Michael Radford's Film version of George Orwell's Novel Nineteen Eighty Four

I just watched the film Nineteen Eighty Four, and whilst it is about totalitarianism, I thought the film also had some potential criticisms of psychiatry, and non-participatory democracy, because the way the totalitarian state - or Big Brother - thinks, is in some ways very similar to medical psychiatry, and Orwell makes some references to state-labelled delusions, madness, and sanity, as the torture and abuse that the state imposes and then denies, creates a psychosis of mental and social utopianism, within a dystopian society.

Liberals have tended to mock George Orwell - the author of the novel Nineteen Eight Four - as irrelevant to modern times, in order to justify the spectator society and objectification, but I think his criticism of totalitarianism and bad democratic governments, is very relavant to modern times, and still has a lot of validity, as we are moving closer to more of a surveillance and controlling society and world, along with an area of national and world society, which dialectically at the same time creates more freedom. Until we understand the dialectic of this, and the underlying psychological, political, and social factors influencing it, we will not be able to move towards a more equal and freer society and world.

Our present society, may not be a totalitarian one, and with some aspects of surveillance properly used, may have helped reduce theft and violent crime, but all it takes, is for some extremist dictatorship or group to take over, and they would have complete control. There is also a similarity, in 1984, with the way that the state and media, always have to create some enemy for us to go to war with, as the governments of the world have created terrorism. Terrorism, is not human nature, and it does not grow on trees. It is socially, politically, psychologically, and historically created.

The kind of society in Nineteen Eight Four, that Orwell envisaged, is for some poor and powerless people, already here now. What we need, is less poverty and inequality of power, more genuine and participatory democracy, and more civil and human rights in society, without the hypocrisy and hate-week of criticising other countries for this. Until we have full civil and human rights, we are in no position to criticise other cultures and societies. Having full civil and human rights, is now problematic, because of the rise in terrorism, but that does not excuse society to mistreat poor and powerless people, who rebel against abuse, oppression, and injustice, and who are just as much victims of social and political torture, as that which we criticise in other countries, cultures, and societies.

In the book and film, "hate week", is where the pent-up repressions and frustrations of society, are released, as a kind of therapy, to cathart the emotions, through hating a fabricated subversive called O'Brian, who's drowned out image and spoken words, are played on a large screen. O'Brian had supposedly written a book, of rebellion against the totalitarian state, or Big Brother, but it is later revealed, that the state itself created that book and the rebellion.

Rebellion can take many forms, including authoritarian, and libertarian - and like psychotic utopianism and dystopianism - and a more enslaved and freer society - all this operates and atomises within a dialectic. The synthesis of that dialectic, is an unfolding social, psychological, and political process and outcome, that we must understand, before it leads to a less freer and equal society and world, and to an end of the modern world.

As George Orwell's main character, Winston, says in 1984: "If there is hope, it is in the proles" (the proletarians/working classes), who whilst being the collective willing instruments of the state, are not collectively or individually polluted or corrupted, by the state's political, moral, and intellectual reductionism and elitism.