This Book was Framed!

I recently wrote a piece soliciting a list of the 10 Books that first began readers’ and conspiracy researchers’ journey down the rabbit hole of alternate perceptions of reality. In the comments, a reader going by the name Lotus points out a seemingly surprising omission from our lists :

I can’t believe no one’s mentioned 1984 yet. From the meme of re-writing history, to false-flag attacks, and a system of total control over humanity, to why torture is stupid, this book has it all.

I can’t speak for anyone else regarding the absence of 1984 on their lists, but it brings up an interesting topic for me.

See, I first read 1984 in high school as part of the curriculum of an AP Literature class my junior year. Call me an obedient student in this case because, see, the 1984 that I read in high school was a different 1984 a year or two later. It wasn’t that we read some abridged or redacted version. No, it was that the way I read 1984 that first time was different because the very act of reading it was framed differently.

Even before we read the book, we were informed that Orwell wrote it as an allegory about the dangers of Soviet-style Communism. We were taught the context of Soviet show trials and bread lines and rationing. All of that stuff did exist under Stalin and other Soviet leaders, so it’s not like our teacher lied to us about their relevance to Orwell’s book. Those aspects of Soviet society did get incorporated into Orwell’s novel, after all. However, to frame 1984 in this way was misleading.

To say 1984 is “just” an allegory about totalitarian communism was incorrect. The character of Winston, with his wheezing and ill health incorporated elements of Orwell’s own last days, for instance. And like Winston, Orwell worked in an office of propaganda for a time during World War II. Thus, the Ministry of Truth was informed as much by the inside knowledge of propaganda work on behalf of Britain as it was by the nightmare images of German fascist and Russian Soviet propaganda. (Orwell had been an anti-Soviet since his encounters with their meddling against Republican and anarchist forces during the Spanish Civil War).

Here’s a passage from Douglas Kerr’s In the Picture:Orwell, India and the BBC that highlights the connection between 1984’s Ministry of Truth and Orwell’s days doing British propaganda work:

The BBC like all other publication media came under the supervision of the Ministry of Information, housed in the University of London Senate House and notoriously a model for the dreaded Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and directed by the aptly-initialled Brendan Bracken. Policy directives were issued to the BBC from time to time by the Ministry, and the corporation was charged with censoring its own output in conformity with government requirements. Every broadcast script was vetted in advance, twice, once for Policy and once for Security. Improvisation on air was not allowed. This had a peculiar effect on discussion programmes, for example, in which the pretence was maintained that dialogue was proceeding spontaneously whereas in fact each intervention and response was read from a prepared script. A switch censor monitored all broadcasts with instructions to interrupt any attempt to deviate from the script. This applied to entertainment and cultural programmes as much as to news and editorial matter.

Orwell, despite his WWII years at the BBC, castigated British imperialism in the same manner as he abhorred Soviet totalitarianism. Likewise, Orwell had an obvious disdain for fascism, but also, too of the capitalism that he saw as leading to fascist totalitarianism.

From the same essay quoted above, here’s Orwell speaking in 1937 after his experiences in fighting the fascists and the Soviets in Spain:

After what I have seen in Spain I have come to the conclusion that it is futile to be ‘anti-Fascist’ while attempting to preserve capitalism. Fascism after all is only a development of capitalism, and the mildest democracy, so-called, is liable to turn into Fascism when the pinch comes. We like to think of England as a democratic country, but our rule in India, for instance, is just as bad as German Fascism, though outwardly it may be less irritating. I do not see how one can oppose Fascism except by working for the overthrow of capitalism, starting, of course, in one’s own country.

Granted, the Orwell of the late 1940’s may have modified his views to an extent, but knowing these things about Orwell would have caused me to read a very different, more complex and profound version of 1984 in high school than the one whose reading got framed for me by a well-meaning, somewhat liberal, state employee.

Hell, it certainly would have helped to know that Big Brother was watching George Orwell, too, a fact disclosed this summer:

George Orwell, the author who coined the phrase “Big Brother is watching you”, was himself the subject of intense surveillance by the secret services, documents released on Tuesday disclose.

The creator of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which envisages a day when every person’s movements are scrutinised by a totalitarian state, was closely monitored amid concerns that he was a prominent member of the communist movement.

Every aspect of his life came under the microscope during the 1930s and 40s. The scrutiny even extended to his wife Eileen, who had to be vetted before she was allowed to take up a post with the Ministry of Food.

Files released by the National Archives disclose that in 1942, Scotland Yard was paying close attention to Orwell, who was then working at the BBC.

Given the similarity between the image of Winston and Orwell himself, I wouldn’t be surprised that, like The Game, Orwell knew what was up.

But even aside of all this, if the focus of our high school class discussion of 1984 had focused more on the methods and mechanics of coercion that Orwell so eloquently highlights in his dark novel– the “re-writing history, to false-flag attacks, and a system of total control over humanity” and torture that Lotus mentions–I’d have been reading 1984 more completely back then. Truth be told, we did have a follow up discussion on Newspeak and political language and looked at Orwell’s famous essay on the English language.  However, the parameters of our dialogue only allowed for pointing out very limited examples of the use of language distortion by politicians, and not by the media itself. As for false-flag attacks and the likes, those conversations are probably still verboten during official classroom discussion time even now, so it’s not a surprise we wouldn’t have gone there when I was in high school.

Once I re-read 1984 on my own, in light of things happening in the world, I got Orwell’s message quite a bit more clearly.

But any book can be altered based upon the way the reading of it is framed, even before we flip open the cover. The Bible or the Qu’ran, for example, are two books that have been framed in very specific ways, often ways that are self-serving to certain influential groups in our society and those framings are pretty pervasive. So it becomes a hell of a challenge to approach these books with untainted ears, eyes and minds and read them with the intended message(s) intact.

I guess the point is, you read a book the way you’re ready to read a book. And what you’re ready for depends on you to a large degree.  Of course, first you have to realize that it depends on you.

What do you all think?

I’d love to open this up to a discussion of other books that are misleadingly framed. Better still, I’d love to discuss how we clear out our own pre-conceived/pre-conditioned notions of what a “book” or even a film is, so that we can digest it in a deeper, clearer way, more profound way.

And because I’m already “framing” this discussion in a certain way, even before it has begun, feel free to take the sharing of hearts and minds (a.k.a. discussion) anywhere you will.

Phone lines are open!