The article asks "What accounts for its staying power?" but misses what I think is the main reason for its staying power - it has something of relevance for each era in which it is read. In the 1950s and 1960s, in the context of The Cold War, people primarily saw it as a critique of totalitarianism. In the 1970s and 1980s, in the context of increasing use of CCTV, people primarily saw it as a critique of the surveillance society. And nowadays, in the context of "fake news" and "alternative facts", people primarily see it in terms of the malleability of "truth". Interestingly, one of the main themes that hasn't been the focus for any past generation, is how controlling language can control thought, but maybe that is something still to come.
Anyway, given it was set 35 years after it was published, and it is now 35 years after it was set, we've reached a turning point - the title year will be closer to the author than to us.
>...controlling language can control thought, but maybe that is something still to come.
Over the last couple of years, I've been collecting passages that touch on this point. I'm always surprised when I come across them. Two of my favorites that I've randomly come across (and from non-political books):
>It would be in the interest of kings, czars, nobles, and so forth that the masses be educated in a way that renders them slavelike in mentality. The language of wrongness, should, and have to is perfectly suited for this purpose: the more people are trained to think in terms of moralistic judgments that imply wrongness and badness, the more they are being trained to look outside themselves—to outside authorities—for the definition of what constitutes right, wrong, good, and bad. When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings. [0]
>...the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements — all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics — to make it easy from him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think. [1]
[0] "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall B. Rosenberg
> In the 1950s and 1960s, in the context of The Cold War, people primarily saw it as a critique of totalitarianism. In the 1970s and 1980s, in the context of increasing use of CCTV, people primarily saw it as a critique of the surveillance society. And nowadays, in the context of "fake news" and "alternative facts", people primarily see it in terms of the malleability of "truth"
I'm curious why you see these as distinct phenomena!
Anyway, the obvious cure is simply to read "Manufacturing Consent" (literally any part will do good) and to act against these forces.
>Interestingly, one of the main themes that hasn't been the >focus for any past generation, is how controlling language >can control thought, but maybe that is something still to come.
Isn't that what political correctness is all about?
While control of language is not in the public's attention, it has been used quite knowingly for decades.[1]
More recently though, rather than too much propaganda on a savvier public, the more modern addition is to convince a public that ultimate truth is unknowable. Often just by validating conspiracy theories just enough to the rival of real news.
For example: the Russian news for the MH17 shoot down was not a consistent particular story but a wide variety of extremely wild stories on different outlets.
The relevant thing about 1984 is not the time by which this is "supposed to happen".
The important give-away from the book is that when we (ppl of earth) allow our governments and the industry (in whatever form) to take that amount of control over our lives (it also doesn't matter what technical devices exactly are used etc.) we'll be screwed, similarly.
What we face now is the point of no return in this development - that's why it's relevant now but probably won't be for some future (?) generations.
Look around you how many use stuff like Alexa and how they use computers, their phones and what they think about their data. Already a big part of our society has lost the fear of someone taking away the freedom from them that we were used to when we grew up.
The "language can control thought" idea is called linguistic determinism, and has been considered bogus by linguists for a while now, at least the strong form of it.
> Interestingly, one of the main themes that hasn't been the focus for any past generation, is how controlling language can control thought, but maybe that is something still to come.
To pick an obvious example, the Department of War was renamed to the Department of Defense just 2 years after this book. I better the current funding would look very different had the change not been made.
Language is controlled via wrongthink, aka political correctness in the initial "adherence to soviet policy" definition, this affected a generation of communists and socialist including Orwell himself. There are also modern version of wrongthink, opinions you can't share publicly for fear of reprisal for better or worse.
Control of language seems to be intertwined with controlling history too, being openly racist is now wrongthink, so history gets rewritten into things like "the civil war was about states rights".
Like the other aspects, it's there just not as draconian as Orwell predicted.
Calling anti-authoritarian laissez-faire libertarians "nazis" and "fascists" seems like a modern attempt at repurposing language. Or the term "abortion," a pretty effective euphemism (I'm pro-choice, but it's textbook Orwellian language manipulation). Redefining "racism" to mean "prejudice + power" so that it can only be applied unidirectionally against a single group. This is not "something still to come."
>Interestingly, one of the main themes that hasn't been the focus for any past generation, is how controlling language can control thought, but maybe that is something still to come.
Considering the daily bickering over preferred pronouns and whether a term is racist you see on most online platforms I think that time is on the horizon.
Orwell's book primary point wasn't about the surveillance (although there is plenty of surveillance there, to be sure), it was about how history is rewritten and people are trained to change their beliefs on command.
It's much more about "2+2=5" than about the Big Brother TV-show with the cameras. I myself thought the book was about surveillance before I read it, mostly because of the "Big Brother" TV show.
The West is Brave New World on the surface with a 1984 surveillance state underneath. Obviously, not fully either one, but elements of both are present.
I'd suggest both novels demonstrate the same basic concern: technology in extending our our ability to carry out our desires will actually invigorate our base passions for agression and pleasure, destroying our humanity in the process. In 1984, true power is a boot on another persons neck, and even the last shred of resistance is destroyed in the protagonist, who in the last scenes sheds tears of repentant joy for big brother before he turns himself in for his rightful execution. In Brave New World, the desire for sensual pleasure has completely eroded all capacity to enjoy love, truth, and beauty. Likewise, Huxley's Savage finds the world unlivable and takes his own life at the end of the novel.
I've seen good arguments about both being more suitable to our time. Brave New World captured more of the 'entertainment as anaesthesia' technique, while 1984 captured more of the paranoia-as-virtue we're burdened with. However, we have some very large deviations from Huxley's vision. No one would dream of sending their children to be raised by the state. If a drug like Soma existed (yes there is a drug called Soma now, but I mean a substance that acts as the one in Huxleys book does) it would be aggressively and hatefully prohibited.
One of the most prescient things about 1984 that really stuck out to me at the time I read it, and which I think someone could VERY easily get away with actually creating today with few even batting an eye was the Youth Anti-Sex League. It only gets slight mention in the book, I believe Winston's neighbors children were teenaged members. Brave New World handled sexuality very differently, with its 'orgy porgys' and whatnot. That's certainly not the state we have today, where discussion of sex is fine so long as you're condemning anyone who is having or seeking it, especially if they're outside of their 20s or ugly, fat, disabled, etc.
Ultimately, both books are a product of their times and provide interesting insights nonetheless. I don't know what benefit there is in holding one up as 'more alike' the dystopia we've created.
I tend to agree. As much as I love 1984, I tend to agree with some of the points Huxley made in his letter to Orwell in 1949.
"Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World."
I believe that the range and depth of surveillance are pretty much equal in both the East and the West, and the difference is entirely in the respective societies' willingness to acknowledge that they're being surveilled.
I don't think Huxley's Brave New World has aged too well. Many of its central concepts such as 'soma', 'hatchery and conditioning centers', and the caste system - alphas to epsilons - don't have readily transposable equivalents in our modern day society. Granted, many of the technologies in 1984 don't either, but its central concepts resound to our times.
It seems very strange in the first paragraph to claim that 1984 has "outlasted in public awareness" three other books that are very much still in public awareness. Also, in terms of enduring effect, I'd wager that a lot more people have seen the film A Clockwork Orange than have read 1984.
And 1984 is incredibly well written while Brave New World is a very dull read. I've read 1984 two or three times and I think I skimmed the last 100 pages or so of Brave New World, something I rarely do with novels.
Huxley yes, but mostly his emphasis on pleasure over pain and self in order to pacify the population. But designer babies are already here so he could end up being correct on many more things.
The leader of the strongest country lies every time it speaks. Once and again wars are sold as freedom campaigns and coups as saving democracy. Surveilance has been institutionalized and privacy comoditized. We are in the most orwelian era yet.
This attitude may give you some downvotes - BTW: Many people here are from the US and they usually react to criticism about their countries policy and leader in a bad way.
I like the "prototype" book, the one that inspired Orwell to write his 1984, much better. It's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) I read it in Russian though, and the language of the book is just like poem! Love it. I also find it superior in terms of plot and characters, and it's so much more atmospheric and real to me.
I read 'We' quite some time ago and greatly enjoyed it. Unfortunately I don't recall the translation I read being particularly poetic, which is a shame. But it was still an amazing read that I would recommend.
It wasn't a book about prophecy. It was a book on his present. He just set it in the future since he couldn't afford to tick off the censors in britain.
1984 was inspired by his work as a propagandist for the BBC Eastern Service during ww2. He based the "Ministry of Truth" on the BBC and the dreaded room 101 on a BBC conference room.
Animal Farm is about the absurd and hypocritical political structure of the Soviet Union. 1984 has always been about Britain/West with a heavy focus on truth, propaganda and the news. But whether eastasia, eurasia or oceania, the ultimate message is that it's all one and the same and 1984 applies to all of them.
"In the end he succeeded in forcing her memory back until she did dimly recall that at one time Eastasia and not Eurasia had been the enemy. But the issue still struck her as unimportant. 'Who cares?' she said impatiently. 'It's always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway.'"
- Orwell 1984
Sound familiar? What was true of orwell's 1940s britain or oceania seems true today.
Funnily enough, the BBC ( in the 1984 style ) "rehabilitated" orwell's legacy for their own purposes. Just like big brother "rehabilitated" winston in 1984.
In 1984, who are the champions of censorship? The ministry of truth. Who are the champions of censorship in the west? The news industry - one of the major supporters of censorship is oddly enough the new yorker. Who are the ones demanding that social media censor and who are the ones insisting certain words or topic shouldn't be discussed?
One of the fascinating things about '1984' is that in the actual year 1984 the book, which did receive some notable publicity that year, was perceived as being something of a 'dud'. Not that people perceived that they were living in surveillance-free society but rather at that time people were more preoccupied with nuclear war (anyone remember "The Day After"? [0]) and the tools that would bring about an oppressive environment were still in the imaginations of technologists. Strangely enough Apple, with its 1984 type commercial, was one of the few companies that really went all in on the 1984 anniversary [1].
One thing about Nineteen Eighty-Four that I find interesting is that in the society it depicts, only a minority of people actually demand a big effort from the oppression mechanisms. Most of the population seems to be effectively pacified by ignorance, drugs, sex, simple entertainments, simple propaganda (such as militarist nationalism against *-asia), and usually having enough food to not starve. They probably are not actually likely to engage in wrongthink except on rare occasions. It is the minority in the "Inner Party" (and probably higher levels as well) that demands extra attention.
I liked 1984, but probably enjoyed Animal Farm even more. It was likely a combination of the narrative itself and the fact that 1984 is more about what _could_ happen while Animal Farm describes through fiction what actually _did_ happen (not that parts of 1984 haven’t happened already).
Orwell is so relevant today even more so. The man must have seen the future in some way because just the tv monitors in the rooms that are always on and monitor you is such a similar concept to all of our home assistants and smartTVs that collect data about us.
The part I always liked the most about 1984 was when O'Brien plays back to Winston the tape of what he would be willing to do for the revolution.
I think it's a reminder that we should be vary of compromising a moral stance with the promise of better society. It is really a case against moral relativism.
And I think that perhaps Orwell trolled us with that one. IMHO it should be considered one of the main theses of the book. However, the argument is made (and hypocritically) by the character we hate (O'Brien) towards character we sympathize with (Winston), I think a lot of people miss it.
The fight for Freedom is constant and never ending. I’m a bit of a pessimist in this case. Since 9/11, anything became a reason to take away individual liberty and we slowly moved towards an authoritarian utopia.
Prophesizing/foresight aside, just as a narrative it's a great book with a really satisfying story arc. Can't say that about most of the books I read in high school.
It's not a bad novel, but I wasn't particularly captivated by Nineteen Eighty-Four(how the title is actually stylized) because the state it portrayed didn't seem sustainable. This isn't to say there aren't parallels to North Korean society, for instance, but the type of world in Nineteen Eighty-Four doesn't seem like something that today's world needs to be afraid of as a whole; there would be far too many suicides for such a system to be worth it to anyone who wants to maintain power and growth.(Countries like North Korea aren't particularly large in size or population compared to freer nations) Maybe it made more sense in a world that wasn't driven by media and consumer culture. Brave New World made a little more sense, but I also didn't find it that compelling. Maybe I need to revisit the both of them now that I'm in my 30s, as opposed to my early 20s.
I've found the "Village" portrayed in Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner" to be a more profound message about the world that we actually live in. If the viewer can get over it being a product of its time, as well as the confusing ending, there's a lot of allegory packed into the show that reflects the direction our own societies are headed in:
- Surveillance is not only treated as a given but is incorporated into the conveniences of everyday life. (e.g. The door to Six's domicile opens not automatically but because he is constantly being watched)
- The state wants your "information", so much that it knows more about you than you know about yourself. (e.g. The authorities predict precisely what Six would want for breakfast, right down to how many strips of bacon)
- The line between government and corporation are blurred so much that all food is produced and branded by the Village, which even has its own logo plastered on everything. (All of the food provided to Six is branded as "Village Food")
- The inhabitants of the village all wear the same colorful(albeit ridiculous looking) clothing, almost all of which is unisex. People come from all sorts of ethnicities, yet are made to comply with a single bland culture in under the superficiality of being "international". (The push for gender equality and diversity, while laudable, can easily turn into its own opposite)
- Most of the village inhabitants(or inmates) are infantilized, are essentially adult children who wear child-like clothing and are even seen playing like children. They have no responsibility or agency, but are perfectly content to live a pointless existence inside a resort-like prison.
- The village has a "democratic" system of electing "Number 2", but this system is merely superficial as those who are actually in power and the media have already chosen who they want in said position, and the population is easily swayed to vote for the chosen one.
- Children are completely housebound, only every being seen in one scene of a single episode in the series. Some have read into this as suggesting that the children of the village are always kept inside for safety reasons, much like how todays helicopter parents and governments overprotect children out of irrational fears like "stranger danger".
- The veneer of the village is cheerful in a saccharine-sweet way, so as to drown out any of those negative thoughts or "sudden attacks of egoism". Much like how we are constantly bombarded by music when we are shopping or simply trying to have a conversation at public venues, the Village has a vast system of PA speakers that are playing cheerful or calming music. The village only goes further in that it also plays music in people's homes without their consent.
- The government of the Village is difficult to comprehend, and those who run it are really prisoners themselves, but work within seemingly indefinite layers of bureaucracy. Nobody actually knows who is actually in charge.
- Those who don't wish to participate in the society of the village, yet would be content on being left alone, are considered "unmutual" and made to be social pariahs. Labeling someone with such a blanket term is an easy way to convince the dim-witted masses into agreeing with a position they might not even understand.
- The education system in the village, in the little glimpse that way saw it, is very interested in making "learning" so efficient as to sacrifice understanding for the sake of rote memorization. A system called "speed learn" is used to give everyone an education in a matter of hours, yet all those who are "educated" can do is recite what exactly they were told without any insight or understanding of their absorbed knowledge.
A series called "Tyranny of the Masses" analyzes The Prisoner in greater detail, though anyone watching The Prisoner by itself without expecting it to be a spy-thriller should be able to figure out a lot of those things anyway.
Overall, I've found The Prisoner to be much more eye opening than even Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World, yet next to nobody I've told has heard about it. It's much more profound and in allegorical to our time, despite it having broadcasted in 1969.
[+] [-] m-i-l|6 years ago|reply
Anyway, given it was set 35 years after it was published, and it is now 35 years after it was set, we've reached a turning point - the title year will be closer to the author than to us.
[+] [-] dmux|6 years ago|reply
Over the last couple of years, I've been collecting passages that touch on this point. I'm always surprised when I come across them. Two of my favorites that I've randomly come across (and from non-political books):
>It would be in the interest of kings, czars, nobles, and so forth that the masses be educated in a way that renders them slavelike in mentality. The language of wrongness, should, and have to is perfectly suited for this purpose: the more people are trained to think in terms of moralistic judgments that imply wrongness and badness, the more they are being trained to look outside themselves—to outside authorities—for the definition of what constitutes right, wrong, good, and bad. When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings. [0]
>...the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements — all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics — to make it easy from him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think. [1]
[0] "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall B. Rosenberg
[1] "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler
[+] [-] SomeOldThrow|6 years ago|reply
I'm curious why you see these as distinct phenomena!
Anyway, the obvious cure is simply to read "Manufacturing Consent" (literally any part will do good) and to act against these forces.
[+] [-] nn3|6 years ago|reply
Isn't that what political correctness is all about?
[+] [-] TomMckenny|6 years ago|reply
More recently though, rather than too much propaganda on a savvier public, the more modern addition is to convince a public that ultimate truth is unknowable. Often just by validating conspiracy theories just enough to the rival of real news.
For example: the Russian news for the MH17 shoot down was not a consistent particular story but a wide variety of extremely wild stories on different outlets.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution_(1...
[+] [-] VvR-Ox|6 years ago|reply
The important give-away from the book is that when we (ppl of earth) allow our governments and the industry (in whatever form) to take that amount of control over our lives (it also doesn't matter what technical devices exactly are used etc.) we'll be screwed, similarly.
What we face now is the point of no return in this development - that's why it's relevant now but probably won't be for some future (?) generations.
Look around you how many use stuff like Alexa and how they use computers, their phones and what they think about their data. Already a big part of our society has lost the fear of someone taking away the freedom from them that we were used to when we grew up.
[+] [-] cthor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flukus|6 years ago|reply
To pick an obvious example, the Department of War was renamed to the Department of Defense just 2 years after this book. I better the current funding would look very different had the change not been made.
Language is controlled via wrongthink, aka political correctness in the initial "adherence to soviet policy" definition, this affected a generation of communists and socialist including Orwell himself. There are also modern version of wrongthink, opinions you can't share publicly for fear of reprisal for better or worse.
Control of language seems to be intertwined with controlling history too, being openly racist is now wrongthink, so history gets rewritten into things like "the civil war was about states rights".
Like the other aspects, it's there just not as draconian as Orwell predicted.
[+] [-] ralusek|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|6 years ago|reply
Considering the daily bickering over preferred pronouns and whether a term is racist you see on most online platforms I think that time is on the horizon.
[+] [-] baal80spam|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petjuh|6 years ago|reply
It's much more about "2+2=5" than about the Big Brother TV-show with the cameras. I myself thought the book was about surveillance before I read it, mostly because of the "Big Brother" TV show.
[+] [-] alex_c|6 years ago|reply
“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening” seems lifted straight out of 1984.
A few years ago I agreed with you. Now I’m not so sure.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-44959340/donald-...
[+] [-] dragonwriter|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlos|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bamboozled|6 years ago|reply
Also see the five eyes network.
[+] [-] otakucode|6 years ago|reply
One of the most prescient things about 1984 that really stuck out to me at the time I read it, and which I think someone could VERY easily get away with actually creating today with few even batting an eye was the Youth Anti-Sex League. It only gets slight mention in the book, I believe Winston's neighbors children were teenaged members. Brave New World handled sexuality very differently, with its 'orgy porgys' and whatnot. That's certainly not the state we have today, where discussion of sex is fine so long as you're condemning anyone who is having or seeking it, especially if they're outside of their 20s or ugly, fat, disabled, etc.
Ultimately, both books are a product of their times and provide interesting insights nonetheless. I don't know what benefit there is in holding one up as 'more alike' the dystopia we've created.
[+] [-] cameroncooper|6 years ago|reply
"Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World."
The letter is very interesting and worth a read.
https://cognitive-liberty.online/orwell-versus-huxley/
[+] [-] hawaiian|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UncleSlacky|6 years ago|reply
...taken from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
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[+] [-] MichaelMoser123|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] germanlee|6 years ago|reply
1984 was inspired by his work as a propagandist for the BBC Eastern Service during ww2. He based the "Ministry of Truth" on the BBC and the dreaded room 101 on a BBC conference room.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministries_of_Nineteen_Eighty-...
Animal Farm is about the absurd and hypocritical political structure of the Soviet Union. 1984 has always been about Britain/West with a heavy focus on truth, propaganda and the news. But whether eastasia, eurasia or oceania, the ultimate message is that it's all one and the same and 1984 applies to all of them.
"In the end he succeeded in forcing her memory back until she did dimly recall that at one time Eastasia and not Eurasia had been the enemy. But the issue still struck her as unimportant. 'Who cares?' she said impatiently. 'It's always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway.'"
Sound familiar? What was true of orwell's 1940s britain or oceania seems true today.Funnily enough, the BBC ( in the 1984 style ) "rehabilitated" orwell's legacy for their own purposes. Just like big brother "rehabilitated" winston in 1984.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41886208
In 1984, who are the champions of censorship? The ministry of truth. Who are the champions of censorship in the west? The news industry - one of the major supporters of censorship is oddly enough the new yorker. Who are the ones demanding that social media censor and who are the ones insisting certain words or topic shouldn't be discussed?
[+] [-] pseudolus|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA
[+] [-] casefields|6 years ago|reply
“The Importance of Being Orwell”
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/08/christopher-hitch...
[+] [-] qdfgizcbm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vgetr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gigatexal|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js8|6 years ago|reply
I think it's a reminder that we should be vary of compromising a moral stance with the promise of better society. It is really a case against moral relativism.
And I think that perhaps Orwell trolled us with that one. IMHO it should be considered one of the main theses of the book. However, the argument is made (and hypocritically) by the character we hate (O'Brien) towards character we sympathize with (Winston), I think a lot of people miss it.
[+] [-] lanevorockz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] creaghpatr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alex_stoddard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulie_a|6 years ago|reply
Animal farm is pretty much a children's book.
Dr Seuss books had greater thought provoking material than orwell. Orwell basically beat you over the head explaining simple ideas.
[+] [-] ravenstine|6 years ago|reply
I've found the "Village" portrayed in Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner" to be a more profound message about the world that we actually live in. If the viewer can get over it being a product of its time, as well as the confusing ending, there's a lot of allegory packed into the show that reflects the direction our own societies are headed in:
- Surveillance is not only treated as a given but is incorporated into the conveniences of everyday life. (e.g. The door to Six's domicile opens not automatically but because he is constantly being watched)
- The state wants your "information", so much that it knows more about you than you know about yourself. (e.g. The authorities predict precisely what Six would want for breakfast, right down to how many strips of bacon)
- The line between government and corporation are blurred so much that all food is produced and branded by the Village, which even has its own logo plastered on everything. (All of the food provided to Six is branded as "Village Food")
- The inhabitants of the village all wear the same colorful(albeit ridiculous looking) clothing, almost all of which is unisex. People come from all sorts of ethnicities, yet are made to comply with a single bland culture in under the superficiality of being "international". (The push for gender equality and diversity, while laudable, can easily turn into its own opposite)
- Most of the village inhabitants(or inmates) are infantilized, are essentially adult children who wear child-like clothing and are even seen playing like children. They have no responsibility or agency, but are perfectly content to live a pointless existence inside a resort-like prison.
- The village has a "democratic" system of electing "Number 2", but this system is merely superficial as those who are actually in power and the media have already chosen who they want in said position, and the population is easily swayed to vote for the chosen one.
- Children are completely housebound, only every being seen in one scene of a single episode in the series. Some have read into this as suggesting that the children of the village are always kept inside for safety reasons, much like how todays helicopter parents and governments overprotect children out of irrational fears like "stranger danger".
- The veneer of the village is cheerful in a saccharine-sweet way, so as to drown out any of those negative thoughts or "sudden attacks of egoism". Much like how we are constantly bombarded by music when we are shopping or simply trying to have a conversation at public venues, the Village has a vast system of PA speakers that are playing cheerful or calming music. The village only goes further in that it also plays music in people's homes without their consent.
- The government of the Village is difficult to comprehend, and those who run it are really prisoners themselves, but work within seemingly indefinite layers of bureaucracy. Nobody actually knows who is actually in charge.
- Those who don't wish to participate in the society of the village, yet would be content on being left alone, are considered "unmutual" and made to be social pariahs. Labeling someone with such a blanket term is an easy way to convince the dim-witted masses into agreeing with a position they might not even understand.
- The education system in the village, in the little glimpse that way saw it, is very interested in making "learning" so efficient as to sacrifice understanding for the sake of rote memorization. A system called "speed learn" is used to give everyone an education in a matter of hours, yet all those who are "educated" can do is recite what exactly they were told without any insight or understanding of their absorbed knowledge.
A series called "Tyranny of the Masses" analyzes The Prisoner in greater detail, though anyone watching The Prisoner by itself without expecting it to be a spy-thriller should be able to figure out a lot of those things anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2pC1JKwn0Bi2y4v6D6fk...
Overall, I've found The Prisoner to be much more eye opening than even Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World, yet next to nobody I've told has heard about it. It's much more profound and in allegorical to our time, despite it having broadcasted in 1969.
[+] [-] kulix425|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] goodfight|6 years ago|reply
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