Book Review

Humility: The Quiet Virtue
by Everett L. Worthington (2007)

Reviewed By John W. Whitehead
02/19/08

In today’s winner-take-all world, where personal advancement is highly rewarded and individuals actively seek to perform and advertise altruistic measures in order to gain their 15 minutes of fame, appreciation for virtues such as honesty and humility has been steadily declining. Over the past few decades, American society has become one which increasingly promotes self-progress over the service and advancement of others—ultimately condoning narcissistic attitudes and thwarting the very virtues which are fundamental to the advancement of humanity as a whole. In his book Humility: The Quiet Virtue, Everett L. Worthington, Jr. strives to revive the virtue of humility by drawing attention to its importance and meaning, as well as educating the public on its ultimate attainment. More.

“I am an audience”

The sensual sustenance of Richie Havens

By Jayson Whitehead
02/07/2008

I saw Richie Havens perform in the early ’90s in a small club in Alexandria, and arrived early enough to sit in the front row and watch him play guitar up close. Havens has massive hands that he uses to bar up and down the fret, and uses his thumb to press down over the neck and onto the strings. While doing so, he strums swiftly and rhythmically as he sings of “Handsome Johnny” or “Freedom,” the song he rocked Woodstock with. It all makes for an entrancing experience, his raspy voice and jangling guitar spreading out like luminescent waves of sound.

“I started out in doo wop, which is pure harmony,” explains the 67-year-old Havens, who performs at the Gravity Lounge on February 7, during a phone interview. After quitting doo-wop, Havens became a part of the Greenwich Village beatnik scene and, while sitting inside a small folk club one night, was approached by its owner, a musician named Fred Neil. “Richie, you’ve been singing my songs from the audience, in harmony no less,” Neil said to him. “Take this damn guitar home and learn to play it yourself.” More.

Come Together: The Art of John Lennon

By Jayson Whitehead
05/23/07

“Love, love, love... Love, love, love… Love, love, love.” So went the rather simplistic beginning to the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” As a BBC TV camera closed in on John Lennon, bedecked with a tiara of some sort, he followed with a verse that began, “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done, nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.”    

The apotheosis of the appropriately titled Summer of Love, the June 25, 1967 “Our World” telecast was broadcast live to 400 million people worldwide. Of course, it followed the June 1 (June 2 in the United States) release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a worldwide happening if there ever was one. More.

Book Review

Jacob Bunn: Legacy of an Illinois Industrial Pioneer
by Andrew Taylor Call (2005)

Reviewed By Dave Caddell
11/30/08

Reaching deep into the rich history of Springfield, Illinois, and a family rooted in timeless principles and ethics, Andrew Call sheds a fresh perspective on early American industry and local politics in his book Jacob Bunn: Legacy of an Illinois Industrial Pioneer. Focusing on Bunn, his family and entrepreneurial legacy, along with the early development of Springfield, Call paints an intriguing picture of Bunn’s many business ventures, community benevolence and significant contribution to a legendary American political hero—Abraham Lincoln. As Call illustrates time and again throughout the book, Bunn brought life to the idea that principled leadership can shape and move communities in a positive way. More.

American Fundamentalists: Christ’s Entry into Washington in 2008

An Interview with Joel Pelletier

By Nisha N. Mohammed
07/05/2006

Joel Pelletier is a self-proclaimed “multimedia artist” whose satirical painting “American Fundamentalists: Christ’s Entry into Washington in 2008” has raised a few eyebrows for its controversial portrayal of the Christian Right.  Concerned about the growing influence of Christian fundamentalism in American politics, Pelletier was inspired to create a contemporary version of Belgian expressionist painter James Ensor’s 1888 painting “Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889,” which is housed at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. 

Attempting to convey the hypocrisy of using any and all events to assert one’s own self-importance, Ensor mocked the elites and government officials of Belgium and France by painting Christ’s return as a free-for-all party.  Likewise, in his take on Ensor’s political satire, Pelletier depicts (in his own words) “current American religious, corporate and political fundamentalists and their lackeys whooping it up in a big parade celebrating the return of Jesus, as 2008 Washington burns, the sky is a permanent red, and everywhere snipers and military aircraft stand guard.”

In this interview with OldSpeak, Pelletier talks about his painting “Christ’s Entry into Washington in 2008,” his rationale for the portraits he chose to include—including John Whitehead’s—and the message he is hoping to communicate. More.

Book Review:

Never Let Me Go
By Kazuo Ishiguro

Reviewed by Joshua Anderson
03/03/06

Writing a piece of fiction stacked with political and ethical implications is like pulling a block from the bottom of a wooden tower. It’s something to be done both carefully and firmly—moving slowly but finishing the job without giving the reader time to pause and think too much.  From the reader’s perspective, in order for the story to be effective, it must first of all be a story, and it must be the characters and not the issues in question that drive the emotion of the plotted events.  Though extensive debate over human cloning has thus far been postponed by cultural distaste for the issue, advances in science will one day almost certainly make the cloning of human beings both more realistic and more effective in helping extend the lives of the sick and elderly.  As that day approaches, there is little doubt that real discourse on this issue must soon occur at every level of our society. Are there good reasons to ever create and kill human life in order to give life to others? What if human cloning held the key to ending cancer? Would the cloned life that was created even be human at all? In the recently published Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro, a past winner of the Booker Prize, manages to navigate these tensions and deliver an often moving and ultimately successful warning against the possibilities and consequences of ethical decisions that will soon demand our society’s certain attention. More.

When Will They Ever Learn?

An Interview with Pete Seeger

By John W. Whitehead
01/04/06

Before the Byrds or Joan Baez or Peter, Paul and Mary, there was Pete Seeger. With his five-string banjo in hand, Seeger helped to lay the foundation for American protest music, singing out about the plight of everyday working folks and urging listeners to political and social activism.

In May 2005, countless tributes were held across the country to celebrate Seeger’s 86th birthday. While many of the legendary men and women Seeger associated with are gone, he continues his political and environmental endeavors. He still seems to subscribe to the same philosophy he held to four decades ago, when he advised young people to follow their hearts and take initiative: “Well, here’s hoping all the foregoing will help you avoid a few dead-end streets (we all hit some), and here’s hoping enough of your dreams come true to keep you optimistic about the rest. We’ve got a big world to learn how to tie together. We’ve all got a lot to learn. And don’t let your studies interfere with your education.”

In this OldSpeak interview with John Whitehead, Pete Seeger—described by Studs Terkel as “the boy with that touch of hope in the midst of bleakness”—speaks out, and even sings out, about his life’s work and his concerns for America’s future. More.

Book Review:

The War on Christmas
By John Gibson (2005)

Reviewed by Courtney Carlisle
12/16/05

In The War on Christmas, John Gibson discusses the widespread battle taking place across America to eradicate all mention of Christmas from the holiday season.  He states that, in the United States of America, a nation overwhelmingly Christian, literally any sign of Christmas in public can now lead to complaints, angry protests and threats, and finally litigation.  Though at first there were bans just on outdoor nativity scenes and any other blatantly Christian symbols, every year limitations get tighter as the war on all things related to Christmas expands.  It is lamentable, says Gibson, that saying things like “Merry Christmas” at school or in the office is no longer acceptable, that Christmas trees have become friendship trees, and that people aren’t even allowed to carol in public anymore. More.

How the Beatles Changed the World

An interview with Steven D. Stark

By John W. Whitehead
11/30/05

"Why on earth would anyone need another book about the Beatles?," writes Steven D. Stark in his new book, Meet The Beatles. "Hundreds of volumes have been written about the group in a multitude of languages, describing everything from their musical scores (which they never wrote down because they could neither read nor write music) to a virtual hour-by-hour chronology of each Beatle’s day. Their story has become our contemporary version of the Gospels, each disciple faithfully setting down what Saint John or Saint Paul said to him when it came time to write “She Loves You” or to visit the maharishi in India. As the British rock writer Charles Shaar Murray once put it, theirs is the greatest story “ever told and told and told and told.” And, unlike other pop phenomena, they seem, amazingly, to grow bigger by the year." More.

From Darwin to Hitler

An interview with author Richard Weikart

By Jayson Whitehead
05/16/05

As soon as World War II ended and details of the German Holocaust emerged, the world began to search for answers to explain the Nazis’ motivations for the systematic eradication of millions of Jews. Since then, Adolf Hitler has come to be recognized as the embodiment of evil and is frequently depicted as an amoral, bloodthirsty devil. Yet, as Richard Weikart explains in his recent book From Darwin to Hitler, Germany’s dictator in fact hewed to a strict, if pernicious, moral code, “an evolutionary ethic that made Darwinian fitness and health the only criteria for moral standards. The Darwinian struggle for existence, especially the struggle between different races, became the sole arbiter for morality.” More.

Below the Radar

Why graphic novels are worth embracing

By Neal Shaffer
12/29/04

Odd as it may seem in an age dominated by media, there is a decades-old art form that remains below the radar-a form that combines the visual appeal of film, photography and illustration with the considered storytelling of novels and short stories; a form that is accessible, wide-ranging and entertaining. And you're missing out on it. More.

Faith in Faith

The gospel according to Disney

By Jayson Whitehead
12/15/04

When the Southern Baptist Convention voted to officially boycott the Walt Disney Company in 1997, it was the low point in an already deteriorating relationship. Coming 60 years after the debut of Disney's first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the vote emphasized the severity of the rift between the traditional Christian community and the animation giant. More.

Sensitivity and Reciprocity

Why football should be publicly owned

By Neal Shaffer
10/13/04

Football season has returned, and with it comes a weekly ritual that, as much as any other, defines who we are as Americans. It is an amazing thing to behold, from the social aspect of getting together for "The Game" to the way that we, as fans, see the accomplishments of athletes as an embodiment of things we would like to do and be. Yet for all the enjoyment football creates in this country, there is always a lingering sense of manipulation. Whether it takes the form of an $8.00 beer or a stadium with an asinine name like Network Associates Coliseum, we pay a price for our fun.

It's also a price that generates a unique kind of tension. If sports are basically nothing more than entertainment, then it may make sense to milk the fans for all they're worth. But it is legitimate for the fans to question whether a professional sports team should be viewed that way. More.

Our National Pastime's Legitimacy Problem

By Neal Shaffer
04/13/04

Baseball season has finally returned, bringing with it all the customary hopes and dreams that coincide so nicely with spring. To some of us, this is a big deal. There was a time, however, when it was much bigger. Opening Day used to enjoy near-holiday status in America, but those days are long gone. The '94 strike combined with a succession of idiotic moves by the game's management structure (both MLB and the Players Association) to turn off many casual fans, and with good reason. The salary structure is out of hand, and suspect personalities like San Francisco Giants left fielder Barry Bonds and Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig are the game's public face. These things are distasteful and annoying but could be ignored under the right circumstances. Alas, they're not. More.

Are We at War with Islam...or Not?

By David McNair
04/05/04

After the terror attacks of 9/11, President Bush was quick to remind Americans and reassure Muslims that we were not at war with Islam. In fact, the President went out of his way to reassure Muslims that America was a friend of the Islamic religion. Meanwhile, Christian conservative leaders, so-called neo-conservatives, and hawkish political commentators began voicing a very different opinion about Islam. More.

Book Review:

Zermatt
By Frank Schaeffer

Reviewed by Joshua Anderson
04/04/04

Frank Schaeffer's new novel, Zermatt, is the second entry in a promised trilogy that began with Portofino, and represents a pioneering effort in the so-far-unmined genre of comic Reformed Presbyterian coming-of-age literature. Written as a first-person narrative of Calvin Dort Becker, the novel follows the misadventures of his American missionary family, as they minister among the Swiss during the 1960s and vacation in their customary low-budget Alpine ski hotel for a winter holiday from the Lord's Work. In case you haven't yet made the connection, Frank Schaeffer, son of the oft-knickered Reformed theologian Francis Schaeffer, was also the youngest son of an American missionary family ministering to the Swiss in the 1960s. It's unclear how far the parallels continue after that, and the reader is left to draw his own conclusions. More.

Gay Marriage, Half-Time Bodice Rippers, Allen Ginsberg's Queer Shoulder, and Other Paradoxes of Cultural Hypocrisy

By David Dalton
03/17/04

Can morality be legislated? Well, you can try. For example, take Janet Jackson's bare breast – metaphorically speaking, of course. This exposure was treated as if it were a sign that we were all going to hell in a handbasket. Western Civilization on the brink! Admittedly, this outrage occurred during one of our sacred rituals, wherein genetic freaks compete on steroids and Astroturf while beer-guzzling males gather in loutish little groups to cheer them on. But who, among all the sanctimonious commentators, mentioned the violence of the act? Or the song's lyrics (they told you what was coming), or various pantomimes of sexual perversion in Justin Timberlake's choreography. More.

Michael Jackson Is Guilty?!

By David Dalton
11/20/03

Michael Jackson is guilty as hell. The case has been made beyond the shadow of a doubt. Haven't you been paying attention? Bill Press, Dan Abrams, Chris Mathews, Imus, Brian Williams, Dateline NBC and E! Bill O'Reilly, Linda Stasi of the New York Post, Diane Diamond from Court TV, whatshername from Celebrity Justice (!), and Gloria Allred have all come right out and said it. How many psychologists, profilers, relatives, ex-cops, ex-D.A.s, ex-employees' lawyers, and free-floating pundits do you need? More.

Celebrity Culture in America

Has personality finally replaced reality?

By David McNair
11/06/03

In 1961, historian and social critic Daniel Boorstin argued in his book Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America that our nation was threatened by a "menace of unreality" which was replacing the authentic with the contrived in American society. "We need not be theologians," Boorstin wrote, "to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman. It is we who keep them in business and demand that they fill our consciousness with novelties, that they play God for us." More.

Johnny Cash: 1932-2003

By Neal Shaffer
09/16/03

Those of us who had been paying attention saw it coming. The illness had encroached too far for denial, and Johnny Cash's death on Sept. 12, 2003, at age 71, was no surprise. And yet, this one's going to take awhile. More.

Or Prohibiting the Free Exercise Thereof

Why the First Amendment doesn't protect Rastafarians

By Jayson Whitehead
08/29/03

In 1927, Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey landed on the lush shores of Jamaica. Born there in 1887, Garvey immigrated to America in 1916 and spent the next decade promoting his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Following his deportation for mail fraud charges, Garvey returned to his native country where his message of black empowerment struck a powerful chord with the disenfranchised lower class. More.

The Importance of Being Human

By Nisha N. Mohammed
07/17/03

It is what unites us all—being human. Yet as technology advances in our culture, it also begins to redefine what it means to be human – and the debate over the definition of life becomes more pressing. The discussion touches on all aspects of our culture and on all phases of our lives from birth to death and everything in between.

Abortion, euthanasia, organ harvesting, cloning, stem cell research force us to place a monetary value on human life and, in the process, dehumanize the very thing we once valued highly. More.

Harry Potter and the Christian Cauldron

An interview with Potter apologist Connie Neal

By Jonathan Whitehead
06/25/03

Since the initial publishing of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in 1997, over 25 million books in the Harry Potter series have been sold in the U.S. in hardcover alone, with the fourth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, boasting sales of over 8 million. With the fervor for the upcoming release of the fifth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, at an incredible high, there is no doubt that author J.K. Rowling has created a phenomenon in Harry Potter. But one thing she probably did not count on was the hatred the books have drawn in certain religious circles. More.

Tools of Their Tools

On Luddites, frankenplants, and Nicols Fox's Against the Machine

By Jayson Whitehead
06/11/03

In the early 1800s, a young apprentice weaver in England named Ned Ludd was said to have smashed a knitting machine that he refused to operate. He was just one of many artisans, craftsmen, and laborers that were beginning to oppose the wholesale introduction of machines to do jobs that individuals had done for hundreds of years. As workers'frustrations mounted in the face of unemployment, their ire focused on the early structures that were making them expendable. Across England, groups of displaced workers broke into shops and destroyed shearing frames and other such machines. In 1811, a thousand men marched into a town called Sutton and broke between thirty and seventy frames. These violent actions were becoming known as the "Luddite Rebellion," and as they continued, British authorities responded with a piece of legislation called the Frame Breaking Act that provided for the death penalty in cases of machine breaking. More.

Whose Art Is It Anyway?

By Neal Shaffer
05/30/03

This July, San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art will play host to an exhibit of "Illegal Art"– works that have aroused or could arouse, for one reason or another, legal action. The works range from a skewering of the Starbucks logo to Negativland's infamous "U2" album cover. The styles and media vary widely, as does (to be fair) the intensity of the responses they've garnered. But when taken together they make for a compelling assemblage, one that raises some critical questions about the role of the creative artist in the age of marketing, and to what extent the law is, and should be, involved. More.

Can Capitalism and Real Democracy Coexist?

A review of Greg Palast's book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

By David McNair
05/23/03

There's a temptation to dismiss Greg Palast's whistle-blowing theatrics and meticulous, conspiratorial fact-gathering by pointing out that powerful corporate and political insiders have always run the show and will do just about anything to keep running it. So tell me something my mother hasn't warned me about for years, Mr. Palast. As Mark Twain said about 100 years ago, "The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet." But I'm not going to be that cynical. Besides, there's evidence that our democracy might not survive if we continue to live in a dream world of consumer bliss and ignore the fact that our government is being run more like a corporation than the sloppy, messy, beautiful democracy it was meant to be. More.

Welcome to the Age of Anxiety

By David McNair
05/05/03

In the summer of 1988, Bobby McFerrin's hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" was all over the airwaves. People loved its light, catchy melody and simple optimism in the face of hardship.
In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy...
It went on to win a Grammy Award for Song of the Year and become a part of the American vernacular at the time. During George H.W. Bush's run for the presidency, it was even used as a theme song at the Republican Convention. Boy does that seem like a long time ago. More.

Organized Evil

Torture in the Middle Ages, Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments, and the power of authority over conscience

By David McNair
02/03/03

In the early 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a famous experiment on human obedience at Yale University. Volunteer subjects were asked to participate in a "memory study" and told that it was concerned with "the effects of punishment on learning." Each volunteer, referred to as a "teacher," was introduced to an "experimenter," who would oversee the experiment, and a "learner," who was strapped into a kind of electric chair while the volunteer sat behind a panel of switches and voltage meters, one of which was marked "Danger: severe shock.. More.

The Ideal TV Families?

By John W. Kennedy
01/27/03

The upheaval in U.S. society during the past half-century is nowhere better reflected than by what we watch on our television screens. In the 1950s, TV depicted the archetype white-bread wholesome American family in such shows as "Father Knows Best," "Leave It to Beaver" and "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet." Typically, Dad would leave the house in his suit and tie to go earn a living, leaving Mom in her dress and pearl necklace to supervise the youngsters. Any problems that arose during the day would be handled by Dad after a hard day at the office. More.

What It Means To Be a Soldier

Do military-themed video games create a disconnect between the real and the virtual?

By Neal Shaffer
12/23/02

For all of the amazing technological advances of the past fifteen years, it’s not really an overstatement to say that the emergence of the video game is as important as any of them. In May, 1972, when Magnavox released the first commercially available home video game system (Odyssey), there could have been no way to predict the eventual capabilities and significance of the technology. Anybody who has spent any time playing video games can attest to just how captivating they are. Not only are they a great diversion, there’s a god-factor that can’t be ignored. Every game is a unique world, and with enough practice they can all be mastered. More.

The Prisoner:

Pawns in the Village of Life

By John W. Whitehead
12/16/02

Like the automatons of Orwell’s 1984, our glazed eyes have melted into the television screen. Recent statistics indicate that young people in the United States are voluntarily becoming illiterate. Recent statistics bear this out. For example, the reading scores of fourth graders have not "budged off dreadful" over the past decade. In fact, the United States ranked last among industrialized nations in the literacy of 16- to 25-year-old high school graduates who did not go on to further education in contrast to thirty years ago when the country led the way in education. More.

War and Witchcraft:

A review of Mary Beth Norton’s In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692

By David McNair
11/04/02

Considering the enormous fear and paranoia that a sniper caused the general public in and around Washington, D.C., and that the war on terrorism has apparently caused the whole world, it is not hard to imagine how seventeenth-century settlers in New England must have felt during the two Indian Wars. Surrounded by a vast, unknown wilderness occupied by Indian tribes that frequently emerged like painted demons from that wilderness to raid settlements in sometimes brutal fashion, hacking men, women, and children to death, burning homes, and destroying livestock, it’s no wonder these early settlers grew somewhat hysterical. Combine that with the prevailing Puritanical religious attitudes of the time–which considered the Indian Wars to be the work of the devil and the result of God’s unhappiness with the settlers–add a bit of political and economic turmoil, the age-old tendency of those in power to cover up their mistakes, and the effects of post-traumatic stress syndrome, and you have most of the ingredients in historian Mary Beth Norton’s new book, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. More.

Seen From Above

An interview with artist Daniel Kohn

By David McNair
09/30/02

As one of many visual artists who took part in World Views, a cultural program offering vacant office space in Tower One of the World Trade Center, Daniel Kohn painted several views of the New York landscape from his 91st floor studio. Of course, on September 11, 2001 the landscape paintings that Kohn produced during his residency in 1998-99, which he says "embody the physical sensations of being up there in the Towers," took on a new significance. In a matter of hours they were transformed from simple meditations on place into haunting images of an interior view that no longer existed. More.

Ready to Give an Answer

An interview with Pat Boone

By John W. Whitehead
12/02/02

Born in 1934 and raised in Nashville, Tenn., Pat Boone was an unlikely candidate to be one of rock and roll's first stars. A Bible-toting Christian since his early teens, Boone was the epitome of a clean-cut kid. He served as student body president his last year of high school and by the time he recorded "Ain't That a Shame" in 1955, he had become a husband and father. His cover of Fats Domino was the first of a string of hits (eventually 38 in the Top 40) whose sheer commercial success was rivaled only by another Southern boy, Elvis Presley. More.

Way Out in the Wilderness

The spiritual journey of Bob Dylan

By Jayson Whitehead
12/09/02

When Bob Dylan released Slow Train Coming in 1979, the jaws of his fans and the music world in general collectively dropped. Filled with songs like "Gotta Serve Somebody," "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking," and "When He Returns," the Muscle Shoals recorded album was a gospel drenched, hard laced polemic for the core principles of Christianity. And when Dylan took to the road shortly thereafter, audiences found out how serious the bard was about his new beliefs. A typical show began with a couple of songs—often "Gotta Serve Somebody" and "I Believe in You"—before Dylan would lecture the audience about false prophets, judgment at hand, and the imminent return of the one and only savior Jesus Christ. The show would continue in this fashion, with only new songs, all explicitly Christian in theme, performed. More.

Why 2002 Is Like 1984

Revisiting Michael Radford’s film adaptation of Orwell’s 1984

By David McNair
10/07/02

Given the popularity of George Orwell’s novel 1984, it was inevitable that a film version of the book should be released in 1984. That honor went to British director Michael Radford and a cast that included: John Hurt as Winston Smith, the unremarkable hero of Orwell’s novel whose struggle for survival and eventual destruction are at the heart of the story; Richard Burton (who died of a brain hemorrhage shortly after the film was released) as O’Brien, the terrifying personification of the cruelty of Big Brother; and Suzanna Hamilton as Julia, the salacious member of the Anti-Sex League who becomes Winston’s lover. (Incidentally, 1984 was also the same year Apple introduced the Macintosh personal computer, stealing Radford’s fire by hiring Ridley Scott to make an anti-Orwellian commercial suggesting the Macintosh would liberate us from our drone-like servitude to Big Brother. With the slogan, "Why 1984 won’t be like 1984." Who was right? Orwell or Apple? You decide.) Although Radford’s film version of 1984 can’t begin to compete with the complexity of character and imagined historical detail found in Orwell’s novel, it does remain truer to its source than the 1956 version of 1984 starring Edmond O’Brien (Orwell’s O’Brien was changed to O’Connor to avoid confusion) as Winston. The 1956 version avoids the bleak, destroyed setting of Radford’s film, the nudity and sex scenes of course and, more importantly, the explicit torture scenes that horrifically illustrate the objectives of Big Brother. More.

Down With Big Brother:

The thought crimes of George Orwell

By John W. Whitehead
10/07/02

George Orwell was the pen name Eric Blair took in 1934. At the time of his death in England in 1950, 46-year-old Orwell had been a writer for less than twenty years. For about half of that period, he had been obscure and poor. Orwell’s life was never a comfortable one. He was shot in the throat while fighting in the Spanish Civil War and suffered from a demoralizing and ultimately lethal case of tuberculosis. All the while, Orwell lived on a low budget and, whenever possible, tried to grow his own food and even make his own furniture. More.