The Return of Bowdler

In 1807, Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) published The Family Shakespeare.  This was an edited version of Shakespeare's works that removed materials thought to be unsuitable for children.  For example, in Hamlet, Ophelia's suicide is instead painted as an accidental drowning and "Heavens!" is substituted where the original had used "God!"  It is a kinder and gentler Shakespeare.  This type of revision came to be called by his name: Bowdlerize.

Today, the works of Roald Dahl are being rewritten to make them more suitable to children of today.  The word 'fat' must be removed lest someone get shamed.  The word 'ugly' has to go as well.  And let's not even get started on "crazy."  Certainly, we can rewrite it, make it better than it was before.  His old-fashioned and politically-incorrect prose can be updated to the woke standards of today.  You'll hardly even notice.  Winston Smith is hard at work in the Ministry of Literature, revamping the inappropriate compositions of yesteryear into a modern masterpiece.

This zeal for changing the past has been gaining speed.  At first, it was a fad in the entertainment industry to revive popular TV shows and movies, only to undermine them.  In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker was now a pathetic looser and the purple-haired shrew is a great heroine.  In Enola Holmes, young Enola proves to be smarter than her brother, Sherlock.  In the new incarnations of Star Trek, James Kirk is a blundering oaf and Spock is a beta male to his girlfriend, Uhura.  In the TV versions of Star Trek, it turns out that Spock had a smarter and more capable sister, Michael Burnham.  Scooby Doo is absent from the revival that is titled Velma; in this version, Velma is Indian (i.e., ancestors from India), Shaggy is black, Daphne is half-Asian, and Fred is a pathetic straight white male.  In Masters of the Universe, He-Man is killed right out the gate.  Gee, that's like killing off James Bond in a Bond film.  Oh, yeah, that happened too.  In England, movies and TV are colonizing the past to make it more acceptable to modern audiences.  Winston Churchill was portrayed as black on stage.  In Mary Queen of Scots, there were black soldiers and black nobles throughout England and Scotland in the 14th century.  Anne Boleyn was a black woman.  The most recent Great Expectations is multicultural though still set in 19th century.  Kenneth Branaugh's two appearances as Hercule Poirot have changed the racial makeup and attitudes of the 1930s.  The latest version of Doctor Who, we discover that the real first doctor was not William Hartnell, but a black woman.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is here.  The past is being rewritten, just not in quite the way George Orwell predicted.

The Road to Wigan Pier

The book opens with a foreword by the publisher, Victor Gollancz.  He offers praise for Orwell's documenting the tragic living standards of coal miners in northern England (the first half of the book) but then denounces Orwell's views on why socialism doesn't sell to these lower-class workers (the second half of the book).  Of course, Gollancz praises himself for publishing the book despite his clear objections.  Particularly funny (or tragic) was his defense of the Soviet Union.

It is 1936 and Orwell begins in a boarding house in Wigan where he stayed.  He shared a room with several other men and ate substandard fare.  It is rather bleak, but it gets worse.  He then descended the mine and discovered just how difficult was the miner's life.  He had met several who had been crippled in mine accidents and many more were killed.  Traveling the area, he describes the tumbledown homes that would be marked for demolition but for the paucity of housing.  Then there is the catastrophic unemployment that is worse than the government number indicate.  He provides a detailed accounting of how much a miner might make, the costs of living, the periods of unemployment, and the impossibility of escaping a life of hard labor.

Orwell moves on to discuss why socialism has failed to take hold despite the grim conditions he has just detailed.  He offers several reasons.  First, there is class prejudice.  He himself was raised on the lower rungs of the middle class (middle class in England would be white collar workers whereas the working class would be blue collar.  Middle class in England doesn't translate the same as middle class in the United States) and was raised to have a low opinion of the working class.  He further says that socialist are too intellectual, arguing points that would only be of interest to other intellectuals.  He notes that often socialism intersects with fringe or unpopular ideologies, such as vegetarianism or feminism.  This association gives the impression that socialists are a bunch of cranks.  Though he proclaims himself to be a devoted socialist, he says that socialists are using the wrong arguments to win converts.  He even posited that fascism was more likely to take hold in England in the next 10 years. 

It is eye opening to see the same arguments from today were being argued 85 years ago.  There is nothing new.  That Gollancz was a fan of the Soviets shows that he was in the dark.  He must have read Walter Duranty.  Despite repeated epic failures of socialism, there continue to be proponents for socialism.  Orwell is clearly a brilliant man, and yet he argues for socialism.  By the time he wrote 1984, he had come to understand where socialism leads.  Here, he had an inkling while writing this book.

Excellent book.  Recommended.

Civil War 2020

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

The United States has a particular history that has shaped it to be what it is today.  Some of that history is good.  Some of that history is bad.  On balance, it is more good than bad and has resulted in the most benevolent and selfless nation the world has ever seen.  A lot of people don't see it that way.  As luck would have it, Orwell provided a road map for them to use: Control the past.

Columbus discovered the new world.  Vilify him and tear him down.  Done!

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.  Discredit him and tear him down.  In progress.

George Washington won the Revolutionary War and served as first President of the United States.  Maximize his faults and ignore his achievements.  In progress.

James Madison is the Father of the Constitution.  Discredit him.  On the to-do list.

If you can recast the Founders as villains rather than heroes, you can then discard what they wrought.  How can you revere a Declaration that was written by slave owners?  How can you live under a Constitution that was drafted by a bunch of elite white men, half of whom owned slaves?  Tear it all down!

But Frederick Douglass used the Declaration and the Constitution to bolster his abolitionist oratory.  How can you say that all men are created equal when slavery exists?  To be true to the founding documents, slavery had to end.  Then tear down Frederick Douglass!

Martin Luther King referred to the Constitution and the Declaration when he said the Founders signed "a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir."  The Founders had outlined great and noble ideas but did not live up to them.  Nor did many generations afterwards live up to those ideals but progress has been made.

In 1967, Rudi Dutschke proposed a strategy for subverting society by infiltrating institutions.  He called this the long march through the institutions.  The long march is essentially complete in the United States.  The media is almost wholly owned by the left.  Higher education is controlled by the left and churns out ignorant youth who gladly tear down statues.  Most agencies in the government at every level are controlled by the left; is it any wonder that government has mostly stood aside as chaos has gripped the nation.

Lincoln warned that the United States would not fall to a foreign threat.  If we fall, it is because we destroyed ourselves.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Abraham Lincoln

Are we on the brink of America's second civil war?  Maybe.

1984

Who controls the past controls the future.  Who controls the present controls the past.

The movie opens at a rally where the latest news of the unending war is reported to the masses.  During the rally, both Winston Smith (John Hurt) and O'Brien (Richard Burton) notice Julia (Suzanna Hamilton) when she flings a book at the image of Emmanuel Goldstein, enemy of the state.  Winston works in a cubicle where he alters newspaper articles, replacing people who have been 'unpersoned' with other people or rewriting reports of reductions as reports of increases.  Not surprisingly, he has doubts about the government and what he sees on the omnipresent telescreens.  He privately keeps a journal in which he expresses these doubts.  Julia initiates an affair with Winston.  Both of them know that they will eventually be caught and admit to whatever crimes the party requires them to admit but Winston asserts that he will never betray Julia.  The day comes that they are caught during one of their meetings.  Winston is tortured by O'Brien until he doubts whether 2 + 2 = 4 and also betrays Julia.  'Cured' of his thoughtcrimes, Winston is returned to society where he holds an abiding love for Big Brother.

Though familiar with the plot and storyline of Nineteen Eighty-Four, I have not read the novel and only just watched the movie.  Nothing in it surprised me and I was very much reminded of Brazil, which came out the following year.  Brazil is more fun while 1984 is just sad and depressing.  Of course, all the newspeak reminds me of trends in language, where some words become 'unwords' and new, more opaque ones replace them.  For instance, disabled became handicapped, handicapped became physically challenged, physically challenged became differently abled.  These are just euphemisms.  Government has learned to couch things in more favorable terms too.  Spending is investment, secrecy is a new standard of openness, increasing the debt is paying our bills, taxing Peter to subsidize Paul is compassion.  As the language becomes less clear, those who use it can make ambiguous claims and stand by them!  The unpersoning process has gone viral in our media-saturated society.  Say the wrong thing and the rats swarm to pick the bones clean.  No one is safe from the trolls.  Both Hillary and Bernie had to bow to the language of Black Lives Matter during the primaries.  Many have been ostracized for having the wrong opinions or using the wrong words.  Profuse apologies may stave off the frenzy but as often as not encourage more of the same.  Then there is the opening line: Who controls the past controls the future.  I have often noted how historically uninformed people are.  This ignorance is by design.  Here is just one example of a modern Winston Smith rewriting history.

 

Certainly worth watching and surprisingly applicable, which is unfortunate.