Moderation Martyrs10 Mar 2009 09:15 am
Nineteen-Eighty Four All Over Again
By AlexThanks to Mike for this directionless spurt of paranoia.
Actually it really is scary, it’s not a case of “if we go on like this it’ll be 1984″ it’s here already! People in trouble for insulting our “beloved” leader (remember Splitting Image? Those days of freedom are long gone!)
Infact I’ll probably get arrested for this posting (sorry, I mean i’ll get a visit from social services, maybe they’ll take my children away?). Uh oh, I think I hear the thought police knocking on the door…. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU
Bianca Rowan, London, United Kingdom
Don’t worry Bianca. The Thought Police can’t get you if you don’t have any thoughts.
49 Responses to “Nineteen-Eighty Four All Over Again”
It’s people like this that make me wish we DID live in a 1984-esque state.
Don’t worry Bianca, the proles always had the best songs – you’ll be humming your way to a clueless early grave in no time.
PS ‘Splitting’ Image? Well done.
And there was me thinking that itv got rid of Spitting Image because it was rubbish, and hadn’t been funny in years…
Can’t any paranoid person find any other book to use now instead of 1984? I mean, the book is ancient. How about ‘it’s all going Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows-Voldemort is watching you?’
we can’t go back to 1984, lesbian porn websites weren’t invented, how would i fill my day!
IT’S A COOKBOOK!!1!
1984 is the book most people lie about reading (God knows why, it’s not like it’s a doorstop novel or anything, plus its commitment to representing freedom through shagging is almost at French literature levels). And yet it is probably the most-cited book in everyday usage. I wonder, of the people who incessantly talk about the Big Brother state, the Thought Police etc, how many have actually read it?
It’s coz they make you read it at skool. (Commie teachers’ plot to turn us all red.)
Welcome to Brave New World.
The lengths that people will go to in order to convince themselves that the government actually gives a flying fuck about the turgid minge-dribble oozing from their brains to their laptop and on into the glorious tubes of the internet never ceases to astound me.
OMG THERES SOMEONE AT THE DOOR – it’s teh thought police!11!!!11! Er, no. It’s the postman, delivering those velveteen pictures of Princess Diana throwing up that you ordered from ebay. And a fresh slice of buff-enveloped despair as you ram your credit card into the gaping maw of your own self-hatred sublimated into a stream of impulse bought cultural flotsam.
What a bizarre statement.
Point of order. Animal Farm also gets more than it’s fair share of tardquotes.
I think it should all go a bit Jilly Cooper, if only so I have half a shot at some wide eyed innocent stablestrumpet action.
/overshare
People lie about reading 1984! Its not exactly War and Peace. it’s a breeze to read, admittedly, a bleak and depressing breeze, but a breeze never the less.
Don’t worry Bianca, the government stopped caring about you when it misplaced that memory stick full of your personal details on the 2033 from London Bridge to Croydon last week. The only one who cares about you now is Barry, the carriage cleaner for First Capital Connect.
Kill her.
Let’s face it, though – everybody skips or skimreads Goldstein’s Testimony, don’t they (no offense, Manny)?
Yep, done that already john. You won’t be hearing from her type again.
The middle of 1984 is a bit dull. Preferred Animal Farm personally.
Why don’t people use Animal Farm more often when complaining about the government? I thought the idea of leaders as Pigs would appeal to some.
I like 1984 more then Animal Farm. John Hurt, Nudity, and Eurythmics on the sound track. Well the movie had all that, never got round to reading the book. Is it any good?
Ah, O’Brien, my old comrade. Is that an ice pick in my skull, or are you just pleased to see me?
I’d like to read 1984 but I’m afraid that if I go and buy it, the salesperson will pidgeonhole me with idiots like this.
Its an Ice pick in your skull and no, I’m not pleased to see you.
So if I call Gordon Brown a cunt, will Social Services come & take my kids away? Please! Pretty Please! The little sods have been driving me up the wall lately.
So, if you fear the Thought Police and their savage reprisals for dissent then posting your antipathy to the regime on the KGBBC’s website is a bit dumb, isn’t it?
To teach her the foolishness of her ways, let’s take Biancaahhhh to Room 101 and let starved rats eat through her face – just to help prove her point, you understand.
Bit harsh on the rats, but needs must.
Biancahhhhhhh’s face was rubbish. All gristle and tears. Still starving. Send cheese.
Anyway, I thought Goldstein didn’t exist.
‘Lord of the Flies’ is my other favourite.
Can I cast my vote for Timmy Lee’s “Confessions of a Window Cleaner”…?
If only so I can have a shot at Linda Bellingham’s guppies.
(Or was that “Confessions of a Taxi Driver”?)
References to The Ministry of Magic, Dolores Umbridge, etc would be apposite, though maybe the elite political commentators haven’t made it past Goblet of Fire. (Ugh I can’t believe I’m blog-commenting about Harry Potter; on the whole I would be preferred to be locked in a room with Nick Hancock [original presenter of Room 101, fact fans].)
If you want a picture of the future of HYS, imagine a fat-arse shitting on your face… forever.
but the shit is all runny, like fizzy gravy.
The book is a really good read, a chilling and slightly depressing view of a dystopian and totalitarian future, providing an interesting counterpoint to Huxley’s “Brave New World”.
It is a work which provides a chilling view of the manner in which absolute power can corrupt absolutely, much in the same vein as other literary heavyweights like Dead Souls, Crime and Punishment, Bleak House, Scarlet and Black and Spot Goes to School.
And everyone always forgets that it’s actually called “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Because no-one has actually read it. A shame, cause Eric Blair’s prose is so easy to read.
I’ll admit that I haven’t read Animal Farm, but I watches it as a teenager. As a movie it proves nothing except that Orwell is a filthy, filty pervert. The third-reel, (from about 4 minutes after that blonde teabags a goat,) goes well beyond anyone’s boundaries of acceptability. The piece as a whole, though, certainly gives one a new perspective on the term “Spit-roast hog.”
Yeah, I’ve seen that too. Didn’t quite get what it had to do with the Soviet Union though?
I felt sorriest for the chickens!
“And a fresh slice of buff-enveloped despair as you ram your credit card into the gaping maw of your own self-hatred sublimated into a stream of impulse bought cultural flotsam.”
Well, there’s my submission for the next issue of Pseud’s Corner sorted out.
OMG I’d forgotten I’d seen a film called Animal Farm. Thanks so much for the reminder.
I’ve actually watched Animal Farm.
Did I say watched? I meant read…
@ dirigible
You dirty little piggy.
N’allegory innit – the donkey represents western capitalist society – a phallocentric, chauvinist construct – oppressing the weak and obsessed with self gratificiation and superficiality.
Miss Busty Starr represents the motherland – literally shafted by rapacious capitalism: prostituting herself for the gratification of the ruling classes. She represents the sisterhood, trodden down by the ruling male hegemony, forced to conform to a superficial ideal of beauty that is dictated by a consumerist society, unconcerned with her wants and needs. She is forced to work, enriching others by her labour, and yet is forced to dwell in squalor and filth by the oppressive forces of capitalism. And she has really big tits.
For some reason the ring wing morons have got themselves convinced the 1984 police were telepathic… it was cameras in the TVs you idiots.
And their kids grassing them up. You’d think they’d be proud.
I wouldn’t say that exactly. One of the most interesting passages is where O’Brien explains that Ingsoc is essentially an ideology of power for the sake of power. Rather than an ideology being abused by the corrupt, the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four works exactly as it is intended. So rather than the corrupting influence of power being the chief theme, it is the basic functions of hegemony and totalitarianism, stripped bare and shown without ideological taint.
Interspecies intercourse. Relax, I’m fact you couldn’t make it up. Bank!
“One of the most interesting passages is where O’Brien explains that Ingsoc is essentially an ideology of power for the sake of power. Rather than an ideology being abused by the corrupt, the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four works exactly as it is intended. So rather than the corrupting influence of power being the chief theme, it is the basic functions of hegemony and totalitarianism, stripped bare and shown without ideological taint.”
I’m not sure, I found it difficult to swallow – if nothing else I’m not sure anyone could ever be that honest with themself about the nature and use of their power…
Erm….. Brazil? Saves anyone the bother of actually having to read anything and has that nice Mr Palin off the telly in it.
I always enjoy seeing people make 1984 references when they’ve probably not read it. “If I reference the basic outline from the first line of it’s wikipedia page they’ll think I know what I’m talking about, surely!”
Odd, I just unconciously renamed myself. Indignant Person C is dead.
I thought we had a blanket ban on all things Orwellian, on the grounds that they always bring 1984 and Animal farm up on HYS.
Personally, I think every social problem can be solved with reference to a particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
They talk about Animal Farm on HYS?!
*snigger*
That’s the one with the two surgeons in creepy baby masks isn’t it? A chilling prediction of a cabinet containing both Millibands.
I believe that I answered every possible contigency on this point with my lyrics for Marillion. Then I got a bit anti-american and sold fewer albums. Hey ho.
A passing pedant:
“A shame, cause Eric Blair’s prose is so easy to read.”
Or George Orwell, as non-pseuds like to call him.