Bowie songs of the year #2: “1984” (1974)

Bowie wrote and sang about (and to some extent explored in other media) dystopian futures for most of his career as an artist. 2022 saw the quick evolution of what had once been a fringe authoritarian movement in American politics into one that gave articulation to an expressed desire for dystopia here and now. That this movement has been a major influence within the American Republican Party (as with other far-right parties internationally) is not new. The brazenness of their expressed desire to create an anti-Democratic, anti-empiricist regime is. While many Bowie songs could represent this trend, none is better than “1984” (the video features Tina Turner performing the song).

“1984” is, of course, based on the George Orwell book. Bowie had intended to make a musical about the book, but Orwell’s estate objected. Nonetheless, Bowie salvaged this song, as well as “Big Brother” and “We Are the Dead” for his dystopian album Diamond Dogs. The book paints a picture of a world dominated by a few superstates and takes place in one of them, Oceania. The government is headed by a possibly fictional supreme leader, Big Brother, and its control and surveillance of its citizens is as absolute as Orwell could imagine. What always struck me as the defining characteristic of this world is the concept of doublethink, which has to do with the state’s ability to indoctrinate its citizens into believing two contradictory concepts at once, such as “war is peace.” The book’s protagonist, Winston, is eventually tortured to the point that he internalized the concept that two plus two equals five. By that point, his individuality and ability to think on his own had been broken and, as Bowie might have put it in #5 song, “Scream Like a Baby,” he had learned to be a part of socia-soc-society.

The American pro-authoritarian movement has been absolutely fueled by doublethink. Aspiring Big Brother Donald Trump so obviously lies all the time that the practice of doing so is less about confusing people about the actual truth as it is a method of control over his followers. Once they believe two plus two equals five, they are truly MAGA. The movement rallied around “the big lie” that a lost election was won, with advocates and candidates openly calling for the rejection not just of election results, but of math. It became fashionable among some rightists to make the case that the United States actually never was supposed to be a democracy, and that democracy is a bad thing. As anti-voting laws passed in legislature after legislature, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case to test the so-called “Independent Legislature Theory,” that, if upheld, would allow (Republican controlled) state legislatures to determine the outcome of elections. To be clear, the implication is not the same as the pre-17th Amendment arrangement where state legislatures would select senators. Instead, under this far-out theory, state legislatures would have the power to define reality.

Under the doublethink version of “freedom,” movement advocates attempted a variety of thuggish ways to monitor how individuals voted, both prior to and after the ballot would be cast (including by sending armed monitors to polling places in some cases, and knocking on doors and conducting post-election interrogations in other cases). But the movement’s invasive vision went deeper with the goals of banning books, prohibiting certain forms of speech (especially having to do with race in school contexts), promoting disinformation as free speech (especially, but not exclusively having to do with elections and public health), and forcibly controlling sexuality in a variety of ways from abortion bans to trans-oppression. Earlier supporters of Putin’s war against Ukraine, movement cheerleaders like Tucker Carlson continue to hold up the Russian dictator as a model.

Meanwhile, Trump himself continued his tactic of filing frivolous lawsuits to prove up is down (less in court than among his base), while attempting to rally thuggish leaders of what amount to political gangs as well as other prominent adherents of extreme views. His dinner with the avowed antisemite Ye, and proto-Nazi Nick Fuentes got some attention, but less so did the actual views of Fuentes. Fuentes acknowledges that his views on such things as the role of women in society and sexual autonomy are not popular, which is why he advocates an end to democracy and for Trump to become a dictator-for-life.

It’s worth noting that Trump is the instrument for Fuentes and his ilk, not the actual goal. Aspiring dictator Ron DeSantis campaigned in 2018 using commercials showing him indoctrinating his children into Trump-worship, but as 2024 approaches tried to outmaneuver Trump on the right. As if Trump’s handling of the pandemic was too permissive, DeSantis touts his imagining that the pandemic simply did not and does not exist. Two plus two equals five.

The successes of this movement in America were limited, especially in court and at the ballot box. But they had their wins, especially in public consciousness. Consider, for instance, that anybody at all takes Q-Anon seriously. Or that vaccine skepticism has essentially become mainstream. Or that many members of Congress openly speak of January 6th insurrectionists as patriots.

Or consider societal reaction to taking any measures whatsoever to protect against covid. I happened upon a sentence in an article earlier this year about Ed Koch that almost parenthetically mentioned that in 1987, during the height of the AIDS crisis, nearly 10,000 New Yorkers died of the disease over the course of the year. That number was approached by covid deaths in New York City during the worst weeks of 2020. During the course of the covid pandemic, it has almost certainly been the case that people matching the profile of a Trump supporter always faced a greater chance of dying of covid than they ever faced, at any time, of dying of AIDS.

Yet, sexual behavior and attitudes changed quickly and permanently in the late 80s and early 90s. No politicians rail against safe sex or condom use (except, of course, for those politicians who object to birth control at all). Yet even today, the idea that something as simple as mask-wearing has become a political third-rail, as covid and other diseases the spread of which could be curtailed by that simple act rage on, fill hospitals and generally disrupt life (not to mention keep on killing, albeit at lesser rates than 2020). As Bowie put it, “beware the savage jaw of 1984.”

Irrationality combined with the urge to oppress and longing to be told what to do is a dangerous mix that was all too front-and-center in 2022. If Bowie, or Orwell, was still around, either would have occasion to write a sequel to their same-named works, set 38 years later.