I watched "A Clockwork Orange" last night for the first time in probably fifteen years.
In a twisted sense I saw many similarities to "the program." The lead character, a young man named Alex (played by Malcolm McDowell) was sent to prison for a series of fairly ghastly crimes culminating in the murder of a woman during a home invasion.
For his crimes he was sent to prison for 40 years. Alex was getting along fine in prison, even becoming a "model prisoner" who participated in Sunday services and became well-versed in religion and the Bible.
Unfortunately for the young man, 40 years was just too long to cool his heels, so he "volunteered" for a new program of Behavior Modification designed to stamp out violent and sexual urges. He is forced to watch violent and sexual movies while his eyelids are held open by wire devices after having been injected with an "experimental serum" that makes the subject violently ill when subjected to feelings surrounding sex or violence. There is no dialogue in the films he sees, but the score is Beethoven's 9th symphony, of which Alex was previously very fond.
Eventually he is released as "rehabilitated."
Upon returning to the "real world" he is confronted, of course, as we all are, with real life sexual and violent situations to which he has become singularly unable to cope. He becomes a crime victim twice over within hours of his release because he is unable to defend himself due to the physical sickness he experiences surrounding sex and violence, including when he himself is the victim of it.
After two violent episodes, of which he was the victim, he unwittingly, looking for aid for his injuries, stumbles into the home of one of his previous victims whom he does not recognize from the crime he commited against the man and his wife. The man, however, recognizes poor Alex and begins to plot against him in an attempt to use him as an example of crooked and cruel government with the aim of subversion. The man believes that if he can show that the government actually damaged the Behavior Modification subjects in cruel and irreversible ways, there would be an impetus to purge the "perpetrators" from governmental power.
Through some inquiry of Alex the man finds that Alex has become averse to Beethoven's 9th symphony as a side-effect of his Behavior Modification program.
The man locks Alex in a room and begins to play the 9th so that Alex cannot escape from its sickening effect, leaving him only one way out: "snuffing" himself. To this end, Alex hurls himself from the third story window in an attempted suicide. The attempt turns out to be unsuccessful.
Alex is later sent to a hospital where he is de-programmed from his "Behavior Modified" state through intensive therapy and some invasive surgery.
In the end, Alex reverts to fantasies of "the ultra violence" and deems himself "cured."
Now, what is the point of the story? There are a few. One, tinkering with the human mind with experimental psychology (or proven destructive techniques like our programs today) is dangerous. Two, it has unintended consequences which strip the subject of the ability to function normally in society, even though the program proponents say the subject is "cured" or "fixed." Three, it takes intensive deprogramming to return the subject to a functioning level. And lastly, "you never know what you're gonna get in the end."
