Jerry O'Connell is Watching You

A few years ago, I found that many around the world refer to that meticulously mapped portion of the South Pacific, comprised of an astonishingly numerous assortment of islands, as Oceania. Until then, in all my academic endeavors, this continent had been clearly and continually identified as Australia. As you can imagine, such information isn’t ingested easily, as a seventh of the world has suddenly, in one fell factoidal swoop, become something different. It was like when that loveable Sheriff Griffith emerged from a cocoon of syndication as Matlock, only 32,000,000 times more painful. And now I can’t help but worriedly wonder if perhaps my own long lost landmass known as North America will someday undergo a similar identity theft, with the contentintily unrecognized Mexico and Canada running up questionable quantities of charged hockey pucks and soccer balls. All the while, those pavement patriots are skipping their Talladega victory laps to clock into second shift at some mall kiosk, just to cover the bogus bill.

However, this sour scenario becomes a sugar laden diabetic danger compared with the horrible net that Oceania will potentially cast upon the Americas in the not so far off, albeit delayed, future. At least according to an astutely dismal account I recently read. Being a denim enthusiast, I had initially hoped, judging by its title, that this text would be a snapshot chronicling all things stonewashed, as they appeared four years into the 80’s. However, sadly, I soon discovered that this book had no discussion of the tasteful leg-wear this decade had to offer. Rather it was a dark glimpse into a super state entitled, coincidentally enough, Oceania, which just so happened to include the majority of that continent currently carrying this label, as well as it’s two connected neighbors across the Pacific that share a common namesake. In fact, the one and only redeeming quality this nightmare of a nation seemed to supply was the blue overalls, presumably denim, made mandatory dress for many of its members.

Personally, as someone who has derived most of his foreign policy opinions from Toby Keith songs and Left Behind novels, I’ve been properly primed to give such a prediction the urgent, yet strangely affirming attention it demands and deserves. To me, it doesn’t seem that far fetched that this Orwell character, the man who penned this prophecy, was privy to some changing tide in continental colonialism, which was missed by his contemporaries and successors, as they were busy building sand castles with the diversionary Hasselhoffs of global affairs. Perhaps some subtle clues observed in his travels had alerted him to an array of alarming trends. Tendencies that his manuscript portrayed in full maturity.

For instance, from the temporal perspective in which this glance is given, the majority of everyday affairs are attended to in a language officially referred to as Oldspeak, but we would recognize it as English. However, the soon to be sole tongue of Orwell’s Oceania is Newspeak, that is after it’s forthcoming, yet still far off, full and complete implementation. The factor that sets this latter labeled language apart from any other is its peculiar propensity to actually decrease in lexical magnitude with each and every year. This curious characteristic is due to its slow refining by the ruling organization that gathers under the banner of Big Brother. This gradual dropping of words deemed dross is purposed to render critical cognitions directed at this group impossible, as such thoughts would lack the linguistic girders to support their meanings.

Orwell himself actually spent a considerable bit of his youth in India, and perhaps like myself, amidst this time in Asia, he found it favorable to impart the nationals with the knowledge of Oldspeak. Maybe it was during one such language lesson that the beginnings of a movement toward Newspeak became apparent, or at least possible. I’ll admit, this suggestion may strike its audience as quite unlikely, a just criticism surely wetting the confidence that the claim seeks to kindle. However, inside my mental tender box, below a handsome collection of pogs, rest shards of shed bark, their hints of rings telling of life gone by. A fresh addition, slightly gnarled by its misdirected search for the sun above, should be the perfect piece to grant this theory the spark that it needs.

That is to say that recently, one of my fellow teachers came across some compromising curriculum that was residing comfortably and undisturbed inside a textbook from which he teaches. The first flag that caught his eye was a multiple page-spanning chapter entitled “The Family Jewels”, complete with a barrage of expressions equipped to create conversations around this very topic. Needless to say, I was disgusted, but also a bit confused. Littering this lewd section were pictures of jewelry, armoires, and other assorted, seemingly aged, relics. My best guess was that the original images were spliced out in exchange for something non-threatening, something with the soothing subtlety of an “Antiques Road Show”, as a sort of penance for the mere privilege of being printed.

In Oldspeaking occasions, it seems to me that comments and phrases derived from this questionable content would, rather than bring its orators into closer connections with those they interact, instead alienate them inside an unbreakable bubble whose film consists of glossy restraining orders. However, this end may in fact be the desired goal of these perverted publishers. In the same way that Big Brother seeks to destroy the ties between those it subjugates, as such pathways of personal exchange represent lingering liabilities, perhaps these composers of conversational smut are similarly striving, and even building upon the work begun long ago, which went unnoticed by all but one lone Englishman in India.