It is impossible
to found a civilization on fear and hatred and
cruelty.
George Orwell
By Pouyan Baneshat
George Orwell’s Trotskyites novel, 1984,
unabashedly condemns the Stalinist Soviet Union; just one look at the Orwell’s
letter shows his sympathies toward Trotskyism. (1) When Trotsky was exiled from
the USSR,
Orwell made the character of Snowball-Trotsky in Animal Farms chased off of the
farm by Napoleon—Stalin. (2)
1984, is a novel which was used against USSR for many
decades. (3) It is also a condemnation of torture and repression in a
totalitarian society. In this novel, Orwell describes how a totalitarian
society in the year 1984 would look like. He invented the shadowy character of
Emmanuel Goldstein who is supposed to be the founder of an anti-Big Brother i.e.
Stalinist movement.
Winston Smith is the central character of
the novel who is loyal to the system and writes for the propaganda machine. Sympathetic
to Goldstein’s ideas he falls in love with sensual Julia and tries to redefine
his life. But he is arrested and tortured by the government to fundamentally
change his personality.
A new adaptation of 1984 by Michael Gene
Sullivan and directed by Tim Robbins is a failed attempt to reconstruct the
novel into a contemporary play. The complex paradigms of the book are just too complex
to be broken down into a two hours play. From the opening act when the concepts of Eurasia and Eastasia are introduced to the last
sense where all prison wardens cry on the stage the play is confused and contradictory.
The concept of the ongoing war between Eurasia and Eastasia are noted in passing and anyone
unfamiliar with the novel cannot grasp the essence and foundation of the play.
The play has adopted the Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt method. The
accessories on the stage do not define the situation because there are no notable
accessories except for a ludovico chair at the second act. The clothing of the
actors are simply a gray uniform similar to those of Mao’s communist china.
The play attempts to link the contemporary U.S. history
with the 1984 Orwellian world. Orwell imagined a totalitarian society free of
religion and morals where Big-Brother defines every aspect of daily life but
the play fails to hit this mark. For instance, in one scene, we see people
mesmerized by Big-Brother; watching the newsreel of capturing Libya and
defeating the so called terrorists. The
scene is supposed to indicate one of the most terrifying things about
totalitarian society which is systematically destroying social memory, first,
through the forced disintegration of individual experience and, second, through
the complete obliteration of objective records.
That simply is not
the case in United States.
History in U.S.
means yesterday’s news and few Americans can remember beyond that. In U.S., we are
not forbidden from seeking information.
We have an over-abundance of information, but most people do not seek
the truth or are inclined to forget the truth. Many Americans may constantly be
pumped with the lies of FOX news and corporate media but this is not to say
that there is a lack of information.
The level of
consciousness in the Orwellian world is fundamentally different from the U.S.
capitalist and imperialist world where the essence of human consciousness, as
we have come to grasp for it in class societies and hope for it in a classless
society, is obliterated; man becomes a mere function of a process.
In our capitalist society consciousness is
created by the capitalist culture from watching Kung Fu Panda to everyday news-reports. Thus,
there is a constant need of misinformation and disinformation but no need of book
burnings.
The dark world of Tim Robbins and Michael
Gene Sullivan is unrepresentative of our society. These artists are simply unable
to grasp the complexities of the capitalist society. They attempt to examine
the root of totalitarian capitalism, but they fail because they merely present a
paradigmatic version of its social life in a non-capitalist totalitarian
society.
Another fundamental discourse of the novel
is sexual repression. Yet, the misrepresentation of the role of sexual behavior
in a capitalist society is another impediment of this adaptation. In the novel Gordon
Smith revolts against the societal roles which forbid love and only allows sex
for recreation. We know that in Soviet Union sex was not forbidden however, some noticeable
restriction of sexual freedom existed. But we must distinguish between a Soviet
attempt to develop more reliable child-bearing units among the masses and the
capitalist tendency to immerse people with their sexuality in advertising and
porn that exploits sexuality among all social layers.
In examination
nudity and lovemaking in a capitalist society the play is more successful. We
see the Wardens reenacting the sexual acts that happened between Julia and
Gordon but once the reenactment becomes real; there is antagonism between the
wardens and interrogators. The most fundamentalist interrogators are unable to
face the fact that the reenactors are actually enjoying themselves by engaging
in sexual act. Thus, the very act of reenactment of sexual behavior instantly becomes
criminalized.
The wardens by
engaging in sexual mischief begin to sympathize with Smith while the audience is
very aware of the distance between reality and the brutality that is reenacted
on the stage.
The sex scenes despite
the voluptuousness of the nude actress on the stage is completely mechanical. This
is what the philosopher Slavoj Zizek would call sex without sex. What the
author has tried to achieve throughout and failed is well manifested in the sex
scenes. We have sexual tension on the stage but no feeling of arousal. And eventually
we get to a point where the reenactors get punished instead of Smith. The truth
is replaced with a fictionalized version of it. This is created by the capitalist
system in its worst and best sense. This
is ultimately the only thing that can break Smith emotionally; to name and denounce
her beloved Julia under torture.
Torture is central
question of the play and the novel. As torture breaks hero and heroine
destroying their relationship, the final suggestion is that Big Brother will
triumph in the atomization of human beings. This inhuman process is certainly
at work under modern capitalism when O’Brian proclaims “we have to hear it from
you [smith] otherwise your confessions would be meaningless.” This is the level
at which capitalist consciousness functions.
These are the better
parts of the play where Sullivan has not changed Orwell’s original intent. But everything
from the farfetched sympathetic wardens (interrogators) to their uniformed
clothing is the very antithesis of a contemporary adaptation. The central
characterization of several interrogator and the interdynamics of their
relations is very inverted. Whatever the sentiment of the writer may have been,
in reality it is false.
This contemporary adaptation does not
amplify the message of the classic novel, and makes the sublime themes of the
original script harder to grasp. The play is at best a hopeless adventure and
at worst, a fraudulent misrepresentation of the novel.
Hopelessly, at the
end of the play they fail so miserably that they have to read parts of the
Orwell’s 1984 appendix but even modifying that script did not portray today’s
capitalist and imperialist society.
Sources:
The listening thingi
could have been easily replaced with ipad or iphone which is a symbol of
capitalist.
In one scene Smith the central character asks
how can we "fight for freedom abroad" when we are slaves at home? But
the play fails to answer this question and more.
