Beware the Savage Jaw of 1984

I've finally been reading 1984. I know, I know, this should have been happening ages ago, preferably when I was in high school. In the back of my mind, I always thought that it was, well, longer than it actually turns out to be. Not only that, but I made the mistake of seeing the movie first; it was so dark and brutal (visually speaking), that I had no desire to actually read the book. Now that I'm reading it, I'm wondering how the movie dealt with all the bits about language, and everything that is unspoken; I don't recall anything in the movie particularly about Newspeak, which left me somewhat confused. To be honest, I remember virtually nothing about it, aside from the fact that it was just ugly. Oh, and rats; I remember that part. And a sub-par soundtrack album by the Eurythmics. "Sex Crime" at least has a good beat. Overall, the movie was something I felt I should watch, while not being something that I would ever care to see again. U-G-L-Y, it don't need no alibi: it's ugly! (I do realize the ugliness is straight from the book, but it is unleavened by the interesting language and ruminations on language that the book has so far done really well.)

Anyways, what actually got me to read the book was, of all things, an episode of SCTV; 1984-Big Brother, which is included in the collection The Best of the Early Years. This is the one episode in the collection that really meets the standard of excellence that the show eventually became known for. When the Big Brother stuff interrupts SCTV's regular broadcast day, it honestly is mildly creepy, with a female voice dispassionately intoning, "This is Telescreen. Do not adjust. It is a crime to adjust Telescreen." Orson Welles' face flashes on the screen as Big Brother. The details they include in the sketches are straight out of the book: Comrade Kangaroo shows children how to make an ear horn out of construction paper to listen at keyholes, advising children to report their parents for enjoying sex too much. There is an advertisement for a public hanging at 22:00. The Doublethink Game Show, where contestants vie for razor blades and shoe laces trying to guess whether the chocolate ration went up or down -- it always goes down, but you can't admit that it has gone down. In my estimation, it did a much better job of adapting the book than that movie did, and managed to undo my aversion to reading the book instilled in me all those years ago. Shouldn't a great adaptation of a piece of literature make you want to read it for yourself?