"1984 - Predictions Coming True?"

Государственное бюджетное общеобразовательное учреждение

СОШ №582 с углубленным изучением английского и финского языков Приморского района г.Санкт-Петербурга

РГПУ им. А.И. Герцена

(кафедра образовательных технологий в филологии)

Информационно-методический центр

Приморского района Санкт-Петербурга

Конкурс исследовательских работ по иностранному языку

«Поликультурный мир»

ТЕМА ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬСКОЙ РАБОТЫ:

«1984»: Predictions coming true?»

                                     Работу выполнили

                                             ученицы 10 «А» класса

                                                            Тельнина Людмила Дмитриевна,

                                                       Крюкова Марина Витальевна

                               Руководитель:

                                                   учитель английского языка

                               Шишкина Т.И.

2017-2018 УЧ.ГОД

Contents

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………...3

1. Biography. We are what our life makes us, aren’t we? ..........................................4

1.1. The Life of George Orwell ……………………………………………………..4

1.2. The Life of Michael Radford ….……………………………...………………..6

2. The Book and the film:  1948 – “1984”………………………………………….7

2.1. Genre and general description………………………………………………….7

2.2. The main characters……………………………………………………………8

2.3. The main themes. The book .…………………………………………………..9

2.4. The main themes. The film……………………………………………………10

2.5. The most important episodes………………………………………………….11

3. Predictions coming true…………………………………………………………13

Conclusions………………………………………………………………………. 14

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………15

Appendix 1 ……………………………………………………………………….16

Appendix 2 ………………………………………………………………………..17

Introduction

In 1949 the book of “George Orwell Nineteen Eighty Four’ (1984) was published. The book looked at the dystopian future of human societies, governments, mass surveillance, end of need of sexual lives of human beings and lot of new intelligent technology products by the year 1984. This book is considered the first documentation of government and mass surveillance as a tool for the State to control citizen.

On 10 October in 1984 Michael Radford released the movie “1984” based on Orwell’s novel in UK. Today the movie completes 33 years and the book even more. Studying the book and the film, we paid our attention to the things that were predicted by Orwell (later shown by Radford) in real life today.

We believe it took the human minds and technology a little more time than anticipated by Orwell in his famous novel. While Orwell thought 1984 to be a period when “technology” and “propaganda” will dominate the human day-to-day lives, “1984” was probably the beginning of all this.

So, it would be interesting to know how the film differs from the book, if the film makes the same impression as the book and if any of Orwell’s predictions came true.

The aim of this research is to do a comparative analysis of the book and the film.

So, our objectives are:

• to find similarities in descriptions, personalities and in the way the film followed Orwell’s narration ;
• to study the differences  between Orwell’s 1984 and Radford’s version of it;
• to draw conclusions about the differences and similarities of the book and the film;
• to analyse Orwell’s predictions about the future.

In order to do our research we read Orwell’s book “1984”, watched Radford’s film “1984”,  studied the books and Internet resources on  the theory of the comparative analysis of a book and a film, compared the book and the film.

1. Biography. We are what our life makes us, aren’t we?

1.1. The Life of George Orwell

Conclusion: the main events of George Orwell’s life provided him with the understanding of the nature and dangers of a totalitarian state, humiliating effects of poverty and constant shortages. His poor health and struggle with a lethal disease account for the feeling of gloom and fear of physical suffering also manifested in “1984”.

1.2. The Life of Michael Radford

Conclusion: Michael Radford is an untypical media person with deep interest in politics, violation of human rights. His life has been less eventful than Orwell’s, he lacks Orwell’s first-hand experience of suffering.

Thus, it has become clear that the difference of life experience accounts for the deeper penetration into human soul and its movements, the intensity and complexity of feelings and motivation revealed in the book. M.Radford has profound book knowledge of the period while G/Orwell lived through some episodes such as bombing and destruction.

2. The Book and the film:  1948 – “1984”

2.1. Genre and general description

Orwell uses the concept of utopia, which he distorts effectively for his own purposes. Orwell creates a dystopia, a fictional setting in which life is extremely bad from deprivation, oppression, or terror. Orwell's dystopia is a place where humans have no control over their own lives, where nearly every positive feeling is squelched, and where people live in misery, fear, and repression. The society in 1984, although fictional, mirrors the political weather of the societies that existed all around him. Orwell's Oceania is a terrifying society reminiscent of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union — complete repression of the human spirit, absolute governmental control of daily life, constant hunger, and the systematic "vaporization" of individuals who do not comply with the government's values.

 “1984”, directed and written by Michael Radford, is based on the novel by George Orwell; director of photography: Roger Deakins; music by Eurythmics and Dominic Muldowney. This film stars John Hurt as Winston, Richard Burton as O’Brien, Suzanna Hamilton as Julia. The film was released in 1984 which naturally attracted the attention to the prophetic features of Orwell;s book. The timing also linked the film with how the digital age successfully created the technological conditions for Orwell’s dystopia: 1984 marked the release of the first Apple computer. What followed, were GPS- system and other technical innovations that now allow to follow a person closely, hardly allowing us any privacy.When asked “What do you think the film and the book have to say about current events and the future?”, Michael Radford answered: “‘Alternative facts.’ …The book was more about left-wing tyranny and the film is about tyranny on both the left and right. …Another thing I learned was that although Orwell invented the concept of the telescreen, he had no idea of its power. He knew television was the new thing, but he underestimated its power.”(Interview with Michael Radford, published 13 February 2017, http://lwlies.com/articles/michael-radford-1984-working-with-john-hurt/ )

Conclusion: 

• Both the book and the film are created in the same genre, the film developing some of the plot lines treating them from the viewpoint of modern technological developments.
• Also, what works in both cases, is the title: the book was written in 1948 and we can easily account for its title. To Orwell, forty years seemed to be far-away future and at the same time the overturned numbers are suggestive of the fact that our future roots in our present. The film was made in 1984 and according to Radford “Nothing I recreated in the film wasn’t going on in the real world in 1984, I took a lot of it from documentary footage of executions and repression from all around the place.”
• Moreover, what makes the book and the film similar, is the dark and dismal background upon which the action is set. The book describes “vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their houses shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron…”  To achieve the same effect the film director resorts to photography. The film creates an alternative reality that looks constructed out of old radio tubes and smashed office furniture. Winston Smith lives in a world of grim and crushing inhumanity, of bombed factories, bug-infested bedrooms, and citizens desperate for the most simple pleasures.

Roger Deakins's photography looks like all the colors of sunlight have been drained from it. Only in Winston's dreams or memories everything is golden, otherwise the world of  ''1984'' is blue-gray and beige. All bright colors seem to have been “vaporized”. Radford uses a film technique called bleach bypassing that retains the silver in the film to give the film blunted visuals. Winston’s room is bare, the store that Winston turns to for privacy has dusty, fragmented items on sale. The weather is always gloomy and buildings are minimally lighted. Even the physical qualities of the actors are in keeping with the atmosphere of the film.

2.2. The main characters

The main characters of the book are Winston Smith – “ a smallish frail figure , the meagerness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overall which were the uniform of the party”, Julia,  his love and a secret Party fighter, O’Brien, who promises to meet in the “place where there is no darkness” and then betrays Winston to arrest him for torture. In addition, the book is filled with minor characters – Winston’s colleagues, the proles and many others.

Conclusion:

• The main characters of the book are shown in keeping with the main ideas of the book.
• The book seems to be more vivid than the film thanks to a great number of second plane characters such as Parsons  - “eyeless creature with a quacking voice”, Mrs Parsons “with her wispy hair and the dust in the creases of her face”, Syme with his “sort of restless zeal”, Charrington, “a widower of 63 who inhabited the shop for 30 years” and turned out to be a traitor and many others. In the film they are featured as a solid mass of people which produces a different effect making it at the same time more frightening and more primitive.
• Secondly, the “proles” – proletarian in the book present a group character which is shown as “the only hope”, not flatteringly however poetically, capable of displaying real human feeling (the woman in the cinema protesting against cruelty (“they didnt oughter showed it, not in front of the kids”), the woman singing a love song despite the obvious hardship of her life, the stupid old man in the pub). As Winston puts it, “they were loyal to one another”, which is normal human behavior. In the film we see them as a dark mass, indistinguishable from Party members. This lack of detailed focused vision seems to be a disadvantage of the film.

2.3. The main themes. The book

The Role of Language and the Act of Writing. To illustrate this idea that language can corrupt thought and that totalitarian systems use language to restrict ideas, Orwell created Newspeak, the official language of Oceania.

The act of writing also gains political importance. At Winston’s job, people do not actually commit the act of writing. They use speakwrites. Being an intellectual worker, Winston starts writing his dairy with difficulty. However, little by little, he learns writing again, which gives him the renewed ability to think critically and independently. Movement of ideas seems to be following the movement of a pen.

The importance of history. One of the themes raised in “1984” is the idea that history is changeable and that the truths found in history are the bases of the future. "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past," runs the Party slogan in 1984.Winston Smith's position in the Ministry of Truth is to forge the past into something unrecognizable to any person with an accurate memory so he is directly involved in this process which allows him to think more critically.

Dirty politics. At the end of the novel the protagonist comes across the book by Goldstein. Although it remains unclear if Goldstein is a real political character or an invention of the Inner Party, plotted to become the evil opponent to the Big Brother, the so-called book reveals to the reader dirty tricks to which dishonest governments resort to maintain their power, including the economic origins of any war.

Rebellion. There are two kinds of rebellion presented in the book. Winston rebels against the Party for political reasons. His motivation is to make life better for the future generations, to save the world. Julia also rebels in her own way. She chooses to ignore the regulations and lead her life. She stands for personal rebellion: she opposes inhumanity by being human.

Preservation of human values. Despite the inhuman circumstances of his life, Winston still remains a decent and compassionate human being, capable of emotions, hopes, interest in people. Julia also is capable of feelings, though her set of values is different. Even the zombie-like Parsons is shown as a devoted father.

Fear and remorse. At the time the action happens, Winston is too tired of being afraid, so he feels rather disgust than fear. But his childhood memories are filled with fear, unhappiness and his regrets and remorse concerning his mother.

Penetration of politics into everyday life. The author makes the picture vivid by describing the exact arrangement of the society. He speaks about prosaic details such as food rations blending these descriptions with the thorough explanations of political dogmas and slogans. This way Orwell portrays a complex picture of the ways in which the state dominates every aspect of life, depriving people of personal choices.

2.4. The main themes. The film

Warning. “1984 “is about the current state of the affairs. It reminds us of the dictatorships that still exist. Even now, more than 30 years after the film was made and 70 years after the book was written, the threat associated with totalitarian governments is still valid. Peaceful life on our planet still can be destroyed by the will of a ruler who needs a war to keep his power. Thus, the topic of warning is the most essential motif of the film. The film is a reminder that circumstances could turn for the worse at any time.

Threat to privacy. The second concept which rings relevant nowadays is the idea of how fragile a person’s private life can be. Now there are even more means to intrude on one’s privacy. Modern technological developments make an ordinary person more helpless than ever.

Human drama. Unlike in the book, the film attaches more importance to human suffering and drama of the two people to whom love had previously been unknown. The awakening of simple human emotions is rudely destroyed by Thought Police. Love makes you human while the Party does not need human members. So the main characters are forced to betray each other. [4]

Conclusion: Both the book and the film pay sufficient attention to the human drama of their characters. However, the topics of the language, as a manifestation of intellectual activity, the importance of history, dirty politics are not so clear in the film. The film attaches more importance to the topic of dismal predictions coming true. Also, it can be noted that the book has a more polyphonic structure touching upon more topics.

2.5. The most important episodes

 Conclusion: In conclusion, we can say that the film does not have a strong divergence from the plot of the book and the general spirit of hopelessness is preserved. Due to the absence of Winston's internal monologues, obviously, many of the viewers could not understand Orwell's idea that even in such harsh living conditions a person with a strong inner core can fight to the last. 

3. Predictions coming true

Big Brother is Watching You. This, of course, is the most obvious parallel. In Orwell's 1984, Big Brother — the purported leader of the Party that rules the nation of Oceania — keeps constant watch on the population through "telescreens" (basically two-way televisions). In our contemporary world there are ample means to watch people intruding on their privacy. Anybody can be watched with the help of technological developments, any information can be made public. [7]

Perpetual War. In “1984”, the Party embraces a policy of continual war so as to eat up any economic surplus and keep people poor and under control. War is still the means of conducting their policy for some political leaders who try to solve the inner problems of their countries by the means of war.

Bread and Circuses. The proles in the novel are kept satisfied with the help of low quality pulp fiction which is created especially for them. This is the prototype of mass entertainment such as primitive films, videos and tabloid newspapers which flourishes nowadays. Some people are unable to understand that such meaningless entertainment stops their self -development and make them easy victims of manipulation.[9]

 Newspeak. In “1984”, Orwell lays out in detail how language can be used to deceive and control the masses. In the real world today, every national language is on the one hand, becoming simpler, losing the variety of synonyms and, on the other hand, absorbs many English words which do not really become a part of it. Besides, people use abbreviations and clichés which make communication more primitive.

Thus, we see that some Orwell’s predictions have come true.

4. Conclusions:

• The points of difference which exist between the book and the film can be explained both by different life experience of G.Orwell and M.Radford as well as by different historical conditions;
• The book is much more complex at all levels than the film. It concerns the variety of themes, characters and their portrayal, abundance of details. Besides, the book strives to explain the reader the political structure of the dystopian society while the film focuses on human suffering;
• Both the book and the film paint a pessimistic picture of the future using verbal and visual means;
• It has to be noted that it may be hard for a viewer to watch the film before reading the book. Some events and themes are just outlined not explained;
• The film bears illustrative character: it follows the main episodes of the book, providing their visual representation;
• The hottest issue for a modern reader or viewer are the predictions made by Orwell and the main message is our responsibility for the negative impact technology may have on political and social life.

Bibliography

1. George Orwell “1984”, Saint-Petersburg, “Karo”, 2017
2. Джоржд Оруэлл «1984», 2013, ISBN  978-5-17-080115-2
3. Хитченс, К. «Почему так важен Оруэлл», Москва, «Эксмо», 2017
4. https://educheer.com/comparing-the-novel-and-film-rendition-of-1984/  http://www.123helpme.com/comparison-of-film-and-book--view.asp?id=151485
5. https://brightkite.com/essay-on/contrast-guide-film-1984
6.  https://howlingpixel.com/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four_(1984_film)
7. https://mic.com/articles/49409/4-predictions-from-orwell-s-1984-that-are-coming-true-today#.0Yyo4Ei6T  
8. https://techkhabaren.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/1984-george-orwell-michael-radford/  
9. https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/1984-predicted-real-world-surveillance/
10. http://www.brighthubeducation.com/homework-help-literature/42145-1984-discussion-questions/
11. https://www.biography.com/news/george-orwell-biography-facts
12. http://www.softschools.com/facts/authors/george_orwell_facts/1376/
13. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/n/1984/george-orwell-biography (Электронный ресурс)
14. http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ni-Pe/Orwell-George.html
15. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/orwell_george.shtml

APPENDIX 1.

APPENDIX 2.  NEWSPEAK