2/3 through 1984

2/3 to 1984 would be sometime in August of 1322. The month that marked the death of Polish Princess Beatrice of Silesia. Also, John of Fermo, an Italian Ascetic.

Apparently nothing of note happened in that month except a couple people dying.

Anyways, the 2nd third of George Orwell's 1984: Rise of the Sex. I've taken to calling it that because out of nowhere, Winston starts getting frisky with the hot, supposedly super-straightedged party-zealot he was thinking about raping and murdering mere pages earlier. Guess what: their rendezvous is completely consensual!

In much the same way (And in a sequence that screams "MONTAGE BACKED BY "MR. BLUE SKY" BY E.L.O"), Winston finds that as soon as he has a hideaway in which to have his shady, sexy run-ins with Ms. Prescient-Representation-of-the-Eventual-Sexual-Revolution (I'll get to how creepily prescient Orwell actually was in a moment), Winston begins to find that his previous frailties are receding, and he is finding life worth living again.

Obviously the Party wouldn't want people to be invigorated in such a manner, right?

As I mentioned before, sex and sensuality in this book seem to represent the same things they did in Pleasantville. If you still don't know what that is, I made a very convenient link for you to click. See that? So savvy.

Now, I do realize that much of this should be mentioned in the opposite order. Being a text of the late '40s, Orwell's book is really the original source. I mean, any book that coined a phrase as ubiquitous as "Big Brother is Watching" gets dibs on the whole "I did it first" claim. However, Rather than being ashamed of the context in which I'm writing and analyzing this text, I'm going to embrace the fact that the connections I make to contemporary pieces which are in fact derivative of Orwell's work are going to help me understand it.

On that note, the concept of Telescreens probably influenced the moral conundrums in Christopher Nolan's Batman Sequel The Dark Knight.

But seriously, Ms.SexRev (Child-Of-The-Sixties is still too long, I think) is kind of a letdown after a bit. In fact, Winston calls her out on it, referring to her as "Only a rebel from waist down". Which, of course, she finds devilishly clever. She's also constantly falling asleep when Winston wants to talk about anything that really matters. Like politics and history and the media...

Oh...I see her point...

Anyways, on to Orwell's prescience. Yes, immediately the one that sticks out is Telescreens. Immediately they remind me of the email interceptions that happen over a billion times daily so the government can "keep us safe" and the NSA wiretaps that caused quite a stir a couple years ago - and then were promptly forgotten. Even thought they are very likely still happening. However, that's just the tip of the 60-year-old-psychic iceberg.

A lot of this comes through in The Book (Yes, its italicized. In fact, a note is made that when mentioned, it even sounds like it should be italicized. Way to immerse us in a world facilitated by language rather than defined by it, Orwell) But rambling cynicism towards literary style aside? The Book. The historical treatise and political manifesto of Emanuel Goldstein, the face of everything everyone in Oceania is told to hate (literally. for 2 minutes a day. They call it the "2-minutes Hate").

The Book basically outlines everything that has actually happened (effectively bringing in the standard sci-fi exposition into the second act) since the great revolution. It outlines how the constant war going on is completely pointless, and how technology hasn't really progressed since the atomic bomb because the only technological advances being made are in weaponry - weaponry which will never surpass the A-Bomb ANYWAYS because only the A-Bomb could set off the stockpiling leer-fest that was the Cold War.

Wait...Orwell wrote this in the late 40's. He's not supposed to know about the Cold War! I mean, sure, it was just starting, but how could he have guessed the stockpiling and the economic competition...

See what I meant? Eerily prescient.

Furthermore, he goes on to describe how the one thing the constant state of war allows the government to do is explain away the constant state of deprivation that the nation exists in. Why aren't there enough shoes or crackers for the people? Oh, because the WAR ate them.

Yes. The war ate the shoes. No, its not wearing the crackers. It ate those too.

Now, that philosophy right there is easier to understand. He wrote this on the coattails of World War 2, where the Rosie the Riveter, 'Lend us Thy Pennies so we can Make Copper Shells' thing was going on. In addition to the principle of wartime deficit having a historical precedent (namely every state-sponsored war ever,) he had an example in very recent memory to draw upon.

The specificity of his Cold-War prediction still creeps me out though.

Now, I've got a lot to say about this book apparently, but I'm wondering still what my thesis is going to be. "So What?" I'm still asking myself. And I don't really know yet, so I guess I'm going to have to RAFO.