BIG BROTHER FITS THE BILL
‘1984’ addresses timely political concerns but preaches to the choir
“1984” is so popular right now. Just this year, the classic novel by George Orwell shot to No. 1 on Amazon’s best-seller list, the film adaptation from 1984 was screened in hundreds of theaters across the country and the theatrical version is having a resurgence. The play is seeing both a production on Broadway (which is sold out at the Hudson Theatre and has already caused four audience members to faint) and in Houston, via a brutally intimate, exhilarating staging at the Obsidian Theater.
Let’s not discuss why. Those articles have already been written. Those conversations already take place every day, in the car and over the dinner table and at bathrooms, bars and lecture halls. In this “post-truth” era of paranoia, politics and technology seem at once anxiety-inducing and inescapable. Which means, if you can’t escape political talk in 2017, you also can’t escape political talk when seeing and discussing art.
Thus, we know why Orwell’s famous novel is popular once again. Like “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the new Hulu series based on Margaret Atwood’s novel, “1984” is hot right now for what we believe are all the “right” reasons — artists speaking truth to power and consumers deciding to go see something engaging and “serious,” as opposed to, say, the latest “Transformers” movie.
But what if we’re wrong? What if “1984” and Michael Bay movies share the same existential DNA? What if “1984” is nothing but a piece of entertainment that feeds into something that we already know we want?
Dystopian fictions and stories about government run amok aren’t a political movement. They’re a cultural craze, following more on the heels of zombies, wizards and sexy vampires than the civil rights movement.
Nevermind the fact that the Obsidian Theater’s staging features the vicious, near-Olympian physicality of Allen Titel, who plays Winston Smith, and the stony confidence of Chris Gibson, who plays the oppressor O’Brien. Titel writhes like a beast while Gibson smiles in his suit; and yet, even when you know Gibson is the beast, Titel is the human. The contrast in their mannerisms, voice and appearance — the ironic interplay between civility and savagery — shows how deceptive the optics of oppression can be.
Nevermind that the adaptation by Michael Gene Sullivan and direction by Tom Stell condenses Orwell’s book without diminishing its potency. Staged with bright lights in a small, black-box setting, it forces the audience to confront why government and technology seem to be on the verge of warping our sense of reality to the point of enslavement.
Nevermind the realization that Big Brother isn’t just some disembodied voice on a screen anymore — it’s everywhere we go, inside our pockets, tracking more aspects of our life than the average consumer might want to admit.
Nevermind that Sullivan highlights the most intellectually thrilling, but also most overlooked part of “1984,” the subversive book of ideas that outlines why freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength and war is peace, explaining a lucid and practical (though not original) political theory about the way war and industry feeds into the oppression of the lower class.
Because even if the phrase “must-see” is lavished on this production, the reasons behind why we feel like we must see it are more self-serving than we’d like to admit. Which is to say that if the noble way of interpreting “1984” is that it is akin to protest, the other mindset is that “1984” is also just like Fox News in the sense that it preaches to a choir.
This raises a familiar “what’s the point of art” discussion, except the question isn’t activism versus entertainment, but rather how to categorize art in a politically reactionary and reactive environment in which activism and entertainment are one and the same.
I suspect Orwell will affirm more than sway political opinion (not that Orwell or Obsidian Theater is or should be interested in doing so). Because no matter how explicitly a story criticizes a given institution, it’s still up to the audience to connect A to B. Claiming that “1984” is “about Trump,” for example, isn’t a proclamation about Orwell but a statement about Trump that weaponizes “1984” so that it becomes part of the vocabulary of criticism. We are still in the realm of consumerism. It’s all about you.
That’s not to say that Orwell’s story doesn’t remain nuanced. Its observations on fear and control are still prescient. And the ending is an ingenious toying of character sympathy.
Winston begins as the Katniss Everdeen of Oceania, the hero with whom we most closely associate. We think we are Winston and therefore root for him while he fights for “the human spirit,” even as O’Brien asserts his dominance. And then Winston begins to do something Katniss never did, which makes the story braver than most other dystopian stories — he begins to believe in Big Brother.
We’re not so comfortable relating to a convert. The final flourish of “1984” suggests both the reader’s complicity and helplessness in the face of mental totalitarianism. It’d be a lie to believe that we are better or stronger than this man — that,
by the end, we also wouldn’t love Big Brother.
But a devastating ending doesn’t negate a premise of emotional fulfillment. “1984” and all other “relevant” pieces like it — and there are many to come in the Houston theater scene — risk confirming and exacerbating current anxieties, but not doing much more.
Obsidian Theater’s production is highly recommended as a piece of theater, but it’s counterproductive to believe that it’s some kind of answer to our woes. Nor is it the defining art that reflects our times, because that piece might be only a kernel in someone’s mind, undergoing a necessary, and perhaps longer-than-we’d-like, digestive process.
Because here’s the thing about digestion, political or otherwise: it’s protracted. The theatrical gem of the Trump era might not arrive for five or 10 years. It might have come out already and nobody’s noticed yet. It might even be “The Apprentice,” if you’re glib about the idea. But to say “1984” defines our time would be to imply that its relevance is conditional to the emotions of the present moment — and that is not how we think of great works. If we are only now reaching for it because we need it to feel good, then it’s nothing more than a mental laxative parading as classic literature.
Both “1984,” and us, deserve more credit than that.