‘Brave New 1984’ on the NFB’s Citizenshift website

Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in shapes of your own choosing…If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four, 1949

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

Aldous Huxley, Introduction to the reprint of Brave New World, 1945

Two terrifying novels haunted the 20th Century and continue to trouble us today: Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four and Huxley’s Brave New World. Every day, newspapers invoke their nightmarish visions, whether driven by Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ repression or Huxley’s consumer seduction and conditioning.

Several generations of readers have used these two novels as beacons, throwing light on contemporary realities. Young people still read them today, and use them to make sense of what’s going on in the world. Orwell and Huxley could never have imagined some of the amazing technological advances of the last few decade. But they understood the fundamental tendencies at work in modern society, and that’s why they are still read today.

Orwell foresaw surveillance, repression, constant war and torture. Huxley imagined rampant commercialism, deception, conditioning and genetic manipulation. Today, unfortunately, many of the daily realities we and people around the world experience combine the ‘Orwellian’ with the ‘Huxleyan.’ Our willing participation in the invasion of our own privacy through our use of Facebook and other social sites on the web is just one recent example.

There is a time-honoured tradition of debate about which one of the two authors, Orwell or Huxley, was more prescient. In the end, authors like Margaret Atwood have concluded that the main issue isn’t ‘who was right,’ but in what ways both authors were right – and what we can learn from using their insights. This is also our view.

For several years now, Varda Burstyn and myself have been working on a film about these issues. However, the subject seemed too large and sprawling to really make a good film, and the most enthusiasm for this project comes from young people who are most interested in participatory, interactive web-based experiences. The project has now found a home on the NFB’s web site Citizenshift. Check it out, comment, contribute!

http://citizen.nfb.ca/brave-new-1984

If they came back to life, Orwell and Huxley would feel vindicated for many of the dystopian trends they foresaw. At the same time, they might well be surprised – and delighted – to see the amount of resistance to these trends, all over the world. Huxley called for caution, for vigilance and for a greater awareness of the potential totalitarian power of scientific and technological innovation. Orwell called for a mobilization of the common people against power and privilege sustained by repression and elite omnipotence. These concerns are echoed in many civil society movements today.

That is why we think this project has a great deal of potential to capture the imagination of video makers and web users.

Thanks to Jorge Bustos-Estefan for help with this blog.