The mask of the current society

When reading 1984 by George Orwell and V for Vendetta by Alan Moore it's impossible to firstly, not to establish relations between these two text and secondly, to not to start making connections with the Chilean current society or in fact, the world’s society. Why? Is the question. Masks and manipulated information are the answer.

I will like to start with the graphic novel V for Vendetta written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd, first published in 1982, which plot is based in the frivolous totalitarian regime set in a dystopian future 1997 in Britain. Dystopia is, as explained in the cite readwritethink as "A futuristic, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral, or totalitarian control. Dystopias, through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, make a criticism about a current trend, societal norm, or political system." 

 In this graphic novel, the protagonist is V, which is called a terrorist in the novel, but the truth is that it is hard for me to see it like that, since as it is shown along the story this man whose identity is unknown, is more than a man looking for revenge, but a fighter that want to give back to the people what it has been taking away from them, basic still crucial information such as history books, music and so on. Just as it is shown in the following image of the graphic novel.

Now, regarding the theme of concern, masks, we are witnesses of a direct inspiration of the terrorist Guy Fawkes, from which the mask wear by V in Moore’s comic is modeled after Guy Fawkes, a man who is known for attempting to blow up the British Parliament on November 5th, 1606. In the same way, the character V resembles physically Fawkes’ appearance and also his battling against authoritarian regime.

Moreover, in this special case this material mask – not an invisible one as almost all of us have- represents a higher level of power, of encouragement, strength and maximization of individualism, for V to do the things he does in his search revenge, equality and freedom.

But in V for Vendetta, not all masks were material. In fact, I would like to recall one image from the comic that really called my attention, in which a priest tries to rape a girl. We know that this situation is not that unusual as we would like, but still is shocking to see that even though the story is set in a totalitarian system, the government let the priest do whatever they want.

 On the other hand, 1984 is a novel written by George Orwell between 1947 and 1948 in which the author presents us a dystopian society ruled by a totalitarian regime. Under this configuration of government, all the aspects of every person’s life must be controlled by the government, such as what people are allowed to say, what do they think and believe, basically, they – government, totalitarian regime- want to have total power over the minds of people.

And now you are wondering, where do masks appear in 1984 by George Orwell? The big mask is in the person who is watching us! Yes, Big Brother, which as we know is the leader of Oceania. Even when Big Brother is present in the whole story, his existence is an enigma, since he never appears physically in the novel, neither his real name nor any relevant information of him. Thus, this leads me to think that Big Brother is just a propaganda for the people to believe in an imaginary strong man, in other words this pictures of a man observing you the whole time, this supposedly tuff man, this head master is just a created image, use as a mask for pretending they have the strength of controlling you. Aforementioned, they create this portrait that illustrates the power that they want to project.

“He picked up the children’s history book and looks 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.” (Orwell, 1988. P.102)

Now, for the sake of connecting these mentioned aspects with the current society we can start by recognizing the mask that we all humans tend to have. For example, there is no need to go any further, when we turn on the television and we see politicians talking about different projects or improvement in education, in this particular situation we see a mask of a fake persona and in more common situations we have the mask that we create in the social media, such as the image that we show in our ‘facebook’ profile by displaying what we want people to think we are and not our real intentions, our real language neither our real personal image.

Another aspect that 1984 and V for Vendetta have in common are the manipulation of information, oppression and submission, accompanied with the use of technology to monitor and control people in every single moment. There is an extreme amount of crucial information hiden, such as a variety of books, music and almost any record of material that has information about culture or history or anything related to the past. What for? Because in both books, the leaders of the nation- the people of the government- wants to have total control of the people and of course, it’s much more easy to control an ignorant group people, since they have no arguments to not to do what the regime wants them to do, neither a motive to fight against oppression, since people don’t have access to any time o information about the pass, the history or their memory.  

The real intention of the manipulation of information can be clearly seen in the following quote, in which we can fully understand the purpose that the Party wants to achieve. If they erase records, books, and all the material about what happened in the past and create new books with fake or manipulated information, they are going to be the owners of this falseness, which with time will become the truth.

 “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale- then the lie passed into history and became truth. ’Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘control the future: who controls the present controls the past’.” (Orwell, 1988. P. 44)

As for V for Vendetta, there are some parts of the comic that show the intention of the system, but here we find a slight difference, V knows about this idea of hiding information, therefore he fights against this oppression, at the same time he wants to open Evey’s eyes to see the truth of this totalitarian regime in which the society is immersed.

In consequence, I will say the case of the current society is closely related with what George Orwell warned us. This “Orwellian” type of behavior which is connected with the power of language and propaganda. In Orwell’s novel was the oppression and hidden information that controlled the people, nowadays the internet prevents us of thinking critically and in a way fits our behavior.

In conclusion I will like to highlight Orwell’s works that has opened the society eyes since 1984 was published, also,  I would say that we should take some aspects of V and internalized them, maybe becoming a terrorist and kill people is not a good idea, but we could start reading, studying and being more aware of the world that surrounds us. I encourage you to not to believe everything that is told to you and also, to take of the mask every now and then.  

To finish with, I could not end this post without adding one of the most famous quotes of 1984 . What does this quote refers to? Has it something to do with masks? 

" War is peace

Freedom is slavery

Ignorance is strength" (Orwell, 1988. P. 130)

References

C.C. (2014). How Guy Fawkes became the face of post- modern protest. The Economist Newspaper. From: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/11/economist-explains-3

Moore, A. & Lloyd, D. (1982). V for Vendetta. New York: Vertigo.  DC Comics.

Marshall, C. (2015). What “Orwellian” Really Means: An Animated Lesson About the Use & Abuse of the Term. Open Culture, taken from: http://www.openculture.com/2015/10/what-orwellian-really-means-an-animated-lesson-about-the-use-abuse-of-the-term.html 

Orwell, G. (1954). Nineteen Eighty- four. London: Penguin Books. 

Dystopias: Definition and Characteristics, taken from: http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson926/DefinitionCharacteristics.pdf