Ludovico technique
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The Ludovico technique is a fictional aversion therapy from the novel A Clockwork Orange. The Ludovico technique involved forcing a patient to watch (through the use of specula to hold the eyes open) violent images for long periods of time, while under the effect of a nausea-inducing drug. The aim of the therapy is to make the patient experience severe nausea when experiencing violence, thus attempting to solve societal crime. The therapy renders the protagonist of the novel, Alex, incapable of violence even in self-defence, incapable of touching a naked woman, and (as an inadvertent side effect of its use as a background score in the therapy) averse to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.[1]
In the original novel, Alex is conditioned against all music. In the film, he is conditioned only against Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Film critic Thomas Harris has compared this brainwashing technique with the recruit training in Kubrick's subsequent film Full Metal Jacket. He notes that the latter produces a contrasting effect when one of the soldiers (Leonard Lawrence) becomes conditioned, during boot camp training, to become a violent killing machine who associates his sexuality with his rifle.[2]
Notes
- ^ Encyclopedia of American Cinema. Boston: MobileReference.com. 2007. ISBN 1605011452.
- ^ Nelson, Thomas (2000). Kubrick, inside a Film Artist's Maze. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 238. ISBN 0253213908.