- Twenty-eight years later and nothing like this has happened yet where I reside. On the other hand, Big Brother here is anything but a myth.
1984 is linked to Communism. But it can be just as easily be linked to fascism. To any authoritarian and/or totalitarian ideology.
And what is this other than the mass production of a prefabricated dasein. But the real dasein is never all that far below the surface of the least brainwashed.
It’s a world whereby if it can’t be expressed in percentages it might as well not even exist. A world where all are equal but those in the Inner Party are ten times as equal as everyone else. And then the O’Briens: hundreds of times as equal.
And aside from Asian POWs captured at the “Eastasian front” this is an entirely white society.
See if you can spot the parts that Wilhelm Reich could have written himself.
Maybe it’s just me but The Leader here bears a striking resemblance to Martin Heidegger. At least the one on the television screen.
DoublePlusBig my brothers and sisters.
Eurythmics:
youtube.com/watch?v=aGwUNTGrnvE
wiki
Upon hearing a news report declaring the Oceanian army’s utter rout of the enemy (Eurasian)'s forces in North Africa, Winston looks at Big Brother, then turns away and almost silently says “I love you” - a phrase that he and Julia used during their relationship, indicating the possiblity that he still loves Julia. However, he could also be declaring his love for Big Brother instead. His conversation with Julia in the rented room earlier in the film where they express the only hope they can through retention of their true feelings might have been extinguished “if they can make me change my feelings, they can stop me from loving you, that would be real betrayal”
1984
Written and directed by Michael Radford
From the novel by George Orwell
[b]Title card: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
…
Winston [voiceover]: Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself.
…
Winston: [voiceover] April the 4th, 1984. To the past, or to the future. To an age when thought is free. From the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man…greetings.
…
Winston: How’s the Newspeak Committee?
Syme: Working overtime. Plusbig waste is in adjectives. Plusbig waste is timing the language to scientific advance.
Winston: Yes.
Syme: It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. You wouldn’t have seen the Dictionary 10th edition, would you Smith? It’s that thick.
[illustrates thickness with fingers]
Syme [narrowing fingers]: The 11th Edition will be that thick.
Winston: So, The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect?
Syme: The secret is to move from translation, to direct thought, to automatic response. No need for self-discipline. Language coming from here [the larynx] not from here [the brain].
…
Winston [reciting poem]: “Under the spreading chestnut tree / I sold you / You sold me.”
…
Big Brother: War is peace! Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength! A triumph of willpower over the orgasm.
…
Big Brother: At a rally of the Anti-Sex League in Victory Square tonight held to celebrate a 20-percent decrease in civil marriages over 10,000 Party women took a vow of celibacy.
…
Winston: Look, I hate purity. I hate goodness. I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupt.
Julia: I ought to suit you, then. I’m corrupt to the core.
…
Speaker: I just want to finish by saying a few words about the impact of this imminent neurological breakthrough. When the orgasm has been finally eradicated the last remaining obstacle to the psychological acceptance…The introduction of artsem, combined with the neutralization of the orgasm will effectively render obsolete the family until it becomes impossible to conceptualize.
…
Winston [voiceover]: It is folly…as though deliberately, we move one step nearer the grave. I can’t understand why she accepted the idea…she, who is so careful.
…
Winston: If they can make me change my feelings they can stop me from loving you. That will be real betrayal.
Julia: They can’t do that. It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can torture you and make you say anything. But they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you. They can’t get to your heart.[/b]
We’ll see about that.
[b]O’Brien: There are thought criminals who maintain that the resistance is not real. Believe me, Winston, it is very real. Perhaps you are not familiar with how it operates.
Winston: I am attentive to the news.
O’Brien: Indeed. Then perhaps you imagine a huge network of conspirators prepared to commit any atrocity to weaken and demoralize the order of our society. The reality is infinitely more subtle. If Goldstein himself fell into the hands of the Thought Police, he could not give them a list of his agents. Such a list does not exist. They are not an organization in the sense we know. Nothing holds it together but an idea. Individually, they cheat, forge, blackmail, corrupt children, spread disease and prostitution, in the name of spreading knowledge from generation to generation, until…in a thousand years…
…
Winston: [reads from Goldstein’s book] “In accordance to the principles of Doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects. And its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”
This is the role of the military industrial complex with respect to foreign and domestic policy here in America.
…
Winston: Parsons.
Parsons: Keep away from me, Smith. I’m an agent of Goldstein. I didn’t even know it myself. Thoughtcrime is so insidious. It just creeps up on you. My daughter found it out. Very proud of her. Very grateful I’ve been discovered before it’s too late. They won’t shoot me, will they, Smith? I know I could be very useful in a labor camp.
…
Winston: They got you too?
O’Brien: They got me a long time ago.
…
O’Brien: Shall I tell you why we brought you here? To cure you. To make you sane. That was 40. You can see that the numbers on this dial run up to 100. Will you please remember that, during our conversation? I have it in my power to inflict pain on you at any time…and in whatever degree I choose.
…
O’Brien: How many fingers, please?
Winston: Four. What else could I say? Five, or anything you like. Will you please stop it? Stop the pain…How can I help it? How can I help what I see in front of my eyes? Two and two makes four.
O’Brien: Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five, sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once.
…
O’Brien: Neither the past, nor the present, nor the future exists in its own right. Reality is in the human mind… not in the individual mind…which makes mistakes and soon perishes…but in the mind of the Party…which is collective and immortal.[/b]
So much of ideology and “objectivism” is rooted in this: The Party, the truth reflects necessity. And this necessity carries on beyond the grave. Thus through them you become immortal.
[b]O’Brien: How many fingers, Winston?
Winston [in agony]: Four. Four, I suppose there are four. I tried to see five. I wish I could.
O’Brien: Which do you wish? To persuade me that you can see five, or really to see them? Winston: Really to see them.
…
O’Brien: We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us. As long as he resists us, we never destroy him. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. We make his brain perfect before we blow it out. And then when there is nothing left but sorrow and love of Big Brother we shall lift you clean out of history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you. Not a name in a register. Not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past, as well as in the future.
…
Winston: Does Big Brother even exist?
O’Brien: Of course he exists.
Winston: No, I mean… does he exist like you or me?
O’Brien: You do not exist.
…
O’Brien: If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
…
Winston: In the end, they’ll beat you. Sooner or later, they’ll tear you to pieces.
O’Brien: On what evidence?
Winston: Goldstein’s book.
O’Brien: I wrote it. Or, at least, I collaborated in writing it. No book is individually produced, as you know.
…
Winston: I know you’ll fail. Something in this world…some spirit you will never overcome…
O’Brien: What is it, this principle?
Winston: I don’t know. The spirit of man.
O’Brien: And do you consider yourself a man?
Winston: Yes.
O’Brien: If you’re a man, Winston, you’re the last man.
…
Winston: When will you shoot me?
O’Brien: Might take a long time. But don’t give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later.
…
O’Brien: What are your feelings towards Big Brother?
Winston: I hate him.
O’Brien: You must love him. It is not enough to obey him. You must love him.
…
O’Brien: Room 101.
…
O’Brien: You once asked me, Winston, what was in room 101. I think you know. Everyone does. The thing that is in room 101…is the worst thing in the world. It goes beyond fear of pain or death. It is unendurable, and it varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive or castration…or many other things. In your case, it is rats.
…
O’Brien: In the proletarian areas, the rats will attack a baby and within five minutes, strip it to the bone. They also attack the sick and dying. They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless.
…
O’Brien: The mask fits over your head, leaving no exit. I press the first lever and the rats move into the front compartment. I press the second, and the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will shoot at you like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap through the air? They will leap onto your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue.
…
Winston: Do it to her! Do it to Julia! I don’t care what you do to her, but do it to her! Tear her my face off! Do it to Julia, not to me! Do it to Julia! Not to me!
…
Winston: I love you.
…
Title card: This film was photographed in and around London during the period April-June 1984, the exact time and setting imagined by the author.[/b]