The humorous rewriting of Orwell’s '1984'

Q2 Social Sciences European Journal of Humour Research Pub Date : 2021-12-30 DOI:10.7592/ejhr2021.9.4.581
V. Tsakona
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Abstract

This commentary piece offers some preliminary thoughts concerning the Greek memes produced since COVID-19 disease arrived at Greece at the end of February 2020, through identifying an analogy between the sociopolitical conditions in Greece-under-lockdown and Orwell’s Oceania in his 1984 novel. It is specifically argued that such texts constitute political humour commenting on the abrupt, yet pervasive changes attested due to state measures against the spread of COVID-19 disease. To this end, memes collected from the social media are discussed and interpreted in comparison with extracts from Orwell’s novel to point to striking similarities between the 1984 sociopolitical context and the Greek one. It is, however, suggested that there is a significant difference between the two contexts: in Orwell’s dystopia, humour seems to have no place at all; on the contrary, humour thrived in Greece-under-lockdown, especially among participants in the social media, in the form of rapidly created and disseminated memes. Memory (a central notion in Orwell’s novel) emerges as a crucial factor for the production of such humour in contemporary Greece and for its absence from Orwell’s Oceania.
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奥威尔《1984》的幽默改写
这篇评论文章通过对奥威尔1984年小说中《Greece-under-lockdown》和《大洋洲》中的社会政治条件进行类比,对自2020年2月底新冠肺炎疾病抵达希腊以来产生的希腊模因提出了一些初步思考。有人特别指出,这些文本构成了政治幽默,评论了由于国家采取措施遏制新冠肺炎疾病传播而导致的突然但普遍的变化。为此,我们将从社交媒体上收集的模因与奥威尔小说的节选进行了讨论和解读,以指出1984年的社会政治背景与希腊社会政治背景之间惊人的相似之处。然而,有人认为,这两种语境之间存在显著差异:在奥威尔的反乌托邦中,幽默似乎根本没有立足之地;相反,幽默在被封锁的希腊蓬勃发展,尤其是在社交媒体的参与者中,以快速创建和传播的模因的形式出现。记忆(奥威尔小说中的一个核心概念)是当代希腊产生这种幽默的关键因素,也是奥威尔小说《大洋洲》中没有这种幽默的原因。
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来源期刊
European Journal of Humour Research
European Journal of Humour Research Social Sciences-Cultural Studies
CiteScore
1.10
自引率
0.00%
发文量
34
审稿时长
6 weeks
期刊介绍: The European Journal of Humour Research (EJHR) is a peer-reviewed quarterly journal with an international multidisciplinary editorial board. Although geographically-oriented towards the ˋold continentˊ, the European perspective aims at an international readership and contributors. EJHR covers the full range of work being done on all aspects of humour phenomenon. EJHR is designed to respond to the important changes that have affected the study of humour but particular predominance is given to the past events and current developments in Europe.
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