Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Memo to Borders: "Move Orwell's 1984 to the non-fiction section..."


This unbelievable article was (accurately!) summed up by a submitter to a popular site for news headlines as follows:

"In Britain you can now be arrested for writing an email you did not write, because it contains a word that rhymes with another word that some official thinks is racist, but no one complained about."

But wait! There's more! Now how much would you pay?

Welcome to the 21st century. The entire world is a lunatic asylum.


4 comments:

Ariel said...

Much of the public places of Britain, and almost all of the public places of London, have been under almost constant surveillance for close to two decades now. It's a common complaint with the British that they're probably the most surveilled country in the world: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6108496.stm

1984 has been eerily close to reality in more than one way for quite some time now. I would recommend V for Vendetta, the graphic novel by Alan Moore, it's a really great vision of a dystopic successor to the totalitarian society foreshadowed by Orwell.

Dcn Latif Haki Gaba SSP said...

Ariel:
I really like V for Vendetta. I was surprised when I learned that it was based on a graphic novel, since I do not have any experience with that genre. Portman's performance is outstanding. In fact, since my wife is now into netflix, I think I'll make a request for "the queue." Nothing like a good apocalyptic film about an oppressive government for a disenfranchised paranoid Albanian.

Ariel said...

The graphic novel is SO much better than the movie (as it usually is). The movie was mostly just an Hollywood-driven attack on conservative politics that completely distorted Moore's original message (taking it out of the original context of the UK in the 80s when he wrote it). Several Fox News personalities were clearly parodied in the movie, almost cartoonishly so.

But yeah, I would definitely recommend several of Moore's graphic novels. He's an extremely intelligent and creative writer and many of his works reflect that...but take it with a grain of salt. He's extremely secular, his political opinions are mostly anarchy, even bordering on the downright occult (he's claimed at one point to worship a "pagan ancient Roman snake deity"). So I'd advise the same thing that I used to advise my former social studies and English students...take everything with a grain of salt, and consider the source.

Ted Badje said...

What Hitler did not do, the Brits have done to themselves. Will the bluebirds come back to Dover?America is truly alone as a beacon of freedom. It is beyond belief. This reaches biblical proportions on the oppression of men.