“In all the useful arts the world is standing still, or going backwards.”
Emmanuel Goldstein – Nineteen Eighty-Four
It seems that for art in any medium to maintain creative viability, it must deviate from the established norms in order to explore divergent forms. It above all else must eschew repetition (from work to work, not necessarily within a work) to avoid apt perceptions of unoriginality, single minded sloganeering or propaganda. To travel down the same road will invariably end you at the same place whether you are walking or riding a giraffe. With the destination the same, art then becomes more an expression of style than creative invention. Style is the tool of promotion.
There can be little doubt that art is the promotion of the artist, assuredly of his or her creative perception as expressed. But promotion of the individual perspective of an artist is different than promotion of a product, person or established ideology. Artists govern their output based upon their understanding of their subject within their capacity to express it: the greater the understanding, and the higher the capacity, the finer the art. Ideally.
Within the admonition to repetition comes the awareness that much that is great artistically is derivative of other work of varying degrees of greatness. Certain themes deserve more than a single perspective while others get so much light as to become banal and trite. Much popular entertainment falls into the latter category: endless repetition of themes to engineer a predictable response, (usually to purchase something). Where this can be called art, it can as well be called bad art, or barely art. Arty. Not unlike the artistry of your house painter to not splatter your bougainvillea, more skill in presentation than in content. Commercial art exists to make money, not to inspire deep thinking but instead to stir emotion, drive passion.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell deftly interprets his antecedents and presents a hard reality, much of which has been realized by an aristocracy who viewed it as a training manual, while ignored or dismissed by the people who needed to understand its cautionary tale in order to avoid the grim reality it portended. Nineteen Eighty-Four was inspired by Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, where he offered poignantly, “There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.”
Orwell wrote a review of Zamyatin’s dystopian novel and ended it proclaiming that his next book would be based upon it, that book being Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both books are predicated on the written word. D 503, protagonist of We, writes a diary of his experience in the One State, which is the book; Winston Smith writes a diary of his anti-Party feelings to the mysterious O’Brien, inner party bigwig. The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein is the bible of the anti-Party Brotherhood, a book so dangerous that merely possessing it demanded a mandatory torture/death sentence.
And Newspeak is the winnowing away of language in order to reduce words with which to express discontentment – hard to demand freedom if there is no word for it. Unsurprising that writers would give such primacy to the word.
While much of Orwell and Zamyatin’s visions have come to pass – both offered the surveillance state, socially acceptable torture of presumed opposition and perpetual war – Orwell’s impact on the language has proven considerable. “Newspeak”, “doublethink”, “Big Brother”, the “Thought Police” all exist as understood paradigms within our culture even among those who haven’t read his work. In the USA, “Big Brother” is a TV show where people covet the very public intrusion of constant surveillance – in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Big Brother’s attentions were devoutly avoided. This is instructive.
Newspeak is the systematic elimination of language deemed by the Party as problematic. The Party, much as most states (especially Nazi Germany, one of Orwell’s models) had a definitive anti-intellectual bent. Slaves illiterate don’t know of the delights (or costs) of freedom, of liberty and if there is no one to tell them, they cannot appreciate their discontentment. They have no context. Literacy offers context. The more literate one becomes the more of the world around them they can understand and the better they can express their perceptions thereof. Newspeak is the Party’s way to eliminate dissent as in Newspeak dissent is not a word.
We still foster this anti-intellectual bias, still suffer for it as our amazing language gets reduced to acronyms, abbrvtns & emoticons. Newspeak is alive and functional as words don’t disappear from dictionaries so much as from use or cultural understanding while others achieve prominence. Our expressions and responses are governed through the media which compels us and defines our socialization. Reduced linguistic proficiency equals limited understanding; limited understanding in an anti-intellectual culture equals reduced desire to understand. Apathy.
Orwell describes a machine which cranks out sentimental and Party-inspirational songs: simple, heavily percussive, a glorious machine called the versificator. The songs are proffered in Newspeak but Orwell never defines the music in similar form. It seems such a style of music, which uses very little by way of music to drive manipulative lyrics, would be called Newsound. Perhaps that which emanates from Newsound would even be called Newsic.
The song “Big Bother”, inspired by its brilliant antecedents, is composed in Newsound. It has but one note throughout. That note is A. “Big Bother” is a song about Newspeak (and doublethink) in the style of Newsound. A singular piece of music to be sure.
11/18/14
© 2014
Big Bother
Damnation/Salvation
Torment is delight
Employment vacation
Love eternal fight
Sex is masturbation
Blindness is insight
Victimhood predation
The left think they’re right
Sufficiency starvation
Charity is just theft
Approval indignation
Ineptitude is deft
The vagabond vocation
Abundance is bereft
Destruction is creation
The right is all that’s left
Big Bother is listening
Just like God the father
Through fire a christening
Sing praise for Big Bother
Newspeak is awesome
Too many words
Reduce the clutter
Silence the herds
Double plus goodness
Emptiness girds
Preventing face crimes
Living inwards
Newsound astounding
Too many notes
Just use the old ones
“Musical quotes”
Repress expression
Groupthink promotes
Regress progression
Art’s antidotes
Big Bother is watching us
Prepare for the slaughter
Right after debauching us
Hosed off by Big Bother
Debt is really profit
Divisions unite
Loss is acquisition
Ill iterate right
Disdain is affection
Frailty is strong
Peace in insurrection
Where the rite is wrong
Ignorance is knowledge
Wisdom stupidity
Brutality kindness
Largess cupidity
Escape is containment
Slander validity
Hate is entertainment
Confinement liberty
Big Bother ubiquity
Earth and air and water
Outrage and iniquity
Blessings of Big Bother
© 2014
