Looking Back: Stanley Kubrick's Answers the Charge of Fascism in the New York Times

When A Clockwork Orange hit theaters the movie was controversial not simply for its violent content, but for its perceived politics, with those of liberal opinions commonly regarding it as a very right-wing movie (in Roger Ebert's words, "a paranoid right-wing fantasy masquerading as an Orwellian warning")--and the New York Times education editor Fred Hechinger saying that "an alert liberal . . . should recognize the voice of fascism" in it.*

A Clockwork Orange director Stanley Kubrick took great exception to that the charge of fascism, and was given the opportunity to offer his response in the pages of the Times itself. Kubrick's counter-argument stressed Hechinger's not supporting his claim about the movie initially, and that others had understood the film differently, citing the views of not just Clockwork Orange writer Anthony Burgess but Catholic News film critic John Fitzgerald of the film as a "Christian sermon" about free will and what its lack would mean. Of course, he did not clearly endorse their view, but he did go on to a more substantive counter-argument--in which he repeated the very opinions that Hechinger quoted in criticism of Kubrick (reiterating his own anti-Rousseau, anti-Enlightenment anti-humanistic, Robert Ardrey's ethology-influenced pessimism, acknowledging his anti-liberalism), but denied that these were fascist opinions.

Kubrick is quite prolix in that denial--but never offers a definition of fascism, a standard for what would constitute fascism, such that one could distinguish his, or anyone else's, views from it. The result is that those inclining toward sympathy for Kubrick's denial might be impressed by his defense--but those taking a more critical attitude toward Kubrick's position, especially seeing Kubrick double down at length on the hard right position he had already taken, probably came away thinking that Kubrick had failed to refute Hechinger's reading, and indeed validated it in respects, the more in as those on the left have come to expect to be attacked for merely using the "F" word whether they do so correctly or not.

* Ebert said of the film (in what is filmically an exceptionally literate review that discusses the cinematography, music, etc. in detail) that while "[i]t pretends to oppose the police state and forced mind control . . . all it really does is celebrate the nastiness of its hero, Alex," with which nastiness it endeavors to make the reviewer identify--all in imparting its philosophical-political message about human vileness and the hopelessness one must accordingly accept.