The ubiquitous slogan "Big Brother is watching you" serves as a constant reminder that Party members are not entitled to privacy. They are subject to constant surveillance to ensure their ideological purity. This is primarily through omnipresent telescreens that provide two-way video communication and constantly blare propaganda.
There are many theories about the origin of the character. In the essay section of his novel 1985, Anthony Burgess states that Orwell got the idea for the name of Big Brother from advertising billboards for educational correspondence courses from a company called Bennett's during World War II. The original posters showed J. M. Bennett himself, a kindly-looking old man offering guidance and support to would-be students with the phrase "Let me be your father." According to Burgess, after Bennett's death, his son took over the company and the posters were replaced with pictures of the son (who looked imposing and stern in contrast to his father's kindly demeanor) with the text "Let me be your big brother".[1]
Additional speculation from Douglas Kellner of the University of California, Los Angeles, argued that Big Brother represents Joseph Stalin, representing Stalinism, and Adolf Hitler, representing Nazism.[2][3] A theory made by Mr. W.J. West, a London book collector, who found radio transcripts and over 250 letters written by Orwell during his years at the BBC, that the inspiration for Big Brother was Brendan Bracken, the Minister of Information, based on Orwell's use of the initials, B.B. for the character Big Brother was discredited as speculation by Gordon B. Beadle.[4]
The idea of Big Brother could be also borrowed from the 1937 H. G. Wells novel Star Begotten, in which "Big Brother" is referenced as a fictitious example of "mystical personifications" able to easily manipulate the common man,[5] as well as the Soviet Union, where there was an ideology of "brotherly nations" or "brotherly countries". The Soviet Union presented itself as a big brother who watches over its younger brothers (other nations). The ideological word 'big brother' or 'older brother' was very well known and used in the Soviet Republics before and after the Second World War.[6] In the "Circe" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) the prophet Elijah addresses God as "Big Brother up there, Mr President".[7]
Portrayal in the novel
A depiction of Big Brother from a comic adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Existence
In the novel, it is unclear if Big Brother is or had been a real person, or is a fictional personification of the Party, similar to Britannia and Uncle Sam. Big Brother is described as "black-haired, black-moustachioed, full of power and mysterious calm".[8] He appears on posters and telescreens as a man in his mid-forties. In Party propaganda, Big Brother is presented as one of the founders of the Party.
At one point, Winston Smith, the protagonist of Orwell's novel, tries "to remember in what year he had first heard mention of Big Brother. He thought it must have been at some time in the sixties, but it was impossible to be certain. In the Party histories, Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of the Revolution since its very earliest days. His exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties, when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London".
In the fictional book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, read by Winston Smith and purportedly written by political theorist Emmanuel Goldstein, Big Brother is referred to as infallible and all-powerful. No one has ever seen him and there is a reasonable certainty that he will never die. He is simply "the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world" since the emotions of love, fear and reverence are more easily focused on an individual than an organisation. When Winston Smith is later arrested, O'Brien states that Big Brother will never die. When Smith asks if Big Brother exists, O'Brien describes him as "the embodiment of the Party". O'Brien also explains the reason for Big Brother's existence: "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."[9]
Cult of personality
Big Brother is the subject of a cult of personality. A spontaneous ritual of devotion to "BB" is illustrated at the end of the compulsory Two Minutes Hate:
At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmic chant of 'B-B! ... B-B! ... B-B!'—over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first 'B' and the second—a heavy murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamps of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.[10]
Critical response
The magazine Book ranked Big Brother no. 59 on its "100 best characters in fiction since 1900" list.[11]Wizard magazine rated him the 75th-greatest villain of all time.[12]
Film adaptations
The character, as represented solely by a single still photograph, was played in the 1954 BBC adaptation by production designer Roy Oxley. In the 1956 film adaptation, Big Brother was represented by an illustration of a stern-looking disembodied head.
In the film starring John Hurtreleased in 1984, the Big Brother photograph was of actor Bob Flag. Both Oxley and Flag sported small moustaches.
Since the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the phrase "Big Brother" has been commonly used as a metaphor and synecdoche to describe any overly-controlling authority figure, increased government surveillance and loss of privacy.[13][14] Immediately after the novel's publication Life magazine, in its 4 July 1949 issue, warned that the United States could fall under the influence of a Big Brother figure.[15][16]
The worldwide reality television show Big Brother is based on the novel's concept of people being under constant surveillance. In 2000, after the United States version of the CBS program Big Brother premiered, the Estate of George Orwell sued CBS and its production company Orwell Productions, Inc. in federal court in Chicago for copyright and trademark infringement. The case was Estate of Orwell v. CBS, 00-c-5034 (ND Ill). On the eve of trial, the case settled worldwide to the parties' "mutual satisfaction", but the amount that CBS paid to the Orwell Estate was not disclosed. CBS had not asked the Estate for permission. Under current laws, the novel will remain under copyright protection until 2044 in the United States; it entered the public domain in 2020 within the European Union.[18]
The image of Big Brother played a key role in Apple's "1984" television commercial introducing the Macintosh, which aired at Super Bowl XVIII on 22 January 1984.[19][20] The Orwell Estate viewed the Apple commercial as a copyright infringement and sent a cease-and-desist letter to Apple and its advertising agency. The commercial was never televised again.[21] Subsequent ads featuring Steve Jobs mimicked the format and appearance of the original ad campaign.[22][23]
China's Social Credit System has been described as akin to "Big Brother" by detractors, where citizens and businesses are given or deducted good behavior points depending on their choices.[24]
↑ Wells, H. G.; Star Begotten, Sphere Books, 1937, p. 101–102. "Most of us to the very end are obsessed by infantile cravings for protection and direction, and out of these cravings come all these impulses towards slavish subjugation towards gods, kings, leaders, heroes, mystical personifications like the People, My Country Right or Wrong, the Church, the Party, the Masses, the Proletariat. Our imaginations hang on to some such Big Brother idea almost to the end. We will accept almost any self-abasement rather than step out of the crowd and be full-grown individuals."
↑ The sacred in twentieth-century politics: essays in honour of Professor Stanley G. Payne. Stanley G. Payne, Robert Mallett, Roger Griffin, John S. Tortorice. Basingstoke [England]: Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. ISBN978-0-230-24163-3. OCLC435833495.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
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