Clockwork Orange: Male Gaze

In 'A Clockwork Orange', the Male Gaze theory is applied in order for the audience to further their identification with Alex and align with him more. Three scene's in particular (Home Invasion, Treatment and the Finale) show this.

In the 'Home Invasion' scene the audience are implicit to the scene because we are essentially part of alex's gang because he said so, he called us 'brother' through narration because we made it through the initiation with the beating of the old man and the fight with the other group. We also do not see how the event is from the woman's point of view just from alex's who is a male. Kubrick only lets us see how its like to be the attacker and not the attacked so we dont identify with the woman and inevitably empathise with her.

Maybe if we saw from the POV of the woman and we didn't see a shot of them approaching we'd be shocked and probably feel like being attacked too. This scene supports Mulvey's theory of 'The Male Gaze' because the me are in control and we see from the eyes of men and the woman is also desirable.

During the treatment scene, both Alex and the spectator are denied the pleasure of the images as they flash up onto the screen, instead the spectator is punished for the participation of the violence on women as throughout the film we have always been a bystander to these attacks as we have stayed to watch the film and not walked out and denied this, almost as if we were standing there in the same room as Alex observing the attacks. By now we have already aligned with our main character Alex through the opening scene through the use of close ups, voice overs and character emotions such as when Alex is looking down the camera as his 'droogs' are looking away from the camera, due to being aligned to him this 'torture' he is going through also affects us as we have been a spectator to these attacks but also we sympathise with Alex and we clearly see he is in pain with the close ups of him screaming and looking clearly distressed.

At the end of the film, Frederick tells Alex of his wrong-doing to put him through the treatment and offers an apology. Just as he does so, an uplifting score gradually rises and the audience are shown a POV shot of Alex. Now that the audience are in Alex's eyes, they can identify with them too be being rewarded. The flowers, the speakers hurling the uplifting score and the press taking photographs at the audience are all for the audience as well as Alex. It could even be a way of Kubrick making his apology for making the audience go through their punishment also.
For Alex, the score is the main piece of reward in my opinion as it triggers a response to his former self. Alex then tells the audience after a short dream sequence via narration "Oh, I was cured alright". The 'was' implies that the cure is now past tense, and that Alex is now back to himself. Because the audience have identified and sympathised with Alex all the way through the film, the return to his former self is welcomed. The uplifting score also leads to the connotation that this return to former-Alex is a victory, and it should be celebrated.

As we can see, the Male Gaze is present throughout the majority of this film. The audience are encouraged to align with Alex and I believe the Male Gaze theory has large part to play in that.