Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"He picked up the children's history book and looked at the portrait of Big Brother which formed its frontispiece. The hypnotic eyes gazed into his own. It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you--something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it."--Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell |
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Big Brother is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence - where the ruling elite ('the Party') wield total power for its own sake over the inhabitants.
In the society that Orwell describes, everyone is under complete surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens. The people are constantly reminded of this by the phrase "Big Brother is watching you", which is the core "truth" of the propaganda system in this state. The physical description of Big Brother is reminiscent of Joseph Stalin or Lord Kitchener. His moustache is also similar to that of Adolf Hitler.
See also
- 1984 (television commercial)
- Big Brother (TV series)
- Big Brother Awards
- Cult of personality
- Mass surveillance
- Memory hole
- Narcotizing Dysfunction
- New World Order (conspiracy theory)
- Panopticon
- Spychip
- Totalitarianism
