I just finished reading Orwell’s “1984” or maybe rereading. I seem to have read it in college (certainly not high school), but don’t remember the frank and adult sexual relationship between Winston and Julia. So maybe it was a bowdlerized edition in high school. There were rags of familiarity in this reading, but those may be due to the ubiquity of memes from 1984, some of which have gone beyond meme to cliche (“Big Brother”, “thoughtcrime”, “newspeak”). The long discourse from Emanuel Goldstein’s forbidden history book – the philosophical egg in the middle of the story– made my literary hairs stand on end.
So, it’s commonplace to say how prescient the book is, but, my god, how prescient the book is! The forever war, ‘truth is lies”, the willing ignorance of the proles: hello.
Reading it was easy going; there’s an old fashioned flow to it since it is from, you know, 1949. But the stomach-roiling comparison to These Days reminded me of rewatching “Idiocracy” by the great Mike Judge (creator of the modern Mayberry series, “King of the Hill”).
It was funny when first viewed but is way too close to home to be humorous now. I remember when the kid at the video store pressed it into my hands and whispered, “and it’s true!” He was right. Both the novel and the movie offer vicious pictures of society followed to logical, yet hopefully absurd conclusions. “1984” is crushingly depressing; “Idiocracy” is hilariously depressing.
Of course, I am not unaware of the possibility that I have become that crotchety old man I mocked in my youth, flailing against modern times that have passed me by. “It was long ago and it was far away, and it was so much better than it is today” as Meatloaf sang on the seminal “Bat Out of Hell“ album. But, as I’m sure my dad and his dad and his dad said, “yeah, but this time it’s real different.”
Sometimes the feeling that the world is at a crossroads, and at least two of those roads are screamingly obvious bad choices, is true. Most Americans are in a moral panic right now, not just me, not just my g-g-generation. 1984‘s road is the totalitarian lockstep we see being embraced all around the world. Idiocracy‘s path reeks of a particularly American circus of consumerism, arrogant ignorance, and naivety. As usual, Art shines a light into our darkest corners, leaving us with the choice – let’s say, the responsibility – of cleaning those corners out.