After reading the essays “Where Did The Future Go?” by Randy Martin and “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” by Louis Althusser, I really felt the difference between the two views towards society, and how they both would interpret the film “A Clockwork Orange” in very different ways. In my opinion, the treatment process would be a positive way towards a Utopian society for Randy Martin, but a major flaw for Louis Althusser.
Randy Martin spoke about a problem that arose in schools where “The risk-capable–momentarily crystalized in the now largely defunct day trader–are the poster children of neoliberalism. The “at-risk” are the human dart boards of the neocons. In 1983, then Secretary of Education William Bennett issued the polemic “A Nation At Risk” which fingered low test scores among public school children as a threat to national security via compromised market competitiveness. A new regime of discipline and punish, with tightly controlled content standards, turned education into a battlefield that now buries its dead (before they survive to
become fully grown threats) in a cemetery called “No Child Left Behind.” ” (Martin Page 3). Martin states this to show us how the Government created a problem solver, where the Government would give special training and superior education to help those children with low test scores to become what is “superior” with high test scores. This process is similar to the entire “Treatment Process” in the film (1:11:35), which is an experimental rehabilitation program called the “Ludovico Technique” where prisoners will be brainwashed and changed from good to bad in two weeks, where they are freed and released to the real world. The leaders of this new program went to prisons and chose some good candidates, where Alex, being the main character of the movie who was to first to be treated. As planned, Alex was brainwashed and was molded into someone who did not have any urges to fight back, sexual feelings, or any “negative” attitudes towards society. This states that Randy Martin would view the film in a positive way, where the Government will help and change those at risk in order to enhance them to make everyone equal in order to reach Utopia. As Martin stated, “For the future to come now, the present moment must be lived pre - emptively” (Martin Page 2). This shows us how Martin believes that in order for society to reach Utopia, the problems now should be cured and taken care of, “But emancipation has a price really a value with its attendant political economy” (Martin Page 2). Similar to the movie, the entire treatment process was something new and expensive, which the people of the society and the majority of the Government was not for it, let alone the costs of the treatment process. All in all, Martin’s essay ties in with the movie, where people must be treated now in order to reach Utopia in society, where everyone is equal, with nobody making any mistakes.
On the other hand, Louis Athusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” clearly states that Althusser would not be for the treatment process, where changing people into a given mold is entirely wrong. “What, then, is the reproduction of the conditions of production?” (Althusser Page 1). This simple words clearly states what Althusser would think of the treatment process. What then would happen to Alex and his child, which would be his reproduction? By going to the treatment process, Alex would be changed into a given mold, which does not even work later on, but what would happen to his children? The treatment process just brainwashes one temporarily in this case and does not even pass on to further generations, then what is the point? “ On a number of occasions I have insisted on the revolutionary character of the Marxist conception of the ‘social whole’ insofar as it is distinct from the Hegelian ‘totality’. I said that Marx conceived the structure of every society as constituted by levels or instances articulated by a specific determination: the infrastructure, or economic base and the superstructure, which itself contains two levels or instances” (Althusser Page 6). Althusser believes that society should have different classes each with different ranks, rather than one equal class similar to a Utopian society. This shows that he would be against the entire treatment process because that would be breaking the boundaries of the different levels, because what the treatment process is doing is making everyone equal. It is taking the negative and turning it into that one positive which is seen as normal in society. But why have the same ranks? Althusser religiously believes in the Marxist world, where we all need the lower, middle, and upper class, “Like every metaphor, this metaphor suggests something, makes some thing visible. What? Precisely this: that the upper floors could not ‘stay up’ alone, if they did not rest
precisely on their base” (Althusser Page 6). This clearly states that the upper class would not be able to stay as the upper class if it was not for the base, which consists of the middle class and mainly the lower class. In other words, society needs the negative, society needs to have people with lower test scores, with prisoners, with those who work as janitors or burger flippers. The society all depends on each other, so the Ludovico Technique would definitely be out of Althusser’s book.
Lastly, this brings up the next major topic “and to the genius of Marx who resolved it, we know that the reproduction of the material conditions of production cannot be thought at the level of the firm, because it does not exist at that level in its real conditions. What happens at the level of the firm as an effect, which only gives an idea of the necessity of reproduction, but absolutely fails to allow its conditions and mechanisms to be thought” (Althusser Page 2). Unlike Martin, Althusser actually questions the entire process of reproduction. Martin took it for granted that changed the negatives would result in utopia, where everyone would be in great hands with no more problems to fall in to, but what happens to the reproduction? Althusser on the other hand states that those who have problems who get treated is simply an effect. They were not meant to be changed because “it does not exist at the level in its real conditions”.
In other words, if both Martin and Althusser viewed the film “A Clockwork Orange”, I believe that Martin would be for the whole treatment process and Althusser would be against it, where he would believe that Alex should have just stayed in prison because in society, we need to have different levels.
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