It Was A [Regular] Day in April...

I just finished reading George Orwell's dystopic novel 1984.  Now, I know what you're thinking, but I promise: I'm not a high school junior.  I just never read it when I was in high school, so I figured I might as well do it now and see what our future was like 28 years ago.  It's a shame though - after having read it, I really want to write a 5 page essay comparing Orwell's vision of the future to that of Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness.  (Double-spaced with at least three references, of course.)  Unfortunately, I doubt anyone would want to read that.  (Perhaps I should narrow my dating pool to naught but English teachers.)

Big Brother is watching you.

If you're unfamiliar with the novel, then I recommend you go back to school and get your GED because come on, serioulsy?

Kidding.  Just check the Wikipedia.  In essence: dystopian future, freedom of all kinds is suppressed, the ruling class ["the Party"] knows and controls all.  (But seriously, read the book, it's plusgood.)

Obviously our society has not (yet) fallen into such a dystopic state as predicted warned by the novel.  The validity of Orwell's concerns is not really what I want to discuss, though - again, I'm sure you had enough of that in your English classes.  What I want to discuss (-ish) is the new diction/language in the novel's society called Newspeak.  It is basically the Party's attempt to be more in control by actually limiting the vocabulary, making every word have one specific meaning and eliminating "unnecessary" words.  Also, using combinations of the fewer words to replace "eliminated" words, such as good is "good" and ungood is "bad" and plusgood is "great/excellent/superb/awesome".  By eliminating words (or changing their meaning), concepts such as freedom and liberty and anything anti-Party eventually will disappear from the lexicon and thus from ideology/thought in general.  Everyone will be a goodthinker.  (It would be very helpful if you read this appendix on Newspeak that Orwell included in the novel.) 

One such word I really like is doublethink, and it basically means to hold two contradictory ideas in your head, but accept them both as true.

I never knew there was a word for this concept, but it's something I'm sure we all do in one instance or another.  Personally, I've been doing it in one very specific case for quite some time; a necessity to my happiness and positive outlook on the world.  I'm, of course, referring to the ultimate Jurassic Park gaffe.  You know the one: at first, the T-Rex paddock has a ground that is level with the car-path outside.  However, the T-Rex bursts through the fencing, stepping from one ground to the other, and yet a mere minute later when he flips the car off the track and into the paddock...suddenly the paddock floor is a hundred feet down, as seen by the car free-falling down into a tree, and Grant/Lexi scaling down the wall on a long cable.

When I first was made aware to this rather large mistake, I had two reactions.  One: I'm an idiot for not noticing this earlier since it's one of my favorite movies that I've seen a thousand times.  And two: damn you interwebz for destroying my happiness at the glory that is Jurassic Park!  My world was marred for while and I felt jilted.  However, I soon resolved to not let that alter my perception of the movie, so I started actively accepting the contradictory ideas - not creating excuses/reasons for the faux-pas, but simply believing one or the other when it was necessary/convenient.  Doublethink.

[Pro-tip: this movie, along with many of your other favorites, is rife with mistakes - if you want to remain innocent and happy with the films, please do not seek out their mistakes.  It will make you doubleplusungood.  Ignorance is bliss.]

Real quick: another interesting concept from the novel, somewhat akin to doublethink, is the fact that the Party literally rewrites the past to make it fit with the current state of events/ideas/etc of the present.  (Another means of control, showing the Party is always right and painting them in a good light at all times.)  They perpetrate this via the doublethink-ly titled "Ministry of Truth."

Now I'm not saying that our government does this or anything.  It's simply that I just recently saw an article about how unemployment was at a low, when I swear I had just seen one that said it was at a high.  Same with new job creation.  Pretty much anything to do with economics or politics.  Again, I don't think our government is perpetrating any grand-scale hoodwink on us - I'm just admitting that I am woefully ignorant with certain current event topics.  Maybe I wouldn't mind a Party doing all my thinking for me.



Fun facts!:

-The title of this post references 1984's infamous opening line, "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."  But today was just a regular April day.

-The basic purpose and ideology behind Newspeak are somewhat akin to the Esperanto language.  They just differ in vocabulary and that pesky "we're doing this to control you" vibe that Newspeak has.  (Gratuloj, vi povas legi esperanto!)

-The Bad Religion song "Boot Stamping on a Human Face Forever" gets it title from a line in 1984: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."  Powerful imagery.

-If you're feeling pretentious and/or rebellious, there's this fun poster.

"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones"

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.     

                          -There Will Come Soft Rains, poem by Sara Teasdale (1920)

I've been interested in dystopic and post-apocalyptic media for some time now. Fortunately for me, there's actually a lot of it out there--more than I would have thought before I went looking for it. I know there are a lot of other people who have similar interests (yes, the zombie craze has many crossover points with post-apocalyptic media generally), so I wanted to start a segment on some of my favorites.

Concept art from Fallout 3, drawn by Adam Adamowicz of Bethesda Softworks.

Realize, first, that dystopia and post-apocalyptia share some traits but fundamentally cover two separate things. While dystopic settings describe a society (that still exists!) in a repressive, police-state situation, post-apocalyptic settings occur when society has broken down due to some tremendous catastrophe. In short, dystopia covers a society that is still structured, but exists in an anti-utopia (hence the name), while post-apocalyptia entails a society that has completely broken down into the state of nature. Post-apocalyptic stories usually involve extensive lawlessness and fights for even the most basic of needs. Sometimes there are pockets of people who have begun to rebuild and have created some semblance of order once more. Another key aspect of post-apocalyptic situations is the apocalypse itself. This could be anything from a natural disaster to an entirely humanity-created catastrophe (as we will see, humanity has a tendency to bring about its own demise in post-apocalyptic literature).

In essence, while the two categories have some similarities (namely, the undesirable nature of living in such a setting), they are fundamentally different. While dystopic societies may be extremely repressive, there is at least some structure to them. In fact, often it is the extent of the structure that causes such a society to be come dystopic in the first place. In this way, they are in stark contrast with the complete "wild west" attitude of post-apocalyptic society.

I plan to hash out each situation further in later posts, while highlighting my favorite examples of each. For now, though, I just wanted to provide a brief overview of each.