1990's Responses to:
1984

This page contains reader responses to my anti-review web page for the movie 1984. These responses are dated 1997 and later

Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 21:21:07 -0700
From: Ray Powell 
Subject: 1984

Hi,  I just thought I'd throw in my two cents.  I just finished 1984,
boy this book sucks!  I would have thrown it out prior to ending the
first chapt.  But, like most of you I was force feed this crap as part
of a grad course at Georgia Southern Univ. in Statesboro, Ga.
	I think reading this book was like taking a shit,  damn it felt good
when it was over!!     Ray Powell  G.S.U.  Statesboro, Ga

Date: Mon, 05 Jan 1998 22:48:35 -0600
From: nate jarvis <njarvis@CCTR.UMKC.EDU>
Subject: 1984

There were two operative differences between Orwell's 1984 and
Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, the Russian dystopia Orwell admittedly
ripped off while writng in '48 (by the by, under the Chinese zodiac '48
and '84 are both years of the rat, which may mean more to people who
have read the book than seen the movie but the rats still play a large
role in both). The telescreens are the first. In We the streets
are bugged for sound, but not video, and all new buildings are made of
glass (there is a place called the anceient hosue made of stone where
D-503 and I-330 meet to do more or less what Winston and Julia did in
the house in the prole quarters (ie sex and nicoteine). But whereas
I-330 was only using D-503 as part of her plot to overthrow the
Benefactor, Julia truly loved Winston, if only because love was illegal.
What makes 1984 unique, and not just another another
Hamlet (which was originally French and like the 70's film
adaptation not by Shakespeare), having nothing in the way of fresh
thought but being in English and hence marketable, is the love story.
Zamyatin's OneState allowed love, not monogamy but love all the same.
The lost love for Julia is Winston's last recognized defeat (his
acceptance of Big Brother is his final defeat, but by virtue of the
nature of such defeat cannot recognize it as such), this is Orwell's
penulitmate expression of the power of evil. What makes this love story
so much more potent than Romeo and Juliet is the brutal realism to it;
poeple really do just fall out of love, into states of estrangement.
Romeo and Juliet's tragic close is contirved, it's fake, constructed to
serve his "dramatic" purposes (or just to not alter the plot as it was
when he lifted it from someone else's sonnet). It comes off as plastic,
and shallow.

Someone said the proles were never really sure what year it was. Maybe,
maybe not. That was never really properly addressed in the movie or the
book (I've never seen the 1955 adaptation). The proles were mostly just
dumb and drunk and horny and talke dabout the lottery. Winston was an
Outer Party Member, that's why he wore the blue cover-alls. Proles
enjoyed freedom, Inner Party members did too if they were on the level
(ie, weren't allegorically Trotskyist). Outer Party members were the
ones kep[t under constant surveillence, and who disappeared in the
miniluv (the Newspeak for the Ministries is where their irony really
lies, Minipax being mini pax being little peace, etc.).

I thought for awhile that Julia (played by Suzanna Hamilton in the
movie, really, if you wanted to write film reviews the least youi
could've done would have been to write down some people's names, or
checked the paper ads which tend print the leading actors names in the
fine print) was a reference to Julius Caesar, the whole idea of a failed
coup parallel and all, but the thought of it as a modification of Juliet
and hence a Shakespearean allusion is growing on me. which is
irrelevent, never mind.

Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 21:00:07 -0500
From: Julia Lewis <TOOTLES@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: 1984

In your review of 1984 you said that you did not understand why
the movie was called 1984 if it was set in the future. 
1984 is actually a book written in 1949 by George Orwell, so it
is set in the future.

From: "bakerspread" <bakerspread@computron.net>
Subject: 1984
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 22:52:16 -0700

Dear Sir,

Have you read the book 1984?  In the book, the  love story between Winston
and Julia is not what the book is about.  The  book is about what George
Orwell felt the future would hold.  In  addition, the book was published
in 1949, when 1984 was the distant future.  To truly enjoy and
comprehend the movie 1984, you  must read the book.  It adds a whole
new dimension to it.

Sincerely, Kevin Baker

From: "Ross, Michael" <RossMic@pbnec.com>
Subject: hi
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 12:06:03 -0700

Kelvin,

I'm sure that you have recieved other responses of this type about your
review of the movie 1984.  And maybe you have read the book by George Orwell
since you wrote the review.  I would just like to tell you that the book was
written just after WWII and was somewhat a prediction of the future.  The
movie was made many years after the book, and as movies go, followed the
book much more closely than most movies do.  Anyway, if you haven't read the
book, I suggest you do.
Mike

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(Updated November 8, 1998.)