On Saturday, the New York Times ran an opinion piece about the concept of a morality pill, a theoretical-but-apparently-not-implausible panacea for humankind's ethical shortcomings. Think Chicken Soup for the Absent Soul. Of all the possible meditations on free will and human reform, the one cultural allusion the authors made in the article was to A Clockwork Orange, referencing both the novel by Anthony Burgess and the film by Stanley Kubrick.
The article explained that Kubrick's film, which was released in America 40 years ago today, had set off a debate at the time over whether it would ever be virtuous or permissible to use science to deprive someone violent of free will. It's not surprise fact that this debate hasn't gone away, given that A Clockwork Orange has never gone away. The film's legacy has been chewed over plenty, and at 40, it remains many things: a cultural touchstone, a blueprint for artistic emulation and fashionable imitation. Decades later, the diffusion of the film's iconography through pop culture continues unrelentingly; its images have been copped and borrowed by everyone from David Bowie and Led Zeppelin to Madonna, Lady Gaga, The Simpsons, Usher, and Metallica.
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