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'I should not have written 'A Clockwork Orange''

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Re: 'I should not have written 'A Clockwork Orange''

#161

Post by themadturk »

gwbas1c wrote: post #158
JohnFen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if he's gotten sloppier or just more verbose, but do find his later writings to be largely plodding and much less interesting than his earlier works. He pretty much lost me with The Baroque Cycle. Those books were a chore. But I think that has to do with the clear change in his writing style, which has diverged from my personal tastes. So it's not a judgement call on his writing either way -- we've just…

> He pretty much lost me with The Baroque Cycle. Those books were a chore. I wouldn't call those "later writings," he's written quite a few excellent (and better) books since. Anathem, Seveneves, and Fall; or, Dodge in Hell were excellent. Termination Shock was a quick read. I've since gone back and re-read Cryptonomicon. I don't know know if I'll redo the whole Baroque cycle, (Because it was so long,) but I do have…

I could not get through the Baroque Cycle, and hated Fall. The only other Stephenson book I've not made it through is Anathem, which I know is a heretical position to take, but I can't help it.

Re: 'I should not have written 'A Clockwork Orange''

#162

Post by themadturk »

coliveira wrote: post #38
dageshi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

House was at least in part based on Sherlock Holmes who infamously had his 7% Cocaine solution. It's not entirely unreasonable to think the writers of House would update that to be pills. Not everything is some vast conspiracy...

Except that this was such a small detail on Sherlock Holmes novels that few people remember it.

Except that the author of one of the best of Holmes pastiche novels, Nicholas Meyer, titled one of his books "The Seven Percent Solution."

Re: 'I should not have written 'A Clockwork Orange''

#163

Post by dsr_ »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #147
dsr_ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not "not given a functioning moral code". Not raised by capable parents, not educated, not offered a place in a society which abandoned them. And then society used them: authoritarians can't exist without an enemy to simultaneously fear and insult; if necessary, they will make their own enemy. Those who make progress impossible make revolt inevitable.

> Not raised by capable parents, not educated, not offered a place in a society which abandoned them. The usual complete and utter disregard of the actual victims (the woman raped, for example) and the victimization of the actual criminals (the rapist, for example). It's always been the signature of intellectuals and I believe it is the reason of many things that are wrong in society. "The only thing necessary for th…

It's interesting what you leap to accuse me of.

Please read my words more carefully.

Re: 'I should not have written 'A Clockwork Orange''

#164

Post by Spivak »

DoItToMe81 wrote: post #153
Spivak wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here is the tension between "my work doesn't support the whole point is showing it's bad" while simultaneously portraying the bad thing in a positive light while the narrative does the condemning. The problem with demonizing things is that demons are cool. If you want your condemnation to be effective in fiction you have to make the characters doing it pathetic miserable losers. You can even have the narra…

WTF, no. Media absolutely shouldn't be lowered to children's cartoons for adults. That's absurd. And nobody in the world who isn't already completely insane finds gang rape 'cool', nor does this book or movie portray it positively.

You say lowered, I say writing in such a way that communicates what the author actually intends to communicate. If what you're trying to say doesn't land among your intended audience that's a you problem.

Having read the book and seen the movie adaptation I have to disagree. Alex is charismatic, popular, a feared leader, independent, and rebellious. The brutal rape scene while singing makes him look like an absolute badass (a la the Joker) existing well beyond the reach of society's rules and importantly, makes him look powerful. Ultraviolence sounds like an achievement in DOOM. When he's caught it's framed as a betrayal not "we finally got the bad guy." Then they make him sympathetic through the torture and weakening him and making him unable to defend himself to the point of being driven to suicide. It's harrowing, not the cathartic comeuppance of a terrible man. And then the police apologize, let him go and arrest the man he brutally beat to near death.

The narrative considers Alex to be horrible but the view as seen by the camera/reader thinks he's hot shit and a tragic victim of a dystopian society.

As another example, when you watch Dexter you're rooting for Dexter and the show makes him cool despite him ya know being a killer.

In a lot of ways I think it's actually a hallmark of media literacy that readers/viewers largely ignore the narrative as a source of moral judgment because it's fiction and we like compelling villains and instead finds it in how the characters are actually portrayed.

Re: 'I should not have written 'A Clockwork Orange''

#165

Post by FrustratedMonky »

JohnFen wrote: post #123
gwbas1c wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, Neal Stephenson's later writings are awesome. I don't think he's gotten sloppier at all.

I don't know if he's gotten sloppier or just more verbose, but do find his later writings to be largely plodding and much less interesting than his earlier works. He pretty much lost me with The Baroque Cycle. Those books were a chore. But I think that has to do with the clear change in his writing style, which has diverged from my personal tastes. So it's not a judgement call on his writing either way -- we've just…

I wouldn't frame it as early versus later works.

I think the Baroque Cycle was an outlier. It was long, and boring, and plodded.

Early works were good, later works were good. There wasn't a phase change and later works went downhill starting with Baroque.

Not everyone can bat a thousand.

Re: 'I should not have written 'A Clockwork Orange''

#166

Post by 0xBDB »

hindsightbias wrote: post #119
mordymoop wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To hear Burgess talk about his book, one would never realize that it is a comedy. The book is extremely funny, darkly funny obviously, but still uproariously absurd and filled with set pieces that possess the structure of comedy. The subject of humor is usually Alex’s misfortunes and the consequences he reaps from his terrible choices. He is a sort of George Costanza figure painted in shades of ultraviolence. Burgess…

> Veerhoven's I stopped talking to people about the film because I discovered that most of them didn't see it as satire or think the book (which they read as teens) was proto-fascist.

The movie is an obvious satire. I've never understood how people get proto-fascism from the book. Even assuming it isn't a satire itself (and I could be convinced either way) it dwells on the military in a conservative society but the society it describes is also a democracy that doesn't even let active-duty military members vote.

Re: 'I should not have written 'A Clockwork Orange''

#167

Post by 0xBDB »

nineplay wrote: post #86
StableAlkyne wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

House drew a lot of inspiration from Sherlock Holmes - both get cases nobody else can solve, Wilson / Watson are their close companion who are essential to solving many cases, etc. It's something acknowledged in interviews by people involved in the show. The drug use is another thing - Sherlock used cocaine and morphine. House used Vicodin. Morphine and Vicodin are both opioids. If they had him abuse cocaine, it woul…

Sherlock Holmes did not use opium. Watson once described him as appearing as someone under the influence of opium, but discarded the suggestion. In another story ( The Man with the Twisted Lip ) Watson discovers Holmes in an Opium den, but Holmes is on a case and in disguised. The cocaine habit is probably exaggerated. Watson does not give a frequency of his usage and reports Holmes as saying that he only uses it whe…

It's strongly implied that Holmes used morphine for recreation as well by the fact that Watson had to ask which habit he was indulging in The Sign of the Four.

"Which is it today," I asked, "morphine or cocaine?" "It Is cocaine," he said, "a seven-percent solution. Would you care to try it?..."

Re: 'I should not have written 'A Clockwork Orange''

#168

Post by blindriver »

stickfigure wrote: post #122
pookha wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the weirdest and most interesting things I've ever seen was how this crazy book created gang violence by illustrating dystopian gang violence...And I can guarantee you that some of the youth ("hooligans") in England that were committing Droog gang violence -- inspired by this book -- have reformed as elderly adults. It's not unrealistic. When you remove people out of cults and gangs and they begin to self-refl…

I think the key element there is "as elderly adults". I haven't read the book (tried, the Nadsat took effort) but the movie is one of my favorites. If the ending had Alex popping up from his bed shouting "I want to be good!" I would have filed the movie away as Spielbergian feelgood schlock (see also: AI). I do think people change, but it happens slowly, not quickly. Kubrick's ending still leaves us with the ability…

He didn’t wake up and decided he wanted to be good.

He just decided at one point that his current lifestyle was boring and he wanted a change. He didn’t turn into a good guy, he just decided to go a different way. Thats the point is that he made the choice himself.

Re: 'I should not have written 'A Clockwork Orange''

#169

Post by hnbad »

WorldMaker wrote: post #148
hnbad wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stephen King is not a filmmaker. There used to be a running joke that you can judge the quality of a Stephen King adoptation by whether he liked it: if he liked it, it was likely trash; if he didn't, it was likely good. The problem is that films are not books (shocking, I know) and what works in one medium of storytelling doesn't necessarily work in the other. As in actual translation, there has to be some liberty in…

> Stephen King is not a filmmaker. Stephen King is a filmmaker because he does have one professional credit as a director. [0] The debate remains that Stephen King is probably not a good filmmaker. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091499/?ref_=nm_knf_t_1

He's a filmmaker in the sense that he has made films. He's not a filmmaker in the sense that he thinks of films as films and understands the art form. You can argue that's enough to technically qualify as a filmmaker but most people would argue that having received professional credit as something once while having made something else your entire career is not the same as that thing being your primary career, even if the English language lacks the appropriate grammatical structures to represent this difference.

Re: 'I should not have written 'A Clockwork Orange''

#170

Post by WorldMaker »

hnbad wrote: post #169
WorldMaker wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stephen King is not a filmmaker. Stephen King is a filmmaker because he does have one professional credit as a director. [0] The debate remains that Stephen King is probably not a good filmmaker. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091499/?ref_=nm_knf_t_1

He's a filmmaker in the sense that he has made films. He's not a filmmaker in the sense that he thinks of films as films and understands the art form. You can argue that's enough to technically qualify as a filmmaker but most people would argue that having received professional credit as something once while having made something else your entire career is not the same as that thing being your primary career, even if…

English has lots of axes to represent this difference, I offered two in my post:

amateur versus professional: King was paid so he's a professional filmmaker.

bad/unskilled versus good/talented: King showed himself to be a aesthetically bad/unskilled filmmaker.

You are offering a third axis:

"one-off" versus "career": King so far has not made a career of filmmaking and only made the one film.

In English yeah, we do tend to assume the first axis (amateur versus professional) as the "default" axis. I think this is a very useful axis to use as the default: it's the least gatekeeping and the least subjective. Have you been paid anything to do that job? Congratulations, you are a professional at it. You've done the job. Otherwise, you are an amateur, keep trying you'll get there some day.

"one-off"/"career" is an axis with more subjective judgments. (How many films does it take to call it your career? 2? 14? If you deeply and academically study films your whole life but only make one masterpiece, is that not a career effort?) I shouldn't need to explain how good/bad, skilled/unskilled are deeply subjective.

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