Newspeak ~ It’s A Wonderful Thing to Destroy Language
Newspeak …
According to the (real) dictionary –
new·speak [noo-speek] noun
( sometimes initial capital letter ) an official or semiofficial style of writing or saying one thing in the guise of its opposite, especially in order to serve a political or ideological cause while pretending to be objective, as in referring to “increased taxation” as “revenue enhancement.”
Origin: new + speak, coined by George Orwell in his novel, 1984 (1949)
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I was recently a victim of a great ad scheme …
I keep a few frozen dinners around to prevent starvation during marathon editing sessions.
I noticed that one of my favorite major maker of ready frozen dinners proudly displays on the box that their dinners are –
“NOW WITH MORE VEGETABLES” …
That sounds GREAT ! More veggies !
Hmmmmm…
Yet the box is the same size …
The weight is the same.
The tray inside is the same.
Hmmmm…
What they said was there is more vegetables –
What that means is, the meat was made smaller.
Yet another recent example …
Two of the large fast food chains went high volume all over television with ads touting a new menu that will save their customer’s money and provide better value …
What they did was raise prices on everything and created a board on the wall of their cheapest items.
Is this deliberate deception or just clever advertising ?
Back in the 1960s everything was …
“NEW AND IMPROVED”
… in advertising. Which means everything used to be old and lousy apparently …
There is an art to it – to say something that sounds great and is true in its own way yet mean something completely different or sometimes the opposite.
Newspeak is the opposite of Oldspeak as George Orwell wrote many years ago.
By 2050 the language we have known until now (Oldspeak) will be destroyed and replaced by Newspeak.
If Oldspeak will exist in any form it will be only with those who are so weak from lack of power or money that it won’t matter anyway – besides, those people are barely human anyway and are of no consequence. If they do not have power within “The Party” or have a large sum of coinage rendered by those who have the power – they are nothing.
This is what George Orwell wrote in his future fiction story of “1984”.
Are writers and the makers of art merely using historical fact and truth in human nature to create their fiction ? Is it some form of deja vu’ ? Prophetic insight ?
Or do people read too much into fiction ? Like some type of Nostradamus syndrome …
People can easily blur the line between fact and fiction.
Some are better at it than others.
When does fiction
become fact ?
The greatest example is in the story of “The King And I” where a stage version of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was performed to make the king see the error of his ways. SO – a fictional story used a fictional story to shame a fictional character into doing what was right.
This is nothing new – remember your Shakespeare ???
Still – this isn’t fiction becoming fact – but how many times has fiction been blamed for fact ?
I will never forget going to see the release of “The China Syndrome” and then just a few, short days later the accident at Three Mile Island made headlines. How could this be ?
Did the movie makers have a crystal ball ?
Was there some type of conspiracy at work to promote the movie ?
Certainly not – but what a coincidence !!!
WAS it merely coincidence that a major motion picture from a major studio with major box office draw actors hit theaters just days before a real life scenario of the fictional subject matter in this movie occur ?
Of course – or was it art imitating life ?
Does life imitate art ?
When it does, you usually hear “But it’s just a movie!”
Category: Tony Rollo Blog
