Talk:Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

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The cat: Unseen Character isn't true about Big Brother. As you can see, this article even has a pic of him, and in the book and films, he is seen all the time on posters and screens. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bronks (talk • contribs) .

I think that "unseen" may more be intended to mean that we don't actually see the physical character himself at any point in the book. Hbackman 22:14, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I generally interpret the line "no one has ever seen him" as meaning that Big Brother is always portrayed by doubles when giving speeches or appearing in public. TashkentFox 20:04, 27 Febuary 2009 (UTC)

Spelling Error

"...with a long pause between the first 'B' and the second—a heavy mumurous sound, somehow curiously..."

Not really a big problem, it just says mumurous instead of murmurous.

Early Reference To Big Brother in H.G. Wells' Star-Begotten, 1937

H.G. Wells mentions "Big Brother" [with the capitals] in his 1937 novel Star-Begotten. The context is a conversation about the common man & how he is vulnerable to manipulation: "Most of us to the very end are obsessed by infantile cravings for protection and direction, and out of these cravings come all these impulses towards slavish subjugation towards gods, kings, leaders, heroes, mystical personifications like the People, My Country Right or Wrong, the Church, the Party, the Masses, the Proletariat. Our imaginations hang on to some such Big Brother idea almost to the end. We will accept almost any self-abasement rather than step out of the crowd and be full-grown individuals." [Wells, H.G.; Star-Begotten, Sphere Books, 1977, p101-102.] The publishing data says this book was copyrighted in 1937. I thought this might be significant to the article, but I'm not an editor, so I wasn't sure where to post this in the discussion. 58.109.48.29 (talk) 10:20, 14 July 2011 (UTC) eve ryone

Uncle Sam?

Who thought it was funny to add "See also: Uncle Sam"? I'm having trouble drawing a connection, unless both are national icons, but that's a stretch. I'm removing it. (User:Stalefries) 134.39.51.9 16:03, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

It wasn't supposed to be funny. They are both personifications of the state used in nationalistic war propaganda. Uncle Sam is arguably unlike Big Brother in that he is not inside the house watching you, but outside protecting you. Nevertheless, the psychological technique of the appeal to family values, the association of governmental authority with benevolent familial authority, the appeal to the "national family"--these are identical in the two propagandas. The powerful, vaguely threatening appearance of the figures themselves is also shared. As I said in my summary comment, this would be better explained in the article... but I was feeling lazy.

I must say, many people have a rather distorted image of Big Brother, apparently based on popular usage of the term by those who have not read 1984. For example, one wonders if the producers of that reality TV show have ever done so. Big Brother really should be understood as Oceania's Uncle Sam. But I guess you thought I meant to imply Uncle Sam was USA's Big Brother! That, of course, is ridiculous. -65.75.18.227 10:46, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

To clarify that further, in modern society (as opposed to Oceania!) Big Brother connotes brutal totalitarian surveillance. Uncle Sam is not watching you! But other than that they are the same. They served the same propaganda function, in the same way--the only reason for the difference was that Oceania was a totalitarian state based on surveillance while WWI USA was not. Each one is adapted to its particular state, but as a propaganda technique, as an instrument of ideological power (i.e., in the way most relevant to 1984), they are indistinguishable. -65.75.18.227 10:54, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Uncle Sam is symbol of the American democratic will; the image was used to rally voluntary patriotism and reflected nothing that American society as a whole did not want. Big Brother, in contrast, is the symbol of the Party, which exists for the sake of its own power. To call these "indistinguishable" merely because they both appeared on posters is akin to saying that, aside from wielding entirely different power under entirely different systems for entirely different reasons, Roosevelt and Stalin were "indistinguishable." Jsamans (talk) 17:27, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Secure beneath the watchful eyes

Great stuff! TODO: incorporate this into the article. -65.75.18.227 10:46, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Picture Caption

Second picture down the page (movie screenshot) the caption is 'Big Brother's face looms on giant telescreens in Victory Square (the actual movie location is Alexandra Palace in Muswell Hill, north London) in Michael Radford's 1984 film adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty Four.'

I think the set used (Alexander Palace) is surplus to information as strictly speaking it has nothing to do with the book or the character/organisation the page is supposed to describe. I'll remove it if nobody objects in a few days, and after that I suppose it can be reverted. Andrewjd 16:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Telescreen.png

Image:Telescreen.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 08:12, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Original Big Brother image?

So yeah, where the hell is the original Big Brother image, from the first 1984 movie? Why isn't it shown here? --Ragemanchoo (talk) 05:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean the image from the 1954 version? In edit mode, you can see that it was commented out because the image was deleted. And if you go to File:Bbc19842.jpg, you'll see that the image was deleted last July because it was a fair-use image with no fair-use rationale provided.--ShelfSkewed Talk 05:48, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

So is the image bound by copyright or not? Its so widely used at this point that I wonder if its become public domain.. --Ragemanchoo (talk) 08:48, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Ministries naming

It says that the ministry of love is the most straight forward, but the reason it gives is because the thought criminals leave loving big brother. It also says that the other ministries are the inverse of their names. But in the book, it asks if the ministry of truth edits history, then is it really a lie? And since there is obviously plenty of resources to waste on outdated military equipment, doesn't the ministry of plenty really have plenty of resources? And since the ministry of peace fights the wars over the useless territories so that they don't have to fight a war on their own soil, don't they really keep the peace?

The ministries are exactly what they say they are, in their own, perverse way, and the article should reflect that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.232.102.14 (talk) 08:12, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Goldstein's Book establishes that the ministries are all what they claim to be. That said, the ministries don't have anything to do with Big Brother, so they belong in the main article discussing the novel, right? Jsamans (talk) 17:29, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Orwell Estate

Man these people are just about as opressive as the government in this book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.151.6.98 (talk) 23:31, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

1984 Here Now

In Britain. Article today in a paper where a former security chief sounds a warning about big brother state in Britain. The term 'Big Brother' has come from the book and has come into popular use. Massive surveillance and monitoring of the population. America, France etc. don't stand for this, but Britain does. Maybe says something about the character of the country? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.8.7.9 (talk) 04:35, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Also 'I think the media need much more scrutiny, and people need to think alot more. We all hear about stabbings and violence in society and everyone loves to talk about something and throw their moral two pennies in, but let's think for a moment. How many stabbings were there in the past compared to now? Were they reported as much? Is say 25 stabbing deaths a year in London within a population of 7 million really cause to panic and bring in draconian surveillance laws a la george orwell and 1984? Which is what is happening. When you factor in the rise in population too compared to the past (when we survived very well without video surveillance etc) then you have to wonder who is playing on peoples fears and why? Or are people and society just eating themselves up with their own self induced panic psychosis and control freakishness? Or is it the mean world syndrome...hmmm p.s also fears about change and society may compel people to worry disproportionately and put their fears onto things which the media then plays up. I know someone who constantly obsesses about their weight although not fat. Really other issues and unhappiness have led her to put all her worries on obsession with her weight. Is that what ths is too? Combined with peoples ignorance and we start to develop into a big brother nightmare which the government are all too eager to exploit to control and tax more and the media play up to. We cant have zero crime and perfect people. Its crazy and undesirable.' Quote from Mean World Syndrome Discussion page by 86.8.2.0. It is suddenly a concern of the middle classes too. Perhaps they realise now we are all guilty of something, and this affects them too. This argument that if we have nothing to hide we have nothing to worry about is a clever and easy false logic statement that condems us all. Are we not to be human any more? The UK has become an autocratic authoritarian wasteland and 1984 is prophetic in this sense. No wonder it was set in the UK. Lets hope this acts as a warning to Europe and other countries. Britain has lost itself. Don't do the same!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.8.7.9 (talk) 23:45, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Apple Advert

Should this section have some kind of citation? Maybe link to the avert on youtube or similar? As it is, this is an entire section with no citation at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kamahl (talk • contribs) 04:31, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Tag and Example

This is an example of why I placed the tag on the article-

• Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and Nazi Party Leader Adolf Hitler were probably the main inspirations for Big Brother.

While I have little doubt this is true, there are no sources listed with the information and is not written in an encyclopedic fashion. The name of the section itself lead me to look closer at further claims and the article as a whole. Just need specific sourcing and it's all good. tyvm. Pudge MclameO (talk) 00:00, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Does this work? http://gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/from1984toonedimensional.pdf 108.65.0.169 (talk)

It's Stalin for the love of...

I just have to say that Big Brother is the most obvious Stalin allusion in all literature. The same way that Goldstein is the literal physical description of Trotsky. Should this page be the vanguard of the most vapid revisionism? 108.65.0.169 (talk) 01:50, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Here is a scholarly citation for Big Brother being Stalin: http://gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/from1984toonedimensional.pdf

Is this good enough to put a line or two in the page? 108.65.0.169 (talk) 02:12, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I would almost say yes and no. It is almost impossible not to compare big brother to stalin since he is argueably the real world figure most closely associated with a big brother like character. Besides adolf hitler or benito mousolini (sort of.), who big brother has also been compared to, there arn't that many figures who he can be compared to around the time of orwell. Orwell could have used him for real world reference, but you also have to look at how the evil's of stalin were not 100% widely known this time, even though orwell himself knew of it. (animal farm.)So i wouldn't say he would be 100% allusion to stalin, just a real world example to compare to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.10.97.243 (talk) 23:35, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Says the article, "Additional speculation from Douglas Kellner of UCLA argued that Big Brother represents Joseph Stalin and that the novel portrayed life under totalitarianism." for which 'speculation' seems a weak word. Even if it isn't (solely) Stalin, I think it's fairly obvious that 1984 portrays life under totalitarianism. Furius (talk) 04:25, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

There is little question that the image of Big Brother is a representation of Stalin. Orwell was a lifelong socialist who remained loyal to the ideals of socialism precisely because he saw very early on (in Spain) that Stalin's Soviet Union was in no way a socialist state. Oceania's IngSoc is a future projection of Stalinist Communism, superimposed on his own England. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jsamans (talk • contribs) 17:31, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Character?

It's kind of the point of the novel that he is not really a character in the sense that eg. Winston and Julia are.

Nope, can't think of a better name for what he is. --79.223.5.145 (talk) 05:00, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

A beautiful mind reference.

I was wondering if the big brother reference in the film a beautiful mind should be mentioned since it is a clever reference. If you have ever seen the movie, russel crowes character refers to ed harris's character as big brother. This almost has a double meaning. The ed harris chracter is authoritaran like big brother but like in the novel his existence in the story is questionable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.10.97.243 (talk) 23:29, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

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Need help on formulation

Hi!

I edited the following paragraph to the article (March 16 2019 8:27) "Commercial Realisation

Today, many websites offer for a fee an insight into the private rooms of unsuspecting people. One example is reallifecam.com . The websites often pretend to the viewer a victim's knowledge about the espionage, thereby playing both ends against the middle by using the viewers' shame about their act of voyeurism together with the viewer's fear of prosecution to silence the audience."

As all of my edits it has been deleted. Can you help me please to write in an acceptable way? Is the naming of the website not ok, as it is not closed, and probably will never? Or is the whole paragraph not acceptable, as it shows the realisation of the dystopia and a lacking intervention of the security agencies? Or what else is the issue?

As all of my edits, these questions are not meant to be accusing but asked very directly in hope to get a direct answer how to reformulate the paragraph to match wikipedias terms of acceptance. On the official page only formal rules are explaint, no rules about content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.223.1.134 (talk) 01:38, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Maybe User 2602:306:3793:A3B0:FC85:F6A0:83BE:945A himself can tell what exactly made him delete the paragraph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8070:A198:9000:106B:85B5:FFB:F444 (talk) 01:50, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Image

@Isaac Rabinovitch: While I can understand why you consider the comic image to be "problematic", using an image of graffiti in place of an actual adaptation of the character is unhelpful. The graffiti does not illustrate the character as well, and I think that using an image from an actual comic of 1984 is much more desirable, regardless of our personal qualms with how he was depicted. I'm hoping that an agreement can be made. Di (they-them) (talk) 05:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't see the graffiti as unhelpful. The article isn't simply about the character, it's about the character as a synecdoche for the oppressive surveillance state, and people's resentment of same. The graffiti neatly represents that resentment. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 16:57, 12 January 2024 (UTC)