{"id":8112,"date":"2017-06-16T09:10:16","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T07:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=8112"},"modified":"2017-06-16T09:10:16","modified_gmt":"2017-06-16T07:10:16","slug":"the-children-of-1984-dystopia-down-the-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2017\/06\/the-children-of-1984-dystopia-down-the-decades\/","title":{"rendered":"The Children of \u20181984\u2019: Dystopia Down the Decades"},"content":{"rendered":"

SOURCE: New York Times<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A poster for the 1956 British film adaptation of Orwell\u2019s novel.<\/p><\/div>\n

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLERJUNE 15, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

The stage adaptation of \u201c1984\u201d opening on Thursday, June 22, may be George Orwell\u2019s Broadway debut. But his novel \u2014 and coinages like Big Brother, thought police and double-think \u2014 have never been far from the cultural stage. Here\u2019s a partial history of the prophetic year that somehow never passes into the past.<\/p>\n

[Read about \u201c1984\u201d coming to Broadway.]<\/a><\/p>\n

A Star Is Born<\/strong><\/p>\n

The novel, published in 1949, sold well, but it took the \u201ctelescreen,\u201d as Orwell might have put it, to inject its nightmare vision into the cultural bloodstream. A TV adaptation aired in the United States in 1953, followed the next year by a BBC version <\/a>seen by seven million people, many of whom seemed to have the bejesus scared out of them.<\/p>\n

The show opened with the image of a mushroom cloud and a warning that it was \u201cunsuitable for children or those with weak nerves.\u201d The next day, The Daily Express reported a casualty under the front-page headline \u201c1984: Wife Dies as She Watches.\u201d The BBC was flooded with complaints, and the British Housewives\u2019 League denounced it as \u201csadistic and horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

It had the lasting effect of turning Orwell\u2019s shadowy villain into a celebrity. \u201cThe term Big Brother, which the day before yesterday meant nothing to 99 percent of the population,\u201d The Times of London reported, \u201chas become a household phrase.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Propaganda Tool<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Orwell was a man of the left, the novel was seized on as a useful cultural weapon against the Soviet Union. The Time-Life publisher Henry Luce promoted it in his magazines. And the Central Intelligence Agency, which had financed an animated film version of Orwell\u2019s \u201cAnimal Farm,\u201d also took an interest in \u201c1984.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agency helped fund the 1956 British film version, starring Edmond O\u2019Brien, Michael Redgrave and Jan Sterling, while the executive director of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom \u2014 an affiliate of the C.I.A.-backed Congress for Cultural Freedom \u2014 worked behind the scenes to alter Orwell\u2019s bleak ending. The novel ends with Winston Smith\u2019s total submission, but the British version of the film shows him being gunned down after shouting \u201cDown with Big Brother!\u201d The Orwell estate later withdrew the film from circulation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK<\/strong><\/em>
\n Why \u20181984\u2019 Is a 2017 Must-Read JAN. 26, 2017<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Big Brother, Ourselves?<\/strong><\/p>\n

By the 1960s, Winston\u2019s struggle was seen as against the dehumanization inherent in modern society itself. In an influential afterword written in 1961 (and still included in contemporary editions), the psychologist Erich Fromm called it a warning that \u201cunless the course of history changes, men all over the world will lose their most human qualities, will become soulless automatons and will not even be aware of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dystopian echoes of the novel appeared in Anthony Burgess\u2019s \u201cA Clockwork Orange,\u201d published in 1962, and the British television series \u201cThe Prisoner,\u201d which began airing in 1967, but the Orwell estate kept a lid on outr\u00e9 direct adaptations, including a musical version by David Bowie.<\/p>\n

Orwell\u2019s widow and executor, Sonia, reportedly found the idea in poor taste and blocked it, but Mr. Bowie did write several songs loosely inspired by the novel, including \u201cBig Brother\u201d and \u201c1984,\u201d and in 1973 presented a television special with the punning title \u201cThe 1980 Floor Show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Party Like It\u2019s 1984<\/strong><\/p>\n

As 1984 itself approached, the news media ran numerous articles comparing Orwell\u2019s vision to reality. Shortly after the year arrived, the Soviet political journal New Times issued its own propaganda strike, in an article charging that Orwell\u2019s vision had come true \u2014 \u201cin the United States, under a \u2018Big Brother\u2019 named Ronald Reagan.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the Super Bowl, Apple aired its memorable (and much parodied) \u201c1984\u201d commercial, directed by Ridley Scott. And a movie version of the novel, directed by Michael Radford, was rushed into production.<\/p>\n

In a recent video interview, Mr. Radford recalled filming the novel\u2019s Two Minutes Hate \u2014 a mass ritual denouncing the regime\u2019s enemies \u2014 with hundreds of extras. \u201cEach time we did a take, three or four or sometimes 10 people would faint and go hysterical,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Irony alert: The decommissioned Battersea Power Station in London, which doubled as the facade of the grim Victory Mansions apartment complex in the movie, is currently being transformed into a $17 billion development whose tenants include the new British headquarters for Apple.<\/p>\n

Surveillance Is Fun<\/strong><\/p>\n

Orwell\u2019s vision of a world of total surveillance may have had its fullest, if most ambiguous, realization in reality TV. \u201cBig Brother\u201d and its spinoffs survived a copyright challenge in 2000 from the owner of the film rights to the novel, and has survived to provide memorable moments, including in November 2016, when contestants on \u201cBig Brother Over the Top\u201d emerged from sequestration to learn Donald J. Trump had been elected president.<\/p>\n

In the second-time-as-farce department, the novel\u2019s infamous torture chamber, Room 101, where victims confront the thing they fear most, has lent its name to a British comedy show in which celebrities discuss their pet peeves. Boris Johnson has inveighed against, among other things, boiled eggs and \u201chysteria about passive smoking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enough Already?<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the \u201c1984\u201d boom has come something of a backlash. \u201cThe last few months have been hard, no doubt, the news more distressing by the hour,\u201d the novelist and critic Siddhartha Deb wrote in The New York Times Book Review in February, \u201cbut there is still something perversely groupthinkish in the fact that the impulse of resistance has homed in on the same book.\u201d<\/p>\n

A version of this article appears in print on June 18, 2017, on Page AR7 of the New York edition with the headline: Dystopia Down the Decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SOURCE: New York Times By JENNIFER SCHUESSLERJUNE 15, 2017 The stage adaptation of \u201c1984\u201d opening on Thursday, June 22, may be George Orwell\u2019s Broadway debut. But his novel \u2014 and coinages like Big Brother, thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,46,50,48,10],"tags":[749,748],"class_list":["post-8112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor-selection","category-freedom-of-expression-and-media","category-political-civil-economic-social-and-cultural-rights","category-war-and-peace","category-world","tag-749","tag-george-orwell","country-world","Documents-statements-multimedia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8115,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112\/revisions\/8115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}