Cultural Heresy: What If "1984" Is Overrated?

Dun-dun-DUUUN!

The headline is of course designed for shock value. But please read on… there is a point coming.

1. A Bad Joke

A man builds a time machine and travels 100 years into the future.

He is welcomed by a friendly woman who takes him on a tour of the city. It seems there is no war in the future. There’s peace and quiet on the streets. The cops don’t have guns because no one has guns.

People seem to be happy and well-fed, no one seems to be oppressed, the air smells good, birds are chirping... and quiet airships glide majestically through the unpolluted sky.

Of course the time traveler has to ask his guide: ”What’s your secret? How did you make this paradise come true?”

The woman says: ”First, we eliminated all violent people. Then we eliminated all lawyers. Then we eliminated all politicians. Then we eliminated all liars. Then we eliminated all ugly people. Then we eliminated all jealous people. Then we eliminated all greedy people.”

The time traveler goes pale. ”How many people live here, really?”

The woman looks around for a minute, and replies: ”Twelve... or fourteen. But we’re talking about eliminating people who are good at counting!”

Sounds like an awful place. In fact, too awful to exist.

Tyranny in the real world can only maintain itself within physical limitations. The most crucial physical limitation is that the repression must not kill all the citizens. Not even a monster like Pol Pot could wipe out absolutely everyone in his country, because a tyrant is nothing without subjects.

But fictional tyranny can ignore the physical limitations — and it does.


2. Perfectly Wrong

Fictional bad societies, even the well-written ones, tend to suffer from what I call the ”Perfectly Wrong” paradox.

For example, take a movie that many of you may have seen, Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL (1985)… Or a novel like George Orwell’s 1984 (1948), which I assume most of you have read.

Both works are well crafted … both are based in a sort-of-modern era … and both dystopias share these traits:

In both BRAZIL and 1984, we are shown a society which is deeply dysfunctional. It’s insanely bureaucratic, things are breaking down, any individuality is crushed, no one feels safe (except those who are too brainwashed or too stupid to realize they are slaves), the leaders are sadistic torturers who relentlessly bully the citizens...

...while at the same time, the oppressive state runs smoothly, it never fails to crush the will of the citizenry, no one ever escapes the system, no one in charge ever questions the meaning of all the oppression, torture and murdering... every rebel is alone and gets caught and/or destroyed. The State is all-powerful and its evil is supremely confident — it shows no sign of decline.

You get the impression that these hellish places are controlled by supergeniuses or demons. When do they slip up? Never. When do they succumb to old age? Never.

A tyrant that never slips up is the least believable character of all. Hitler, Mao, Stalin — they all failed. The Soviet Union broke up. Big Brother isn’t “the embodiment of the Party” — he’s flesh and blood, and he dies.

The worlds of BRAZIL and 1984 are simultaneously too perfect and too dysfunctional in ways that should be mutually exclusive. That’s the ”Perfectly Wrong” paradox.

Ironically, real dictators want their subjects to think the rulers are perfectly powerful and impossible to topple — as in 1984 — and as in BRAZIL.

State propaganda tries to depict any grubby, dysfunctional dictatorship as… “perfectly functional” and never wavering from the One True Path. Exactly as depicted in 1984… and BRAZIL.

Which begs the question: Are these critically acclaimed dystopias really all that “anti-dystopian”? Are they really about defending freedom against tyranny? Or might something else be going on between the lines?


3. Orwell’s Demon

I wrote this piece because I had a terrible thought: Is there, somewhere in the back of the mind of a genuinely talented artist like Terry Gilliam, or a genuinely inspired writer like George Orwell, a tiny demon that secretly enjoys making their fictional dystopias seem both evil and invincible?

Granted, a caricature of real tyranny is allowed to exaggerate for effect and satirical bite. (But is 1984, taken as satire, funny? Orwell could be funny, but not in the case of 1984.)

Granted, it’s easer to mentally digest the fictional, well-kept bureaucratic police state of BRAZIL than the real (and much seedier) police state of North Korea. A parable can get the message through more effectively than a documentary.

Granted all that, I still question why BRAZIL and 1984 do not include even the possibility of change, of systemic cracks — an opening to let tyranny fail.

Underneath the artistry, does something else lurk? Perhaps misanthropy, and its cousin nihilism? Maybe, just maybe, the real villain of BRAZIL isn’t the State, but the People. Maybe Orwell resented the masses more than he hated Stalinism.

Or take a more recent dystopian film, Bong Joon-Ho’s SNOWPIERCER (2013). It depicts a totalitarian state, compressed into a single train set, racing endlessly across a frozen wasteland. Which is of course a parable — a heavy-handed one — and the target seems to be capitalism.

But then… who does the protagonist end up killing at the end of the movie?

The people.

Spoiler alert: The movie SNOWPIERCER does end in change — i.e. a complete physical annihilation of the train-based state. Almost everyone dies. Since the passengers on the doomed train are supposed to be the last remaining humans, the act of killing them all is an attempt to end the human race. And I wouldn’t bet on the two survivors standing a chance. (The final scene clearly suggests they’re toast.)

My beef with SNOWPIERCER is that the nihilistic “kill’em all” ending is presented as the only option. I didn’t buy it; it was a variation on the dystopia that is 100% awful and 100% invincible … unless you blow it to pieces and everyone dies because the author decided There Are No Other Options. It’s an orchestrated choice. It’s too obviously Perfectly Wrong.

Is there some dark part of an artist — even a talented one — who makes up that kind of story because… oh, I don’t know… the artist secretly hates the world and wants it destroyed? Because the world isn’t “perfect” enough? Because the artist carries a grudge?

Or … is there something about the “world-building of evil” in fictional dystopias that seduces artists and make them fall in love with their own creations?

Let’s consider how artists could make a fictional dystopia from motives or reasons that are not pure, and that these motives/reasons reveal themselves in the work.


4. The Artist as Big Brother

Hypothesis 1: When artists make dystopias too perfect they are acting out some dark personal impulse.

Perfection is, in my view, inhuman. Any society that claims to be forever, to be perfectly good or perfectly evil, is a place where human beings cannot live.

The artist can enact a personal revenge or punishment on humanity by inventing a world where they can only suffer. As if to say, “You rotten herd followers, here’s the future you deserve!”

What, precisely, is that evil impulse about?

One explanation (out of many) could be it’s an expression of embittered middle-class elitism.

A subtext in 1984 (which Isaac Asimov pointed out in a scathing 1980 review) is that Orwell seems to express contempt for the “proles”, the lower classes. The proles are hardly worth the attention of Big Brother’s all-seeing surveillance state. Instead it goes after Winston Smith, who is a middle-class bureaucrat, with all its might. Because he is more important.

(Orwell is not alone here. In H.G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE (1895), the time traveler sides with the upper-class Eloi, and hates the working-class Morlocks so much he wants to kill them all.)

In BRAZIL, the great mass of citizens seems completely indifferent to the awfulness of the bureaucratic police state they live in. You don’t see any street protests.

The rebellious protagonist is central to the story, and just like in 1984 he’s a middle-class bureaucrat. Apart from him, there are nebulous “terrorists” who randomly kill civilians and are never caught. But it’s as if those killings don’t really matter to the story; what matters is when the special main character is being persecuted and his middle-class comfort is threatened. (Who cares about a bunch of dead NPCs, right?)

In 1984, most citizens are not as rigorously surveilled as the “important” ones — that is to say, the middle-class people who are “really” part of the State. All men are equally oppressed, but some are more equally oppressed than others.

What’s the hidden message in BRAZIL and 1984? Simply this: People are sheep; only the elite minds truly think and must be singled out for special persecution.

It is easy — you might say it’s an occupational hazard — for artists to think of themselves as “elite minds” and to look down on those who are not artistically inclined. But writers and artists depend on the work of “ordinary people.” I’d say it’s foolish to despise the common man. It’s also delusional.

Hypothesis 2: Artists can be seduced by their own work

For all its dystopian awfulness, BRAZIL is a true work of art. It does look great. It took a serious effort to create its vision. (I have seen a documentary about how the most visually striking scenes were constructed; it’s very impressive.)

Of course the talented artist will take pride in his efforts. In addition, BRAZIL is the work of an Ex-Monty Python member who understands dark comedy and uses it to great effect.

And therein lies a problem: BRAZIL makes the dystopia funny and interesting to look at.

George Orwell’s artistic temperament is far from Terry Gilliam’s, and his sense of humor is not quite in the same league, but… 1984 makes the awful police state seem potent (in a savage sense), and eloquent. The chief oppressor, O’Brien, gets all the best lines.

As someone has pointed out, even a photo of an atom bomb explosion has a certain terrible beauty. Those German Nazi officers may have murdered millions, wrecked civilization and made lampshades out of human skin — but you gotta admit, their uniforms looked good.

Evil people are vain, too; it pleases them to have fancy uniforms, neat parades and catchy slogans. And they will find artists who are willing to work for them.

There is always the danger — and allure — of giving the fictional villains all the best clothes and all the best lines. While in real dystopias the murderous leaders, bureaucrats and uniformed thugs tend to be dull, mediocre little men.

Art can — unfortunately — make evil aesthetically pleasing. And that terrible beauty can seduce also the artist, who strives to perfect the artwork… and in the process enhances the seductiveness of evil.


Hypothesis 3: Society is to blame

Sorry. All the time I’ve been unfair, attacking the messenger who brought the bad news. The primal error lies not in the artists, but the times they were born into and lived in. They are shaped by society and circumstances as much as everyone else, and their work simply reflects those circumstances.

George Orwell, Terry Gilliam and Bong Joon-Ho grew up in the 20th century, a period scarred by unparallelled tyranny and mass murder, social upheaval, and the terror of nuclear war. Naturally, they will work out such collective traumas in their art — as they should do.

Thus, 1984 is a horror version of Stalinism triumphant. BRAZIL is a horror version of the European bureaucratic welfare state triumphant. SNOWPIERCER is a horror version of reckless capitalism, racing across the frozen ruins of a world it has destroyed.

So these works are more than personal screeds; they are symptoms of a greater sickness in modern society. Are we cured by now? Has the sickness brought by two world wars, the worst tyrants in history, and the atom bomb, finally lifted? You tell me.


5. Evil Wins For the Sake of Art

1984 offers no way out of the dystopia — Big Brother crushes Winston Smith and that’s that.

BRAZIL offers only the escape into fantasy — as the state torturers admit when the protagonist loses his last vestige of sanity. They can’t crush a man who’s already gone.

SNOWPIERCER is by far the most nihilistic of the lot: The ending states that since society is bad, (almost) everyone in it should be killed.

Why do critics praise these visions of elitism, nihilism and despair? Because everyone, including the critics, were just as scarred by the 20th century as the artists? Because these works are art, and succeed as art? Arguably, yes.

But even so. I demand the right to have two (or three) different thoughts in my head at the same time:

1. These works are not as “morally elevated” as they have been made out to be. The more I look at their messages, the grubbier they seem. (The message of SNOWPIERCER, in particular, reeks.)

2. Yes, these are works of art, with real artistic merit, regardless of their messages. I can still enjoy them.

3. Scarred minds will produce scarred art. The 20th century scarred many minds.

There are fictional dystopias that don’t fall into the “Perfectly Wrong” trap. I’d like to point out two outstanding examples: Ray Bradbury’s FAHRENHEIT 451 (1953) and Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932).

In Bradbury’s near-future dystopia, there are many outsiders and the repression is “soft.” There’s no Big Brother, but instead a smothering consensus that works more efficiently than torture chambers and uniformed thugs.

And this state fails in the end. It dumbs itself down into extinction.

In Huxley’s far-future dystopia, humans are regimented through biotechnology, education and rewards (material comfort, entertainment, sex and drugs). The repression starts even before birth, so very little policing is necessary. The masses are born into a predictable shape, and are conditioned from early childhood to take their society for granted. Happiness is managed and groomed.

And even here, there are outsiders. The ruling elite — the manager class — can’t “fix” society’s most rebellious misfits, those few who refuse to be happy. So it simply casts them out to fend for themselves. And the ruling elite is not all-powerful. The system still can fail; it’s being run by humans, not demons.


6. Low Art Is More Truthful About Tyranny

You shouldn’t love Big Brother. But you shouldn’t make him bigger than he is, either, because that’s what he wants. And if you love your artistic vision of perfect evil above people, I have the right to point it out. And you absolutely should not mistake your own “petty bourgeois” anxieties for a true concern about your fellow man.

Finally, I’d like to present two alternative “Big Brother” characters in popular fiction. These examples are not high art, but they tell a truth about tyranny that cuts deep.

- Hugo Drax in the movie MOONRAKER (1979). He’s the stereotypical supervillain — a megalomaniac who wants to kill off humanity, and then remake it as a supposed utopia populated by a “perfect race.”

Drax himself is a creepy little man, smug and overly cerebral, lost in his own abstractions. His vision of a perfect high-tech society is so narrow-minded that even his henchman Jaws turns on him. (I love Richard Kiel’s performance in that scene. He changes from a mute lackey into a dignified human being.)

- Dr. Raymond Cocteau in the movie DEMOLITION MAN (1993). Another megalomaniac, but more successful. He has managed the construction of a “politically correct” and “kind” society, where politeness is enforced by law.

But the “kindness” turns out to be a big lie; underneath the shiny happy surface are all those who did not fit into Cocteau’s utopia. And his fanatical desire to squash every last dissident proves his undoing. His henchman Simon Phoenix gets the killer line: “That’s who you remind me of! You’re like an evil Mister Rogers!”

Now, why do I prefer DEMOLITION MAN to SNOWPIERCER…?