View and vote on the article here: George Orwells 1984 and Todays World
George Orwells 1984 and Todays World| Category | | | Summary | | One of the finest novel's to be ever written, 1984 By George Orwell, which is the pen name for Eric Arthur Blair. |
| | Body | The novel, is set in a totalitarian society "Oceania" where there are three classes of society, "Inner Party", "Outer Party" and the "Proles" or Proletarians. Many of Orwell's descriptions of this world (were very absurd in 1948, when he wrote it, however) are very real today.
The Telescreen
Believe it or not, but the "telescreen" described in 1984, is a perfect analogy of a television today. Orwell describes a telescreen as a screen on the wall that gave the daily news (big brother's propaganda), and orders. Televisions do give news, and much of it may be false. And the orders given were direct in Oceania, but here they are more subliminal. Advertisements and subliminal messages are not rare in today's world, in fact if you researched on how much subliminal messaging is used today, you would be very surprised. And not only that but major news networks are very convincing in the "false" news they report and can lead someone into false beliefs.
Ministry of Truth
How much propaganda do we see every day? One could never know. The CIA and FBI cover-ups, many and many lies fed to the people. A good example is the US govt. Shortly after the september 11 attacks, the CIA claimed to have no intelligence on any such attacks, and that such an attack could not have been preconcepted, however later on they report many things that were completely obvious and say that the attacks could have been foreseen and stopped. A movie, "Wag the Dog" is very interesting and resembles this to a much higher degree, the power of the government and the media on distoring truth, and in some cases, creating truth.
Newspeak
The breakdown of language into a form where it becomes completely conformistic and unpersonal. The language is just an example, everything in the world today is becoming like that. And if you want to look at language, look at IRC "how r u?" abreviations and short words. This can in some way resemble Newspeak. This also relates to the propaganda, the military uses words such as "Colatiral Damage" meaning that the military killed its own soldiers by accident. Strong words in the media today are "Terrorism" and given such heavy impact and extremely negative connotation.
Emmanuel Goldstein
The state, uses an enemy to keep the people united, in 1984 it is Emmanuel Goldstein. Do these names ring a bell? Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Husein etc. "Enemies" and "Evil persons" keep the USA united today. Such figures are projected in the media as the ENEMY and the atmosphere of a country in war keeps its "comrades" united. This is clearly shown today in the "War Against Terrorism" taken on by the USA.
Big Brother
During the vietnam war, it is safe to say that the equivalent of "Big Brother is watching you!" was the "Uncle Sam wants you!" logo. Uncle Sam was the name given to represent the USA government. Likewise we see that in Oceania, the government was given the name Big Brother. The effective use of a personal name given to the government makes the government more effective, and more ambiguous. Big Brother seems like the unchallenged power of Oceania and in some sense, so is Uncle Sam.
Well those are just SOME aspects to name a few, but there are many more, if you just take a closer look at the many things in society today. Although 1984 was very extreme, some aspects of it are beginning to surface and so this could mean that Orwell's "warning" or "prediction" could have infact been right all along. |
|
This article was imported from zZine. (original author: fu)
There are no replies to this post yet.
|