1984 Critics, Adaptations and Retellings

• Lindsay Dowty: ’1984 is the novel in which George Orwell predicts the outcome of a totalitarian Christian theocratic government.’
• Lindsay Dowty: 1984 ‘serves as a foreboding warning that theocratic governments will ultimately turn Fascist.
• Lindsay Dowty: ‘Goldstein as a symbol of the Devil.’, Hill summarises this theory with the public being ‘conditions into a zealous worship of Big Brother against the anti-Christ Goldstein’
• Lindsay Dowty: ’Room 101 itself is an embodiment of Hell’
• Lindsay Dowty: ’Ministry of Truth is described as a pyramidal building, coinciding with the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity
• Lindsay Dowty: ’1984 is as much about an oppressive government as it is about losing faith within a theocracy’
• Patricia Hill [On Winston’s torture]: ‘a process similar to the traditional sacramental experience of penance: confession, mortification, penitence, and the restoration of faith to community’
• Warburg (Orwell's publisher) about 1984 - 'This is amongst the most terrifying books I have ever read.'
• Warburg (Orwell's publisher) about 1984 - 'Here is a study in pessimism'
• Warburg (Orwell's publisher) about 1984 - 'if a man can conceive '1984', he can also will to avoid it.'
• Anthony Burgess (1985) about 1984 - a book about London in 'war-time or just after'
• Waddell - 1984 'said something meaningful to the persecuted, the forgotten, the hopeful, the obsequious, the afraid.'
• Waddell - our society is more 'technocratic'
• Waddell - 1984 'hatred is the hidden freight of a love teetering on the brink of sadism'
• George Orwell claimed that 1984 was 'laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English speaking races are not innately better than anyone else.'
• Waddell - 'the man who chose to read 1984 in public in Thailand in June 2014, in protest against the military  groups who ruled the country until 2019.'
• Nussbaum - 1984 is 'not just about lies and totalitarian projects of domination. it is about the end of human beings as we know them, the political overthrow of the human heart.'
• Waddell - O'Brien 'sets the stage for works like Radiohead's song 2+2=5 (2003)'
• 1984 (1954 TV series)

  • Broadcasted on BBC, ironically given Orwell’s implicit criticims of broadcasting propaganda in the novel.
  • Led to criticism and death threats due to controversy around political message
  • Largest audience since the Queen’s coronation (1953)
  • Medium provides an implicit comment on Orwell’s use of technology, with everyone watching on their televisions/telescreens.
• 1984 (1956 film)

  • Had an alternate ending where Winston and Julia are shot after crying “Down with Big Brother” - a more optimistic ending
  • Film secretly funded by CIA, reflects anti-Soviet propaganda as the Cold War was intensifying, reluctant to let Big Brother’s communist ideology have its “victory” over Winston
  • Ironically repurposes 1984 as anti-communist propaganda in spite of Orwell’s intentions for it to be simply a warning about totalitarianism which “can happen anywhere.”
• 1984 (1984 film)

  • Faithful adaptation apart from some details (Winston’s public confession; mother’s body being eaten by rats). Retro-futuristic setting to indicate what could have happened in an alternate year of 1984
  • Not a prediction - warning instead
  • Shows awareness of panopticism and self-policing after Foucault’s 1975 ‘Discipline and Punish’
• 1984 (Advertisement) Apple TV Macintosh Advertisement 

  • "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984."
  • "1984" is an American television commercial that introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer. The ad was a reference to Orwell's 1949 which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised "Big Brother".
• 1984 (2013 play)

  • Released after Snowden’s leak of the PRISM project (NSA’s surveillance of US citizens)
  • Transferred to Broadway in 2017 after Trump’s inauguration and “alternative facts” (Kellyanne Conway). 
  • First dramatisation of the appendix - uses a group learning the history of Newspeak to analyse Winston’s narrative for inaccuracy or unreliability. Watching it through the appendix to make us question the reliability of the novel
• Sandra Newman, Julia (2023)

  • Retelling of 1984 from Julia’s perspective who Sandra Newman called “a fantasy sexy partner” in Orwell’s original
  • She’s pregnant - artificial insemination - baby for Big Brother. Project called ‘Big Future’ -ArtSem programme which impregnates women with Big Brother’s sperm – asking the question of who the future belongs to, Winston Smith or BB? novel gives a new meaning to “We shall squeeze you empty and fill you with ourselves”, where women are concerned specifically.
• Sandra Newman, Julia (2023)

  • She works with thoughtpolice to take down Winston and then works with brotherhood to take down BB.
  • BB an old man with dimentia - Julia finds importance in objective truth - his time is over and so is the partys.
• Hammond ‘[1984 is] a world which has abandoned God and the guidance of his Church’