Film Critique: Clockwork Orange
Behaviorism is “the theory that human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning, without appeal to thoughts or feelings, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns” (Google.com). The patient being treated can either be positively or negatively reinforced (learningtheories.com) and in the movie Clockwork Orange, the main character Alex is negatively reinforced so that he gets over his violent behavior. The use of this conditioning was mostly used with animals at first like Pavlov’s dogs and was started in the early 1900’s. It really peaked in the 1970’s and 80’s and was then also used on humans.
Research
Now that it is the 21st century, we have new …show more content…
As the movie starts, you see Alex and his three friends Dim, Pete, and Georgie sitting on a couch in the Korova Milkbar drinking milk that’s laced with drugs surrounded by female plastic mannequins made into tables and posing in inappropriate ways. When they leave, they go on a huge crime spree of robbing, mugging, car theft, a large gang fight, and then break into a house and raped the wife and making the husband watch the whole time. After they leave, the four go back to the Milkbar and fight each. After that they are walking around outside while Dim makes fun of Alex for liking classical music so much and Alex decides to punch him in the face turning the rest of the guys against him. When they go on their next break-in at an older womans house, and Dim gets back at Alex by hitting him in the eye with a chain while the lady calls the cops. The three guys besides Alex run away and leave him behind to take the blame and go to prison. They realize he’s the one who’s been running around raping women and robbing/mugging people and tell him how the first woman they had raped had died. So, Alex gets sentenced to 14 years of prison which starts off terrible due to both the other prisoners that try to rape him and ruthless guards. A few years into prison however, he shows a sudden interest in the Bible and becomes friends with the prison priest. He then gets to …show more content…
Behaviorism, uses negative and positive reinforcements to try and alter that person’s behavior pattern and in this case, it was negative reinforcement making him associate violence with nausea. After a couple weeks Alex was “cured” and he would now become nauseous from the idea of violence. In the movie, Alex was the first one in this experiment to be tested but usually, this is used on young children and animals to teach them what’s right and wrong while they are still in their learning years. The one thing that different from what behaviorism is they didn’t use feelings and thoughts they just knew that the animal and human behavior was from conditioning. What happened with Alex was, they knew he liked classical music and used that as an advantage to get him sick from seeing any type of violence or hearing that kind of music. So anyone watching this might think that you have to associate things they like to the thing they don’t like in order to change their behavior but in reality you can associate it to anything. With the Pavlov dog’s they linked food to the sound of a bell just so that they would salivate at the ring of a bell. It’s not typically used to treat criminals who commit major crimes to suddenly hate violence and committing crimes all the time. It was harsh to basically torture someone into hating what they used to love even if they are a criminal they could’ve
Behaviorism is “the theory that human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning, without appeal to thoughts or feelings, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns” (Google.com). The patient being treated can either be positively or negatively reinforced (learningtheories.com) and in the movie Clockwork Orange, the main character Alex is negatively reinforced so that he gets over his violent behavior. The use of this conditioning was mostly used with animals at first like Pavlov’s dogs and was started in the early 1900’s. It really peaked in the 1970’s and 80’s and was then also used on humans.
Research
Now that it is the 21st century, we have new …show more content…
As the movie starts, you see Alex and his three friends Dim, Pete, and Georgie sitting on a couch in the Korova Milkbar drinking milk that’s laced with drugs surrounded by female plastic mannequins made into tables and posing in inappropriate ways. When they leave, they go on a huge crime spree of robbing, mugging, car theft, a large gang fight, and then break into a house and raped the wife and making the husband watch the whole time. After they leave, the four go back to the Milkbar and fight each. After that they are walking around outside while Dim makes fun of Alex for liking classical music so much and Alex decides to punch him in the face turning the rest of the guys against him. When they go on their next break-in at an older womans house, and Dim gets back at Alex by hitting him in the eye with a chain while the lady calls the cops. The three guys besides Alex run away and leave him behind to take the blame and go to prison. They realize he’s the one who’s been running around raping women and robbing/mugging people and tell him how the first woman they had raped had died. So, Alex gets sentenced to 14 years of prison which starts off terrible due to both the other prisoners that try to rape him and ruthless guards. A few years into prison however, he shows a sudden interest in the Bible and becomes friends with the prison priest. He then gets to …show more content…
Behaviorism, uses negative and positive reinforcements to try and alter that person’s behavior pattern and in this case, it was negative reinforcement making him associate violence with nausea. After a couple weeks Alex was “cured” and he would now become nauseous from the idea of violence. In the movie, Alex was the first one in this experiment to be tested but usually, this is used on young children and animals to teach them what’s right and wrong while they are still in their learning years. The one thing that different from what behaviorism is they didn’t use feelings and thoughts they just knew that the animal and human behavior was from conditioning. What happened with Alex was, they knew he liked classical music and used that as an advantage to get him sick from seeing any type of violence or hearing that kind of music. So anyone watching this might think that you have to associate things they like to the thing they don’t like in order to change their behavior but in reality you can associate it to anything. With the Pavlov dog’s they linked food to the sound of a bell just so that they would salivate at the ring of a bell. It’s not typically used to treat criminals who commit major crimes to suddenly hate violence and committing crimes all the time. It was harsh to basically torture someone into hating what they used to love even if they are a criminal they could’ve