Another Clockwork Orange?

I watched Clockwork Orange for the first time this week.

Not really knowing what to expect except perhaps a film full of gratuitous violence,I was surprised in what I saw.

After all Kubrick had pulled the film not long after launch fearing that the violence in it would be imitated and vowed that it would never be shown again in his lifetime.

Yes there were some particularly disturbing scenes in it but they seemed out of context to the main thread of the film.

On Wednesday American broadcaster NBC decided to show footage of the a video made by the Virginia Tech killer in the midst of his killing spree.Broadcasters around the world picked up on the feed and showed "edited highlights".Was this the right thing to do?

Lets start from the point of view of NBC.They had acquired the footage,the story was top billing around the world,people were asking all sorts of questions as to why this had happened and here they had a exclusive.

It must have been a difficult decision whether or not to broadcast,balancing the sensitivities of the victims against a major media scoop.They went ahead no doubt after much soul searching.

I wander if you had been in that same position,would you have not made the same decision.

Peter Horrock writing on the BBC editors blog says that if he had received the video,he would have weighed up the pros and cons,the feelings of the relatives of the victims would have been balanced as well as speaking to the police.

Back to the Clockwork Orange debate and does the showing of violence lead to more violence.We dont really know the answer to that except to say that if it does then so much violence has already been shown that the damage has probably been done.

Was this video any different to the suicide bombers last will and testaments?

What it did was to at least go some of the way to explaining what lay behind this awful tragedy and how perhaps no procedure can prevent someone with a mind full of hate carrying out atrocities.


Away from the media debate,I liked this comment in the Telegraph by Andrew Marr

"One of the endless problems of journalism is the awful, big event which is basically resistant to analysis, as in the Virginia university massacre. Rightly, any newspaper or TV organisation thinks it should show respect, and "proper news values", by describing the killings and the killer at some length. But it's also one of those stories which, frankly, tells us absolutely nothing about the human condition we did not already know, and has nothing to say about life here in Britain."