ink has been spilled over the question of whether the world-view of archetypal auteur Stanley Kubrick is nihilistic or not, and appropriately so. To my mind, this is one of the most important questions we can ask about genuine artists and their oeuvres. If auteur criticism is to have any validity, from a philosophical perspective, it must address such issues. True cinematic geniuses (e.g., Bergman, Antonioni, Wertmuller, Hitchcock and Cronenberg, to name only a few) have something to teach us about the meaning of life, and in uncommon instances, their explorations can be genuinely philosophical. This is the case in several of Kubrick’s films, but most especially in his treatment of Anthony Burgess’ dystopic classic, A Clockwork Orange.
Burgess declared his own intentions in a new introduction to the 1988 edition of the novel, which he entitled “A Clockwork Orange Resucked”. While admitting that......

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Approximate Word Count: 2126
Approximate Pages: 9 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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