Straw Dogs & a clockwork orange

[seal!]

Why are they called this? are there reasons behind the names?

[seal!]

cheers archie, that helps a lot.

[seal!]

shame i cant do a negative rating

[Loosehead]

I'm not 100% on this but I think "Clockwork Orange" is a northern slang term for someone who is brainwashed into doing something that they wouldn't do normally or behaving differently. In the film Alex is "rehabilitated" from his violent ways by an experimental technique, forcing him to watch violent scenes in the hope that he will supress them in himself. Hence Alex becomes a "Clockwork Orange"

[tartanwiz]

A clockwork orange means a natural thing turned into a machine (you should read the book by Anthony Burgess).  The main character, Alex, is transformed from a bad but human person into a 'good' but artificial, unthinking thing.

[Golem]

'Straw Dogs' comes from a translation of a Chinese text called Tao Te Ching thought to have been written by Lao Tzu in the (Western equivalent) 2nd century BC. It is an important text in the tao belief system. The passage reads;

Heaven and, Earth are not humane;
They regard the ten thousand things as straw dogs.
The Sage is not humane;
He regards the hundred families as straw dogs.

The idea of the impersonality of Nature is fundamental to all Taoist writings (and seems clearly evident in Peckinpah's film). In addition, the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu records certain Chinese ceremonies in which woven straw dogs are made and initially respected but when the ceremony is over, are thrown away and trampled on. 

Peckinpah recognised that a book originally titled 'The Seige of Trenchers Farm' by Gordon Williams actually dealt with something more fundamental than the violence that distracted the original censors.

[Golem]

...my last sentence about Peckinpah recognising this, that and the other, was a complete load of b*****ks. I should have reconsidered it before submitting it. Please ignore it. Thanks :)

[jno]

Loosehead gives the answer Anthony Burgess himself used to give. But I also think I remember reading somewhere, years ago, that he just made the phrase up - just the sort of thing he would have done, then pretended it was some sort of ancient wisdom. (When starting out he occasionally reviewed his own novels - favourably - under another name, I believe; a bit of a prankster at times.)

[johngammon]

• There used to be a phrase "as queer as a clockwork orange".
• Nothing to do with the question, but about the time Straw Dogs came out I saw a letter in the Sun which (hopefully) some wag or a journo must have made up.  It began like this:  "As a lifetime dog lover, I was interested to see a film at my local Odeon called Straw Dogs, and I rushed to buy a ticket.  Imagine my horror when..."

[johngammon]

• There used to be a phrase "as queer as a clockwork orange".
• Nothing to do with the question, but about the time Straw Dogs came out I saw a letter in the Sun which (hopefully) some wag or a journo must have made up.  It began something like this:  "As a lifetime dog lover, I was interested to see a film at my local Odeon called Straw Dogs, and I rushed to buy a ticket.  Imagine my horror when..."