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From: cs1@oddjob.UUCP (Cheryl Stewart)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: _1984_  (spoiler)
Message-ID: <799@oddjob.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Jun-85 04:18:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: oddjob.799
Posted: Mon Jun 17 04:18:21 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Jun-85 04:26:38 EDT
References: <2107@ut-sally.UUCP> <295@wuphys.UUCP>
Reply-To: cs1@oddjob.UUCP (Cheryl Stewart)
Distribution: net
Organization: U. Chicago, Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lines: 33
Summary: 



                 _1984_

           The book vs. the film



     The film _1984_ has an unfortunate difference in emphasis from the book.
Orwell stressed the intellectual brutality of IngSoc and its language,
how the main character fought that brutality by simply (and illegally) main-
taining his diary, and through that diary the integrity of his own mind.  
There are strong hints throughout the book that the affair with the girl 
was set up merely to destroy his capacity to figure out when he was being
lied to.  (It worked.)
      The film, on the other hand, stresses the physical and psychological
brutality of of the system.  They won't let him shave or make love.  They
torture him because he asks questions and thinks for himself.  The film is
very true to the book in many details, but what's left out is Orwell's 
story of a man struggling to articulate his own ideas while being bombarded
with flashy rhetoric intended to dupe him otherwise.
      I came away from the book convinced that Madison Avenue was just a
candy-coated version of IngSoc. I came away from the movie relieved that 
I'd never been tortured here in wonderful democratic America.  

      Has anyone else noticed this difference?

                                                  Cheryl Stewart
-- 

There's one kind of favor I'll ask of you: 

  Just see that my grave is kept clean.