In 1971 the film, A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick directed a poignant film based on Anthony Burgess’ book by the same name. In 1971 violence in England was common at football grounds and skinheads went in search of queers and pakis to beat them up.
The film’s central character is Alex who is the leader of a gang of young thugs. He is obsessed with the music of Beethoven and carries out vicious crimes to the accompaniment of a jarring soundtrack. He and his ‘droogs’ beat up a tramp to the tune of Singing in the Rain.
Alex is finally caught and imprisoned, but is offered the chance of early release if he participates in experimental aversion therapy. The therapy is aimed at curbing his violent and lascivious cravings. An unfortunate side effect is an extreme aversion to the music played to Alex during his therapy. Without giving away the ending of the film, the aversion therapy is discredited and reversed. Young Alex is free to think his own thoughts once again.
In the late 1960s a gay student in Northern Ireland was referred to a Department of Mental Health at university to be ‘cured’ of his homosexuality. The electric shock aversion therapy must have been horrendous for the gay student already facing homophobia in his home town and its Presbyterian community. The fact that he willingly chose this treatment does nothing to mitigate the inhumanity of those inflicting pain and suffering on young men who were merely trying to come to terms with their natural sexual orientation.
Alan Turing chose to be emasculated chemically when faced with Draconian laws that made homosexuality illegal and his encounters punishable by imprisonment. Ultimately, he took his own life, much to the shame of a nation labelled a ‘liberal democracy’.
odespinner 