Now that we have completed the dystopia that is 1984, and many of you are disapointed in the ending because you are so accustomed to the American "happy ending," I would like you to think about Orwell's prophetic message the novel conveys. What are some of the things in our society (not mentioned in class) that Orwell would perhaps put in his novel if he were to write "2008" in 1948 instead of 1984. What are some of the things that make our society a dystopia and why?
11 comments:
Katherine Liu
I think some of the things that Orwell would elaborate more on are maybe how the media effects everyday life now more than it did in the past. Also maybe the awareness and occurence of drugs and sex. Orwell surfaced it a bit but if he were to write about it now there would be so much more he could bring up. I'm not saying that all of those things are good its just that today it become a big part of the world that we're growing up in today. Everyday now you see people getting busted for drugs or teenagers getting caught doing only God knows what but its begining to be a bigger part of our world whether we're getting views for or agianst it.
I think that Orwell would have written about different things if he wrote "2008" instead of 1984. When he wrote 1984 in 1948 he focused on how the government used different tactics so they could gain complete control over a society. Over the years many things have happened (positive and negative) that have led to the society changing and being more corrupt than ever before. He could write about how people are more concerned about what the "beautiful people" do than people in their day to day life. He could write about how terrorism and war affect people. He could focus on the negative aspects of our society by ignoring all of the ways that the world has advanced. Orwell can focus on how propaganda has always been an easy way for people to be manipulated and nowadays it seems like it can't be escaped. He can even talk about Global Warming and how if we don't change bad habits then the world will change as we know it.
Aly, I think you make some good points here, although I think a
1984 government would use many of the things you discuss as scare tactics to further instill fear into the citizens of the country; to perpetuate the fear that keeps them in power.
~Mr. T~
Well i think the majority of 1984 is true in our society today our government is in constant warfare using the word terroism or terror as scare tactics to keep people understanding that they are in charge. They dont tell us everything thats really going on d they can watch our every move. They can track phone calls, bills, identities, etc and make it all dissapear. The only difference with our govermetn is they dont confine us to no feelings they want us to have the oppisite, extreme feelings. They cause us to show our feelings with "chick flicks" to make people cry, action movies to pump up adrenaline, and comedy to keep us happy and filled with laughter and of course unrealistic horror films to keep us afraid. The reason why to keep these constant tittering feelings is to keep us weak if we use or emotions so much that when it came to a situation that happend say in a horror movie we would feel like we already know the ending keeping us under fear. In addition we get bombarded with propaganda, entertainment, and possibly even religon to keep our minds off of the real world. How our lives could be obliterated in a second, how an apocolypse could happen at any moment and that people are dying all over the world and that we sitting at home watching family feud. Orwell may have not hit the nail on the head but he still got a good slice of it. I would also like to insist on watching the video at this link http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/ It may not be all true but it makes many interesting and valid points
I know I'm not in your class (legitimately) but I might as well be 'cause we tight.
I just noticed your blog and was curious to see what you'd write about, and I thought I'd share some stuff. I loved this question, I thought it was wicked interesting.
Though I think Eric and Katherine's comments were really great, Ali's actually reminded me of what my college professor said when we were picking a theme for our last play, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.
The theme in that play, is power. The whole thing is a basic power struggle between people WITH power, and people that don't seem to have it.
When Bren (the professor) let us all sit in and observe the meeting he had with the costume designers, Cyn and Sid, I learned a lot that relates to Ali's comment, addressing "beautiful people".
At one point in time (though it changed a teensy bit), the concept for the show was to dress the powerful people like celebrities, and the others like individuals. This, Bren stated, was because the entertainment industry almost has just as much power as the government does.
Orwell created a world where the government controlled the peoples' thoughts, and ways of living. In our society as of right now, while the entertainment industry doesn't technically CONTROL us, it has such a strong influence on the majority of people, that in a sense, we are all run by it.
Look at the clothes we wear, the habits we pick up, and the things that captivate our minds. I'm not usually one that blames the media for violence, but look at the video games we play, and the superstar heros we get to look at. The girls are all trying to hard to be skinny like Paris, blonde and beautiful like Jessica Simpson. Our political opinions can even be swayed by Leo DiCaprio who is extremely anti-Bush. History CAN be fabricated, just watch a Michael Moore flick. Sometimes, the influence isn't all bad, for example, Bright Eyes may make you want to start learning "big words", or Fiona Apple may have really urged you to say "F the government! I'm unique!"
The Entertainment industry controls us more than we think. And as individual as we want to be, in the end, I fear that society is exactly like in a Shakespearean tragedy, stupidly convinced.
Sorry this was long.
It always seems to be with me.
xo
I beleive that 1984 is a general representation of what our government is becoming. The patriot act is a contradicting proposal to root out all of the homegrown terrorists by taking away all of our freedoms at the snap of president bush's fingers. The government feeds us filtered garbage on the television that they first sifted through makiing sure it is what they want us to hear or see. The images we see on the television are nothing but discreet distractions ployed by the government to keep us occupied and ignorant. After all, "ignorance is strength", right? The government is slowly evolving into George Orwell's early predictions, with all of the footage from war in iraq on our own "telescreens" and excitement over drop in gas prices even though they are in fact higher than they were the year before, which can be compared to the rationing of chocolate in 1984. If we pull out of iraq it will be for the worst right?....War is peace right? Fighting for freedom, possibly getting drafted in the name of freedom and giving up our freedoms in the name of the patriot act; arent those somewhat related to the phrase "Freedom is Slavery"? maybe or maybe not...
The book 1984 is, to me, a general interpretation of our society today. The patriot act justifies taking our freedoms away, ironically in the name of "Freedom". At the snap of a finger our dear president bush can push the amendments aside and make his own rules. To me this sounds like the phrase "Freedom is slavery", that orwell reiterates throughout the novel. Still on along the lines of the party slogans; how about all these images of war and all this talk about needing to keep our troops over seas fighting a seemingly endless war? But we cant pull our troops out bush said. Maybe he's right. So does that mean that war is in fact peace? The television: seems to resemble the ideas of the "telescreen" to me. The t.v. floods your mind with governmentally filtered images all day. Everything we watch is first meticulously sifted through by the FCC before they allow you to stupify yourself with shows and movies about other peoples lives that somehow seem to affect your lives. Maybe television isn't a discrete way for the government to occupy us and give us a false hope of daily satisfaction, through "Reality shows " that arent even real, but to me they still keep us ignorant to what is really going on around us. But after all, ignorance is strength right? So from the sounds of it everything today is a beautiful utopia just like in the book 1984. I mean gas is $3.00 a gallon today, it was $3.02 yesterday, thats great right? (although last year it was probably in the mid $2 range but hey it went down since yesterday, just like in 1984 the chocolate rations are going up.yay!)
Some interesting points here Titus...I posted both of your comments (I think you thought your first one didn't go through) because you have slightly different ideas in each.
~Mr. T~
I deffinitly believe that Orwell's 1984 is clear prediction of the future and already our present is evolving in to exactly what he feared. We are becoming so ignorant that we believe everything the media feeds us. We are giving in to the commercials that brain wash us and think exactly what the government wants us to think. By being ignorant we are only weakening our society and giving them the power they need to one day control us. The enflict fear upon us by showing us images of the war on t.v or in magazines and newspapers and in doing so they keep us in their power. We already know the government is corrupt, between the mafia organizing clubs that sell alcohal to minors and huge scandals taking place in the White House we just turn a blind eye towards it all and forget all about it. It's a mirror image of how it used to be 60 plus years ago. The government was still corrupt and their even was a time when the mafia set up speakeasies to sell alcohal during prohibition and even bigger scandlas were happening with our presidents in the White House. The government holds so many secrets and keeps the truth from society. How do we know what the truth really is? Goverment feeds us what ever they want us to know. And history, how do we really know what happened in our past? Sure we have history books and a history teacher that tells us everything we should know about our history, but who says this is really how it was? How do we know it was rewritten to tell us a different story that government wanted us to know instead? We are helpless and inferior to them. They even have control over what we learn. They control the school systems and make the curriculums so basically we are taught what they want us to be taught. Our own knowledge is what the government wants us to know. We have no knowledge beyond what we are taught and what we experience and they control all of that. The only real differnce between 1984 and today is that they want todays society to feel emotion. They want us to know what it's like to be scared and to love and to be sad. They even make movies and have books that surface all of these feelings for us. Emotion is everything in today's society but it's really trapping us. The goverment has us in the plam of it's hand and the more ignorant we get the stonger they get and the weaker we become. They are setting us up for a future just like 1984 and we are only watching it happen.
p.s. i wrote longer better one but it disapeared on me so this as close as i could get to what the original one said!
My goodness Jules, did I teach you all this? You make it seem like we are involved in this big conspiracy theory! To some extent, one could argue that, but you seem to think this to an extreme. If the government had total say, why would I be able to teach you 1984 and the threats of powerful govenments, parties, etc.? Some of the parallels are scary though!
~Mr. T~
Julia, I found your other posting in my email. It did come through so I am posting it for you.
JULIA COLEMAN WRITES:
I deffinitly believe that Orwell's 1984 is clear prediction of the future and already our present is evolving in to exactly what he feared. We are becoming so ignorant that we believe everything the media feeds us. We are giving in to the commercials that brain wash us and think exactly what the government wants us to think. By being ignorant we are only weakening our society and giving them the power they need to one day control us. The enflict fear upon us by showing us images of the war on t.v or in magazines and newspapers and in doing so they keep us in their power. We already know the government is corrupt, between the mafia organizing clubs that sell alcohal to minors and huge scandals taking place in the White House we just turn a blind eye towards it all and forget all about it. It's a mirror image of how it used to be 60 plus years ago. The government was still corrupt and their even was a time when the mafia set up speakeasies to sell alcohal during prohibition and even bigger scandlas were happening with our presidents in the White House. The government holds so many secrets and keeps the truth from society. How do we know what the truth really is? Goverment feeds us what ever they want us to know. And history, how do we really know what happened in our past? Sure we have history books and a history teacher that tells us everything we should know about our history, but who says this is really how it was? How do we know it was rewritten to tell us a different story that government wanted us to know instead? We are helpless and inferior to them. They even have control over what we learn. They control the school systems and make the curriculums so basically we are taught what they want us to be taught. Our own knowledge is what the government wants us to know. We have no knowledge beyond what we are taught and what we experience and they control all of that. The only real differnce between 1984 and today is that they want todays society to feel emotion. They want us to know what it's like to be scared and to love and to be sad. They even make movies and have books that surface all of these feelings for us. Emotion is everything in today's society but it's really trapping us. The goverment has us in the plam of it's hand and the more ignorant we get the stonger they get and the weaker we become. They are setting us up for a future just like 1984 and we are only watching it happen.
p.s. i wrote longer better one but it disapeared on me so this as close as i could get to what the original one said!
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