All posts tagged: Orwells

Animal Farm Film A Hollywood Perversion Of Orwell’s Anti-Communist Classic

Animal Farm Film A Hollywood Perversion Of Orwell’s Anti-Communist Classic

Published by Jenni Sidey

George Orwell’s prognostications about the future of authoritarianism have proven consistently accurate.  They have only been limited by his inability to foresee the creation of certain technologies which make the future look even more bleak.  The reason his books, like 1984 and Animal Farm, are considered classics of literature is because they are timeless.  Their warnings and messages still apply today and will probably apply centuries from now.  Animal Farm, first published in 1945, is a tale specifically written as an allegory for the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of Soviet Communism.  Despite the characters being talking animals, the themes are dark and disturbing.  It is a story about the naivety of the “underclass”, the exploitation of the “have-nots” by communists seeking to use gullible people as weapons against their “imperialist” and capitalist enemies.  It is a grotesque tragedy composed like a children’s novel, which makes it all the more effective.  It destroys the notion of “equity” and exposes the truth:  There is no such thing as a socialist Utopia, there can only ever be …

Isaac Asimov Reviews George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Calls It “Not Science Fiction, But a Distorted Nostalgia for a Past that Never Was”

Isaac Asimov Reviews George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Calls It “Not Science Fiction, But a Distorted Nostalgia for a Past that Never Was”

Published by José Betancourt

Here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, a young read­er first hear­ing of George Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty-Four would hard­ly imag­ine it to be a work of sci­ence fic­tion. That would­n’t have been the case in 1949, when the nov­el was first pub­lished, and when the epony­mous year would have sound­ed like the dis­tant future. Even as the actu­al nine­teen-eight­ies came around, it still evoked visions of a tech­no-total­i­tar­i­an dystopia ahead. “So thor­ough­ly has 1984-opho­bia pen­e­trat­ed the con­scious­ness of many who have not read the book and have no notion of what it con­tains, that one won­ders what will hap­pen to us after 31 Decem­ber 1984,” wrote Isaac Asi­mov in 1980. “When New Year’s Day of 1985 arrives and the Unit­ed States is still in exis­tence and fac­ing very much the prob­lems it faces today, how will we express our fears of what­ev­er aspect of life fills us with appre­hen­sion?” The occa­sion was one of a series of syn­di­cat­ed news­pa­per columns that Asi­mov seems to have pub­lished each new year. At the dawn of Nine­teen Eighty-Four’s decade, the syn­di­cate asked …

How the global power shifts seen in George Orwell’s 1984 are happening now

How the global power shifts seen in George Orwell’s 1984 are happening now

Published by Daniella Wilson

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails There’s nothing new about calling George Orwell’s most influential novel prescient. But the focus has usually been on his portrayal of the oppressive aspects of life in Oceania, the superstate in which Nineteen Eighty-Four is set. Today, however, a different feature – which as recently as 2019, some critics dismissed as “obsolete” – is getting more attention: its vision of a world divided into three spheres, controlled by autocratic governments that constantly form and then break alliances. In 2022, Vladimir Putin initiated Russia’s full-on invasion of Ukraine. This year began with the US mounting a raid on Venezuela and snatching its president, while Donald Trump speculated about US actions against various other countries in Latin America and Greenland. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping regularly repeats China’s intention to “reunify” with Taiwan – by force if necessary. “Orwell-as-prophet” commentators began showing more interest …