Tell me about the primary text you've selected. You should provide basic identifying information as well as a summary. Then: which features make this text a dystopia? Which theory(ies) will work well as analytical lenses? Have you settled on a theoretical lens?
Have you done any research yet? What have you found? List/link anything you've identified as a possible source here.
I will try to comment on all of these. The more ideas/possible analysis you have, the more I can give you. Will be looking forward to reading these.
I chose to use the movie, A Clockwork Orange, for my research assignment. The movie takes place in England where a man named Alex and his gang of friends terrorize people around their city. From beating up homeless people, to raping innocent women, Alex and his gang have no mercy against the people they hurt. Alex's friends ultimately betray him where he is arrested and locked up in prison. Two years into his sentence he is selected for this psychological experiment on criminals, which claims to prevent them from committing more crimes. It ends up working and Alex is not able to physically injure men or sexually assault women. The only negative side affect was that Beethoven was played during Alex's experimental sessions, making it unbearable for him to listen to it anymore. Later on in the movie Alex is forced to go back to a home where he raped a woman and beat a man to the point where he can no longer walk. The man recognizes Alex and locks him in a room while playing Beethoven outside Alex's room. Alex decides to try and commit suicide by jumping out the window. He survives with only broken arms and legs. We are not told why, but at the end of the film Alex wakes up from his fall and all of his progress from the psychological experiment is no longer affecting him. Alex ends up going back to his old self. The movie is taken place in the future where a society extrapolated from the growing urban crime problems of 1970 when the film was made. The exact year in which the film is set is not indicated, but it is likely somewhere around our current era. The film creates a sense of menace from the first, and yet at the same time, it uses strong imagery and high stylization to turn its dark vision, which makes it a dystopia. I have decided to do psychological criticism to analyze what makes Alex commit these crimes. Is is his social upbringing or is it his psychological state? I am in the beginning of my research, so I don't have a lot of deeper information yet.
ReplyDelete