Nineteen Eighty-Four

[Senior Baiano]

Winston Smith = gusano. Should have finished the book with him fucking off to miami and whinging on talk radio about how big brother took his family's plantation away

[Dr Rock]

I liked Brave New World for its approach to that issue, you had a few people who knew what was going on but didn't trust the masses and gave them soma to keep them happy. Even the Savage is just blindly repeating stuff he took from Shakespeare, the alternative voice still doesn't have original thought. Big strands of both left and right irl believe the other side was indoctrinated by the right wing media/left wing educational establishment.

I think Brave New Would is fantastic, Great debate here on whether it's turned out to be more prophetic than 1984 (also the bees knees incidentally)

will Self on top form,

[Fambo Number Mive]

I've been inspired to read Brave New World again by this thread, and while it's not as bleak as 1984 it's still pretty bleak.

[Dr Rock]

Ah, have Soma, you'll feel better.

[Pranet]

I've a feeling I've said this before on here, but a bit ago I watched the BBC 1954 Nigel Neale/Rudolf Cartier 1984 (with Peter Cushing, Andre Morrell and Donald Pleasence).

At the start I wondered how much I really wanted to watch a 70 year old tv play but tbf they knew what they were doing. Recommended if you have any tolerance of old black and white tv.

[touchingcloth]

I don't have a black and white TV any more.

[wrec]

Is that the version with a happy ending?

[Pranet]

No I think an American version may have had one with Julia and Winston  shouting "down with Big Brother" as they got shot or something.

[famethrowa]

[popcorn]

No I think an American version may have had one with Julia and Winston  shouting "down with Big Brother" as they got shot or something.

They were shouting "We're down with Big Brother", keeping it faithful to the novel.

[Ferris]

They were shouting "We're down with Big Brother and the Holding Company", keeping it faithful to the 1960s.

No I think that's a bit far-fetched.

[Fishfinger]

No I think an American version may have had one with Julia and Winston  shouting "down with Big Brother" as they got shot or something.

That's Julia Roberts and Bruce Winston, there.

[Virgo76]

Animal Farm is not a scathing takedown of a party which no longer exists.
Communism still exists. It rules the roost in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos.
Both it and 1984 remain great books though. Orwell cannot be blamed for right-wingers hijacking his message. The book 1984 is pro-socialist and anti-Soviet.
The weakest aspect of the book is the unconvincing depiction of the proles.

[Ferris]

Well communism exists but the book is pretty explicitly aimed at the USSR (country) and Russian Stalinism (political administration) in particular. I feel like I'm on safe ground claiming neither still exists.

As a result, the satire is less contemporary (in my opinion, other opinions are available). Cf. "1984" which remains as relevant and terrifying as ever. That's all I meant.

[Virgo76]

Fair enough!

[Ferris]

Orwell cannot be blamed for right-wingers hijacking his message.

I saw this utter drivel today:



...and was reminded of your post. It's so shit it sort of becomes funny again.

[Virgo76]

Right-wing American billionaires having some of their social media temporarily privileges revoked after attempting to incite a coup to overturn a democratic election which they'd lost?
Ultimately, the prospect of that happening lay at the heart of everything Orwell was trying to warn us about.

[Senior Baiano]

Kind of fancy the wife there though, ngl

[Fambo Number Mive]

Love the phone - top coordination. And the sheer terror in the man's eyes, his hand shaking as he tears of the calendar.

[touchingcloth]

Is that artist called Gary Marvel? Like Dapper Laughs has combined forces with Kevin Feige?

[kngen]

I don't know if it was unconscious or an active effort but Orwell's ingrained yet co-habiting fascination and disgust of the working class and other cultures often breaks through into the prose of his books and is a feature of his work, even stuff like The Road to Wigan Pier.

I can't help but feel the petit bourgeois trope of 'oh, you can't give them anything nice. They'll put coal in the bathtub, and are baffled by indoor toilets' has a direct antecedent in The Road to Wigan Pier. Maybe it was a common observation by the gentry before that, but Orwell reports it as if it's a revelation from his time spent at the (literal) coalface.

Plenty of other dodgy stuff in his books of course ('The Burmese are so stupid you have to beat them with sticks to make yourself understood' ... paraphrasing, of course, but you get the idea). Still one of the all time greats, though - I mean, he got shot in the neck fighting actual fascists, for fuck's sake, not doxxing them on Twitter - so I'm willing to give him a pass on almost anything (and I will, very generously,* give him a by-ball for his late-in-life grassing up his lefty pals to the government as the actions of a very ill man who was quite possibly losing his marbles in his final days.)

_{*I'm sure he'd be delighted to know.}

Fake edit counterpoint: He also observed that the main reason that forcing those living in slums into better-appointed newbuilds didn't turn out to be a panacea for their overall quality of life was due to the lack of focus, on the part of the architects/town planners etc, on fostering a sense of community in their new surroundings.  This was in 1937, and was a lesson many a municipal grandee would fail to learn for decades afterwards. He might have a supercilious view of the working classes, but he was very perceptive nonetheless.

[Pink Gregory]

actions of a very ill man who was quite possibly losing his marbles in his final days.)

is there anything that corroborates this?  It was TB or some other bacterial lung thing that got him in the end wasn't it?  Sort of thing that usually messes with the brain anyway.

[kngen]

I think I read it in a review of a biography, and it's stuck with me as a 'Yes, that'll do' conceit if the subject ever came up. So not exactly a point of view that I've arrived at through rigorous examination, I'd be the first to admit.

[FeederFan500]

Fake edit counterpoint: He also observed that the main reason that forcing those living in slums into better-appointed newbuilds didn't turn out to be a panacea for their overall quality of life was due to the lack of focus, on the part of the architects/town planners etc, on fostering a sense of community in their new surroundings.  This was in 1937, and was a lesson many a municipal grandee would fail to learn for decades afterwards. He might have a supercilious view of the working classes, but he was very perceptive nonetheless.

In the post-war rehousing people who were moving didn't rank their old neighbours or continuing with the same community particularly highly, preferring amenities or services for their house or nearby. They also weren't particularly enamoured with the idea of social clubs or societies just to get together with those who lived nearby, expressing a preference for things like leisure centres.

I suppose this means one of two things, either their living conditions were so poor that the housing improvements were really important, or after all they were stupid and didn't know what was best for them.

[Tony Tony Tony]

Read it first many years ago as an A Level text. I used the quote "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever" in the exam and I carried the words around in my head for a long time. Grim.

Recently reread for a book club and discovered I missed the fact that Winston is doomed/entrapt even before the story begins. He bought the forbidden diary from Mr Charrinton's shop, where he later returns to set up his love nest with Julia before it turns out Charrington is a thought police agent.

Makes me think even the scrap of paper Winston finds at work which 'proves' party lies was probably put there deliberately.

[All Surrogate]

O'Brien says he's been watching Smith for seven years, if I remember correctly, and the thought police probably were watching him before that. I sometimes think that even Smith's terror of rats has been heightened by the thought police over the years.

[Ambient Sheep]

Recently reread for a book club and discovered I missed the fact that Winston is doomed/entrapt even before the story begins. He bought the forbidden diary from Mr Charrinton's shop, where he later returns to set up his love nest with Julia before it turns out Charrington is a thought police agent.

Makes me think even the scrap of paper Winston finds at work which 'proves' party lies was probably put there deliberately.

Whoa! Despite doing it for O-Level, and having read it at least once before that and at least once afterwards, I somehow completely missed that!

<mindblown.gif>

[13 schoolyards]

I remember wondering how closely the thought police watched party members - was the surveillance of Smith just run-of-the-mill until he bought the diary? If he'd just bought it, wrote some random observations for a while and then hid it away, would they have bothered bringing him in?

Guess if they were under quota for the month marginal cases like that would get bumped up.

[Senior Baiano]

Now it's out of copyright someone ought to write a novel from the point of view of the Thought Police, maybe in a Len Deighton sort of vein

[Senior Baiano]

One target of the satire that often gets overlooked is the Catholic church (an even more authoritarian and sinister organisation in the pre-Vatican II days). The idea that the whole resources of the state secret police can be brought to bear on just one unimportant malcontent, it's very much like the Catholic emphasis on the salvation of the individual soul, rather than guide to how secret police actually operate under dictatorships.