Last night I showed another film in the series of adapted movies. No one showed. However, I showed it anyhow, and I was impressed by the film, which has aged extremely well, probably because it is set in a mish-mash of a dystopia, which makes the echoes of the period's actual clothing and decor seem more natural and less dated.
It made me realize how much I admire Kubrick as a director, and I wondered if I could manage to teach that film, which is sure to shock and offend students who will object to being made to watch it over and over in order to write about it. I would feel almost like those torturers in the prison who subject the main character to torture by forcing him to watch movies. Yet I find the violence and other offensive behavior in the film entirely justified by what it is saying. I would love to teach it in a class I would call "Crime and Punishment." Perhaps Dostoevski's work by that name would be in the class also, as would material about the Milgram experiments. It would be interesting. It's just that I don't know if people would be able to stomach it.
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