Orwellian dude...was Religious Fundamentalism in ...

[pynchonoid]

>     "Wow, the Government has turned into Big
> Brother, *just like
>     Orwell predicted!* Something, huh?" "Orwellian,
> dude!" (xvi)
> 

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> He's parodying a conversation between two
> shallow-minded fools who are
> equating contemporary Western government with
> Orwell's depiction in the
> novel. 

Hardly. Pynchon does not say that  the characters he
parodies  ar "equating contemporary Western government
with Orwell's depiction in the novel" -- instead,
Pynchon compares what they do to "a game critics like
to play, worth maybe a minute and a half of diversion,
in which one makes lists of what Orwell did and didn't
'get right'." 

While he makes fun of the "Orwellian, dude"
exclamation, Pynchon here offers some rough parallels
between society today and what Orwell describes in
_1984_:  helicopters in law enforcement, "televised
'crime dramas' themselves forms of social control" and
the television itself, government control of news,
surveillance of ordinary citizens.  

While Pynchon parodies the Valley Boy style of
commenting on such observations, Pynchon presents
these parallels themselves as legitimate comparisons. 
  

But he pushes deeper, comparing Orwell to "a working
prophet" who can "see deeper than most of us into the
human soul", then, "Orwell in 1948 understood that
despite the Axis defeat, the will to fascism had not
gone away, that far from having seen its day it had
perhaps not yet even come into its own-- the
corruption of spirit, the irresistable human addiction
to power."

Pynchon then compares the third Reich and Stalin's
USSR to "first drafts of a terrible future" and,
having already pointed out some rough parallels
between _1984_ and 2003,  wonders what is to prevent
"the same thing" (i.e., what happened in the third
Reich and Stalin's USSR) from happening in the US and
Britain.   

Far from ridiculing those who see the potential for
fascism in the US, and who point out the fascistic
elements in the US, Pynchon validates their warnings. 
It's so clear that even the most poorly informed mall
rat/Valley Girl or Boy can see it.


> The parody makes fun of those who say that "the
> Government" has turned,
> holus bolus, into Big Brother. 

Well, yes and no.  Pynchon makes fun of the way they
talk, but he endorses the basic point they make and
says there is nothing to stop the US and Britain from
becoming like the third Reich and Stalin's USSR. 


> The "yes and no" relates to the broader distinction
> between prediction and
> prophecy which Pynchon makes. 

Only if you treat the text as your own personal jigsaw
puzzle, cutting it to pieces  and putting it back
together again to give it the single meaning you wish
it to express.

"Well, yes and no" is Pynchon's continuation of answer
to the question he has just posed:  " 'Something,
huh?' 'Orwellian, dude!' Well, yes and no."

jbor:
>  the USA is a fascist hellhole
> and Bush is an evil
> blood-sucking dictator and whatnot.

You're the only person saying this, of course. Perhaps
you are hallucinating.  Nobody else has said this on
Pynchon-L, dude!



=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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