G. Thompson
Today--Nineteen Eighty-Four, to p. 104; no additional reading for Wed.
Last Wed. we looked at some of "our" propaganda films from the mid-20th-century. Just to underscore some points from those:
The different society requires different methods. Both Nazi Germany and (somewhat differently) the Soviet Union could control publication and distribution; in democratic societies we have only the censorship of the marketplace, together with controlled access to powerful figures, so our propaganda has to rely more on persuasion.
In comparison with our own time, there were fewer media--newspapers and magazines, more reliance upon posters, radio, and film. This made control easier.
But the same general methods apply--cf. the Institute for Propaganda Analysis' list. Personal attack, glittering generalities, etc., are to be found then as now. For example, the opening of Don't Be a Sucker brings out all the familiar patriotic appeals as a way of getting the audience to buy in. You can be patriotic at the same time that you recognize that you are being manipulated by patriotic symbols.
We didn't go over the reading from Patrick explicitly. Some points from that before we begin Orwell:
10 Propaganda "is an organized bid for the right to interpret meaning in a given set of circumstances." Desire is for "interpretive monopoly"
Propaganda matters in areas where there is a lot at stake--who gets to interpret meaning?
That is what is at stake. In the Chrysler ad we saw last time, the idea of America is colonized for the image of manufacturing of automobiles--i.e., consumerism. Is being American really only a matter of buying things?
We should stop thinking of propaganda as all about lying. Much propaganda tells the truth, or part of it. It was true that, as at the beginning of Don't Be a Sucker, there are many true statements.
"Take Mike here for instance. He's got everything, you might say. He's young. He's healthy. He's got a job. And he's got a country, called America. It's a wonderful thing to have. America. Lots of room. Room enough to raise plenty of food. Big factories that make things a man can use. Big cities to do the business of a big country. And people. Lots of people. Enough to work the farms, and build the factories, dig the mines, run the businesses. All kinds of people, from different countries, with different religions, different colored skins. Free people. They can live together, work together, and build America together because they're free. Free to vote, say what they please, go to their own churches, to pick their own jobs."
I don't know about that last part. I'm free to pick a job as a running back in the NFL, but I don't think they would hire me. We have different opportunities in this country, based on region, family income, level of education of our parents, race, religion in some cases. That was even more the case when this film was made, before Brown vs. Board of Education, when "separate but allegedly equal" was allowed for schools. Before you had to serve anyone who came into your lunch counter, no matter their race or gender orientation.
It's a very optimistic interpretation to say that we are building America together--a lot of people see their lives as competing with others, and the more they have, the less you have. I don't want to have to pay for your health care, because I might have higher taxes as a result. (etc.)
This part of the film is a set-up for contrast with the very divisive speaker in the park, followed by the Hungarian immigrant now a citizen.
Propagandists often believe in their own propaganda--that helps them to be more convincing. Trying to sell someone on a point of view you don't believe in comes off like the spiel in a Disney ride. Insincere.
21 "Propaganda permeates modern mass-society democracy, which is based on nominal consent of the governed, and wherein coercion generally stands a safe remove in the background."
American system--much propaganda is done in the private sector--this is a key difference from the totalitarian model.
Orwell--two goals, to understand the novel on its terms and its implications; and to see how it connects with the totalitarian model of propaganda.
Orwell was born Eric Blair, and took the pen name from a river in Cornwall, England. He was born in 1903 in British India, grew up in England; worked for five years or so in Burma, until he contracted dengue fever and returned to London. Most of his works are not directly relevant to our purposes--politically left but anti-Stalinist. He's best known for Animal Farm, published in 1945, in which the pigs take over the barnyard (four legs good; two legs bad). It's an allegory of communism, with two pigs representing Stalin and Trotsky; its success made him famous. Suffering from tuberculosis, he managed to complete Nineteen Eighty-Four by the end of 1948. He died in January 1950.
Background: in 1944, as it was evident that Germany was going to be defeated, the three principal figures of the allies, Stalin, Churchill, and the ailing Roosevelt, met in Tehran, Iran, and essentially divided up the world into spheres of influence. This idea is behind the geopolitics of Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which there are three huge countries, Oceania (where Winston Smith lives), Eurasia (the enemy in book one), and Eastasia. There's another zone where none of them dominate, which is where the wars allegedly take place. Oceania includes the British Isles ("Airstrip One") and the Americas. The world of the novel is projected 36 years into the future, with the political ideology, Ingsoc, dominant.
The division into Russian and Western spheres dominated the Cold War period, at least up through 1989, and arguably into the present in some form.
Orwell's dystopia extends the techniques and assumptions of totalitarian society, principally that of the Soviet Union, into England and the West: war conditions apply--people are subject to rationing and receive continual bombardment from global propaganda (telescreens, newspapers, lectures, meetings at work, with the Two Minutes' Hate and Goldstein as the Enemy).
I want to see whether everyone is keeping up with the reading, so let's do a quick writing (5-7 min.) Choose one of the following prompts and write in response:
Describe Winston's job
What is the Party's attitude toward sex, and how is this shown in the novel so far?
What are the Proles like, and what do we see of them so far?
Extra credit: what is Newspeak, and why is it being developed?
[After the writing]
It's important to pay attention to what is happening with language in this dystopia: as a writer, Orwell was strongly motivated by attention to words, as we will see with his essay, "Politics and the English Language," later. He felt that jargon in political and academic speech was substituting for clear thinking. Orwell agreed with the Sapir-Whorf assumption of linguists (not accepted now) that we think with language--the implication in Nineteen Eighty-Four is that if you reduce the language with which people articulate their thoughts, they lose the capacity to think anything different from what the authorities want them to think. They cannot, in other words, commit thoughtcrime. What is left, outside of language, is a generalized discontent.
The whole population has been gaslighted. Gaslighting is a recent term, derived from a classic movie, in which we hear lies and contradictions so often that we become confused, doubt our sanity, and simply do what we are told.
Topics for discussion:
Wonderful first sentence--something is amiss.
Names of things are opposite from their expected meanings:
Victory Mansions, Victory cigarettes, Victory gin; 4, the party's three slogans--discuss
memory holes (37)
3 Effect of surveillance--you assume that you are being overheard and seen, and so you adopt a mask. Eventually you may internalize the values you believe are expected.
What is Winston Smith like? Why does he begin to keep a journal?
6 Having a journal doesn't break any laws. There aren't any laws any more.
First entry, film, audience reactions to people being machine-gunned from a helicopter; cf. also reactions to hangings, fun to watch.
9 First mention of the dark-haired girl, and O'Brien.
13 Goldstein is there to personify the war with Eurasia--Trotsky figure. Propaganda needs enemies.
Description of the Two-Minute Hate reflects anxiety about masses. B-b chant (16)
17 glance from O'Brien.
Representative citizens: Parsons (22). The children . . . reflective of Young Pioneers, Hitler Youth.
Feelings of isolation (26)
28 First serious writing in journal
29 Account of parents. "Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship." (30)
31 Winston's morning ritual--telescreen, exercise
Dream of girl with dark hair--gesture as opposition to system
War is continuous--why?
34 If the Party changes the record of the past, and the past exists only in people's minds, then the past has changed, history has been erased, etc.
37 Woman on the telescreen--keep fit.
First mention of memory holes
38 First example of Newspeak jargon (doubleplusungood), instructions to Winston. Discuss what his job is.
This would be easier now, since records are electronic rather than in print.
Writing is a palimpsest--definition. Paper on which one message has been destroyed and another written over it
History is all a fiction anyway ?
41 Other employees: Ampleforth, Tillotson, Syme
42-43 Scope of propaganda.
Pneumatic tubes?
45 What happens to unpersons--
46 Winston takes up Big Brother's rhetorical style--compare with political speech in "Politics and the English Language"--it substitutes for thought.
48 Syme--philologist who exults in Newspeak as an idea. He's too intelligent, and will be rubbed out. See 51 re destruction of words.
50 Description of food
54 Another comrade engages in duckspeak--saving stupidity
56 Parsons collects money for Hate Week--poverty
58 TV crap--produces "edified boredom"; contradiction between announcements of production and rations, scarce razor blades, etc.
61 Winston gets a look from the girl
62 facecrime--your expression gives you away
64 Party's attitude toward sex--people seek out prostitutes. It's an uncontrollable factor, and the Party is all about control
69 Discussion of the proles
71 Contradiction in the party's attitude toward the proles--duplicates the Soviet system.
73 Official distortions of history--"mute protest in your own bones," etc.
75 The three traitors in the Chestnut Tree Cafe; rhyme, 77
78 Photo comes across Winston's desk, documentary proof not yet erased
ownlife
83 Portrayal of proles; dispute over pint vs. half-liter; failure of oral memory
93 Visit to the junk shop, and Mr. Carrington; room with no telescreen. Coral paperweight as beautiful object--discuss
Mr. Carrington knows some nursery rhymes alluding to churches. St. Martin's is converted to propaganda displays (99)
100 Winston sees that the girl has followed him there.