Orwell is the man. Nobody writes against the totalitarian left quite like a disappointed socialist!

One thing that I note, while reading 1984, is that most commentators completely overlook the Proles. That’s incidentally a good way to tell the difference between someone who’s actually read the book and someone who’s just absorbed its broad strokes from Cliff Notes or cultural osmosis. Just ask them about the Proles, or listen to them assume that all the citizens of 1984 Oceania have telescreens (they don’t) or are under constant watch by the Thought Police (they aren’t, at least not to the extent of the Party).

But in many ways, since the destruction of all but a few of the old, monolithic Communist evils, it’s the Proles who represent some of 1984‘s most compelling and timely material circa 2012. After all, the Proles don’t have the overt, draconian surveillance imposed on the Outer Party; instead they’re kept satiated with prolefeed, a constant stream of low-quality, mind-numbing entertainment (and of course “Pornosec”).

I wonder what Orwell would think of a few hours of US/UK “reality TV” or supermarket tabloids in that context? It certainly is mindless stuff, on the whole. But you have to ask yourself if our proles–or us, the proles–are simply heaving down our prolefeed either at the behest of an oppressor or, perhaps more chillingly, the behest of no sinister agency at all. To borrow another dystopian metaphor, could the clamshell earphones of Fahrenheit 451 exist if there were no oppressive, external force driving them–nothing but the free market?

Maybe we are have all made proles of ourselves, and no one will realize it until someone or something steps into the vacuum to become Big Brother.

  • Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!