It was called "Orwell: A Life in Pictures". I should think that it will get an international release, because it had rather high production values and, of course, a lot of it had significance to events happening now.
I think you're right about the foresight thing. The horrible thing about 1984, and which a lot of people don't realise, is that it was never meant to prophetic. He simply stated that, if people were prepared to allow it, a state like that could always rise up. I think crap like Fox News may as well re-brand itself the two-minute hate. And remember the unseen enemy in 1984? Why does it remind one so much of the "war against terror"?
But, more than that, it also detailed his life beginning as a priveleged member of the bourgeois classes in England, to somebody who understood poverty and suffering. He was, of course, no saint, but remarks such as, "I looked into the girl's face... and there was no dumb animal acceptance of her situation; she fully understood her position, and her sad place in the world, and the degradation of cleaning out a gutter in some filthy back-street," demonstrated his empathy.
More than anything, though, his words on the corruption of power and the suppression of intelligent debate seem to ring true much more now than they ever did. I can't even begin to imagine what he would think of Dubya.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2004-01-15 05:07 am (UTC)I think you're right about the foresight thing. The horrible thing about 1984, and which a lot of people don't realise, is that it was never meant to prophetic. He simply stated that, if people were prepared to allow it, a state like that could always rise up. I think crap like Fox News may as well re-brand itself the two-minute hate. And remember the unseen enemy in 1984? Why does it remind one so much of the "war against terror"?
But, more than that, it also detailed his life beginning as a priveleged member of the bourgeois classes in England, to somebody who understood poverty and suffering. He was, of course, no saint, but remarks such as, "I looked into the girl's face... and there was no dumb animal acceptance of her situation; she fully understood her position, and her sad place in the world, and the degradation of cleaning out a gutter in some filthy back-street," demonstrated his empathy.
More than anything, though, his words on the corruption of power and the suppression of intelligent debate seem to ring true much more now than they ever did. I can't even begin to imagine what he would think of Dubya.