Orwells Vision of 1984

Orwells Vision Of 1984

Written By: John Mahramas November 15th, 2005 Nineteen Eighty-Four a futuristic novel released in nineteen fourty-nine soon after the second world war. A satirical novel about a futuristic authoritarian society. One of the major factors during the story is the fear of being “vaporized” by the Thought Police. The fear was brought by the propaganda induced by the media and “The Party” that no one dared to oppose. Now is Orwell’s vision futuristic vision of modern day society coming true, in America today is fear being induced by the media, headed by the government?

How do social science experts such as, historians, political scientist, and sociologist look at America as a whole, was it just a simplistic novel that was ahead of its time, or is it becoming the norm in American society? According to Wikipedia “Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). It was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks and of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines. The mass-media audience has been viewed by some commentators as forming a mass society with special characteristics, notably atomization or lack of social connections, which render it especially susceptible to the influence of modern mass-media techniques such as advertising and propaganda.” That is one of the main premises in nineteen eighty-four, the party erases the past and as the old era of people die out, they use the media to make people believe what is right and go to the extent to actually change the past and make it seem as if the party always was. How do historians, sociologist and political scientist look at the situation, is it too late for the people to take back control of the media, or are we have to going to cower in fear and believe everything, newspapers, magazines, Cnn, T.V., radio and whatever else were are told by the media? The party in nineteen eighty-four, molded the peoples minds, to make them fear the party and the figure head of it known as big brother. According to the http://www.sweetliberty.org (Shadow Government) a webpage about government control, conspiracy and what not, they also state that “The mass media form for us our image of the world and then tell us what to think about that image. Essentially everything we know -- or think we know -- about events outside of our own neighborhood or circle of acquaintances comes to us via our daily newspaper, our weekly news magazine, our radio, or our television. It is not just the heavy-handed suppression of certain news stories from our newspapers or the blatant propagandizing of history-distorting TV 'docudramas' that characterizes the opinion- manipulating techniques of the media masters. They exercise both subtlety and thoroughness in their management of the news and the entertainment that they present to us.” This is a similar to the parties propaganda in nineteen eighty-four, the quote and novel are similar in that, in that in both of these cases, a curtain has been put over the eyes of the people in order to make them believe that everything is going well in the world and that we are molded to believe what is put infront of our eyes.

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

O'Brien, Nineteen Eighty-Four. O’brien inevitably got vaporized by the Party and Thought

Police because of his power of too much knowledge about the system. Accoriding to John

Bennet a writer for the Journal Of Historical Review states that “Orwell's prophecy has already been partially fulfilled. The central theme of his book, the control of history, has already been largely written out of references to his book and has disappeared down the memory hole.” Now its no longer about the media, putting fear into the people and molding them, but also it by carving history with their own hands. Bennet also states that the central theme of orwells book, control of the past has been written out of refrence and those refrences have already begun to disapeer down the memory hole. It is in some aspect like Chairman Mao once was, now in china he is virtually been thrown down into the memory hole and has practically been written out of chinneese history. He wonders if this is happening to America and asks if government controlls the media, are there facts that aren’t getting through to the American people, are there things that have been exposed been thrown down the memory hole controlled by the government? The

Ministry Of Truth, was were the re-writing, erasing and revamping of history took place. Orwell had based the Ministry Of Truth on the British news station BBC ( British Broadcasting

Corporation). Bennet informs us that “Orwell worked for the BBC for a time, and the Ministry of

Truth is modeled to some extent on the BBC. Orwell noted that the BBC put out false hate propaganda during World War II, and controlled history by censoring news about the genocidal

Allied policy of leveling German cities by saturation bombing” and also that “the popular perception of history is based on brainwashing by the mass media, indoctrination by the education system, peer group pressure, self-censorship and television "docudramas."

Docudramas such as Winds of War; Tora, Tora, Tora; Gandhi; Gallipoli; and Holocaust, which pervade people's 1984-like telescreens, are a blend of fact and fiction. They give a clear and believable, but usually completely misleading view, of historical events.” In the end this historian believes that our history is being erased and falsified more and more every day.

How would a sociologist view the falsyfing of history and media propaganda? James

Tyner a writer For Social & Cultural Geography, thinks more than anything that it has to due with geography. Tyner believes that it’s the nexus of space and social relations that go on within a geography, cause the actions of the government and the media. He strongly supports a theory by a writer by the name of Sharp, who has to say “Geographers undoubtedly have a contribution tomake to the analysis of fiction. The ‘imagined geographies’created through all sorts of media are central to the geographies used by people when going about their daily lives, so that it is important that such imaginings are understood by those of us trying to get to grips with contemporary geographical relationships and identities.” Another point that Tyner gets across is the fact that in nineteen eighty-four everyone was being monitered and it’s a thought that rolls across his mind, that is if we are being monitered? “In this totalitarian society, the history of people could be erased. Not simply death, but a social death so complete that all vestiges of an individual’s life are removed. Accordingly, in the Orwellian world of 1984, the control of knowledge, of information—indeed of history itself— is paramount for the exercise of power and the disciplining of society. Winston, as an employee in the Records Department of the

Ministry of Truth, is well-versed in this process. Indeed, it is Winston’s job to (re)write history, to change ‘facts’ according to the demands of Big Brother. Moreover, Winston understands that

‘Books … were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made”James Tyner says it plain and simple this is what nineteen eighty-four and fears that this is what America is becoming.

A political writer for Washington Monthly named Christopher Lehmann believes that

Orwells vision of nineteen eighty-four is based upon Jopesh’s Stalin’s rule over Soviet Russia, and believes it has nothing to do with America. Lenmann feels that “In considering how literature might grapple with the moral issues at the heart of today's politics, one could do worse than ask, what would George Orwell do? In 1984, the political novel's most famous modern exemplar, Orwell reckoned with the most decisive forces loose in the modern world: not merely the rise of totalitarian political regimes, but also the triumph of a depersonalized mass culture, the humorless bureaucratized workplace, and the abolition of historical memory. Long after the Stalinist nightmare dissolved, 1984 has survived as literature--conjuring the vivid stink of

Victory gin, the grim footage of mass carnage played for laughs, and the furtive state-forbidden sex of Winston Smith's Oceania. The novel's continued relevance was more than a function of

Orwell's imaginative genius; it flowed at least in part from his service as a British propagandist during World War II, which awakened in him both a reverence for the democratic culture he had worked to save, as well as a nuanced understanding of the corruptions of politics and spirit that occur under totalitarian regimes shoring themselves up with propaganda campaigns.” This is what Lehmann believes in.

Know what do I John Mahramas, the reader see? I see Orwells vision happening, in a society today where everything is blinded from the American Citizen. Not so much the erasing of the past but the future, they are molding us to believe what has happened, the war in Iraq is practically a desert verison of Vietnam. What are we there for nobody knows. The major question is are the erasing information that we do not know about? I feel that america is being blinded by the government and that when this country was started it was made for the people by the people, not for the government by the government. We the people have a right to know what goes on in our system and not have to believe everything the T.V says because for all we know it could be under government supervision and we are being told all lies. I believe if the country found out how corrupt the government was we would over throw it. We fight for their government, their views, their beliefs what THEY think is right, we do not fight for ourselves, but as the great George Orwell said “All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” Works Cited

http://en.wikipedia.org, The Free the free encyclopedia. November, 2005

Lehmann, Christopher “Why Americans can't write political fiction.” Oct/Nov2005

http://web36.epnet.com/citation.asp? rds=1&sxp=43493&tb=1&_ug=sid+9E91E793%2DBF02%2D43E2%2D8CF2%2D A6950BD66F67%40sessionmgr4+dbs+aph %2Cufh+cp+1+62F9&_us=frn+1+hd+True+hs+False+or+Date+ss+SO+sm+KS+sl+ %2D1+dstb+KS+mh+1+ri+KAAACBAD00096811+8586&_uso=tg%5B0+%2D+db %5B1+%2Dufh+db%5B0+%2Daph+hd+False+clv%5B0+%2DY+op%5B0+ %2D+cli%5B0+%2DFT+st%5B0+%2D1984++the++book+ex%5B0+ %2Dfulltext+2A3A&fn=1&rn=1 Oct/Nov2005

Tyner, James “Self and space, resistance and discipline: a Foucauldian reading of George Orwell's 1984.” http://web1.epnet.com/citation.asp? rds=1&sxp=74924&tb=1&_ug=sid+5D39FBE9%2DFC04%2D4A53%2D8994%2DA57 6AC74E249%40sessionmgr4+dbs+aph+cp+1+CFC3&_us=frn+1+hd+True+hs+True+cst +0%3B1%3B2+or+Date+ss+SO+sm+KS+sl+0+dstb+KS+mh+1+ri+KAAACBVA00002 260+6951&_uso=hd+False+tg%5B0+%2D+st%5B0+%2DGeorge++Orwell++1984+db %5B0+%2Daph+op%5B0+%2D+mdb%5B0+%2Dimh+CEAE&fn=1&rn=2

Bennet, John “Orwell's 1984: Was Orwell Right?” Spring 1986 http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p--9_Bennett.html

“Who Rules America? Who Controls The U.S. Media?” June 2000 http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/shadow/jewishmedia.htm