What's Behind the Camera

            In 1984, George Orwell reveals the sadden truth of what has been going on in Oceania.  “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and inscribed exactly as often as was necessary”(40).  In Oceania, it didn’t take a person to kill someone to lose their own life or to be removed from the system, and completely erase any information or memory of that person.   A simple thoughtcrime can instantly cause you to lose your identity and everything you've ever done or work for.  There was no real history in Oceania, everything can be erased, and revised at any given time. Meaning, there is always a question on to whether “did this really happen?”.  As for Gill Scott-Herron’s song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, there are similar concepts that are said in the song that people in Oceania dealt with.  Gill Scott-Herron said, “The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, brother”. As many people know, when you’re shown on the T.V., you tend to look five pounds lighter than what you really look; although that’s not the only thing that the television can hide, the truth may be, what’s not caught on camera.

            George Orwell’s quote really came to my mind because the thought of someone having the power to control history, makes me completely speechless.  How would society know what’s really the truth, and what’s a lie?  How would we know when, where, and what really happened and what specific time?  There would be endless questions about everyone and everything if anyone today in the United States had the power to control history, as they did in Oceania.  Gill Scott-Herron’s song was also very powerful for the deep meaning he had in his song.  These two both connect because they both tell us that the truth can be kept away, unseen, erased, and forgotten without us even knowing.  The television does not always televise what we should really see, what’s really significant, and what would really impact us.  If you can hide five pounds through a camera, how much more can you hide?  For example on the news, and newspapers, we don’t get all the information about what’s going in the government, and how things are being taken care of.  We think we know enough, yet really, we know so little.  There may be set rules and regulations, but even the most powerful people we know may be going against our countries own rules; just as they can in Oceania, and as they could have/have back then in our country.