Spoiled

 “The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.” 

This was the title card that appeared at the end of the version of Fight Club that had been streaming on mainland Chinese services. This little addition to David Fincher's 1999 film was placed there by China's cultural police obscured the intended finale placed there by the film's director. If you have yet to see this movie or read the book, or talk to co-workers about it and obsess mightily on all its contents, you are walking a thin line, since it has been twenty-three years since the film's release and the rules for Fight Club suggest that I may have already said too much. Far, far too much. 

But this sort of revisionist conspiracy brought me immediately to A Clockwork Orange. It was only after watching Kubrick's tale of a dystopian future a dozen times that someone clued me into the fact that there were several moments in which the film diverged from the novel upon which it was based. And if you guessed that one these was the ending, you may have read ahead. In the book, there is an epilogue that explains how juvenile delinquent Alex actually is cured. As he grows old, his desire for violence begins to wane, and he even suggests that he may start a family one day. It was "just a phase," and his moral compass is restored. Which, if you have seen the film is a very different message than the one you might take away from seeing it on the big screen. 

In this way, Stanley Kubrick is to A Clockwork Orange as the Chinese Government is to Fight Club. 

These may be notorious examples of how artistic vision can change from one moment to the next, from one tyrannical vision to another. Everyone's story can be aided by a good editor. Or at least it can be "punched up," if you'll forgive the pun. It was Fight Club's author, Chuck Palahniuk who wrote in the novel, “On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” It's better, for the sake of storytelling, to burn out rather than fade away. Which may be why Mister Palahnuik found it ironic that suddenly there was a great fuss being made over the censorship of his work. “My books are heavily banned throughout the U.S.,” Palahniuk said. “The Texas prison system refuses to carry my books in their libraries. A lot of public schools and most private schools refuse to carry my books. But it’s only an issue once China changes the end of a movie? I’ve been putting up with book banning for a long time.”

Does anyone else want to see that movie? 

I do.