The Hunger Games movie is set to go on screen in a few weeks. By then we’ll probably be discussing how it compares to the book, if it justifies the adaptation, or how much is changed from the story to make it more “cinematic”. The book is a massive success and the movie will be an eventual hit. Even this early it is hard not to get caught up in the excitement. I have read the book about two years ago (I think), and trying to recall it reminds me of 1984.
Written around 1940s, George Orwell’s 1984 is a dystopian novel of a controlled state. To anyone who wondered, the idea of Big Brother came from this book. In the society the book describes, everyone is under complete surveillance by the authorities through telescreens, a television and a security-camera device in one. People are punished just by thinking of illegal thoughts (Thoughtcrime), and languages are deliberately impoverished (Newspeak) to promote the state. “Big brother is watching you” is the constant reminder that people are being watched and controlled.
1984 has had a wide influence to many literary works. The idea that someone is watching you is always an instant cause of discomfort and alarm, so it makes a good material for entertainment. In Hunger Games the people of the districts are being watched and monitored by the elites. It drives fear to Panem by holding an annual hunger games, in which they kill each other to death, and only the survivor allowed to live. In Haruki Murakami’s IQ84 Aomame starts to think that she is in an alternate reality she calls “1Q84″ (a wordplay that can also be read as 1984 when written in Japanese) when she notices subtle changes in her world that she can’t recollect with her memory just like In 1984, where Winston’s job was to revise historical records to conform the past to the party’s current ideology.
I can only think of the more obvious books that are referenced from 1984, but I’m sure there are so much more not just in literature, but in other forms of art. The movie TheTruman Show revolves around Truman Burbank’s life being filmed and broadcasted without him knowing it.
The concept of big brother is really big that even in reality it draws comparison. Most believe that the Orwellian big brother evokes the personality of Joseph Stalin, but now the comparison usually belong to internet giants. Google, for example collect and hold billions of personal data that its omnipotence is causing alarming.
George Orwell’s book is somewhat a warning and prediction of what could happen when there is Totalitarian regime back in the 40s’. But the plot and content of his work is still accurate even now, as freedom is as much an abstract concept and people can be manipulated becuase of their own willingness, when it becomes harder to resist than to just give in. But when we are all being watched wouldn’t it make us more conscious of our actions? We’d all act based on what big brother thinks is good and refrain from doing bad to avoid punishment.
The only question then, is who is watching big brother?
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“After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take “good”, for instance. If you have a word like “good”, what need is there for a word like “bad”? “Ungood” will do just as well — better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of “good”, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like “excellent” and “splendid” and all the rest of them? “Plusgood” covers the meaning, or “doubleplusgood” if you want something stronger still.” – 1984 by George Orwell, chapter 5
