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theatlantic:

‘A Clockwork Orange’ Strikes 40

Kubrick’s film, which was released in America 40 years ago today, set off a debate at the time over whether it would ever be virtuous or permissible to use science to deprive someone violent of free will. It’s not surprise fact that this debate hasn’t gone away, given that A Clockwork Orange has never gone away. The film’s legacy has been chewed over plenty, and at 40, it remains many things: a cultural touchstone, a blueprint for artistic emulation and fashionable imitation. Decades later, the diffusion of the film’s iconography through pop culture continues unrelentingly; its images have been copped and borrowed by everyone from David Bowie and Led Zeppelin to Madonna, Lady Gaga, The Simpsons, Usher, and Metallica.

And yet A Clockwork Orange remains in some ways misunderstood, and some of its innovations still haven’t been given enough due: its strength as a genre-less film, its insurgent marketing plan, its stylized violence, and its unprecedented use of music, all of which shaped both film and pop culture as well as influenced society at-large for decades to come. Read more.

[Image: Warner Bros.]