Strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

didn’t get said until 1985. I don’t mean the real

| T FIGURES that the final words on 1984

1984, | mean George Orwell’s.

The movie has been
belatedly released in England
and Tom Wolfe has publish-
ed a wonderful satire in the
latest issue of Esquire.

First, the movie, which I
saw a couple of weeks ago in
London. Seeing it in London
added a special touch, since
~ even though the name of the

city had been changed to-
: Airstrip’ One, Orwell's cau-*

tionary political tale was set
in London and its surroun-
ding countryside.
: The shocker about the
movie is that, much more so
than the book, it drives home
the point that life really could
have been this way. Paradox-
ically, ‘the production values

on the show were so excellent .

that you~ leave: the theatre
feeling uplifted, despite. the
unrelenting existential gloom
that is-the essential theme.

_ Fora ‘couple of hours, you
experience. the: London -that
might: have - been. This. is

cinematic.’ futurism’s. answer .

- to Star: Wars: High tech there
is, but: it is all of the variety
that ‘would have-evolved had
everything but the telescreen
been-frozen ina
technological dead end i in the
mid- Forties.

‘The tape “recorder | ‘into .
which Winston “Smith “dic- ©

_tates , his .Party-ordered

as rewrites of history. looks

more like grandma’ Ss. “party

‘line wooden’ telephone’-box .

“than a modern pocket

A.D.

cassette. Even in the torture
chamber in the Ministry of
Love, the electronic
machinery is of Second
World War vintage.

Outside, the Blitz has never
ended, In the weed-spiked,
rat-haunted rubble, battered
pubs squat next to vacant lots
and along the wreckage-
clogged streets,
quitous image of Big Brother
glowers from telescreesn
mounted at every corner.

As a nice counterpoint to
the era of Jane Fonda
workouts, the raucous drill-
sergeant voices of Outer Par-
ty calisthenic instructors bray
though the air, causing the
audience, as well as poor
Winston Smith, to cringe.

The relief comes when you
step back onto the streets to
find. the, stylishly dressed

’ crowds sweeping back and
pubs’

forth,. the . bright-lit
freshly- paintéed and varnish-
ed, swirling neon signs along
narrow roads jammed with
Renaults and Datsuns, and,
thankfully, only the rare
glimpse of a quaintly-

helmeted PC armed with:

nothing more lethal than a
cellular radio.

Ah yes, but. what London |

might have been is hardly less
fascinating to contemplate

than what London might yet

be, which is the challenge
Tom Wolfe’ addresses in his
Esquire piece,

BOOKS _

the ubi- -

titled 2020

In it, another Winston and
another Julia confront
American tourists wearing
miniaturized video cameras
on their heads in a Britain
that has been turned into a
theme amusement park.
Every citizen has to wear
various period-piece
costumes so the tourists —
known as ‘“‘viddies’? — will
have something to tape.

The British themselves
have become ‘‘viddie-
humpers”’ whose task is to
put on a good show for the
tourists, The economy having
long since crashed, the
government hired Disney
Studios to tear down
anything that looked modern
and convert the islands into a
historical zoo. The schemehas
worked beautifully. The na-
tional treasury is stuffed with
hard foreign currency.

On the downside,
Taiwanese and Japanese
technicians have to be
brought in to do.even the
simplest chores, such as put-
ting up plastic replics of Big
Ben along the various parade
routes, British workmen were
forcibly retired on pensions
in the 1990s to made way for
American experts on the con-
struction of imitation Tudor
and Victorian buildings.
Anything 20th Century was
out. No Englishman knows
how to do any actual manual
labor any longer.
~ It will be interesting in the

year 2020 to look back on

Wolfe’s dark vision. Will he

_prove to be as far off base as

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Orwell? Just as the fantasy of
Big Brother's triumph, when
it was written, was based.on a
real shadow overhanging
England, the idea of the en-
tire nation turning into an all-
purpose tourist attraction, its
once-mighty industrial plant
shattered beyond repair, is
real-enough to bear thinking
about.

Quite ‘real,
cheers anyway.

chaps. But

Ronald J. Schmidt

’ Barrister

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