What the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four could never have predicted is that the citizens would subject themselves to the scrutiny of the cameras voluntarily. The deeper threat to human dignity in 2009 is not state surveillance but pathological exhibitionism. In so many respects, what Orwell foretold has come to pass — with the crucial difference that it has been embraced by consumers not imposed upon them by the totalitarian state.
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Samizdata quote of the dayMarch 26th, 2009 |
 27 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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It’s a mistake to compare modern Britain to Airstrip One because Big Brother’s state was openly ideological and ruthlessly efficient. It’s becoming more like the world of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” or Kafka’s “The Castle”, where an authoritarian bureaucracy controls everything but is incapable of making anything work.
The problem is not just that the citizen is obstructed at every turn by red tape. It’s that the culture of government bureaucracy is spreading throughout every national institution and into the wider population, until our whole society will become paralysed by procedure. Instead of the road to serfdom, we’re on the road to complete stagnation.
That’s right! Who’d a thunk?? Now that you’ve pointed this out, those authoritarian bureaucrats will now turn right around and make things work. After all, making things work IS the point of the exercise…. innit? It’s shorely not about controlling everyone… innit?
The Spectator’s writer is pointing out a principal factor that is taking us on the road to the
NEW TOTALITARIANISM .
What is NEW is exactly that the electorates, the general populaces, “We the People” are creating the structures and conditions that can (and will) be seized upon by those in “control” of socially and politically effective coalitions to choose, direct and limit the objectives for human conduct – as well as the means chosen for those ends.
We are on the way ! If you look at the History texts in school use today, you will see that what is happening, how it happens, and the results produced will not be recorded or retained for future understanding. The why of these times and trends will be lost.
It’s a long time since I read 1984, but as I recall the novel, it is a stark warning about the perils of totalitarianism, (and a not so subtle dig at dear Auntie Beeb).
What we have happening around us now might be better understood by comparison to the Fall of the Roman Empire, or perhaps the collapse of the Byzantine Empire.
We live in a bastardised democracy where the ruling elite spend their time in byzantine, (sic), deliberations of matters of great complexity but no import, (such as counting the number of CO2 molecules that can dance on the head of a pin), whilst the majority of us are content with bread and circuses.
Big Brother, the TV show, is part of the circus. What happens now that the bread is running out may be more to the point.
“The deeper threat to human dignity in 2009 is not state surveillance but pathological exhibitionism”
Pathological exhibition is just fine. The problem is that if 51% of the people are exhibitionists the state decides we all have to be.
Well, what a bunch of rubbish. There have always been people who voluntarily made exhibitionis of themselves. Our entertainment is largely depenent on them. That some people choose to dislike Jade Goody for being successful where they were not appears to be just a form of jealousy. Who is to decide who is talented? The fact is that to voluntarily expose oneself to the public on one’s own terms is not an invitation to general surveillance, any more than if I tell a few jokes in my local pub I’m asking for a state camera in my living room.
“Orwell envisaged language drained of poetry and passion by the state’s imposition of Newspeak. In the event, it was the citizens themselves who invented this lifeless shorthand, in the text language that now routinely appears in the examination papers of our teenagers.”
Oh, the proles aren’t writin’ high falutin’ prose. Text speak is an efficient shorthand- easier to type on awkward keypads that keeps the messages under the character limit (and was not Stephen Fry quoted on this very website pointing out that letter writers of the past, faced with similar practical restrictions, commonly used abbreviations?). We may as well berate my mum for her use of Pitman shorthand as a secretary.
And (run on sentence, ooer), Orwell’s point about newspeak wasn’t its lack of “poetry and passion”, it was the restructuring of language such that it became impossible to express counter-hegemonic thought, a process we are indeed undergoing, but it’s not txtspeak or l33t doing it, it’s intellectuals and philosophers and the kind of tits who write for The Spectator.
“As for the Junior Spies of Nineteen Eighty-Four, today’s children are already culturally primed to berate their parents for smoking, breaching environmental guidelines, or buying products that are not Fairtrade. The state does not have to get involved.”
Jesus H. Did the writer of this have their head in a bucket at the time? The cadres of little spies are being ruthlessly organised and trained by the state, using the edjicashun systum!
What a pile of crusty old elephant’s doo-doo.
Ian B, it is not fundamentally about class, although no doubt some of the Daily Mailites out there are upset because the person at the centre of this latest outpouring of voyeurism and fake sentiment was the late Ms Goody rather than a showbiz big name or trustafarian aristocrat called Jemmia in Hello magazine.
But the Spectator makes an important point, which should not be lost because you are playing that rather shopworn “what abaaat the workers” line again, Ian. The fact is that our age is increasingly incapable of protecting, or indeed gives a stuff, about privacy. At the end of WW2, the British gladly threw away their ID cards; now, opinion polls regularly show large numbers of people favour them or accept the various intrusions. Large numbers of people in this country, of all classes, seem to have no awareness of how our liberties and privacy are under constant assault.
Class analysis has its place, but you are in danger of making the error of using class to explain everything, and thereby, explaining not much at all.
Johnathan- trying to shift the blame for the deliberate destruction of our liberties over two centuries by our rulers onto Jade Goody isn’t just wrong. It falls into the “not even wrong” category.
If you see only class analysis in what I wrote, then I think maybe you’re in danger of making the error of a presumption of class analysis to explain everything Ian B writes. But if there is class analysis there, you could ask whether I introduced it, or the writer at the Spectator who thinks texting will be the downfall of western civilisation.
The exhibitionism is a complete red herring.
The bureaucratic nursery for adults which a country once called Britain / the UK is becoming was created one brick at a time. Most of the bricks have been put in place openly, although with false or partial reasons being given.
Favourite reasons for further extensions of state power are: “the war on drugs”, “counter-terrorism”, “anti-racism”, equal opportunities, domestic violence and “child protection”.
The real reasons tend to be: raising more tax, social engineering (including destroying everything that went before), making politicians seem strong and making Britain more “European”.
For example, powers to stop British citizens leaving the country were created to “protect” foreign countries from British football hooligans; Thus was the principle that they could stop us leaving was established. No doubt when it is useful, they’ll come back to that little wedge and extend the power.
To give another example, we have now reached the point where the teachers in private schools spy on the parents of their pupils, because these schools are inspected same as the state ones, and they daren’t make waves. (Naturally, they wouldn’t see it quite that way; They are just complying with child protection rules in the interests of the children; I bet my father and his generation, if they were still alive, would see it as spying.)
Of course, there isn’t a single agenda or masterplan. Newspapers, the BBC and other broadcasters publicize some real or imagined outrage. Government politicians must be seen to act. Often for ideological reasons, they can’t take the course of action that would alleviate the underlying problem. Of course, sometimes there is an agenda, and every opportunity is seized to advance it. All in all a one way ratchet to Gilliam’s Brazil, or something worse.
Otto, good points all. This process has been a long time in the making. In fact, the “exhibitionism” or “reality” TV shows are part of the final chapter. One hopes a certain revulsion sets in.
Ian B, I think I was actually rather mild in my initial response to what, by your usually high standards of debate, was a rant. Let’s deal with your last comment:
Well the Spectator leader writer can argue for himself, but I doubt that publication is trying to “shift the blame”; it has been one of the few publications to actually highlight the relentless assault on civil liberties that has gone on in recent years. People like Rod Liddle and others at that publication have been pretty good in that respect (I don’t care much for Liddle generally, though). The point it is making about the “reality TV” phenomenon – which was not, cointrary to what you claim, a class one – was that such programmes show how much appetite there is for prying into the innermost details of people’s lives. Look at the ratings. That has an effect on the nature of the debate about privacy. It helps shifts the boundaries of what is considered okay to be put in the public domain.
There has, ever since modern print media etc attracted a large audience, been an appetite for gossip, for tittle-tattle, and the like. The modern communications media of our time have accelerated this process enormously. What cannot be denied, however, is that the appetite for a lot of this stuff suggests that there is no longer much resistance to having one’s affairs put on public display.
I guess some of us are guilty of this in our own lives by our Facebook entries, or our blogging, or whatnot – although I tend to keep my personal life pretty private if I can even with such things.
I also suspect that you are projecting your own class analysis views onto the Speccie as it is written, so you imagine, by a bunch of toffs, as well as the odd Greek ex-con with dubious views.
Well, what a bunch of rubbish. There have always been people who voluntarily made exhibitions of themselves. Our entertainment is largely dependent on them. That some people choose to dislike Jade Goody for being successful where they were not appears to be just a form of jealousy. Who is to decide who is talented? The fact is that to voluntarily expose oneself to the public on one’s own terms is not an invitation to general surveillance, any more than if I tell a few jokes in my local pub I’m asking for a state camera in my living room.
Johnathan, if you’d care to point out which of the above is class analysis, I’d be eternally grateful.
You ask the question, Ian, and by the wonders of computer technology, voila:
Oh, the proles aren’t writin’ high falutin’ prose. Text speak is an efficient shorthand- easier to type on awkward keypads that keeps the messages under the character limit (and was not Stephen Fry quoted on this very website pointing out that letter writers of the past, faced with similar practical restrictions, commonly used abbreviations?). We may as well berate my mum for her use of Pitman shorthand as a secretary
In other words, you chose to make a point about the Speccie’s editorial, going on about how that publication was sneering at the “proles”. Hence my point that you are trying to criticise the Spectator for its snobbery. I think that charge is unfair and misses the point.
And by the way, you say there have “always been people who choose to make exhibitions of themselves”. Well up to a point; but I’d argue that the sheer volume of this stuff today is significantly worse than even, say, 30 years ago. My memory may be playing tricks but I don’t think so. We used to laugh at the folk on Jerry Springer; now the UK leads the world, if I can put it that way, in this “baring-all” form of victimhood-entertainment bullshit.
Like I said, I don’t think the Spectator or other few publications bemoaning the loss of privacy/civil liberties are blaming a few rather celeb wannabes for our plight; what they are saying, however, is that the UK population has taken a craven attitude on these losses of liberties and a sign of that is the “reality TV/baring-all” cultural swamp we now have. A mark of a free society is not just a respect for privacy, but a revulsion at exhibitionism.
In the event, it was the citizens themselves who invented this lifeless shorthand, in the text language that now routinely appears in the examination papers of our teenagers.
They’re sneering at the proles, aren’t they Johnathan?
It is?
Oh, for the good old days when we got good wholesome non-exhibitionist entertainment from touring carnivals full of freaks.
Oh come on, Ian. When people visited such things, they usually had the good sense to realise that that was what they were doing: looking at a freak show. The difference was that the “freaks” did not see it as a route to fame and riches, at least not usually. The plight of such people was pitiable, and seen as such.
And my broader point, and that of the Spectator’s article, stands. This “see-all, show-all” culture has got worse, noticeably, over the past couple of decades or so.
I think there is a decent example of Johnathan’s point (although anecdotal).
When Paddy Chayefsky released his brilliant film, Network, in 1975, the yellow journalism/ populist claptrap, and superstitious dumb-downery was an over-the-top surreal look at the direction we were headed as a society. We laughed at it because it was so outside our realm of reality, as we laugh today at the out-there film, Hot Fuzz.
We rented it to show it to our kids (as part of their homeschool education) a few years ago. They didn’t get it. When it was over they asked why we made them watch the boring documentary-like film that wasn’t funny, sarcastic or interesting. Everything in that film has come to pass. The talking heads on today’s non-serious, populist network news not only achieve the examples in Network, they exceed them.
Howard Beale is tame compared to the Bill O’Reilly’s, Glenn Beck’s, and Judge Whomever is on the TV today.
The population has become perverted (stupid, arrogant, envious, suspicious, greedy, and lacking in gentility, moral principles, and sophistication). There may have always been a segment of the population that met that definition, but they weren’t mainstream, and our media didn’t laud them, or present Archie Bunker types as anything other than fools to point and snicker at. Now their mediocrity has become the new black… and heaven forbid that anyone call them out for being rubes, or we’re “being elitist” or “passing judgments.” Bleuch.
People talk about watching American Idol in a way that makes it clear that they aren’t ashamed of themselves for watching that voyeuristic shit. They admit to it! Publicly! Proudly!
I’m not suggesting that there is some great communist puppeteer in the sky, but divisions among people and dumbing-down the population has to be seen as an element of a direction that leads people to conclude that it is OK to be photographed, monitored, and watched in everything we do, sharing our thoughts, and foibles for all to watch and comment on. The population appears to have gone from being somewhat prudish and private to believing that voyeurism/exhibitionism is sort sort of virtue and goal.
Don’t call it class warfare, if that is the issue. It is beyond class warfare now… that battle was long lost. We lost. There’s a new war, between Dumb and Dumber.
Don’t even ask how much lower it can get.
We can pass examples back and forth all day about whether the media is to blame for any of this, but I think we can agree that media is (at minimum) a reflection of who we are, if not the makers of who we are. The scope and pervasiveness of media in our lives IS a new thing. There might have been a blatantly vile and bawdy cabaret on some back street, frequented by lowlifes in the past. But it isn’t in some back alley anymore. It’s in prime time, with adults and their kids watching this shit, and downloading it to our media-enabled phones where we can watch it in public buses and at work… and they call it “art” because they have no education/experience to call it what it really is.
So it hasn’t gotten to lions devouring Christians, but how is a bunch of kids taping themselves beating up another kid, and then posting it on YouTube to be “famous” different from that?
The late and much-missed Alan Coren wrote a wonderful satire on how 1984 could never work in Britain — in one instance, the screaming headline “Come Off It, Big Brother!” was not punished because the newpapers claimed that there was a type shortage — but sadly, Coren was wide of the mark.
What Orwell foresaw, only too clearly, was that the media would become a tool of state power. The only difference (and what a difference) was that Orwell thought that this could come about only by State ownership. He would not have believed that the Press would willingly become an extension of government, as they have done.
Forgive me, but it’s many year’s since I read 1984, and so my newspeak is a bit rusty, but doesn’t the newspeak word “prolefeed” cover the bulk of celebrity / reality material in all media.
Exhibitionism is not a good tendency. It is very different from the set of values which built the West.
Exhibitionism fits with a sort of lottery mentality that one achieves wealth, status, success, etc., through pure luck with no ability, exertion, experience or moral behaviour necessary or desirable.
Dignity is like character, conscience and the morality underlying capitalism & liberty deeply out of fashion at the moment; They’ll come back of course, but not just yet.
It is if you’re a stripper.
Depends on whether the extra competition in the stripping profession produces more than enough demand to outweigh it. Eventually you reach a tipping point.
I thought that in Nineteen Eighty Four most people did subject themselves willingly – Winston Smith was so unusual precisely because he didn’t. It’s hard to tell, the others may have all been hiding their true opinions, but the impression given was that Winston was the subject of special MiniLuv attention because he was one of the last free-thinking people.
I also think that people give entirely too little attention to the end of the book, when despite knowing exactly what the Party is and what it means, and despite knowing that it means his own death to do so, Winston comes to love Big Brother. Stripped of all illusions, Winston eventually chooses the Party. Have you ever thought for long about why – what it is supposed to mean?
In 1984, the war excused all things, and everyone felt that constant surveillance would help them win the war, or at least they were told it would do so. Does this constant surveillance help in the war on drugs, for example? Do you even get some benefit out of it?
What would happen if someone introduced a computer virus so that all the cameras stopped working? Would crime go up or down?
Ian, JP,
Much though I enjoyed the ding-dong I think you’re both missing the point. The closest anyone has come to the point is PA.
If there is any significant analogy between Orwell’s dysatopian vision and Endemol’s putrid wankfest then it’s in these two points.
1. BB (C4) is total. It is clevely designed to be “water-cooler TV”. It is cleverly designed to also sell newspapers and for the papers to sell the show. So yes there is an analogy because you can’t get away from it all summer. Try temping when it’s on and confessing no interest. You are suddenly Billy No Mates.
2. More deeply though 1984 is scary not because of the depiction of brutal repression but because IngSoc are able to define reality. I have seen the instruments of the Spanish Inquisition (yes, even the rectal pear) and none of them scare me as much as 2+2=5.
Now, with BB (TV) the media have done exactly that. Let’s look at Jade Goody’s career in The Sun… She first shoots to notoriety for thinking “East Angular” ia abroad and getting her “kebab out”. This prompts The Sun to brand her a national disgrace and instigate a campaign to get her voted out. I recall an unflattering image of the woman and the tagline “Vote the pig out”.
She is later reconstructed as “Our Jade” only to be done down again over the Shilpa Poppadom incident which the tabloids blew out of all proportion and managed to manufacture a minor diplomatic incident over. Imagine if we had actually gone to war with India over that? Then Jade Goody gets cancer and she’s “Our Jade” again and I recall The Sun recently saying they’d always had a soft spot for the lass which was a blatent lie. They might as well have stated “We have always been at war with EastAsia”.
I never had the impression reading Nineteen Eighty-four that the telescreens and surveillance were imposed. I don’t recall the question being explicitly answered, but I do remember a suggestion that the surveillance and telescreen started voluntarily. Doesn’t the antique dealer, responding to Smith’s surprise that the room has no visible telescreen, say something like “Oh, I never bothered to get one”?
I know that I always assumed that they were at first not just voluntary, but desired by the public. An entertainment and information tool, later turned more obviously toward control.
Like television, then colour television, then cable, then satellite, then internet, then DSL, then wireless…
“There’s no telescreen!” he could not help murmuring.
“Ah,” said the old man, “I never had one of those things.Too expensive. And I never seemed to feel the need of it, somehow. Now that’s a nice gateleg table in the corner there. Though of course you’d have to put new hinges on it if you wanted to use the flaps.”
Two points about 1984-
The antiques dealer was lying. He was a member of the thought police, and he had quite a few sets hidden about the place.
Also, the party spied mainly on the party- the proles were fed prole-feed news, and the party didn’t seem to worry about the real workers, except to keep them mindlessly amused.
Quite so, Nuke.
But what does the ending mean, when Winston comes to love Big Brother?
That Big Brother is always right! How could you doubt? In Oceania, the patients cured themselves. winston goes from being a thoughtcriminal to becoming a productive member of society, curing himself of his delusions along the way, until he achieves perfection. A heartwarming story of redemption for all!!!