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the film is even more severe. The first glimpse of this is the scene involving the gang rape of a woman by Billy Boy and his four droogs. The scene's establishing shot is accompanied with light cheery music. The gang and the woman are on a stage, pulling back and forth in a very melodramatic way. The combination of the music, the stage, and the melodrama make it difficult to take the scene seriously. It adds to the spectacle of the woman, almost as if we are simply watching a play and these are merely actors and not a potentially brutal gang rape. The way Kubrick uses quick cuts between long shots of the stage and more close up shots of the spectacle on the stage also adds to the effect that this is a performance. The fact that we get different views of the stage evokes the feeling that we are an audience in different areas of a theater further detracting from the dehumanization of this woman and emphasizing this violence as something funny.

What is interesting about this scene, is that Billy Boy and his droogs leave the spectacle to engage in violence. The woman rushes off the stage as soon as she is let go and the spectacle is immediately over. Perhaps even more ironic is the fact that the woman is so easily cast aside for these men to pursue other interests dehumanizing her even more. It was clever of Kubrick to emphasize first the spectacle of the woman and then the violence between the men. It suggests that without the woman, there can be no spectacle, and thus no violence, since the spectacle must first precede the violence. What I think Kubrick is trying to point out is that if we look at violence as spectacle it dehumanizes the victim because it takes away from the severity of the crime. This speaks true to the Billy Boy scene since it is hard to take the violent act against the woman seriously because it is turned into a spectacle. Furthermore, the violence that occurs between the gangs after the spectacle of the woman solidifies that there is a direct link between spectacle and violence in A Clockwork Orange and that it relies on the dehumanization of women. She becomes like the mannequins in the milk bar, a dehumanized figure of spectacle and violence.

By far the most disturbing scene in A Clockwork Orange is the gang rape of the writer's wife by Alex and his droogs. Like the soundtrack to the gang rape scene with Billy Boy, the soundtrack for this rape scene gives the effect of the rape being a performance. Alex sings "Singin in the Rain" while

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