February 21, 2004

• Last night's movies:

  '1984,' the one that came out in 1984. I encountered the term 'two minute hate,' and couldn't remember exactly how the two minute hate worked, so I googled it and ended up at this site: the Newspeak Dictionary. Poking around there, I eventually read most of Emmanuel Goldstein's 'The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism,' which is the book-within-a-book in '1984.' So it was on my mind when I went to the video store.

  Goldstein is, in the book, the most hated man in all of existence, because he is a subversive rebel. In fact, he might or might not exist, and his book might have been created by the Party to ferret out rebels.

  Now, 'Oligarchical Collectivism' is basically the crib notes explaining the context for everything else that's happening in the book. Once you read Goldstein's book, it all falls into place. When you're watching the movie, on the other hand, the filmmakers leave very little space to understand that there's no tyrrany, other than raw social force perpetuated by the Party itself, upon itself. Instead, the movie concentrates on the love story between Winston and Julia. In these storytelling confines, Winston ends up as the poor pathetic brainwashed victim, and O'Brien is the heavy, the bad guy.

  So I think it's true that '1984' should really only be a book. You should have to read it in order to know it, in the same way that you have to read 'Oligarchical Collectivism' to know Oceania.

  So it's handy that it's available as a download.

  • 5:30 am
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