Unclear On The Concept

File this under “Evidence of a shoddy education”: around the world, (we are told) the movie adaptation of George Orwell’s “1984” is being screened…

…to “protest Donald Trump“.

Forget for a moment that Orwell wrote the book as a satire of contemporary British far leftists snd their tendency to eat each other, not to mention the horrors of the Stalinist regime that they were busily sweeping under the rug at the time.

No. The funny thing, I’m going to bet, is that the “progressives” – who will no doubt need to buy two tickets to the screening to save a chair for their self-righteousness and indignation – after the election we just had, will no doubt will see themselves as Winston Smith, rather than O’Brien.

Posted

April 7, 2017

A ‘n E, Trump Derangement

Mitch Berg

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11 responses to “Unclear On The Concept”

The Big Stink

April 7, 2017

Orwell’s screed against Big Brother is a condemnation of socialism – not a reinforcement. The left will hate the story. If they agree with the themes, they’ll leave the theatre, go to their car and suck on the exhaust pipe.
Mitch Berg

April 7, 2017

TBS,

In a linear world, you’d be right.

But this is the world the Left made. The world, in fact, that Orwell described; where meaning is fluid and history can be changed.

In the minds of today’s left, Orwell wasn’t writing about them, because they are not the descendents of Stalin and the western Stalinists Orwell was writing about. Fifty years ago many of them would have had a point.
bikebubba

April 7, 2017

Mitch translated: for the left, it’s all “Newspeak” that means nothing more, nothing less, than they intended it to mean. And it’s double-plus-ungood for the rest of us.

(apologies to Lewis Carroll!)
Bill C

April 7, 2017

I need to read that book again. I had to read it in 10th grade and all I remember about it is he had one small corner of his house that was not visible to the TV screens, and from there he practiced his free choice thought. Or something like that.
DMA

April 7, 2017

“for the left, it’s all “Newspeak” that means nothing more,”

Technically, what you hear on MSNBC and CNN is Duck Speak.
DMA

April 7, 2017

” If they agree with the themes, they’ll leave the theatre, go to their car and suck on the exhaust pipe.”

You don’t understand. When the party embraces 1984 its themes are ++good. When it turns on it it is ++ungood. Just like Eastasia can be good one instant and ungood the next.
Mammuthus Primigenius

April 7, 2017

I think they will buy it, and not read it.
The crime Winston Smith commits is to have free thought. This is symbolized by his relationship with Julia, which represents a reality that excludes Big Brother.
That’s it. That was the extent of Smith’s crime. To imagine, and not actually enjoy, that there could be a tiny piece of existence from which Big Brother was excluded.
Night Writer

April 7, 2017

From the forward of the book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neal Postman:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
Mammuthus Primigenius

April 7, 2017

Orwell had far more experience with totalitarianism than Huxley. Huxley can be said to have feared the bourgeois, Orwell the State.
Night Writer

April 8, 2017

I think that they both feared that the State would have its way; it’s only in the manner in which they go about it. Orwell would be the end, Huxley the method.
Mammuthus Primigenius

April 8, 2017

In real life, I think Orwell made a better guess at our possible dystopia.
Which is more likely is an interesting topic for debate. I choose Orwell because BNW is essentially about technology and modernism. It is dated in a way that Nineteen Eighty-Four is not. Orwell saw the world descending into a totalitarian state up front and in person in Spain. He knew that all the technology the totalitarian state needed was soldiers, guns, railroads, the telegraph, typewriters and filing cabinets. Huxley’s dystopia was his own time and his own social class’s outlook, with tech added and God removed.