The most obvious psychopath in a Kubrick film is Alex (played by Malcolm McDowell) in A Clockwork Orange. In Clockwork, we find ourselves listening to Alex's narration as he tells the story of his career. In Alex, Kubrick has created a character who is simultaneously attractive and repellant. He is bright, witty, handsome, self-confident, brave (plays "chicken" in motorcars), adventurous, splendidly fashionable in dress, lover of Beethoven, and has a highly developed esthetic sense which is demonstrated in the following narration describing the sensations of driving in the country at night....
But at the same time, Alex is totally devoid of any empathy for other human beings. He has no moral scruples or conscience. He is sadistic, narcissistic, sexually promiscuous, a liar and deceiver, and is driven by fantasies of power and dominance. He and his hoodlum droogs prowl nightly beating up drunks, fighting with rivals, and looking for opportunities to rob, rape, and pummel their victims. Alex sees his crimes almost as a peculiar form of artistic expression. The victims are usually chosen randomly (those unfortunates who happen to be driving the other way when they play "kings of the road", or the writer and his wife). Alex and his droogs are masked and the violence is theatrical, accompanied by strange touches such as Gene Kelly song and dance numbers ("Singing in the Rain")....
Manipulation is another tool of the psychopath often used by Alex. He lies to his parents and to his truant officer in order to manipulate them. When Alex is caught and charged with murder, he typically tries to shift blame to his droogs and to deny responsibility. Once he is imprisoned, he adopts the role of model prisoner, "sucking up" to the chaplain by pretending to study the Bible (secretly finding more material for his sadist and sexual fantasies therein). During his conditioning he attempts to manipulate the scientists....
As might be expected, the choice of such a protagonist for an important film by such a well known director as Kubrick resulted in a storm of critical controversy. Kubrick was accused of pandering to violent behavior if not outrightly promoting it. In an interview in the New York Times, Kubrick explained that although he is fascinated by violence, he is not advocating it (or anything else) in the film, but merely portraying it: "Part of the artistic challenge of the character is to present the violence as he sees it, not with the disapproving eye of the moralist, but subjectively, as Alex experiences it."[15] From this standpoint, in my view, Kubrick has succeeded masterfully in letting us see into the mind of a psychopathic personality. But Kubrick goes further in the interview in explaining his reasons for his fascination with Alex: "I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.... The idea that social restraints are all bad is based on a utopian and unrealistic vision of man."...
Kubrick is expressing an idea here that accords with Sowell's[16] description of the "constrained" view of human nature which posits that it is flawed and largely fixed, and that efforts to build utopias will invariably founder on the rocks of human failings and will reflect the imperfections of their builders. Variations on this view have been held by such historical figures as Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Edmund Burke, Thomas Hobbes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman...
