Big Brother Is Watching You

Rambling Thoughts On the Most Banned Book In America

1984, by George Orwell.

Photo by ev on Unsplash

The Stats

Firstly, it’s never been banned in the U.S. In fact, most of what gets talked about as a book ban is actually some challenge to a library or school district to remove a book. It’s the parents y’all. Maybe don’t mention their children’s search histories…But it has been challenged quite a bit.

For, get this, pro-communist themes.

Now the first thing, the communist part, is hilarious. Mostly because Orwell wrote this as a critique against both Stalin and Hitler’s regimes. I mean, I just…ugh. I love the idea of some concerned mother reading through the book, getting to the end, and thinking, “See he loves Big Brother. This book is teaching kids to love communism!”

Some people should just stick to TV. Uncomplicated and of the reality variety.

Oh the irony! This next one is fun.

Challenged in 1981 in Jackson County, Florida for being pro-communism, while also being banned in Russia for being anti-communism.

For all the artists, comedians, and writers out there - this is the goal in my mind. To have both sides think you’re either for or against them. It is just plain genius. It makes me want to evil cackle. But I end up on the wrong side of that sometimes. As in, I’m siding with the wrong character, following along behind a hypocrite, cheering them on before reaching the end and realizing I’m the asshole. (Flannery O’Connor anyone?)

A tangent - Netflix’s movie Don’t Look Up got that kind of response from people in my life on the left and the right. Each thought it was talking about the Other side of the political aisle. I’m pretty sure that means they nailed it.

And, sexual content.

This is going to be a majorly recurring theme. Again, the parents. (And I should say I am one). They don’t want their kids reading about sex. If they read about it, they might think about it. If they think about it, they might do it. And if they do that…

Obviously there’s something to be said about age appropriate, etc, etc. But the district bans on this are for middle schoolers and high schoolers. If you’re a parent and you don’t know that your children are sexually maturing at those ages…well, maybe there’s a book you can read?

Interestingly the Party in 1984 wants to limit all sexual expression outside of a reproductive context. The point is to make more babies for Big Brother’s causes in Oceania and beyond. No desire. No love. Just duty.

(I know I said I wasn’t going to get all sociological here, but a question for anyone who knows something about this. Does restricting knowledge of sex (i.e. through media and art) have any kind of positive consequence on a culture? Less teen pregnancies? Better marriages? Happier couples? (If so, please comment and link something so I can expand my knowledge beyond a gut reaction here).

A little backstory.

Winston falls in love with a young woman named Julia. A rebel, a pleasure seeking fiend who hates the Party, not for ideological reasons or the greater cause of human freedom and expression, but because they’re really putting a damper on her good time. And one of the main ways the party does that is by banning sex for pleasure or love.

“Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema.”

The imagery there is perfect. To turn sex from something desirable, into a sterile, medical procedure. Necessary, but on closer examination, totally disgusting.

And another:

“We shall abolish the orgasm.”

This is during Winston’s re-education by O’Brien, a member of the Thought Police.

Julia, a member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, is secretly promiscuous, divulging to Winston that she has slept with hundreds of men before him. And Winston’s response? That only makes me love you more. She opens up the world of desire for him. A world where overcoming Big Brother is possible.

And Now, My Personal Thoughts.

I was convinced I’d read it before. Read it so long ago that I couldn’t remember the details. I’m sure it was assigned in high school, but to no one’s surprise, I’d only read part of it. I know that because the ending was just absolute utter shit. I would have remembered it. No question. Don’t get me wrong. It was great from a writing perspective. God I love this guy’s writing. Truly. But from a Justice Must Be Done, Truth Will Prevail perspective, I hated it. And I think that was the point.

A few definitions that I found interesting…

Doublethink

The act of holding, simultaneously, two opposite, individually exclusive ideas or opinions and believing in both simultaneously and absolutely.

Newspeak

The language favored by the Party working for Big Brother, and designed to diminish the range of thought. In other words, the elimination or alteration of certain words, the substitution of one word for another, the interchangeability of parts of speech, and the creation of words for political purposes.

A prominent piece of this book is information (or really misinformation) in media and politics. Big Brother holds the entirety of Oceania under his proverbial thumb by absolute and total control of thought. To think the wrong thing is to be met with severe punishment. Torture. Even death. Thought crime. You must think and believe what the Party thinks and believes. You must not be individual. Not other. Only a part.

Now here, I think this book has accomplished something incredible. The language of doublethink opens up a seat where we can self-reflect, see where we have been the villain. See where we have supported the villain. This isn’t a one party, one religion, one media outlet sin. This is a sin of all in power. The re-crafting and overwriting of the story to come out squeaky clean on the other side.

!Spoiler Alert!

Big Brother wins. Winston, the main character, is reeducated (tortured) into being a perfectly good, law abiding, brainless, party loving nit wit. His love of freedom, crushed. His discernment of the truth, twisted into an unrecognizable perversion. His will to fight the party, obliterated.

I mean, I thought we were headed for revolution against tyranny, and instead we end with a teary-eyed Winston reflecting on his love for Big Brother. Somehow, I didn’t see it coming. I know, I know. The eternal optimist in me was holding out for Winston to leave the Matrix. To fight the power. Instead…

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

Can we just pour a drink out for George Orwell. I mean, this is some dark shit. To be fair, I do love to read on the dark side of things. So. There’s that. But I always want the monsters to die in the end. Or at least get sent back to the dark underworld of the Earth from whence they came. No luck here people. Just plain dystopian nightmare.

An anecdote.

If you read my first post then you’ll know that I come from an Evangelical turned end-times fundamentalist background. A part of that lifestyle and belief system was daily quiet times, or times spent in prayer, bible reading, and reflection. In one of those times, I was reading through a parable told by Jesus that went something like this (paraphrasing, mine):

Two guys went to the temple to pray. One guy was a Pharisee (read religious leader with extremely strict interpretations of scripture) and one guy was a tax collector (read a guy who everyone thinks is a no good slimeball). The Pharisee prays and tells God, “Thank you that I am so awesome. Not like all these other shitty people. I fast, and do a bunch of religious crap I’m supposed to do. Thank you God!”

The tax collector, on the other hand, didn’t even approach. Just stood looking, then cried out to God, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Jesus finishes by saying that the tax collector was justified before God that day.

So I, a bible believing Christian at the time, read this story and think, “That reminds me of so and so (annoying, ultra religious, judgmental guy I worked with at the time who really rubbed me the wrong way, and probably sped up my departure from the church). And then, and then! The words literally leave my mouth in a prayer.

“Thank you God, that I am not like him.”

Of course, because I said it aloud, I realized that I’m kind of a piece of shit. I’m the Pharisee in the story. The villain.

My point in saying that is to say, it’s easy to read fiction, and not see yourself as the bad guy. The Party in 1984 becomes whatever political or religious or philosophical group you dislike. Don’t get me wrong, there are extremists whose own views mirror very closely the authoritarianism that Orwell was writing about. But some of those extremists may lie close to your side of the aisle, or religious beliefs, or philosophy. It may be you yourself, if you’re honest.

So when I read doublethink, although there are politicians and media outlets that come to mind, ones I don’t agree with, I turn the phrase back on myself. And I find, when I look in the mirror, there is a hell of a lot of work to be done.

To separate myself from a group (more on that will be posted in regards to my personal journey out of fundamentalism), and to tune into my own instinct, thoughts, rebuttals. To fight and go to war with my own self to find the truth. I’ll be honest, it’s not always there. I don’t always feel like I know what’s right. It’s not as easy as it was when everything was “God said it, I believe it.”

It’s also telling that this book bothers people. That they see some dangerous Other in the writing, even when Orwell is critiquing the very Other they are fighting! Can you see yourself in the pages? In Winston’s weakness and betrayal? In Julia’s flippant hedonism? In the ignorance of the Proles or the dogmatic fury of the Inner Party? There are pieces of us in there. If we turn the mirror back on ourselves.

Okay. Let’s talk about sex.

When a book gets banned or challenged, it’s always this. Like, 99% of the time, it’s this. And I’ve got to say, I think it’s a little out of touch.

First, the idea that you are going to subvert middle school and high school sexuality by not allowing them to read this strange dystopian affair is, frankly, ridiculous. No one can stop the burning fire that is puberty. No conservative mom’s groups, no book bans, nothing. (I take it back. Maybe SSRI’s.) It’s biology.

Second, some may say, But Why Does He Have To Write About Sex So Much!? It’s Not Even Pertinent To The Story!

And here, I disagree. See paragraph above when I stated that no super mom can stop her kids from wanting to have sex, or thinking about sex, and then think of what Big Brother was able to do to the Party. Not only has sexual desire effectively been wiped out, but love, the deepest mover of human beings and revolutions and all lasting change, inner as well as outer, has been obliterated. Turned onto Big Brother himself. The smiling mustachioed fellow who sees you when you’re sleeping, and knows when you’re awake.

Sex here, is not in the book just for sex. It’s in the book to display how totally Big Brother has taken over the hearts and minds (and genitals) of Oceania. Has curtailed even the most basic human desires and motivations, and molded it into a Party shaped box.

A lot can be referenced here in regard to political and religious control. It probably shaped a lot of the free love reaction in the 1960’s, the core of which was that love should not be determined by legal ties (i.e. the state), but by love. We all know it…evolved.

Some free loving, groovy hippies. I love these photos. (Date, time, context- unknown)

But I think there’s a valuable point in this book to be made by Winston and Julia’s promiscuity and love for one another being the deepest betrayal of the party.

“No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.”

And

“Not merely the love of one person, but the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear the Party to pieces.”

It’s the center of the book. The match that lights the spark in Winston. The final push he needs to really rebel wholeheartedly against the Party. Even if it doesn’t work in the end.

Some Spookies For You.

Now, this book was written in 1949, just at the close of World War II. It stood as a stark warning against totalitarian governments and the control of thought that could sweep a society. Have you heard about those strangely prophetic stories? Books written that predict inventions and events that an author would have no way of knowing about?

This is certainly one of them.

In 1949, the inklings of mass surveillance were encroaching on society, especially in the wake of Hitler’s Nazi regime and Stalin’s quick follow. However, most of the spying was done by actual people. Friends and neighbors. Teachers and kids.

That’s disturbing enough, but Orwell brings us a different predicted reality. One where technology is used to monitor and control people at all times. The telescreen watches Party members as the Party members watch it. It is a surveillance camera and television in one.

Fast forward to today, where surveillance is a mass issue in the halls of Congress and the social media platforms where people publish unfiltered ideas 24/7. Unless you’re in a country where big tech has determined it will work with the state (*cough* China) to censor you. (But remember, those tech companies are the good guys. Cue serious eye roll.)

Big Brother can and likely is watching. In a manner and on a scale that was not even remotely possible when Orwell wrote this book.

As far as the rewriting of history and reporting done through a speakwrite, think of what’s possible with Deep Fakes? Or hell, Facebook articles?

We live in a wild time. A time where much of what Orwell wrote is possible. But only, I think, if we fail to find fault in ourselves. Allow ourselves to be controlled by a party or a religion or a narrative, and constantly turn on the Other.

On that note, I’ll leave a quote by Ray Bradbury on writing the future.

“People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.”

— Ray Bradbury, Beyond 1984: The People Machines, 1979

Next Time: The Handmaids Tale. Because I found it at a thrift store and I loved the show.