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Dystopian Lexicographies: 1984 and A Clockwork Orange

Edmond O'Brien and Donald Pleasence speak in 1984, from 1956

Two of the great literary dystopian novels rework the language itself to accomplish a keen disconnect with the contemporary reader’s known world. This high neologisticism (Itself a neologism. Neologed by me, just now.) has an effect that also serves to make the works timeless. It’s something that takes a deft touch and could easily be schlocked up if overdone. Many a sci-fi story has failed for misuse of this technique and become unpleasantly impenetrable or worse,  cutesy.

One that does well with it, of course,  is George Orwell in 1984. Here’s a link to The Newspeak Dictionary.

Most know of the 1984 film version famously released in the titular year of 1984. There is a lesser known, and now more rarely viewed, film version of 1984 released in the year 1956, with Edmond O’Brien as Winston Smith.

Where the early version failed with a love story that ” makes the unforgivable mistake of providing an ending that cuts clean across Orwell’s savage purpose”, the 1984 version may have failed partly for the opposite reason, for bludgeoning the romance up-frontally, so to speak, with distracting nudity, as well as its overextended torture scene. In many ways  the 1984 1984 appeared to have been an intentional refutation of the 1956 1984. Where O’Brien may have been a little bit on the fleshy side, John Hurt as Smith may be a little too gaunt, even for a dystopia. Both are talents worthy of the role, however.

Anthony Burgess put his own lexicon right in the back pages of the acutely prescient A Clockwork Orange, seeing the devolution of the language as a parallel to the devolution of Western civilization. Here’s the Nadsat Dictionary. You can draw you own conclusions as to why Burgess predicted a heavily Russian influence on the language of his ultra-violent UK teens of the near future.

On the slightly lighter side, a literary entity in itself, Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary illustrates that the maddening ironies and nearly intolerable absurdities of a dystopia may be just what we’ve been  moving through since his own time. An example:

SYMBOL, n. Something that is supposed to typify or stand for something else. Many symbols are mere “survivals” — things which having no longer any utility continue to exist because we have inherited the tendency to make them; as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. They were once real urns holding the ashes of the dead. We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness.

1884: Yesterday’s Future

Variety reports that Terry Gilliam is shepherding a steampunk feature film called 1884: Yesterdays Future. Directed by special effects specialist Tim Olive, it’s a film made in 1840, using steam powered filmmaking, of a story set 40 years hence. Both puppets and CGI characters will be used and the actors’ live action lips and eyes will be included, much like the old Synchro-Vox technique pioneered by Cambria Productions’ Space Angel and Clutch Cargo cartoons.

American stern-wheeler floating aircraft carriers in Tim Olive's 1884: Yesterday's Future.

Here’s the very rough four-minute teaser:

Hat tip: Quiet Earth

Rashomon

The dead man tells his story…through a medium, in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon.

"How quiet it was."

Vincent Price Day

Saying “Happy” Vincent Price Day may not be quite appropriate, even if people do say Happy Halloween.

Hm. What to watch while in a dystopia phase, on Vincent Price Day.  How about The Last Man on Earth. Yeah. That’ll do.  Here’s a review.

Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price in TALES OF TERROR

Post Apocalyptic Media List At Quiet Earth

From 12 Monkeys to Z for Zachariah.

InfinityBound: focus shift, back to the sci-fi

Not such a glacial shift, really, but for a few reasons: one big one that will become apparent soon, and two because of a recent high tech failure. Our front line graphics-chewing PC died. We’ll work to revive it, or something, soon.  Gaming topics and reviews will have to be set aside for the duration. Science fiction will be the focus for the nonce, though it has never really left InfinityBound. Near-future, HARD sci-fi story-telling in all media is our main thing. We are ride the boundary between speculative life–it’s not just about the technology, you know–and the real world…as we now know it. Of course we are not limiting to that by any stretch, all sci-fi is fair game and we’ll even stretch into paranormal. But we promise, no teen vampires.

Like this :  Artificial Intelligence: helping man to explore the cosmos

Sounds like a story in there somewhere.

And we’ve recently been brushing up on our dystopia recently as well (again, for reasons  etc etc ….stay tuned)

The other night we screened Children of Men, which was better than not,  and we’ll give it a mini- review next. Film reviews are much less time-consuming than game reviews, so hopefully it will mean more posts . Two hours letting the subject  wash over  you and then write. Game reviews, well the way we like to do them anyway, can take over your life for weeks. Soon as we get our A-game technology back in gear we’ll do more.

But for now, back to science fiction.

District 9 Nominated for Best Picture

Prawn!

The Oscar nominations were announced today and somehow or other District 9 is among the Best Picture nominees. Now I enjoyed the movie but let me go out on a limb and predict that it will not win the Best Picture Oscar. You might say, well, this is the first years of the expanded 10-nominee, watered- down category…but wait. It’s one of two science fiction flicks in the running. So, pro-rating back to the smaller list and, well…Avatar would still be there.

Dune Yea, Avatar Nay

Dune vs. Avatar. Friend made an Avatar comparison I hadn’t heard, adding yet another facet to its derivation. (I haven’t seen it yet. I may wait for the DVD. I get vertigo from video games. This one may knock me out cold. But there’s plenty of information about it out there.) I’ve heard it’s similar to a few others (Pocohantas, Dances with Wolves, Fern Gully.)

But what about Dune? Does the Earthling guy become a messiah type? A god? Or just a leader of the opposition. If a god then was there a legend that an avatar would come and save the Na’avi? Dune splices that with Dune’s Bene Gesserit millenia-in-the-making genetic manipulation plans. A bit more meat there.

It may bear some similarities to the Dune movie and the miniseries, in that they were fairly simplied tick-tock interpretations, but those books were probably not destined to be good movies. I had excessively high, it turns out, hopes for the David Lynch attempt but was deeply disappointed. Besides phoning it in, with a production scale far beyond his ken, Lynch was lashed to a couple-three fatal casting choices: his own (Kyle McLachan?!) and the studio’s (Sting!?)

Scarce resource? Spice vs….whatever it is the evil humans want in Avatar? Yes, but House Atreides was given Dune to manage the spice in a diplomatic deal that turned out to be a trap. The Fremen indigenes may not have been happy about it but armed resistance didn’t start until the Harkonnens took over. So right there you have a more sophisticated set-up than just evil Americans swooping in to grab Na’avi land.

Also, from what I’ve heard, Cameron’s planet is elaborately imagined but maybe a bit OVERimagined. Whereas the environment of Dune was simpler and more integrated with the characters and the political motivations of the story. Why were the worms feared, yet worshiped? I’m sure you’re aware of the actual source of the spice. There again, a point probably intentionally not clearly laid out in the books, untouched in the movies, and pretty much out of Avatar’s league.

And oh yes, another point in common: Na’avi skin, blue. The Fremen whites-of-their-eyes? Blue.

Hadn’t thought of that Dune comparison though. Interesting, and worth considering.

Long-Delayed Destruction of Phantom Menace in Seven Parts

Remember years ago leaving the theater after seeing Episode One: The Phantom Menace you thought “I know it was bad but I don’t feel like expending too many cycles analyzing why”? Well the myriad answers why are are contained in the clips on this page at Slashfilm.com: Strong language and content warning.

You also left the theater that day with no desire to see it again, and yet you have seen “Empire Strikes Back” nearly annually since your first screening. The gentleman in these clips explains why that might be, and in the process of deconstructing dismantling the Episode I, also conveys a good basic lesson in storytelling/scriptwriting.

Personally my own Star Wars orbit began to decay with Return of the Jedi. Besides the accursed Ewoks, I came away with the distinct impression that Lucas didn’t actually re-screen or review his own previous films for any “the-story-up-to-now” before scribbling the script for the next one. At the End of Empires Yoda states: “There is another.” Leia, I’d guessed. Made sense. But I never found out.