The complete failure of ‘1984’

Progressive media outlets are celebrating the release of “Julia,” a new feminist retelling of “1984” authorized by George Orwell’s estate. One glowing review from the Los Angeles Times declared that the new novel outclassed Orwell’s dystopian classic and suggested that it should take the original’s place in high school English curricula.

The irony is almost too much to bear. Perhaps the 20th century’s most famous novel about propaganda, in which the main character’s job is to update the historical record to conform to the current government narrative, has been updated to conform with modern propaganda. The media, which in theory serve as the safeguard against exactly this form of centralized information manipulation, are instead its most enthusiastic cheerleaders. Though we live in a society whose conception of authoritarianism has been shaped almost entirely by “1984,” Orwell’s novel has failed to slow our rush headlong toward centralized state control.

Humans are narrative creatures who do not interact with facts in a vacuum. Stories are critical because they create a shared context and vocabulary in which we can place the facts that we encounter. Even going back to Plato, most civilizations have understood that the stories they collectively tell themselves shape the very conceptual landscape on which people approach issues.

Orwell’s book has served as the shared narrative context in which America and many other Western nations discuss the possibility of tyrannical state authority. Modern advances in mass transit, mass communication, and mass production during the early 20th century allowed for the rapid centralization of state power and gave rise to nightmarish regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Orwell’s most famous work perfectly captures the nature of those regimes in its depiction of a brutal authoritarian government backed by plenty of direct oppression and the threat of force.

The dystopian novel became the universal reference point for tyranny thanks to its ubiquitous assignment as required reading in American public schools. Although the deterioration of public education has meant fewer modern students still read the book, for many decades “1984” was likely the only novel most Americans had read that provided such a conceptual framework. And yet, while most people treat “1984” as the critical warning on what an authoritarian government looks like, they never seem to consider why it was included in compulsory public education in the first place.

The truth is, while “1984” serves as a good warning against the dangers of a Nazi Germany or a Soviet Union, it fails to equip students with the tools necessary to oppose the total state that is currently consuming America.

Given the nature of our soft-managerial regime, “1984” poses little threat to our leaders. And because it is the only text in which most Americans encounter the idea of a dystopian government, the novel limits their ability to conceive of an oppressive government that does not resemble the one Orwell described. As a result, “1984” is only a threat to the dead managerial regimes of the past, the ones thar our current rulers defeated. It serves the role of containment, setting a narrative frame that fences in thought about how a population might be controlled.

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