Clockword Orange?

[Loosehead]

Just bought the DVD for �3 from ASDA, although not a great film certainly an Iconic one and I though my collection needed it and for �3 pretty cheap. Anyway I was wondering what actually is a "Clockwork Orange"?

[4getmenot]

The writer of the novel, 'Anthony Burgess' , claimed that the term "clockwork orange" was a Cockney phrase, but most philologists agree that there has never been any such phrase until the appearance of his book. Burgess lived in Malaysia during the 1940s, and the Malay word for man is "orang", from which "orangutan" (man of the jungle) is derived. There is, however, an English slang expression for a gambling device known as the "one-armed bandit" in the U.S.: a clockwork fruit (the gambling device typically is referred to as a "fruit machine" in the UK due to the depictions on its dials; clockwork in England is a word applied to a plethora of mechanical devices beyond just time-pieces). The anthropomorphic look of a "fruit machine" (thus, its name "one-armed bandit" in the U.S. for its roughly man-sized shape and "arm" giving it a humanoid appearance) may well have given rise to the term "clockwork orange" in Burgess' fertile mind as Alex, through conditioning, is turned into a robot (which a fruit machine resembles). Gambling also is a game of chance, and Alex literally is gambling with his soul. This is made explicit, particularly in the film, when Dr. Brodsky tells Alex -- who is upset over the use of Beethoven on the soundtrack to the atrocity films and claims he has been enlightened -- to take his chance, as he will be free in a fortnight (roughly the time an annual vacation in an English resort such as Blackpool -- the Las Vegas of Britain -- with its scores of fruit machines, would take).

[crete]

i always thought it was a saying for the glasgow underground system.

[ludwig]

It's an organic thing that functions like an automaton. This is simply a metaphor for the condition of Alex, after he has undergone his aversion therapy.

[ross410]

I live in Glasgow and everyone who uses the undergound calls it the clockwork orange, as crete says.

[loulee89]

Apparently its a cockney phrase meaning meaning strange or unusual; "as queer as a clockwork orange"

Although i don't see why it would be cockney as the language features used are those of "nadsat" so i'm guessing maybe it stems from that, as that has some weird words in it!