Lazy Sunday Afterthoughts

clockwork snippet in dot dot dot

01. A Clockwork Orange
It is important to realise that Anthony Burgess never mentioned false eyelashes: Alex is never described wearing them in the novel. So how did the lashes show up in Kubrick’s film adaptation? Our theory is as follows. On the cover of the first Penguin edition of the novel (art directed by UK designer David Pelham) a stylised, almost cartoon-like human figure is shown, sporting a black bowler hat, a green shirt and blue braces. This abstracted portrait is staring at us from the cover with one eye, an eye that is actually a geometrical drawing of a clock’s cog-wheel. The cover is a beautiful translation of the theme of the story – the symbolism of a clock’s cog-wheel placed in a human face is crystal clear. In our opinion Kubrick took the cover image of the cyclopean cog-wheel eye and translated it cinematically into a set of false eyelashes, worn on one eye; a secret homage to the paperback cover.