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John Brown aggregates all the most recent public diplomacy related news, including current issues in U.S. foreign policy, international broadcasting and media, propaganda, cultural diplomacy, educational exchanges, anti-Americanism, and the reception of American popular culture abroad.

APRIL 27, 2005
by John Brown

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PRESS REVIEW, APRIL 27

ESSAY

“A Boot Stamping on a Human Face”: Orwell’s “1984” as a Process of Defacement - John Brown (Public Diplomacy Press Review): The book’s protagonist, Winston Smith, is punished for his rebelliousness against totalitarian Oceania by being literally de-faced, conditioned into seeing his own face as only a reflection of absolute leader Big Brother’s dehumanized image. “Nineteen Eighty-Four” could hold a lesson for the twenty-first century: In the process of letting ourselves be remade into generic Hollywood movie stars by advertising and technology, do we not risk the danger of losing the unique features of our very own, “imperfect” human faces, those essential indications of our precious, unique individualities?
FOR FULL TEXT, PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO SECTION C

QUOTATIONS FOR THE DAY

“I THINK WE’VE BEEN WINNING FOR SOME TIME.”

--Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, regarding the United States in Iraq; cited in Bradley Graham, “Pentagon Plays Down New Rise in Iraq Violence” (Washington Post, April 27)
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“A FIFTEEN-YEAR PREGNANCY—WHAT A RELIEF!”

--Scholar Richard Arndt, taking delivery of the first shipment of his new book, “The First Resort Of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy In The Twentieth Century”; cited in an e-mail from Dr. Arndt to PDPR’s compiler.

WHENEVER YOU’RE WRONG, ADMIT IT;
WHENEVER YOU’RE RIGHT, SHUT UP.

--Ogdan Nash, “A Word to Husbands”; cited in Roderick Nordell, “A Husband Who Could Make a Living From Light Verse: Ogden Nash Had Fun with Marriage and Other States of Confusion, but He Wrote to His Wife Like a Lovesick Swain” (Christian Science Monitor, April 27)
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A) PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

1. THE DAILY OUTRAGE : TONE DEAF; WHAT’S WRONG WITH US PUBLIC DIPLOMACY? EVERYTHING - ARI BERMAN (NATION): It’s a perfect snapshot of American foreign policy today: the Bush Administration’s outreach program to the Muslim world has no Muslims on staff. Depending on your perspective, this is either a symptom or a cause of a much larger public diplomacy problem. If that weren’t enough, the new head of the public diplomacy effort is Bush’s longtime spin-master Karen Hughes, the spokeswoman for many of the policies that have fueled worldwide resentment of America in the first place. Her new task is evidently none too urgent—Hughes won’t start until the fall. What’s a few months to a program that hasn’t accomplished much of anything over the past four years? Even Dick Cheney, hardly a defeatist, now admits that public diplomacy “has been a very weak part of our arsenal.” The appointment of Hughes, Bush says, “signifies my personal commitment to international diplomacy.” Apparently, so does John Bolton.
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2. GLOBAL ANTI-AMERICANISM IS SPREADING, U.S. AGENCY SAYS - WILLIAM FISHER (FINALCALL.COM, APRIL 26): Most of the government’s public diplomacy efforts come from the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The GAO, as well as media and foreign policy authorities, have stressed the importance of public diplomacy—especially the job of “winning the hearts and minds” of Muslim audiences in the Middle East—but many have dismissed current efforts as fragmented, lacking a coherent communications strategy and amateurish. In a recent report, the GAO recommends that “the director of the Office of Global Communications (OGC) fully implement the role mandated for the office in the President’s executive order (of Jan. 21, 2003), including facilitating the development of a national communications strategy.” Unfortunately, the White House has confirmed that the OGC no longer exists—though it is still displayed on the White House website. Its two top officials departed several weeks ago to join the private sector. The National Security Council is to assume its responsibilities. The OGC started its short life in 2001 as the Bush administration’s “war room” during the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan.
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3. THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT TERRORIST EXTREMISTS, BUT THE WAR ON TERRORISM WILL BE WON BY MODERATE MUSLIM LEADERS LIKE THOSE CURRENTLY SERVING IN PAKISTAN, IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN, DEFENSE SECRETARY DONALD H. RUMSFELD TOLD CIVIC AND COMMUNITY LEADERS APRIL 25 – TERRI LUKACH, AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE (NEWSWIRE, APRIL 27): Each year, the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference brings together civilian leaders from across the nation who spend a week meeting with Defense Department officials and visiting military installations in the United States and around the world to observe and participate in military exercises and training. Rumsfeld told this year’s 54 persons in attendance that America needs to do a better job at communicating its goals. “We no longer have any mechanism in government to communicate to the world what the United States is all about,” he said, noting that in recent years the country has become “skittish” about public diplomacy. “In an age of 24-hour news cycles and electronic media, a lie can spread around the world in 16 minutes,” Rumsfeld said. “But it still takes us two to three days to track it down and investigate it. That is why it is so important for leaders like you to meet with the troops, recognize their contributions, and go home and communicate those contributions to your communities,” he said.
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4. SEN. MURKOWSKI BACKS DELAYING VOTE ON BOLTON - SAM BISHOP (NEWS-MINER, APRIL 27): Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), in a meeting with Alaska reporters April 7, said she had met with U.N. ambassador nominee John Bolton and expected to support his nomination. “He has been both equally condemned as well as elevated, if you will, for some of his very direct and sometimes challenging statements, and sometimes that can get you in trouble when you are trying to work through public diplomacy,” Murkowski said.
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5. INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION HONORS U.S. SENATOR RICHARD G. LUGAR WITH STEPHEN P. DUGGAN AWARD (ASCRIBE, APRIL 26): In accepting the Award, Senator Lugar said, “I discovered the benefits of international education at Oxford University—my first trip outside of the United States. The parameters of my imagination expanded enormously during this time, as I gained a sense of how large the world was, how many talented people there were, and how many opportunities.” He noted that many of the people from all over the world who he met during this time are working in education, government or diplomacy. Senator Lugar also spoke of “the need for more thoughtful public diplomacy in the world,” and discussed the work that he is doing with the educational community to continue to encourage foreign students and scholars to overcome visa issues and security concerns to come to the United States. He commented, “We have to recognize that much of the opportunity we now have for democracy-building in the Middle East comes from the students who studied in the United States and imbibed, at least for a period of time, a part of our thinking, and found at least portions of that to be very relevant to their situations.”
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6. QATAR DRAWS UP PLAN TO SELL OFF AL-JAZEERA - JANE KINNINMONT (GUARDIAN, APRIL 27): The Gulf state of Qatar is considering privatising its satellite TV channel, al-Jazeera, because of pressure from the US and a de facto advertising boycott by Arab countries offended by its critical coverage. Hans Wechsel, regional director of the US state department’s Middle East partnership initiative, said: “We have issues with them giving a platform to people who are calling for violence. It’s not a matter of government interference, it’s strictly an issue of ethics. After all, we raise ethical concerns with journalists in the US too.” Hafez al-Mirazi, an Egyptian who runs the channel’s Washington bureau, and who previously worked for Voice Of America, noted: “The White House has been spoilt by Fox News. The current administration is unusually sensitive to any criticism. The situation now is ‘either you’re just like Fox, or you’re against us.’” According to Mouafac Harb, director of al-Jazeera’s less popular US-funded rival, al-Hurra, “Al-Jazeera has hijacked the role of the mosque as the primary source of information and views. Al-Jazeera is the only political process in the Middle East.”
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B) RELATED ITEMS (Al-Jazeera, 7; war on terror, 8-9; Iraq, 10-14; Middle East, 15-19; Europe, 20-21; China, 22; Bolton, 23-27; media, 28)

7. WATCH OUT WORLD: AL-JAZEERA IS GOING GLOBAL - DANNY SCHECHTER (MEDIACHANNEL.ORG, APRIL 26/COMMON DREAMS): “Jazeera” means island but, in many ways, this emerging global broadcaster functions more like an oasis in the desert country where it is based, as well as in the international TV news industry in which its dedication to hard-charging news makes it an anomaly. As the demoralized, compromised and dumbed-down news system in the West implodes with mounting scandals and the erosion of both viewers and credibility, is there a new savior, a genie in the bottle arising in the East?
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8. TERROR ATTACKS INCREASED SHARPLY IN 2004 - ASSOCIATED PRESS (NEW YORK TIMES, APEIL 27): In Iraq where the United States is spending billions of dollars to restore order, there were nine times as many terror attacks in 2004 as there were in 2003.
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9. EVIDENCE THAT THE US MAY BE LOSING THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR – IVAN ELAND (INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE, APRIL 26/COMMON DREAMS): The Bush administration is trying to hide important data that might very well lead historians and the American public to conclude that the GWOT has been disastrous for U.S. and global security.
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10. THE IRAQ MANTRA - CLAUDE SALHANI (WASHINGTON TIMES, APRIL 27): The trick in spreading information (and sometimes disinformation) is to meld the points you want to get across with truths—hard, proven facts—so the two blend. It’s the oldest trick in the public-relations book. Iraq is neither safe nor stable today despite what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would like the rest of the country and world to believe.
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11. LOSING GROUND IN IRAQ – EDITORIAL (NEW YORK TIMES, APRIL 27): Getting directly involved in negotiations over cabinet posts or imposing some kind of arbitrary timetable in Iraq would be a serious mistake. Instead, the United States needs to put its full weight behind the basic democratic values President Bush has embraced for a new, freer Middle East.
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12. GALLUP: 50% OF AMERICANS NOW SAY BUSH DELIBERATELY MISLED THEM ON WMDS - E&P STAFF (EDITOR & PUBLISHER (APRIL 27)
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13. ABU GHRAIB ACCOUNTABILITY: AN OVERHYPED STORY, NOT A WHITEWASH - REVIEW & OUTLOOK (OPINION JOUNRAL FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL PAGE, APRIL 27): The salient and remarkable truth here is that America has punished its own for the Abu Ghraib abuses; and it has done so even before Saddam and his henchmen have faced justice for the horrors they propagated in that same prison.
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14. NO ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ABU GHRAIB – EDITORIAL (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE,APRIL 26, 2005 ): CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS are rightfully outraged that the Army has cleared senior military officials of any wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq, but they shouldn’t be surprised. It seemed clear from the start that punishment would be aimed at a small group of low-ranking soldiers for abusing captives, not at those top officers who approved rules regarding prison interrogation practices.
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15. US TILTS TOWARDS ACCEPTING ISLAMISTS POLITICAL ROLE - SHADY HASSAN (ISLAMONLINE, APRIL 26): A chorus of voices demanding the Bush administration to listen and talk with popular Islamists in Arab and Muslim countries has reached a crescendo with senior officials recognizing the faulty policy of giving the cold shoulder to a more representative current. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is seen as the champion of the new policy-shift on US-Islamist dialogue.
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16. DEMOCRACY, UNCLE SAM AND THE FUTURE OF ARAB WORLD - MATEIN KHALID (KHALEEJ TIMES, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, APRIL 27): Despite the breathless sensationalism of the international media and the self-serving propaganda of Arab dictatorships, there is no real democratic revolution sweeping the Middle East. Fear of George Bush and the American war machines, not the Cedar Revolution, compelled the Syrian Army and intelligence agencies to end their thirty-year occupation. Democracy cannot be legislated into existence in the Middle East by kings and dictators, let alone the White House, Downing Street or the EU. It is the end result of complex historical processes, ideals of social freedom and individual supremacy, that seem have no provenance in Arab culture or history.
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17. THE WESTERNIZATION OF ISLAMIC EDUCATION - YUSEF PROGLER (ISLAMONLINE, APRIL 17): With the increasing American colonial presence in the Muslim world, beginning with the 1991 war against Iraq and gaining momentum on the heels of 9/11 with recent invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, there have been numerous efforts aimed at reforming school curricula and revising textbooks. From Saudi Arabia to Indonesia, American officials have been pressuring local governments to eliminate anything that the Americans say promotes “violence and terrorism.”
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18. DIPLOMATIC HAND-HOLDING: SYMBOLIC HAND-CLASP BETWEEN BUSH AND SAUDI PRINCE SHOWCASES SOLIDARITY, ESPECIALLY ON OIL POLICY - MATTHEW CLARK (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, APRIL 27)
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19. HYPOCRISY OF THE LIBERALS – EDITORIAL (HAARETZ.COM, APRIL 27): Last week the union of British university lecturers imposed an academic boycott on two Israeli universities, as a means of pressure and punishment for “Israel’s war crimes.” When the State of Israel denies Arab students and their families freedom of movement to the universities where they are students, and the even more basic right to earn a dignified livelihood free of the occupation, when the separation fence in Jerusalem is going up on the campus of Al Quds University, it is difficult to argue that Israel adheres to the basic values that it rightfully demands the British university lecturers uphold.
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20. ITALY FURIOUS AS REPORT IS SAID TO CLEAR GIS ON AGENT - ELISABETH ROSENTHAL (INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, APRIL 27): Tensions between the United States and Italy surged on Tuesday as Italian opposition politicians and citizens reacted furiously to leaked reports in the Italian media that a joint investigation into the shooting death of an Italian agent in Baghdad would absolve U.S. soldiers of guilt in the incident.
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21. A NEW DIALOGUE CAN BIND US TO EUROPE - DAVID HANNAY (FINANCIAL TIMES, APRIL 27): The US and EU need to be able to share analysis and talk through policy options discreetly to work out strategies for concerted action when they agree on the objectives, and strategies for damage limitation when they do not.
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PAID SUBSCRIPTION

22. CHINA’S FIRST INTERNET-ORGANIZED PROTESTS - XIAO QIANG (WALL STREET JOURNAL, APRIL 27): It’s no coincidence that the largest of China’s recent anti-Japanese protests occurred in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, where the use of the Internet, cell phones and online chatting is among the highest in China. That’s because a notable feature of the recent protests was that they were almost exclusively organized through such modern communication technologies. While activists in the recent protests share strong nationalistic sentiments, the story line behind their motivation is entangled with the government propaganda.
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PAID SUBSCRIPTION

23. BATTLE ON BOLTON NOMINATION COULD WOUND THE PRESIDENT, TOO - ELISABETH BUMILLER (NEW YORK TIMES, APRIL 27): Republicans opposed to Mr. Bolton were already spinning out his possible loss as a win for Mr. Bush in that it would help internationally with allies who see Mr. Bolton as a symbol of the Bush administration’s unilateralism in foreign relations.
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24. U.N.LEASH WOOLLY BULLY BOLTON - MAUREEN DOWD (NEW YORK TIMES, APRIL 27): We should give the Bush administration credit for not being hypocritical by supporting a mealy-mouthed, mewling conciliator along the lines of Jeanne Kirkpatrick.
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25. THE BEST MAN FOR THE U.N. - THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN (NEW YORK TIMES, APRIL 27): John Bolton is not the best person for the job—not even close. George H. W. Bush, a k a 41, is.
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THOMAS M. BOYD

26. THE RIGHT BULL FOR UN CHINA SHOP - THOMAS M. BOYD (BOSTON GLOBE, APRIL 27): As even Vice President Cheney noted last Friday, Bolton’s historic views about the UN and how it functions, combined with his strong ties to President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, make him the right person for this job.
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27. RX FOR THE U.N. - ARNOLD BEICHMAN (WASHINGTON TIMES, APRIL 27): John Bolton is just the man to follow in the footsteps of such hard-line UN ambassadors as Goldberg, Henry Cabot Lodge, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Jeane Kirkpatrick.
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28. NEXT: THE GOOGLE STREET JOURNAL: EVEN WHEN NEWSPAPERS GO BELLY UP, THEIR KIND OF CONTENT WILL LIVE ON - ANDRÉS MARTINEZ (LOS ANGELES TIMES, APRIL 27): The point-and-click world still depends on us old-fashioned news types for indispensable content.
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C) TEXT

29. “A BOOT STAMPING ON A HUMAN FACE”: ORWELL’S “1984” AS A PROCESS OF DEFACEMENT—JOHN BROWN (PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PRESS REVIEW)

In a recent article for the Times Literary Supplement (April 15), scholar Roger Scruton notes that “human beings are alone among the animals in revealing their individuality in their faces. The mouth that speaks, the eyes that glaze, the skin that flushes, all are signs of freedom, character and judgement, and all give concrete expression to the uniqueness of the self within.”

George Orwell also suggests this in his anti-utopian novel “1984,” but from an infinitely less positive perspective. The book’s protagonist, Winston Smith, is punished for his rebelliousness against totalitarian Oceania by being literally de-faced, conditioned into seeing his own face as only a reflection of absolute leader Big Brother’s dehumanized image, a mustachioed figure incessantly propagandized in his rigidly controlled state.

From the onset, “1984” uses the face to define the uniqueness of its fictional characters, both major and minor. The wife of Winston’s neighbor, Mrs. Parsons, is “a woman with lined face and wispy hair.’ An old man, bumping into Winston, had a “whitestubbled face” that “had flushed pink.” A young man named Wisher is “silly-faced.” Another person is a “beetle-like man with a flat face and tiny, suspicious eyes.” The high Oceania official O’Brien, the antagonist of the novel’s anti-hero Winston, has a “grim” and “heavy” face, which when bent down displayed “the line of the nose,” and “looked both formidable and intelligent” (O’Brien, though an instrument of Big Brother’s Oceania, has not lost all his individuality despite his belief in the new order).

Winston and Julia

When Winston remembers his past—anathema in totalitarian, ahistorical Oceania, where memory and the past are frowned upon—he thinks about faces. His mother nursed “his young sister, a tiny, ailing, very silent child of two or three, with a face made simian by thinness.” He recalls that his “mother’s anxious eyes were fixed on his face.” His face is what first reacts to his environment:  when he ventures into a pub frequented by “proles” (the lowest social stratum in Oceania) “a hideous cheesy smell of sour beer hit him in the face.”

Soon after Winston meets Julia, the rebellious girl with whom he falls in love, “the memory of her face came back.” Seeing her again, he notices that the “smile on her face … looked faintly ironical,” a facial condition at odds with Oceania’s solemn posters of Big Brother. When they first kiss, she “turned her face up” and soon “the mass of dark hair was against his face” (thanks to her, “The process of life had ceased to be intolerable, he had no longer any impulse to make faces at the telescreen,” the two-way television perpetually indoctrinating Party members).

In the forest clearing where Winston and Julia make love, “she turned and faced him. … But for a moment he did not look at her body; his eyes were anchored by the freckled face with its faint, bold smile.’ Later, “he pulled her down so that they were kneeling face to face.’” Later still, Winston “sat up and watched the freckled face, still peacefully asleep, pillowed on the palm of her hand.” (Aren’t freckles means par excellence of defining a face?).

Not long after Julia and Winston become aware of each other’s presence at their workplace, the Ministry of Truth, Winston sees:

“A figure in blue overalls was coming down the pavement, not ten metres away. It was the girl from the Fiction Department, the girl with dark hair. … She looked him straight in face, then walked quickly on as though she had not seen him.”

When Winston tells Julia, after their first kiss, “You are ten or fifteen years younger than I am. What could you see to attract in a man like me?” Julia—“used to judging people by their faces”—replies: “It was something in your face. I thought I’d take a chance. I’m good at spotting people who don’t belong. As soon as I saw you I knew you were against them.”

During one of their secretive rendez-vous Julia puts on make-up—a remnant of pre-1984 era when people could still embellish—and “individualize”-- their faces.

“He turned round, and for a second almost failed to recognize her. What he had actually expected was to see her naked. But she was not naked. The transformation that had happened was much more surprising than that. She had painted her face.”

“She must have slipped into some shop in the proletarian quarters and bought herself a complete set of make-up materials. Her lips were deeply reddened, her cheeks rouged, her nose powdered; there was even a touch of something under the eyes to make them brighter. It was not very skilfully done, but Winston’s standards in such matters were not high. He had never before seen or imagined a woman of the Party with cosmetics on her face. The improvement in her appearance was startling. With just a few dabs of colour in the right places she had become not only very much prettier, but, above all, far more feminine.”

Later, “[w]hen Winston woke up … . Julia was sleeping with her head in the crook of his arm. Most of her make-up had transferred itself to his own face or the bolster, but a light strain of rouge still brought out the beauty of her cheekbone.” When they are about to part, Julia says, “I must start washing this paint off.  What a bore! I’ll get the lipstick off your face afterwards.”

Defacement

When Julia and Winston “secretly” meet O’Brien, he—playing the role of the revolutionary to trap them – “warns” her that, as a result of Winston’s struggle against the status quo:

“…even if he survives, it may be as a different person … . We (the anti-establishment “Brotherhood” may be obliged to give him a new identity. His face, his movements, the shape of his hands, the colour of his hair—even his voice would be different. And you yourself might have to become a different person. Our surgeons can alter people beyond recognition.”

As Winston and Julia leave O’Brien’s living quarters, the official’s “yellow-faced servant,” Martin, is instructed by his superior to “[t]ake a good look at these comrades’ faces before you go.” Martin follows the order and

“(e)xactly as they had done at the front door, the little man’s dark eyes flickered over their face. … He was memorizing their appearance, but he felt no interest in them, or appeared to feel none. It occurred to Winston that a synthetic face was perhaps incapable of changing its expression.”

These references—being altered beyond recognition, a synthetic face incapable of changing its expression—are a foreboding of what happens to Winston after he is arrested. Incarcerated at the Ministry of Love, Winston and other prisoners are subject to torture, including what I’d characterize as defacement, the abuse and ruination of the face, the destruction of its unique identity (a brutal 1984 version of identity theft). Early on in his cell, Winston notices that:

“The door opened, and another prisoner was brought in whose appearance sent a momentary chill through Winston. … what was startling was the emaciation of his face. It was like a skull. Because of its thinness the mouth and eyes looked disproportionately large, and the eyes seemed filled with a murderous, unappeasable hatred of somebody or something.”

Reintegration

Eventually, Winston’s beatings grow “less frequent.” But some questioners “saw to it that he was in constant slight pain … . They slapped his face, wrung his ears, pulled his hair … shone glaring lights in his face until his eyes ran with water.” In the second stage of his three-part “reintegration” (“learning,” “understanding,” and “acceptance” O’Brien, like the Grand Inquisitor in the Brothers Karamazov, tells Winston what he must understand, including that:

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever. … And remember that it is for ever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again.”

Winston, told by O’Brien to stand between the wings of a mirror, is overcome with fright and despair at his own defaced reflection:

“The creature’s face seemed to be protruded, because of its bent carriage. A forlorn, jailbird’s face with a nobby forehead running back into a bald scalp, a crooked nose, and battered-looking cheekbones above which his eyes were fierce and watchful. The cheeks were seamed, the mouth had a drawn-in look. Certainly it was his own face, but it seemed to him that it had changed more than he had changed inside.”

“You have thought sometimes,” says O’Brien after Winston has seen the sorry sight of his ruinous outer self, “that my face—the face of a member of the Inner Party—looks old and worn. What do you think of your own face?” Spinning Winston round so that he is facing him, O’Brien continues:

“You are rotting away … you are falling to pieces. What are you? A bag of filth. Now turn around and look into that mirror again. Do you see that thing facing you? That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity.”

Months after his encounter with O’Brien, Winston, no longer tortured and fed three meals a day, believes he has “capitulated,” that he has “accepted everything.” But he wonders about his face:

“He ran a hand over his face, trying to familiarize himself with the new shape. There were deep furrows in the cheeks, the cheekbones felt sharp, the nose flattened. Besides, since last seeing himself in the glass he had been given a complete new set of teeth. It was not easy to preserve inscrutability when you did not know what your face looked like.”

And he still has strong doubts about Big Brother and his omnipresent, inhuman poster-face:

“What was the most horrible, sickening thing of all?  He thought of Big Brother. The enormous face (because of constantly seeing it on posters he always thought of it as being a meter wide), with its heavy black mustache and the eyes that followed you to and fro, seemed to float into his mind of its own accord.  What were his true feelings toward Big Brother?”

Later, in an area at the Ministry of Love many meters underground, “as deep as it was possible to go,” Winston is made to complete the final stage of his “reintegration” process—“acceptance.” He is in Room 101, with O’Brien, who calls the space “the worst thing in the world,” telling Winston that “in your case … the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.” O’Brien picks up a cage full of these rodents, presses its first lever, and tells Winston:

“When I press this other lever, the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes. … will leap on to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue.”

As the mask closes on his face, Winston suddenly understands that there is “just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment” and he shouts frantically:

“Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!”

Faceless in Oceania

Out of jail and a “reintegrated” man in London, Winston can’t fail to see a poster of Big Brother, and the “huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power.” He eventually sees Julia, and both realize they have betrayed the other. “Her face,” he observes, “was sallower, and there was a long scar, partly hidden by the hair, across her forehead and temple.” Exchanging a few words, they know they will never see each other face to face again.

With Julia no longer part of his life, Winston realizes the “long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain”:

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

Winston’s and Big Brother’s faces become one and the same, at least in Winston’s reintegrated mind. Big Brother is no longer a poster or portrait, but a mirror. Big Brother is now the perfect reflection of him, a re-faced Winston.

Total Make-Over State?

Today’s industrialized world is a far cry from Orwell’s 1984.  But the book perhaps holds a lesson for the twenty-first century. Round the clock, we are increasingly under pressure to remake our “imperfect” faces. Products and processes promising to “make us look better,” widely advertised in the mass media, are everywhere, part of the urban and rural landscape in numerous countries. Of course, the outcome of “changing our faces” can be positive and lead to improved health—nothing more beneficial than better teeth, for example. But in the process of letting ourselves be remade to look like generic movie stars, do we not risk the danger of losing the unique features of our very own, “imperfect” human faces, those essential indications of the infinite variety of our individualities?
The text used in this essay is located on “The Literature Network” at
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