Alex DeLarge, played by Malcolm McDowell, is the narrator and leader of the droogs in Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, adapted from Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel. The Ludovico Technique is the fictional aversion therapy used on Alex to condition him against violence, involving forced viewing while drugged. The scene became one of cinema's most referenced images of psychological control. Online, clips naming the technique circulate among film fans and meme editors who use the reference as shorthand for brainwashing, forced exposure and moral conditioning.