Dystopia, Masks and Glitter

A society heavily controlled by a mysterious figure that seems larger than life and that appears to be undefeatable, those are some of the most common scenarios in dystopian fiction and all comes from the same place, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. Concepts such as Thought Police, Big Brother, Doublethink, Though-crime, among others, are ideas that once introduced by Orwell, became an integral part of modern science fiction and to this day serve as an inspiration for many artist in all kinds of fields. Two great examples of the cultural relevance that Orwell’s novel had are the works of Alan Moore and his tale of an anarchist anti-hero known in the format of a graphic novel known as V for Vendetta and the futurist nightmare created by David Bowie on his album Diamond Dogs. These works share more in common with Nineteen Eighty Four than just the dystopian idea of a totalitarian system taking over Great Britain since Orwell’s influence can be felt in every little detail of these art pieces.

V for Vendetta must be one of Alan Moore’s most recognized works, whether it is for its impeccable narrative (at point’s far superior to the one present in Nineteen Eighty Four) or by the cultural phenomenon that it caused thanks to the symbolic nature of the Guy Fawkes mask. In this Graphic Novel, there is a totalitarian regime lead by Chancellor Susan a man obsessed with ensuring the safety of people by removing their chance of being free. The story centers on the character of Evey a sixteen year old girl who is rescued by a masked vigilante known only as V. This mysterious man is trying to take down the totalitarian government of Susan by taking out the main players one by one. The character of V is ambiguous throughout the graphic novel. The character brings up the question of how far would you go to achieve freedom as your ultimate goal, in the case of V he is willing to become as much as a villain as the government he is trying to overtake since he thinks he is fighting for a right that had been taken from us or, as the graphic novel states, a right that we gave away willingly.

 “Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.” 

He takes the protagonist of the story and completely breaks her in order to show her the bars of her cell. 

“You're in a prison, Evey. You were born in a prison. You've been in a prison so long, you no longer believe there's a world outside. That's because you're afraid, Evey. You're afraid because you can feel freedom closing in upon you. You're afraid because freedom is terrifying. Don't back away from it, Evey. Part of you understands the truth even as part pretends not to.”

But V’s methods are so morally grey that it is impossible to describe them as good or to relate his figure to the one of a hero. He is taking power from a dictatorship but at the same time creating a symbol as strong as the one presented by the “villains” of the story. By passing the torch to Evey he is creating an immortal figure that could oversee and “protect” people for a long time, becoming something similar to the figure of a Big Brother, especially when we take Nineteen Eighty Four as a reference and how the rise to power is described.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. 

Diamond Dogs, released in 1974, became David Bowie’s fifth studio album and the comparison between the album and Nineteen Eighty Four are unavoidable, this mainly because Bowie intended this album to be a conceptual Rock Opera based entirely on Orwell’s work, but since he was denied the copyrights to do so he saw himself forced to adapt his work into a new concept. In this album we follow a futuristic Great Britain that is being ruled by an all mighty eye that can see everything and that keeps population in a state of lust and despair. None the less, most of the songs are directly related to the story seen in the novel, taking titles directly from it like the songs “Big Brother” and, of course, “Nineteen Eighty Four”. The main difference between the novel and the album is that Bowie transforms the totalitarian system into a government that the population accepted with open arms, echoing with the concept that Moore brought up on V for Vendetta in which people gave up as a society and allowed its fate to be managed by someone other than themselves. But contrary to Moore’s work, most of the characters present in the album know that they are not free and acknowledge that the way they live is absolutely fake, but they are amazed by how real it feels like in the song “Candidate”: 

We'll pretend we're walking home 'cause your future's at stake

My set is amazing, it even smells like a street.

The people know that they are living a lie but they choose to keep living on it. They accept the limitations and see it as the needed boundaries to live their lives even allowing new generations to also be taken by this government similarly to what happened on Orwell’s novel. The ones that suffer the most are the few ones that feel sicken by the artificial world they are living in, but the thing is that, just like Winston when he buys the diary and decides to write on it, they know they are condemned to die or to be chased by the brutal force of the Diamond Dogs. As the title of one of the songs from the album suggest, those people know that they are bound to die and they recognize it by stating “We are the Dead”  

They tell me "Son, we want you, be elusive, but don't walk far"

For we're breaking in the new boys, deceive your next of kin…

…Because of all we've seen, because of all we've said

We are the dead

Diamond Dogs is as bleak as Nineteen Eighty Four when it comes to its resolution, with masses clamoring for the love of Big Brother on the song of the same name, forgetting about the search for integrity and giving up to the controlled chaos proposed by the establishment. This parallels with how Winston’s surrenders and is finally assimilated at the end of Orwell’s novel, showing that the figure of the supreme leader is stronger than we could have ever imagined. 

Someone to claim us, someone to follow

Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo

Someone to fool us, someone like you

We want you Big Brother, Big Brother

In V for Vendetta on the other hand we have the figure of Chancellor Susan that functions as the figure of Big Brother but with a twist. In this Graphic novel, we see Susan as a character instead of an entity, we get to know his motivations and we get to see how fragile he actually is. Alan Moore, the author of the original comic, goes as far as giving this character his own story arc, making a parallel between him and the figure of V. What is interesting is that at the end of the novel we know more about Susan than we know about V since the former hides behind theatricality and mystery, elements utilized by the Big Brother himself in both Diamond Dogs and Nineteen Eighty Four. 

Even though this two pieces of art shine with their own light, they most definitely wouldn’t be the same if George Orwell’s novel didn’t exist. Many of the TV shows, comic books, novels, albums and video games that we thoroughly enjoy nowadays take a lot of inspiration from Orwell’s words and it is undeniable that the mark that he left in literature and in art in general won’t disappear especially now that some of the aspects that were introduced by this fictional novel are becoming more and more of a reality. All these pieces warn us about a possible future in which the individual suffers in hand of the corrupt, but they also show, even though briefly, a glimmer of hope in a world full of despair. We can choose to be free, we just need to know how far we are willing to go.