“We fillied round what was called the backtown for a … bit, scaring old vecks and cheenas that were crossing the roads and zigzagging after cats and that. Then we took the road west. There wasn’t much traffic about, so I kept pushing the old noga through the floorboards near, and the Durango 95 ate up the road like spaghetti. Soon it was winter trees and dark, my brothers, with a country dark, and at one place I ran over something big with a snarling toothy rot in the head-lamps, then it screamed and squelched under and old Dim at the back near laughed his gulliver off–“Ho ho ho”–at that. Then we saw one young malchick with his sharp, lubbilubbing under a tree, so we stopped and cheered at them, then we bashed into them both with a couple of half-hearted tolchocks, making them cry, and on we went. What we were after now was the old surprise visit. That was a real kick and good for smecks and lashings of the ultra-violent.” So says Alex of “A Clockwork Orange”. Alex takes delight in meaningless violence. He sees it as some form of artistic expression. Like some modern teenager, spoiled and pampered, Alex is bored, delinquent, and perhaps just evil. Or so many serious reviewers of Anthony Burgess’s novel and Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation have said.
But what about the Alex and his buds of our real world?
- Ruby Thomas
In London, two drunken 18 year-old girls, Ruby Thomas and Rachel Burke, attacked a gay man in Trafalgar Square, after their friend Joel Alexander, 19, had punched him to the ground, knocking him unconscious. They stamped on Ian Baynham’s chest and kicked him in the head so badly that he never regained consciousness and died 18 days after the attack.
In Liverpool, gay trainee policeman James Parkes was attacked by up to 20 youths in the city’s gay village. He had been leaving a club with his boyfriend and friends. Mr Parkes suffered fractures to his skull, cheekbone and eye socket during the October 25th attack. Police arrested 15 people during their inquiry but have said there is insufficient evidence to charge them.
In Monsey, NY, four teenagers have been charged with a hate crime after threatening local Jewish residents with an aluminum baseball bat. The suspects have been identified as Anthony Soto, 18, Denise Lopez, 17, and Kyle Silceira, 16. The identity of the fourth boy has been withheld because he is 15-years-old. In addition to threatening residents, the suspects are accused of throwing stones and kicking over garbage cans. Detective Lt. Brad Weidel said authorities believe the teens were likely targeting the Jewish community.
Police are looking for a group of teenagers preying on Asian women in the lower East Side of Manhattan. Police said the attackers include two girls, possibly as young as 13, who appeared to be the ringleaders. In at least one of the attacks, the girls pushed their victim to the ground while three boys cheered them on. The victims were Asian women between ages 50 and 71. Nothing was stolen during the string of attacks, police sources said.
- Family members of hate-crime victim Marcelo Lucero gathered near the site of his killing in Patchogue, N.Y., Monday after Jeffrey Conroy was convicted of manslaughter. From left, Joselo Lucero, the victim’s brother; Rosario Lucero, his mother; and Isabel Lucero, his sister.
A Long Island teenager, Jeffrey Conroy, 19, was found guilty of committing a hate crime in the killing of an Ecuadorean national. Mr. Conroy was one of seven teenagers who set out to randomly beat up Hispanics. They found Marcelo Lucero and a companion near the Patchogue Long Island Rail Road station and began taunting them. After one of the teens punched Mr. Lucero, he took off his belt and flailed it in defense before Mr. Conroy stabbed him with a black folding knife. Mr. Lucero was pronounced dead about an hour later.
I could go on but will stop here. What makes these kids do these terrible acts? What perverse need is satisfied by attacking people different from themselves? Do they do it from boredom? Have they become so detached that they feel no emotion and only find stimulation in violence against others? Do they somehow see these senseless acts as some form of artistic expression? Perhaps bored, perhaps detached, perhaps seeking stimulation, but artistic expression - no fucking way! This an example of art criticism run amuck. But the rest is real. Some young people, often teenagers, become so alienated that banding together and attacking a person that does not fit their idea of the norm somehow makes them feel part of a whole.
I don’t understand why this happens. But I do know that it is not the norm. Most of the young people you see are really nice people who are a lot more interested in fucking each other than they are in beating the crap out of total strangers. So let them live their lives and be like you were when you were that age. As for the few who for whatever reason become like Alex and his Droogs, I think they have been around, and from time-to-time society may create more than at other times, but they are always a minority few.
Is Still Here
It seems undeniable that acts of senseless, perverse violence by some teens (and young adults) is increasing.
I live near Philadephia, which has been having terrible problems with “flash mobs.” Originally, flash mobs involved teens who used texting on social networks to gather at random for fun events. Unfortunately, that innocent concept has devolved. In Philly, teens have been using that technology to gather randomly at a prescribed time and place to commit commercial burglaries, serious vandalism, simple and aggravated assaults, and robberies at strip malls, downtown areas, etc. They often disappear using mass transit as quickly as they came.
It seems like a more serious and high-tech version of “wilding,” which plagued urban areas of the Northeast in the 1990’s.
Today, Phildelphia administrators and civil leaders alike are at a loss as to how to stop it, and especially how to explain it.
What is it about our current era that fosters this type of anarchy, because to me, that is exactly what it is: the attack against law, order and underlying government and civilization.
Some merely laugh and say that every older generation feels this way about those who are younger. That may be so, but this is different. There is something very real about these observations, about this spiraling violence and disregard for the basic human rights of others, and of property.
Anarchy is what Clockwork Orange was ultimately all about, destroying the cuture that was in control in favor of abject chaos. The Droogs felt so disconnected from everything and every one, that they felt alive only when they were causing pain and destroying.
For me, the movie was a cautionary tale, challenging us to wake up and prevent that from ever taking over our culture.
God help us all if that’s really what’s happening today in real life.