KEY
“make insightful and meaningful… perceptive etc connections about how meaning is created by the significant connection across all the texts.
What do dystopias have in common? What does the dystopian genre have to tell us?
How do the techniques create meaning?
NOTE – all the texts have torture.
“plan a structure for your answer that allows you to explore the similarities and differences between each of the texts in their handling of your chosen dystopian feature.”
The texts warn us to pay attention to what is happening around us and to not just complacently allow increasing levels of control to be placed upon us. Protect yo rights!!
All of the texts warn society of what could happen if we allow people or a group to become too powerful without being held accountable for their action. If we become complacent and allow increasing levels of control to be implemented upon us, then our freedoms and individuality will be increasingly restricted and result in our lives being more and more controlled, often without us realising it.
The texts warn us to pay attention to what is changing in our own society and guard ourselves against a group becoming too powerful and controlling too much of our individual lives. It warns us to protect our individuality and choice before it is taken from us without our knowledge.
- government control over the individual as a mechanism for gaining more power for themself. Texts warn of a government having the ability to control individuals and restricT freedoms
- to gain more power themselves
- mechanism = surveillance
- mechanism = control of language
- mechanism = propaganda?
- mechanism = suppression of individuality
- mechanism = suppression of individual choice
- The state trying to control the individual’s actions
- warning of the future
- shows fears of the time it was made
Similarities between texts
- Nineteen eighty four + minority report:
- Use of technology for control
- Use of surveillance for control
- Use of an antihero
- Neologisms
- Restriction of free will
- Personalised advertising and propaganda?
- Nineteen eighty four + clockwork orange
- Use of an antihero
- Neologisms
- Restriction of free will
- Influence from stalinist russia in the presentation of the ideas
- Minority report + clockwork orange
- How they examine personal choice. Does placing restriction on choice actually help/is it moral?
- How they control the choices that people make.
- Symbol of the eye. Still represents a loss of choice and control over one’s own actions.
- In both stories the original goal is to prevent crime (called “pre-crime in the movie”) before it happens. Both do it by removing the option to commit bad, and both result in an unwanted consequence for the ‘criminal’.
Differences between texts
- Nineteen eighty four + minority report
- 1984 controlling mind and changing it whereas minority report observing mind and not changing it.
- Nineteen eighty four + clockwork orange
- in 1984 they try to control thought whereas in clockwork orange they try to control actions (they don’t care about the thoughts, just the outcomes)
- 1984 uses direct ideas of stalinist russia whereas clockwork orange uses slavic influence in the language to give a general vibe of doom.
- Minority report + clockwork orange
- Eye in MP signifies constant surveillance
- Eye in clockwork orange is when Alex has to keep his eyes open in ludovico technique. Instead of being watched he is forced to watch.
- How they prevent crime before it happens – In the movie it is pre-cognition. However, the desired purpose is the same.
PARAGRAPH PLANNING:
Introduction
P1 = 1984 and how it presents idea
P2 = minority report and how it presents similar idea (link a specific detail between this and 1984)
P3 = clockwork orange and how it also expands on this idea (using a specific technique which is also shown in minority report)
P4? = how clockwork orange links also to 1984
P5 = how the radiohead lyrics link to the idea shown by the previous 3 texts
Very quick conclusion if P5 is not a conclusion
1984
controls the citizens by controlling the information they have access to. By altering facts and rewriting history they maintain this control over the population. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
– “It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened”
– thoughtcrime and doublethink, principles of INGSOC, increasing surveillance and restriction of actions by restricting thought. This is done by controlling the language “The sacred principles of Ingsoc. Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past.“
– “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it”
– “The object of power is power”
– 2 + 2 = 5: “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it” (psychological manipulation) “For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?” If the universe exists only in the mind, and the Party controls the mind, then the Party controls the universe.
– “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
– “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten… Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right”
– ““It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened.”
– “the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth.”
Minority Report
– It’s not just the technology that makes it the future, its how people use it.
Surveillance: The store doesn’t just greet him while he’s trying to keep a low profile, it also eagerly remembers and recites his shopping history. Minority Report was already predicting the world of consumerism it, and similar services, would lead to: one where the promise of security and convenience trumps any right to privacy. Customers shopping at the mall are greeted with a barrage of ads that scan their retinas and call them by name as they walk by.
– The larger vision that emerges is one of a consumer-friendly, interconnected surveillance state. Eye-scanners are everywhere in this film, allowing the police and corporations to track down and identify people as they go about their lives. The PreCrime unit itself also has extensive surveillance abilities, monitoring public cameras or deploying spider-like retinal-scanning robots to crawl through buildings and identify those inside. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/30/15865462/minority-report-steven-spielberg-surveillance-technology
– Tension between a citizen’s right to privacy and the need for the state to ensure safety. When does it go too far?
– ‘predicting the future would be the crowning feature of any surveillance state’. control citizens by locking them up before they even do anything wrong. Extreme surveillance for preventative justice – is it ok?
Spider scene
– state represented by police is highly technologically advanced. Humanity is removed.
– bleach bypass to remove colour
– interaction with the world is mediated by a transparent screen in front of their face. Technology is mediating what they can see
– Police language is dehumanising. ‘live ones’ not even people.
– where the ordinary citizens live, the apartment building is decayed. One of the few times in the film that we see this decay.
– police filmed at a low angle to make them seem tall and authoritative.
– first time dirty walls are seen. Degraded in comparison to the pristine public spaces.
– “27 warm bodies”
– Aryan master race as civil authorities “blonde hair blue eyes”
– “I wanna eat” he just wants to get the killing over and done with
– Reebok ad. The film is talking about control but the film itself is actually controlling us.
– spiders have a laserrrrrr
– announcement to whole building, authorities can do this in any private space. No privacy.
– birds eye view, the people have no privacy from us and we are surveilling them in their most private aspects of life.
– spiders read their eyes, imposed on them. One dude is on the toilet and he still gets surveilled.
– Attempts to cover glass roof for privacy but there is destruction of this. learn difference between transparent, transluscent and reflective and their purposes
– people having sex and they have to stop to get eyes read by the spiders. Huge surveillance. Birds eye view.
– it even breaks up their argument to get read by the spiders. Zero care of the state for the people and it goes in every aspect of life.
– Long unbroken shots show how you can’t get away from it.
– the characters responses and the fact that they dont resist shows how it probably happens often.
– rat = evidence of decay.
– member of law enforcement viewed from below. And through screen. Member of public viewed from above.
– eyes shown in the screen in the back. Public spaces constant digital representation of the eye.
– piece of dialogue (find it)
– “if you don’t want your kids to know terror, keep them away from me.
– state sanction, torture. If he resists the scan he gets electrocuted by the spider.
Song Lyrics
– We’re not scaremongering
This is really happening
– And two and two always makes up five
It’s the devil’s way now
There is no way out
You can scream and you can shout
It is too late now
Because you have not been
Payin’ attention x 10,000
–
Clockwork Orange
– “Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?”
– “We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.”
– “Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.”
– “The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”
– What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?
– “It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.”
– “But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.”
– “The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded.” link to 1984 – the proles are the same!!!!!!
– “You needn’t take it any further, sir. You’ve proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I’ve learned me lesson, sir. I’ve seen now what I’ve never seen before. I’m cured! Praise Bog! I’m cured!
I was cured alright.” link to 1984 – the curing of Winston is like the curing of Alex
– “There was no trust anywhere in the world, O my brothers, the way I could see it.”
– “But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the CAUSE of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don’t go into what is the cause of GOODNESS, so why of the other shop?”
– “You have no cause to grumble boy. You made your choice and all this is a consequence of your choice. Whatever now ensues is what you yourself have chosen” link to 1984 – the ‘consequence’. In reality he has not chosen to be punished nor did they choose to be punished in 1984, it’s just what the state decides to do.
Clockwork orange examines the concept of control in terms of controlling Alex’s actions. What the state thinks is best may in fact be immoral (depending on what you think – this is what the novel questions).
NOTES FROM OTHER DOC THING
KEY IDEA: Individuality and choice can be restricted if we allow it. Be aware
“you still have a choice. The others never saw their future. You still have a choice”
“except you know your own future which means you can change it if you want to. You still have a choice”
“The best books are those that tell you what you already know”
Orwell, as he states in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ – “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”
These mechanisms of government control will result in a society which has no freedom of thought and does not even realise that their thoughts and actions are being controlled in this way, and thus restricts the individuality and personal autonomy of all the individuals in that society. (sum up with a Y statement). The idea that our fundamental thought processes are controlled by the language we use, and that there is the potential for this to be used against us, enhances Orwell’s warning that we need to be aware of all the ways in which we can be controlled in order to protect ourselves against this.
TO DO
- find actual quotes within the texts that say what you are trying to say about individuality, like how in Macbeth Shakespeare literally says what the point of the whole story is within his writing
- quotes are enough and fine, but to make something stronger, if you see it in the quote you can digress on a tangent why the significance of that structure if you see it. “to turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should … choice of government” – metaphor of Alex being clockwork losing humanity – avocado
- Explain the importance of the link itself. Sure it’s cool that they are linked but you don’t need to explain how they link for ages. The link itself is what will advance/contribute to the overall idea so the purpose of the idea/technique that is the link.
MORE NOTES BAHAHA
A further comparison can be made in regards to Nineteen Eighty-Four and A Clockwork Orange, in how the authors used influence from the Soviet Union to strengthen the warnings presented in the texts. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, aspects of the politics in Stalinist Russia are reflected in the political system of Oceania. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell writes that “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it,” demonstrating the extent of control that the government of Oceania has over the thoughts of the individuals. This Party slogan of ‘2 + 2 = 5’ was a real political slogan from the USSR, which referenced the promise to complete their Five-Year Plans for economic success in only four years. Furthermore, the Party itself, their ‘uniform’ overalls, and the use of children to spy on their families and “report their deviations” are also clear references to the mechanisms of politics that were seen in the USSR during the time of writing. In A Clockwork Orange, the influence from the Soviet Union is seen through the ‘nadsat’ language of the youth, which has heavy East Slavic influence. Words such as ‘rot’, ‘horrorshow’ and even ‘nadsat’ itself are only a few of the many words in youth language that have Russian influence. The reason for this use of Stalinist Russia influence in both texts is clear once the political climate surrounding their time of writing is understood. Both novels were written shortly after the end of the second World War, during the Cold War, which was a period of rising influence of the Soviet Union and increasing geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union, the United States and their respective allies. Both authors of Nineteen Eighty-Four and A Clockwork Orange are English and wrote their texts for a primary english-speaking audience, so it is evident that their use of aspects of the Russian politics and language was intended to enhance the warnings presented. The increase in power of the Soviets was a rising fear of in the West during the time when both texts were written, and so both authors use this to heighten the fear surrounding the events in the texts… they don’t want it to happen idk. Readers at the time would have found this concept of Russian influence frightening, as this concept of the USSR becoming more powerful and dominating would have been a key fear at the time of writing.
Paragraph 2: Further use of language to control involves the modification of all written facts, as “every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten… Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right”. By demonstrating the extent to which our thoughts can be controlled and corrupted by the language that we use, Orwell warns us to pay attention to this in our own lives, so that we can protect ourselves from being influenced in this way. If we are aware of how language is used to control us in our present society, we can better protect against having our choices and individuality restricted by this propaganda and corruptive language influence.
Countless times throughout the text, Orwell warns us to wake up and pay attention to how monitored and scrutinised our lives are by the authorities, and he orders us to protect our individuality by being aware of how others aim to control us.
NOTE: bring in concept of individuality restriction as some extra spice later on. This can be the “development” of the idea.
