Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

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Big Brother
Big Brother in the 1984 film adaptation.jpeg
Big Brother portrayed in the 1984 film adaptation
First appearance Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
Created by George Orwell
In-universe information
GenderMale
OccupationLeader of Oceania

Big Brother is a character and symbol in George Orwell's dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four . He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party, Ingsoc, wields total power "for its own sake" over the inhabitants.

Contents

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.

"Big Brother" has become a synecdoche for abuse of government power and mass surveillance, particularly with respect to civil liberties and loss of privacy.

Character origins

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. was discredited as speculation by Gordon B. Beadle. [4] David M. Lubin postulated that Big Brother was based on Herbert Kitchener, whom Orwell admired as a child. Kitchener's face appeared on Alfred Leete's 1914 British military recruitment poster Lord Kitchener Wants You. [5]

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, [6] 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. [7] In the "Circe" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) the prophet Elijah addresses God as "Big Brother up there, Mr President". [8]

Portrayal in the novel

Fan art of Big Brother 1984-Big-Brother.jpg
Fan art of Big Brother

Existence

Big Brother is described in the novel as "a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features" [5] and later as "black-haired, black-moustachioed, full of power and mysterious calm". [9] His image appears everywhere on posters in public places: [5]

On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

—  George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four , Part I, Chapter I

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 novel, it is unclear if Big Brother is or had been a real person, or is a fictional personification of the Party. 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." [10]

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. [11]

Critical response

The magazine Book ranked Big Brother no. 59 on its "100 best characters in fiction since 1900" list. [12] Wizard magazine rated him the 75th-greatest villain of all time. [13] Sally Watson-Jones writing in The Guardian described him as a "terrifying villain" due to his omnipotence as a god-like character made by the Inner Party. She commented that his existence is unimportant as his power comes from his superiority: "He is never wrong, has no idiosyncrasies that can be exploited, no personality that can be manipulated, no desire that can be leveraged against him." [14]

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 Hurt released in 1984, the Big Brother photograph was of actor Bob Flag. Both Oxley and Flag sported small moustaches.

Impact and influence

Use as metaphor

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. [15] [16] 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. [17] [18]

CCTV in George Orwell Square in Barcelona, Spain Plaza George Orwell, Barcelona..jpg
CCTV in George Orwell Square in Barcelona, Spain

Iain Moncreiffe and Don Pottinger jokingly mentioned in their 1956 book Blood Royal the sentence: "Without Little Father need for Big Brother", referring to the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union. [19]

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. [20]

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. [21] [22] 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. [23] Subsequent ads featuring Steve Jobs mimicked the format and appearance of the original ad campaign. [24] [25]

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. [26]

In other media

The English musician David Bowie gained an appreciation of the novel from an early age. He had wanted to create a theatre adaptation but could not get the rights. His studio album Diamond Dogs incorporates themes from the novel in the tracks "Big Brother" and "1984". [27]

The phrase "Big Brother is watching you" features in the design of a commemorative £2 coin produced by the Royal Mint in 2025 to mark 75 years since Orwell's death. [28]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Burgess, Anthony (1978). 1985.
  2. ↑ "Douglas Kellner, George F. Kneller Philosophy of Education Chair, UCLA". ucla.edu. Archived from the original on 9 July 2011.
  3. ↑ "From 1984 to One-Dimensional Man: Critical Reflections on Orwell and Marcuse" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 August 2011.
  4. ↑ Beadle, Gordon. "Reviewed Work(s): Orwell: The War Broadcasts by W. J. West; Orwell Remembered". A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies. JSTOR   4050379 – via JSTOR.
  5. 1 2 3 Lubin, David M. "Big Brother from '1984' is based on this infamous historical figure". Business Insider. Retrieved 3 November 2025.
  6. ↑ 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."
  7. ↑ 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. ISBN   978-0-230-24163-3. OCLC   435833495.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  8. ↑ Ulysses p. 478
  9. ↑ Taylor, D. J. (20 October 2010). "Orwell: The Life". The Orwell Foundation. Retrieved 2 November 2025.
  10. ↑ Tucker, Robert (1984). "Does Big Brother Really Exist?". The Wilson Quarterly. 8 (1): 106–117. JSTOR   40257593.
  11. ↑ Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four.
  12. ↑ Paik, Christine (19 March 2002). "100 Best Fictional Characters Since 1900". NPR. Archived from the original on 8 April 2002.
  13. ↑ Wizard #177
  14. ↑ Watson-Jones, Sally (14 April 2015). "Baddies in books: Big Brother, George Orwell's undefeatable menace". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 3 November 2025.
  15. ↑ Strouf, Judie L. H. (2005). The literature teacher's book of lists. Jossey-Bass. p. 13. ISBN   0787975508.
  16. ↑ Kaplan, Carl (2 February 2001). "Kafkaesque? Big Brother? Finding the Right Literary Metaphor for Net Privacy". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 November 2025.
  17. ↑ Zimmer, Ben (22 June 2024). "'Big Brother': Someone to Watch Over Us, via '1984'". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2 November 2025.
  18. ↑ LIFE. Time Inc. 4 July 1949.
  19. ↑ Iain Moncreiffe & Don Pottinger (1956). Blood Royal. Thomas Nelson and Sons. p. 18.
  20. ↑ Drotner, Kirsten. "New Media, New Options, New Communities?" (PDF) (PDF). Nordicom. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 23 May 2014.
  21. ↑ Remembering the '1984' Super Bowl Mac ad ZDNet, 23 January 2009
  22. ↑ Apple's 'Big Brother' sequel BBC News, 30 September 2009
  23. ↑ William R. Coulson 'Big Brother' is watching Apple: The truth about the Super Bowl's most famous ad The Dartmouth Law Journal, 25 June 2009 Archived 25 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  24. ↑ Farrell, Nick (9 October 2009). "Steven Jobs is the new Big Brother". the Inquirer. Archived from the original on 10 October 2009.
  25. ↑ Gianatasio, David (16 December 2010). "Steve Jobs (once again) cast as Big Brother". AdWeek.
  26. ↑ "Big brother: China's data-driven Social Credit system sounds like a sci-fi dystopia". The National. 26 September 2018.
  27. ↑ Murphy, Kelly (20 November 2024). "How David Bowie channelled the dystopian '1984'". faroutmagazine.co.uk. Retrieved 3 November 2025.
  28. ↑ "George Orwell celebrated on new 'Big Brother is watching you' coin". The Independent. 13 January 2025. Retrieved 3 November 2025.
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