Characters Are Made #22: Six L'Orange Redeux
Ex-HeroMachiner,
Ticketmaster,
And Humble Narrator.
Dear brothers and only droogs, malchiks and devotchkas alike, your humble narrator has put upon himself to govoreet; that being how I made a right snoutie cal of what would otherwise be a horrorshow if I'd been interessovated to viddy A Clockwork Orange before I got to rabbit.
Okay; enough Nadsat. I'm not a nadsat, so I shouldn't be speaking it. It means "teenager" according to the glossary I used, which means I'm basically doing that Steve Buscemi meme to show you that I finally watched A Clockwork Orange this past week.
Just the Ticket #205: A Clockwork Orange
Directed by Stanley Kubrick (The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey, the latter of which gets an Easter eggywegg of an appearance at a record stand in this movie), 1971's A Clockwork Orange is perhaps the last thing a child should be allowed to watch, even if her father is a corrupt, absent-minded, French film producer financed by an underground criminal organization. Between the unsettling depictions of assault (physical and sexual), ubiquitous forniphiliac decor, pornographic artwork on display, and frequent exploitation of the female form, no child should have access to it at all. But that isn't to say A Clockwork Orange is a bad or poorly made movie; far from it. I love the wide-angle, minimally edited action/violence scenes, the intentionally off-kilter architecture, the contrast between the vividly colorful interior scenes and drab, dark, weather-beaten exterior scenes, the lingering close-up shots that test your personal space, the performances (especially the youngish McDowell having such dramatic and comedic range), the commentary on criminal reform and psychology as political talking points (conformity vs individuality, the unintended effects of "curing" a societal ill with a bandage solution to get a few extra votes, relative victimhood, letting the inmates run the asylum, etc.), and the poetically ironic juxtaposition of the two halves of the movie. A hundred thirty-six minutes is perhaps too long of a runtime, and I agree that it isn't a movie for everyone (indulgent, exploitative, and at times a challenge to understand because of the slang-riddled dialogue being a mix of cockney rhyme, baby talk, and vulgar Slavic languages that sounds oddly prescient of modern brainrot zoomer speak), but it is undeniably a work of art composed with the intention of disturbing its audience and delivering a message in a memorable fashion. And it made me understand Rob Zombie's music a little better (particularly "Never Gonna Stop (Red Red Kroovy)," which is like a through-and-through love letter to the film), so that's another plus. It's the last plus I'm giving A Clockwork Orange, though.
A-
Getting back to the Redeux, I looked online for any indication that A Clockwork Orange had been censored in France (where Six L'Orange was born) to make my life easier. No such luck, my brothers and only friends! Looks like I'll be stuck listening to old Ludwig Van until I feel like vomiting and defenestrating myself, dear Ticketholders, so let's rabbit once more, shall we?
I created Six L'Orange when I was just beginning the Clockwork project and screwing around with Heromachine 3. As evidenced by her name and the faint number on her coat, she is the six o'clock member of Clockwork. But before that, she was a member of The Enforcers with Sword, Shield, and erstwhile nemesis Strong Arm. Before that, she was a solo anti-heroine in the vein of Marvel's Punisher or DC's Huntress (or even Batman).
I based her original design on burlesque performers and the Playboy Bunny costume when I entered her into the 2013 Fashion Character Design Contest, but her updated design is influenced more by Zatanna from DC, Shania Twain's "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" outfit, and Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange.
As power set and team function goes, it still stands that she has short-term precognition (maybe the fabled 'tuplet sense or a mutation brought on by trace amounts of temporal Knavium molecules in her body), a tactical intellect, and an expert level of training in various forms of bladed and unarmed combat, especially with her cane-sword, and she is essentially the leader and strategist for every team she joins (or more likely, forms).
What needs to change because of the nature of the film that inspired her, is her backstory.
Name: Sextant
Ticketmaster,
Alias: Six L'Orange
Team Affiliations: The Enforcers, Clockwork
Race: Human
Birthplace: Paris, France
Powers/Abilities: Superior intellect, reflexes, expert swordsmanship (sword hidden in her cane), precognition.
Bio: The daughter of wealthy French producer Alexandre L'Orange, Six L'Orange grew up with constant access to movies. Her mother died giving birth to sextuplets, leaving them in the care of a father so absent-minded that he could only think to name his identical children after the first six cardinal numbers, Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre, Cinq, and of course, Six. Though an absent-minded workaholic, Alex L'Orange spoiled his girls with all manner of industry perks to hide them from the seedier aspects of his livelihood. An endless supply of TV and movies, gourmet catering, high-end clothes; whatever it took to keep them blissfully ignorant of his Underground financiers and the bevy of risqué side productions (to put it mildly) they had him work on.
But as she and her sisters grew, Six began to get a sense that their father's business activities weren't on the up-and-up, and they turned to rebellious, nigh-criminal activities of their own at Six's request, who hoped to provoke him into quitting and cleaning up his act, unaware of how formidable Alex L'Orange's benefactors (puppeteers, to be more accurate) truly were. Though Six was technically the youngest, she had a way with words and persuasion, and led her older sisters in acts of theft, fraud, and violence against local gangs, vying for their father's attention, or at least, hoping to antagonize those who were pulling his strings.
Unfortunately, Six's plan at that preteen-going-on-nadsat age had the latter effect, and one day, agents of Le Milieu (the French Underground crime syndicate) came for the L'Orange family. Because of her extrasensory ability and developing peak human reflexes, Six was able to escape relatively unharmed, abandoning her father and sisters to fates unknown (though she later learned that a man approximating Alexandre L'Orange's description was found beaten and drowned on the Left Bank of the Seine. Her sisters were also identified several weeks later as being deceased, though Six had another feeling that this was a trap set by the people looking for her, and she again fled, leaving her home country behind and sneaking her way aboard a plane to the US, where she told her story to the FBI (minus the sixth sense details) and qualified for Witness Protection. Fostered by her assigned marshal because of her minor status, Six learned several disciplines of self-defense, picked up a variety of languages (including English, which she had already known bits of from watching movies as a child and tussling with British gangs, but she quickly became fluent here), and practiced swordsmanship daily. Presenting these interests as mere "hobbies," Six had a secret, five-year roadmap to prepare herself for a return to Europe when she came of age, where she would personally cut a swath of destruction through the criminal underworld and take revenge against the organization that had killed her family. As an act of poetic irony, Six (operating under the alias of Sextant) would draw inspiration for her costume and persona from the movie A Clockwork Orange, tactically and systematically brutalizing her way to vengeance. But tactical and driven as she was, Sextant was still blinded to the scale and evolution of crime in the world. One particular British gang had an enforcer with superhuman strength, and she began to hear whispers of Le Milieu and other organizations abroad developing cybernetically enhanced soldiers with power beyond her street-level capabilities. The societal ill that had affected her life so personally was now larger than her chosen mission, and she could not hope to fight the world alone. Beginning with the strongman from the Sixth Street Sinners and two Japanese expatriate sisters, Sextant would assemble a group of numerically inspired heroes to protect those who cannot protect themselves. From this idea, Clockwork was born.
I like this version of Sextant's origin story much better, as it keeps some of the visceral but hopeful spirit of the original but incorporates some of A Clockwork Orange's unsettling grime and elements of its plot (like Alex L'Orange's cause of death). This is a much better alternative to "she's a kid so she thinks it's cool and silly and her daddy's name is in it" because, again, not a movie for children (or media-illiterate adults). There's still a few things I would have probably given more detail if time permitted, but I'm pretty well satisfied with what's here.
If you like stories about criminals who commit crimes against other criminals for the good of society...don't look to A Clockwork Orange. But do look to the Robyn Hood series I'll be reviewing, starting tomorrow. So please Stay Tuned and remember to Be A Droogie if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read if you can spare some cutter, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my horrorshow content, like that Robyn Hood review I was to govoreet.
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Out.
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