Clockwork Orange

English translation: See the meaning below please

13:33 Apr 3, 2003

English language (monolingual) [Non-PRO]
Art/Literary

English term or phrase: Clockwork Orange

I've often puzzled over Stanley Kubrick's choice of title for this movie, but, as it turns out, this is also what glaswegians call their subway system. I'm very curious as to why, does anyone know?

Yuri Geifman KudoZ activity Questions: 278 (none open) (5 closed without grading) Answers: 873 Canada
Local time: 21:01

Selected answer:See the meaning below please

Explanation:
:)
"...I do not think so because, by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange--meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.
...I don't think I have to remind readers what the title means. Clockwork oranges don't exist, except in the speech of old Londoners. The image was a bizarre one always used for a bizarre thing. "He is as queer as a clockwork orange" meant he was queer to the limit of queerness. It did not primarily denote homosexuality, though a queer, before restricitve legislature came in, was the term used for a member of the inverted fraternity. Europeans who translated the title as Arancia a Orologeria or Orange Mécanique could not understand it Cockney resonance and they assumed that it meant a hand grenade, a cheaper kind of explosive pineapple. I mean it to stand for the application of a mechanistic morality to a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness."

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Note added at 2003-04-03 13:46:44 (GMT)
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The site:

If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange--meaning
that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice ...
www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1974/main.html - 9k - Em cache - Páginas Semelhantes
[ Mais resultados de www.geocities.com ]

Selected response from:

Clauwolf
Local time: 22:01

Grading comment

This was the first answer that gave me the insight I was looking for (even though others provided the technical info, as to the actual subway trains). Once again, I wish I could split the points... and hope that my thanks will suffice :-)
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer

SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED

5 +3

orange trains and circular route

Jeannie Graham

5 +2

Always on time - color orange

Fuad Yahya

4 +3

being incongruous that something organic would have mechanical works

sergey (X)

4 +2

Clockwork Orange

Sheila Hardie

4 +1

See the meaning below please

Clauwolf

3 +2

orange carriages and on time

Klaus Dorn (X)

3 +2

Just a little more info

Kim Metzger

Discussion entries: 1

Answers

11 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +2

Clockwork Orange

Explanation:
I imagine the Glaswegians have baptised their subway the Clockwork Orange because the trains are orange and it's mechanical too, obviously.

The controversial film's title and other names in the film have meaning. The title alludes to:

* a clockwork (mechanical, artificial, robotic) human being (orange - similar to orang-utan, a hairy ape-like creature), and
* the Cockney phrase from East London, "as queer as a clockwork orange" - indicating something bizarre internally, but appearing natural, human, and normal on the surface

HTH

Sheila

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Note added at 2003-04-03 13:46:23 (GMT)
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I forgot to add, you can see a photo of one of the orange trains in the second reference I gave you above.

HTH

After Steve\'s excellent recreation of the look and feel of London Underground train, we have Robert moving the tunnel experience to the north. You are the driver of Metro Camel UG unit and in front of you is the Glasgow Underground route also ***known locally as the Clockwork Orange, due to the distinctive Strathclyde PTE livery***. It is a 22 minutes journey on a circular route with 15 stations and just a shade over 6.5 miles in length. A nice touch by Robert are the radio chatter and \'Horns of Acknowledgment\' sounds.

http://www.crotrainz.com/DownGla.html

Reference: http://www.filmsite.org/cloc.html
Reference: http://freespace.virgin.net/kenny.m/Glasgow/glasgow.htm

Sheila Hardie
Spain
Local time: 03:01
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in pair: 75

11 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +1

See the meaning below please

Clauwolf
Local time: 22:01
Native speaker of:

Portuguese
PRO pts in pair: 412

Grading comment

13 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +3

orange trains and circular route

Explanation:
The circular route and the orange color of the new cars inspired "clever" journalists to try to give the system the nickname "Clockwork Orange".

Reference: http://www.geocities.com/cable_car_guy/html/ccuk.html

Jeannie Graham
United Kingdom
Local time: 02:01
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in pair: 32

14 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +2

Always on time - color orange

Explanation:
The suubway, not the film.

Fuad Yahya
Native speaker of:

Arabic,

English
PRO pts in pair: 893

16 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +2

orange carriages and on time

Explanation:
The Glasgow underground or 'tube', which has stations in the West End at Kelvinbridge, Hillhead, Kelvin Hall and Partick was called the 'Clockwork Orange' by locals because of the colour of the carriages. Glasgow is the only city in Scotland which has an underground train service.

I guess another reason is it's almost always on time --> "runs like clockwork"

Reference: http://www.glasgowwestend.co.uk/text/facts/

Klaus Dorn (X)
Local time: 04:01
Native speaker of:

English,

German
PRO pts in pair: 35

20 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +2

Just a little more info

Explanation:
Glasgow was the third city in the world to open an underground transport system, after London and Budapest.
The 10.4km-long (6.5miles) twin track circular route was first opened as the Glasgow District Subway on 14 December, 1896.
After refurbishment of the stations, track, signalling and power supply, it was reopened by the Queen in 1980.
The new Underground also boasted a new fleet of trains in a vivid orange livery, giving rise to the nickname, The Clockwork Orange.
The new modern system boasted that the time for a complete circuit was reduced to 24 minutes, with trains every four minutes during the peaks.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2410943.stm

Reference: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2410943.stm

Kim Metzger
Mexico
Local time: 19:01
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in pair: 2249

3 hrs confidence:

peer agreement (net): +3

being incongruous that something organic would have mechanical works

Explanation:

What does the title A Clockwork Orange mean?

Originally, it comes from an old Cockney expression where one might say something odd was "as queer as a clockwork orange," it being incongruous that something organic would have mechanical works.

- Why doesn't the film of A Clockwork Orange include the final chapter of the novel?

Kubrick ........ dismissed the final chapter, which concerns the rehabilitation of Alex, as unconvincing and inconsistent with the style of the book.

5. In Anthony Burgess's novel, Alex - the 15-year-old leader of the gang - is arrested for murder and subjected to aversion therapy that leaves him incapable of distinguishing between good and evil.

6. The film translates this into several notorious scenes, including one where the gang beat a tramp for fun. Kubrick argued that this scene was concerned with the question of free will - "Do we lose our humanity if we are deprived of the choice between good and evil? Do we become, as the title suggests, A Clockwork Orange?" he said in 1971.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/netnotes/article/0,6729,184769,00....

The moral question of the book, is that Alex is now "good", but his ability to choose this has been taken away from him, his "goodness" is as artificial as the clockwork orange of the title.

The book ends with him realising that his violent phase is over, but that it was inevitable. He thinks of starting a family, while thinking that his children will be as violent as he was, for a time. The US edition had the final chapter removed, and ends on a darker note: listening joyfully to music again, and eagerly anticipating his return to creating havoc.

It would appear, from one of Burgess' later novels, The Clockwork testament, that Burgess himself may not have been too pleased by the adaptation that made it to the screen
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange

A Clockwork Orange has never been published entire in America .....
Those twenty one chapters were important to me .....
But they were not important to my New York publisher. The book he brought out had only twenty chapters......

Readers of the twenty-first chapter must decide for themselves whether it enhances the book they presumably know or is really a discardable limb. I meant the book to end in this way, but my aesthetic judgegment may have been faulty. Writers are rarely their own best critics, nor are critics. 'Quod scripsi scripsi' said Pontius Pilate when he made Jesus Christ the King of the Jews. 'What I have written I have Written.' We can destroy what we have written but we cannot unwrite it. I leave what I wrote with what Dr. Johnson called frigid indifference to the judgement of that .00000001 of the American population which cares about such things. Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.

Anthony Burgess, November 1986

Reference: http://pages.prodigy.com/kubrick/kubfaq.htm
Reference: http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~butting/kubrick/resucked.html

sergey (X)
Local time: 02:01
PRO pts in pair: 84

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