“A ‘normal person’ is what is left after society has squeezed out all unconventional opinions and aspirations out of a human being,” says Mokokoma Mokhonoana, the South African philosopher, aphorist and social critic. And nowhere is this brought out as notoriously as in two outstanding prison films of the 1970s that have retained their unconventional cult following.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the story of a lovably raucous anti-authoritarian repeat offender serving a short sentence on a prison farm who is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation and immediately runs afoul of the authorities. The result: he is psychologically lobotomised by shock treatment and forcibly made ‘normal’ again by being turned into a walking vegetable.
A Clockwork Orange is about a sociopathic delinquent whose interests include classical music, misogyny, and what is termed ‘ultra-violence’. Imprisoned after a horrific outing, he too is treated by an experimental medical process aimed at reversing his antisocial tendencies but, in effect, just transforms him into a barely functioning, but ‘normal’, zombie.
Nevertheless, these ‘successful’ examples are from the fictional film world of misconduct and wrongdoing. Luckily for us though, in the real world, society has had some spectacularly famous failures with great visionaries who despite a history of burnings, beatings and berating they had to suffer, still held on to their unconventional opinions and aspirations. Lucky because these have vastly enriched us today — both in the realms of science and spirituality.
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