I had always heard people referencing back to 1984 when it comes to the feeling of being watched, so I felt it necessary to watch it for this project.
I became very interested very quickly in what the story had to tell. The idea that we are all conforming to society and have to be a certain way and that we are being watched in every way and sense possible. I know that I feel as if every google tab I open or every time I may say something that sounds illegal when I am joking (not that I have ever done anything illegal, as I haven’t) but it’s that paranoia that we have no idea what we could have done so we constantly try to remember every little we could have done that was bad whenever there is a police officer or an official person.
1984 is originally is a dystopian novel which was published in 1949 by the famous author George Orwell. The story follows an individual names Winston Smith who starts to get bored of the life he lives where everyone follows and listens to ‘Big Brother’ and there every move is watched by these ‘telescreens’ which are everywhere, even in their rooms. Winston falls in love with a lady named Julia, they both try to find a way of fighting against Big Brother by trying to find an organisation named ‘The Underground’ which is supposedly doing just that. However, once they consult someone who they believe to be a part of this organisation, they end up both being taken away and almost mind-controlled into believing that Big Brother is there God and that they should worship him no matter what, this makes them almost turn against each other.
Unlike many dystopian novels, which are set in distant and unfamiliar futures, 1984 is convincing in part because its dystopian elements are almost entirely things that have already happened, as Orwell drew from first-hand experience in creating the world of Oceania. For example, “2 + 2 = 5” was a real political slogan from the Soviet Union, a promise to complete the industrializing Five-Year Plan in four years. Orwell satirizes the slogan here to demonstrate the authoritarian tendency to suspending reality. Prior to writing the novel, Orwell had watched the communist revolution in Russia and volunteered to fight against the Fascist government in the Spanish Civil War. At first supportive of the Russian Revolution, Orwell changed his opinions after realizing that behind the veneer of justice and equality lurked widespread famines, forced labor, internal power struggles, and political repression. While fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell became disillusioned with elements within the resistance forces that he felt wanted to replace the Fascist government with an authoritarian regime of its own. These experiences provide much of the political satire of 1984.
When 1984 was written, World War II had ended only a few years prior, and many people believed a World War III was inevitable, making the wars of the novel feel not just realistic but unavoidable. Additionally, 1984 was written three years after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Orwell references nuclear-powered wars happening in different parts of the world. The idea of three superstates came from the 1943 Tehran Conference, where Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt discussed global “areas of influence” and how they should exercise their influence on the rest of the world. Orwell also included everyday life experiences from World War II London. The unappetizing food, inconsistent electricity, and scarcity of basic household goods in 1984 come from Orwell’s experiences with wartime rationing. (https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/context/historical/why-orwell-wrote-1984/#:~:text=While%20fighting%20in%20the%20Spanish,the%20political%20satire%20of%201984., 2020)
It is interesting to research into when Orwell wrote this novel as it almost feels like the future, even now, when you watch it, I can imagine a lot of the people who read the novel when it was first released also felt that this is what the future would look like.
What influenced George Orwell's writing?
The rise to power of dictators such as Adolf Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union inspired Orwell's mounting hatred of totalitarianism and political authority. Orwell devoted his energy to writing novels that were politically charged, first with Animal Farm in 1945, then with 1984 in 1949. (https://askinglot.com/what-was-george-orwells-purpose-for-writing-1984, 2020)
I find this piece of information interesting as Power is such a, ironically, powerful thing! It can go straight to peoples heads and a lot of others will just follow those in power due to fear of being an outcast or of getting into trouble. Growing up in the household I did, I can completely validate this! I was outcasted from the family because I was strong-minded enough to be different and not agree with everything my stepdad said, however, my siblings were too scared to do this as they were scared of getting into trouble.
Even though I may have been ‘Strong’ enough to not necessarily take orders from him, this made my life a lot more difficult and in my mind, I don’t see it as a good thing if I had just listened and done everything he told us to do, I wouldn’t have been outcasted, I wouldn’t have been the one who was most hated by everyone else. I would have been treated like everyone else. Which still was nowhere near good, but it was probably better than being felt left out and constantly being the one who isn’t a part of anything. It’s only through doing these projects for as a form of phototherapy that I am realising that we basically lived in a sort of ‘dictatorship’ household, which may sounds extreme but that is almost exactly what it was like.