Blue Story: Cinema chains pull gang film after 'machete' brawl

[Rev. Rye]

Something of an aside Rev. Rye, but do you consider Alex and his droogs to be flat out psychopaths?

Well, in the book, Alex says this about evil:

“They don't go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of the brave malenky selves fighting these big machines?”

While there were changes between the book and the movie (written by Kubrick himself with one hand holding the book and the other hand on his typewriter), I'm inclined to think that things in the book that didn't make it into the movie, but aren't contradicted by the movie still apply. With this in mind, I'm inclined to consider Alex somewhere in between psychopathy and the legal definition of insanity. As for the droogs, I'm more inclined to think of them as just joiners (except for Georgie, who seems pretty sociopathic, at least in the film) who just go along with whoever's giving them orders, whether it's Alex or the state.