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Look at Me!
A Look at the Dehumanization of Women and the Link
Between Spectacle and Violence in Stanley
Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange

From Fear and Desire to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick makes a point of limiting the role of women in his films. They are limited in number (there is usually just one) and they seem to be limited in purpose; limited to serving the purpose of sexual pleasure for the men around them. In Lolita, for example, Lolita's sole purpose is to drive men crazy. In Dr. Strangelove, General Turgidson's girlfriend serves as both secretary and sex kitten. Up until, A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick makes no mistake about putting his female characters on display, they are frequently sexual spectacles, but they are also treated with a certain amount of dignity (however slight it may be). In A Clockwork Orange, however, Kubrick links this idea of women as spectacle with a new idea: violence. What results is an incredible amount of dehumanization for the women involved. Ultimately, spectacle and violence are directly linked through the dehumanization of women in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.

Beginning with the Korova Milk Bar, the opening scene to A Clockwork Orange, women are immediately seen as nothing more than something to voyeur. The dcor of the bar is naked mannequin women, all white, except for their flamboyant colored hair, which is different for each mannequin. They are chained to the walls, suggesting that a certain amount of violence toward women is acceptable and that looking upon this violence is also acceptable. The tables look the same, except the women are bent backwards, exposing all parts of their anatomy in a very vulnerable way. The fact that they are tables, a device used for placing objects, is also dehumanizing. The shot, a backward tracking shot, which stays in deep focus, forces the viewer to be very intimate with this mise en scene. The repetition of the mannequins has the same effect; it forces the viewer to constantly look at the spectacle before them. In the end, the mannequins become spectacles of violence. Spectacles because of their nakedness, something blatant and shocking that viewers cannot help but constantly look at. Violent because of the way they are positioned, both on the wall and the tables, shows that violence toward women is itself a spectacle. The fact that even mannequins can be treated this way makes a strong statement about the dehumanization of women in this film.

The dehumanization of real women in

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