As film adaptations go, 1984 is pretty good. At least, it's pretty faithful to the book. I think William Hurt is terrific. So are Suzanna Hamilton (Julia) and Richard Burton (O'Brien), for that matter. They did leave some parts of the book out, of course, most notably the larger portion of Theory and Practice of Oligarchic Collectivism, and some parts that explain Julia's character in greater detail (her specific politics). In some cases they have combined and condensed certain scenes. But in all cases, they have mostly gotten all the most significant aspects of the book, with one exception. (More on that later.)
One scene that's missing from the movie-- that I wish they had included-- is early on, before (I think) Winston returns to the junk shop. He sees a very old man, in the proletarian area, and follows him into a tavern. He thinks the old man must remember what things were like before the "Revolution," so he buys him a drink, and asks him questions. But the old man remembers only very specific moments from his own life; he has no sense of a "bigger picture," of whether things were in fact better or worse when he was young. And Winston is sadly disillusioned.
It's worth noting-- and again, there's more of this in the book than in the movie-- that Winston thinks that "If there is hope, it lies with the Proles." The Proles, he sees, have remained "human": "They were not loyal to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to one another. . . . They had not become hardened inside. They had held onto the primitive emotions which he himself had to relearn by conscious effort." Amid the endless toil and drudgery of their lives, they continue to sing. This is why when looking at and listening to the prole woman singing in the courtyard (below their window), Winston says, "She's beautiful."
There is one very small but (to my mind) very significant change in the movie. At the very end of the movie, Winston writes in the dust on the table, "2 + 2 =" [You may remember that in his diary he had written "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."] Then, following the war announcement, he turns away from the image of Big Brother before saying "I love you," which echoes him saying "I love you" to Julia. In this sense, the movie makes the ending somewhat ambiguous-- what does 2 + 2 equal? Does Winston say "I love you" to Big Brother? Or to Julia, who moments ago vacated the chair he turns to?
There is no such ambiguity in the book, where he actually writes "2 + 2 = 5." And the final lines of novel read: "it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
The point, I think, is this: Recall when he and Julia agreed that they would not "betray" each other. Confess, yes. "Everybody always confesses." But, Julia says, they can't make you believe it. "They can't get inside you." They can't make you stop loving someone. In this sense, they will confess, but not betray. Yet in the end, they do get inside Winston and Julia; they betray each other. Winston becomes willing, really willing (and the book is very clear on this point) to sacrifice Julia in his place. Presumably Julia has done the same.
One other point I want to make about both the book and the movie. In our culture at large, a lot of attention is usually focused on the idea of Big Brother and the "surveillance state" that we live in-- it's true in many ways. On one hand we have things like the CIA and the NSA, we have increasing numbers of cameras in public spaces and even private ones; and often such videos are widely distributed (I'm thinking here of Mitt Romney, and also Richard Berman). Other writers have called attention to the ways in which technology and social media (especially our computers and smartphones) constitute a vast "surveillance" network (Perlow; Pepijn). And all of that is more or less true. But it's also really only one aspect of the world of 1984.
More significant, I think, is this very astute analysis by Chris Taylor:
"Basically, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book about a government that is gaslighting a nation, and a nation that shrugs when confronted with gaslighting."
The term gaslighting comes from a 1944 film called Gaslight. A man attempts, over time, to drive his wife insane-- one of his primary tactics is to turn down the gas lights in the house. When his wife asks if the lights are dimmer than they were, he says, "No, of course not." Then he goes and turns the gas back up again.
Check out this article from the website Psychology Today.
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was their final, most essential command."
Sound familiar?
The theme of war, in the readings and in the movie carried a lot of relevancy. So much of the dialogue was centered on the war efforts, so the people seemed unable to escape this constant conflict. One quote from the movie that I wrote down was "War is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous... The war is waged by the rich against their subjects... to keep the very structure of society intact." This felt very relevant to the present day and the past century. For example, many of the court cases we talked about in class happened during war time, and they gave the government the ability to lessen freedom of speech during such times. Governments, under the supposed threat of other countries' violence, are able to control the people in a way they cannot during times of peace. They are able to pause cultural growth, or at least steer it, more effectively because people are scared. This was also shown in the film when Winston betrays Julia. Under great fear, the tyrannical government, as represented by O'Brien, was able to break down his individualism and mold him into what they wanted him to be.
ReplyDeleteGoing off the the theme of war and it's correlation with the court times, I think your response to it is really interesting. The idea that our freedom of speech is lessened during times of war in order to keep the people of the country under a more firm control is something that doesn't surface in conversation often. So what could be the reason? My thought is that if the government can keep the public under their thumb via fear then it leads to easier attainment of funds and support while decreasing the idea of spies against the military. Our freedom of speech is a central ideal that the general public holds close to their very being. Isn't that where the redneck hillbillies shouting about their freedom of speech comes from? By jeopardizing this core right it brings to the attention of the people that there will be no tolerating "funny business" (i.e. non-supporters of the war, those speaking against recruitment, and so on) during wartime. So the court comes around and picks up the people not afraid enough to stay quiet and makes examples out of them. I mean each court case can be classified as an example of the court's rule, right? Now whether this is unfair or not is not the interest of the court. They only care about which example will be set in the minds of the people more. Which example is going to keep others from crating the same scene again.
DeleteI have read 1984 for a class before and one thing we talked about was the distortion of language. The people's language is warped so that everything is good, or "doubleplus good". The news is changed to lead people to believe that their chocolate rationing cut was actually an increase so that everything and everyone would believe things are good, when they are bad and getting worse. Also, Orwell had a way of smashing words together to create new words for this society, emphasizing the loss of meaning by doing so. One example is the name of the society "Ingsoc". One could think that Ingsoc is "English Society", but really it is "English Socialism", by reducing it to Ingsoc, people do not have to think about the fact they live in a socialism and can think that it is just their society or simply Ingsoc. This was also a difference I saw between the book and movie. In the book, there was more emphasis on the distorting of words, especially with the character, Syme, who understood the problems with changing words. He knew that the changing of meaning and deterioration of words was harmful how people understood the world around them. In the movie, the strange language, "doubleplus good" and "thoughtcrime" can be understood and overlooked. I agree the movie does do pretty well for a movie and leaves out some rather important scenes, but sometimes I wonder how well a person can understand the movie without having read the book.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really important idea you brought up. One of the things that makes 1984 so great and thought-provoking is its use of language. When I first read the book during my freshman year of high school, the language was easily overlooked. But as you mentioned, even the name of the society has such a prominent and powerful meaning. It's clear that Orwell put a great amount of thought into the language he was creating. One one hand, I think this is an important detail that should have been included in the film. However, it is true that language is much easier to notice and understand while physically seeing the words while reading, and so it might be possible that including this detail in the film was discussed, but ultimately scrapped as it would be much more difficult to create the same effect without the visual aid of the novel and the amount of time a novel has to solidify the idea in your head (as compared to a two hour film).
DeleteI think it's really important to bring up the idea of gaslighting when talking about this novel. I just read this book about a week ago for another Lit course, and I brought up the idea of governmental gaslighting and related it to Trump and the COVID pandemic. In the beginning, Trump declared that this was all just a"liberal hoax" and told people it was just fake news (Fox News backed this up), but of course when the situation became more serious, Trump began saying that he had warned the American people the entire time about how bad this was going to be. When confronted with his previous quotes, he said that that was actually the "fake news."
ReplyDeleteThe point is, we see our government do this a lot. They'll say one thing, decide not to support it later, and when confronted on their past views instead of apologizing they claim that it never happened. It causes for a lot of distrust in the government from its people. However, the Party gets away with it in 1984, and I think that is one of the most insidious aspects of the novel.
Gaslighting also came to mind for me when I was watching the movie/reading the post and comments here. If you can convince your opponent that they're "crazy" or irrational, then you don't have to debunk their actual argument. And if you do that to an entire society, then you have a public that cannot stand up for themselves. I feel like the American society is in this position right now. People have been made to believe that the way things are--with the wealthy having all the power and the poor having none--is totally fine, and in fact, quite good. I hear people say things like "it may not be perfect, but at least we're not in [insert other country here]!" When in reality, we have some of the lowest scores in quality of life surveys in the world. The government has turned this all into a game of "us vs. them," such that even actual numbers to show that America is indeed not #1 are not good enough to convine the American people that things could be better.
DeleteYes! And it's incredibly insidious because not only is the government doing it, the people in the 1% (ultra wealthy) joined in because they saw that it would benefit them. It made me so angry when I realized this, and I think a lot of people are in that position now during the COVID pandemic because that wall has been broken down and people are finally beginning to see the damage this country has caused a LOT of people, under the guise of everything being "totally fine"
DeleteI think the movie captures the bleak tone within the novel, oftentimes with dim lights, Winston's grimy apartment, and dark costumes. This is in tune with gas lighting and we can tell it is effective on Winston who begins acting insane by the party's standards. The world of course, is not as delicately built as it is in the book. We definitely get a much better sense of Winston's job in the book and it more clear that he is literally rewriting history because we walk through the process in detail in the book. We also get less of a feel for newspeak. As someone who is endlessly fascinated by languages, this was a really cool part in the book. Nontheless, this movie captured the main themes of the book, and it did have some advantages. It was able to use the tehnology. In the book, the telescreens were always there, but seeing them made me more nervous than in the book because you can see them watching at all times. It paints a better picture of why Winston felt paranoid about them at times and how the government controls their people with surveillance.
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