The Modern Impacts of George Orwell's 1984

The Modern Impacts of George Orwell's 1984

by Benjamin Secino

The Modern Impacts of George Orwell's 1984

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Abstract

The paragraph should give a three to five sentence abstract about your entire London HUA experience including 1) a summary of the aims of your project, 2) your prior experience with humanities and arts courses and disciplines, and 3) your major takeaways from the experience. This can and should be very similar to the paragraph you use to summarize this milestone on your Profile Page. It should contain your main Objective, so be sure to clearly state a one-sentence statement that summarizes your main objective for this milestone such as "a comparison of the text of Medieval English choral music to that of the Baroque" or it may be a question such as "to what extent did religion influence Christopher Wren's sense of design?"

Introduction

I suggest you save this section for last. Describe the essence of this project. Cover what the project is and who cares in the first two sentences. Then cover what others have done like it, how your project is different. Discuss the extent to which your strategy for completing this project was new to you, or an extension of previous HUA experiences.

As you continue to think about your project milestones, reread the "Goals" narrative on defining project milestones from the HU2900 syllabus. Remember: the idea is to have equip your milestone with a really solid background and then some sort of "thing that you do". You'll need to add in some narrative to describe why you did the "thing that you did", which you'd probably want to do anyway. You can make it easy for your advisors to give you a high grade by ensuring that your project milestone work reflects careful, considerate, and comprehensive thought and effort in terms of your background review, and insightful, cumulative, and methodical approaches toward the creative components of your project milestone deliverables.

PLEASE NOTE: this milestone template has only a few sections as examples, but your actual milestone should have many relevant sections and subsections. Please start to block out and complete those sections asking yourself "who, what, when, where, and why".

Remember, as you move toward your creative deliverable, you're going to want/need a solid background that supports your case, so you want it to paint a clear and thorough picture of what's going on, so that you can easily dissect your creative component and say "This thing I did is rooted in this aspect of my background research".

Section 1: Background

When researching George Orwell, it is almost impossible to avoid the phrase "afterlife." Since his death in 1950, Orwell has been invoked countless times as a "prophet," given authority over everything from politics to the English language. Daphne Patai, author of The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology, is quoted as follows:

I think the question of Orwell's relevance is strictly an empirical one. Is he relevant? Yes, because he is constantly cited.... There is enormous attention being paid to who he is and what he wrote. So I don't think that's a matter of opinion. He simply is relevant.

In exploring this relevance and the justifications behind it, this project will outline the effects that Orwell and his work, specifically Nineteen Eighty-Four, have had on modern politics, the English language, and the cultural idea of dystopia.

The Political Legacy of Nineteen Eighty-Four

I think Orwell is actually more [politically] relevant than ever before. He wasn't talking merely about communism. He wasn't talking merely about fascism. He wasn't talking merely about Stalinism. He was talking about totalitarianism and the totalitarian mindset. And I think there's lots of evidence that the totalitarian mindset to varying degrees is still around. Saddam Hussein. North Korea. Even here [in America] it's very difficult to read the pronouncements of John Ashcroft and Homeland Security without having twinges of worry about what people would accept here in terms of social control. You see people being locked up. There's something Orwellian... about seeing people being dropped off in places that aren't officially part of the United States because they're officially part of Cuba, not allowed to see lawyers, not knowing what they're charged with, what their status is.

Ian Williams, United Nations correspondent for the Nation and author of George Bush at the War Front, in a 2003 interview

The above quotation dates to 2003, when a great deal of political debate existed over the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. But Bush was neither the first nor the last politician to be attacked by opponents citing George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four has been used for decades to argue against large government programs. The Obama administration was criticized over the NSA's surveillance methods in 2013 after Edward Snowden's revelations, forcing Obama to deny claims that the program was "Big Brother... run amok." Soon after the Snowden revelations, sales of Nineteen Eighty-Four rose in the United States by 5,771%. Even Michael Shelden, author of Orwell: The Authorized Biography, is quoted as saying that "throwing out such a broad net of surveillance is exactly the kind of threat Orwell feared." Most recently, Nineteen Eighty-Four shot up to become the number-one selling book in the United States after the first week and a half of Donald Trump's presidency. Following Kellyanne Conway's use of the term "alternative facts," sales on Amazon of Nineteen Eighty-Four rocketed by nearly 10,000%.

Orwell's final novel has been used as a weapon for both the political Left and Right. This universality of use presents an interesting irony: When both sides of the political spectrum claim Orwell as their own, it is impossible for both sides to be representing him accurately. This misrepresentation, used to twist public opinion and enliven propaganda, is, in turn, distinctly Orwellian.

To be fair, some of this universal citation of Orwell comes from discrepancies within Orwell himself. Though a lifelong socialist who considered himself part of the Left in many ways, Orwell was considered too critical of Communism by many of his contemporaries, who would just have soon painted him as one of the Right. After Orwell's death, this debate intensified. During the Vietnam war, many on the Left claimed that Orwell's anti-Imperialist views would have led him to oppose America's involvement in the conflict. At the same time, many on the Right held that Orwell's anti-Communist stance would have led him to support America's involvement. Similarly, when asked whether there was any value in "playing the parlor game of 'What would Orwell say today,'" Dennis Wrong, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at New York University and author of many books on political theory, said the following:

It is very difficult to do so, given what a contrarian figure Orwell was. In the most recent case, the war in Iraq, it seems to me that Orwell can be used on all sides of the argument, and so what then does that mean? It can't be taken as self-evident that you have a good case by citing Orwell in favor of invading or not invading Iraq, since he can easily be used for either side.

This statement was perfectly illustrated in the 1980s when President Reagan proposed a "squeal rule" that would make it mandatory for Planned Parenthood centers to notify parents when they gave contraceptives to teanagers. Speaking against the bill, a Democratic congressman said "this is Big Brother getting into the bedrooms of the people." Almost simultaneously, Reagan's' Secretary of Health and Human Services accused Democrats of putting "Big Brother government between the parent and the child."

Part of the reason behind why George Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four remain in such prominent use by politicians lies in the unusual staying power of Nineteen Eighty-Four as a novel. Following the end of the Cold War, it might have been expected that Nineteen Eighty-Four would have faded to become nothing more than a period piece. However, as Ian Williams so rightly said, Orwell was not simply discussing communism or fascism, but totalitarianism as a whole. Because of the breadth of this topic, almost any society can read themselves into Orwell's novel, picking up on characteristics that they see in the world around them. The familiarity of Oceana, in turn, makes Nineteen Eighty-Four seem deeply personal to its readers. And as long as this novel remains personal and relatable, it is only too easy for public individuals - politicians in particular - to manipulate the message of the book into something that inspires fear and revulsion. In short, Nineteen Eighty-Four is used so readily because it's an easy shot.

The way in which Orwell is so often invoked in political debate raises an interesting question: Does George Orwell still exist, or has he been reborn as "Orwell," the prophet of Big Brother? At times, George Orwell has been compared to Dr. Frankenstein, whose name has famously been taken by popular culture and given to his creation. The following quotation, from a 1982 column criticizing new restrictions imposed by states on the insanity plea, illustrates this point:

George Orwell would have been proud of our 1984-ish ways. I am horrified.

Clearly, the real George Orwell would not have been proud of anything resembling the world he painted in his novel. Even the most distant scholar of Nineteen Eighty-Four realizes that it does not show Orwell's wistful vision of what humanity might one day achieve, but his satirical cautionary tale of what humanity might devolve into if we're not careful. Unfortunately, the trend of conflating Orwell and Big Brother has continued, as shown by the following 2007 headline:

Orwell denied: Bill to stop employers from sticking RFIDs under workers' skin
In an attempt to forestall the arrival of 1984, a California state senator has introduced a bill to ban employers from inserting identification devices under the skin of employees

Section 2: Deliverable

Additional Image

In this section, provide your contribution, creative element, assessment, or observation with regard to your background research. This could be a new derivative work based on previous research, or some parallel to other events. In this section, describe the relationship between your background review and your deliverable; make the connection between the two clear.

Conclusion

In this section, provide a summary or recap of your work, as well as potential areas of further inquiry (for yourself, future students, or other researchers).