Democracy of Violence
Democracy of Violence
[still from Stanley Kubrickās A Clockwork Orange, 1972]
Sustained, leisurely conversations arenāt just essential to mental health, but to maintaining civility. Faced with another, one must learn how to listen, and to entertain, with proper respect, someone elseās opinions. Plus, one canāt so easily lie or make false accusations. Itās a lot harder to bullshit, in short.
Lacking such encounters, society unravels. Online, a masked man can unprovokedly call a woman āa cuntā or ādink cunt,ā and feels no shame, but what do you expect from barbarians? As āsulu,ā ācatdompanjā or āThe Gimp,ā etc., one can say anything, if only for much needed release. Bottled anger must be messily spilled constantly.
Already, the US is in worse shape than whatās depicted in Stanley Kubrickās A Clockwork Orange. Watching it in a theater while still a teenager, I couldnāt appreciate its significance. Whatās the point of so much gratuitous barbarity?
Within the first 15 minutes of this two hour movie, a homeless man is viciously attacked by four young men, a woman is stripped naked and nearly raped, then an older man is tied up, beaten and forced to watch his wife gleefully raped. At minute 42, a woman is murdered.
In any American city, unspeakable acts of barbarity occur almost daily, with most perpetrators not caught, or promptly bailed out then punished so lightly, theyāre likely to commit more outrages soon enough.
By contrast, the main villain of A Clockwork Orange, Alex DeLarge, spends most of the film being rehabilitated, with his entire nation becoming invested in his progress. Far from typical, Alex is seen as a monster. Plus, the state genuinely wants him to be cured. Itself barbaric, the government still wants to maintain a monopoly on violence, unlike todayās America. Spreading mayhem and barbarity quite liberally, the US has become a democracy of violence, and nothing else.
Itās a land of violent opportunities! You can kill and die so many ways, even in places youāve never heard of. Somalia, Nigerā¦ In Cheyenne, Wyoming, a woman told me her daughter was stationed in North Korea. If locked inside, by choice or decree, you can be violent online!
Every interior in A Clockwork Orange has the most vulgar decor, with even āhigh classā households displaying kitschy pornography. At the home of a writer, there is one vaguely legitimate painting, but everything else is kitsch, for vulgarity has engulfed the culture.
The only intrusion of high art is Beethovenās Ninth Symphony. Listening to it, Alex looks deranged while lapsing into poetry, āOh bliss, bliss and heaven! Oh it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest spun heaven metal, or like silvery wine flowing in a space ship. Gravity all nonsense now.ā
For this rapist and murderer, such bliss is a transcendence that rockets him from this earth. The poem in the Ninth is Schillerās āOde to Joy,ā of course. As translated by Michael Kay, it begins:
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods, Daughter of Elysium, With fiery rapture, goddess, We approach thy shrine!
In this poem of gratitude, joy is no incitement to mayhem, but a gift from heaven. It ends:
Way above the stars, brothers, There must live a loving father. Do you kneel down low, you millions? Do you see your maker, world? Search for Him above the stars, Above the stars he must be living.
Without humility, thereās no gratitude, only insatiability, resentment, anger and fleeting smugness. There are so many more Alexes among us than in A Clockwork Orange.
Tellingly, Alexās deepest source of pleasure becomes a tool to torture him. Heās cured only when exorcised of lust, lust for violence and Beethovenās Ninth. Effectively lobotomized, heās capable of neither good nor evil.
My occasional forays into films are most unnatural. I watch fewer movies than anyone I know. Nearly always, I prefer to be among actual bodies and voices. Even when writing, I do this.
Sitting outside Subinh Hotel, I can hear traffic noises constantly. Across the street is a thin lady who almost never smiles. I buy bottled water from her. The waitress here is a plump woman with a gorgeously serene face.
This morning, I again dropped into LiĆŖn HĘ°Ę”ng for its unsweetened avocado smoothies and to chatter with its owner, an old ARVN who lost a leg during the war.
Tomorrow, LiĆŖn will go to Bangkok to visit his daughter and grandchildren. Starving, he had to move to Laos 31 years ago. A Vietnamese from Thailand then fell in love with LiĆŖnās daughter, then only 17. He kept persisting until they both relented years later.
In 1974, LiĆŖn had a chance to emigrate to the US, but turned it down. During those inhuman years just after the Fall of Saigon, LiĆŖn started to regret this, but now, heās more than at peace. In Laos and Vietnam, heās talked to immigrants who had returned from the West.
Thereās a man in his 50ās who had a welding business with about ten employees. Giving it all up, he emigrated to Australia to be with his son. Working in this sonās dry cleaning business, he couldnāt iron fast enough, so was yelled at until he cried. Telling me this, LiĆŖn couldnāt help but laugh, but Vietnamese do laugh at nearly every situation. Recounting their own misfortunes, theyāre liable to laugh.
Itās 2:23PM. Done with this article, I can walk ten yards to the house that sells baozi in the evening. There, I can talk to a Chinese who has just left San Jose, CA for good. Much of the Bay Area has turned into a nightmare, we agree.
If Coredo wasnāt in Pietrasanta, Iād be tempted to visit his Dok Mai Lao to eat and talk. Mentioning his hometown earlier, I forgot to say Fernando Botero had a house there. Boteroās paintings are almost kitschy enough to be in A Clockwork Orange.
See how hard I had to work to draw any connection between Pakse and that horrific movie or the West? Thereās no one remotely like Alex, sulu or Catdompanj here. You need not believe me, but itās an entirely different world. Older and more enduring, it will outlast that distant madness.
My visa expiring, I must leave for Cambodia within days, but I just might return. Before coming to Pakse, I didnāt know it would be so sane and congenial.
[Don Sang, Laos on 4/5/23]
[Pakse, Laos on 10/2/23]
[6AM daily mass in Pakse on 9/18/23]
Source: Postcards from the End