When reading 1984 by George Orwell one can clearly see the similarities with a dictatorship. Take, for example, the business Winston is working at. He, along with his colleges, re-writes news items and burns the old ones. When it comes to independent media, Oceania’s lack is extreme. The Party’s slogan “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” can have different meanings, but as far as I am concerned Orwell wants to show us the power of controlling the media at the same time as the inhabitants lack qualities of looking at the media with criticism (of its sources). When the media is controlled and news items can be “corrected” after printed the state can make anything look bad or good. If for instance the chocolate ransom is reduced, the government can erase, and change, all traces of the chocolate ransom before the reduction. When doing so, they can make the decrease an increase, because there are no documents left to tell another story.

Moreover, one must not forget that this novel was written recently after world war two, and therefore is inspired by Nazi-Germany. The previous paragraph illustrates the same conditions as Nazi-Germany had. Hitler and his associates had absolute control of the media and its power. Orwell wants to open his fellow citizens’ eyes. This has been going on for too long, and it will go on even today if we, the readers, watchers, listeners etc. stop looking at the media censoriously.

/Martin

 

Sanna

31 maj 2010 13:43

Interesting thoughts Martin, I completely agree with you! Actually, while reading your text, Italy comes to my mind. Media there is fully controlled by the government. No wonder Berlusconi is still president…

Moreover, speaking about media-criticism, it is mainly important to teach children about this in the early ages, thus I believe that if society once turn into a society equal to the one in 1984, the way back might be just too troublesome, perhaps even impossible.

 

Anders

31 maj 2010 16:13

I agree with both of you and think it hilarious to read how "The Party" change the past so their predictions always are correct. Furthermore, it is hard to imagine how it would be to live in that kind of world. Where you doubt on your own memory and can not perceive truth from all the lies.

On the other hand, has our possibilities to communicate enhanced since both 1948 (when he wrote the book) and 1984 (wich is the year the story takes place in) mainly through the internet. Thus, it has presumably been more difficult to control everything like in the novel.
Nevertheless, we have to beware of the fact that much of today's media is ,in many cases, controlled by few people. As in Italie, that Sanna mentioned.

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