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Il y a plus de 70 ans, étaient publiés les deux romans-chocs de science-fiction : 1984 et Le meilleur des mondes.
1984 de George Orwell et Le Meilleur des mondes d’Aldous Huxley ont nourri les pires cauchemars des possibles dérives de la démocratie avec deux versions du contrôle des masses : par la privation ou par l'abondance. Romans d’anticipation ? Cauchemars éveillés ?
A l'heure de leur retour en force en librairie, le film confronte ces deux visions en miroir de nos sociétés de plus en plus contrôlées.
1984 de George Orwell et Le Meilleur des mondes d’Aldous Huxley ont nourri les pires cauchemars des possibles dérives de la démocratie avec deux versions du contrôle des masses : par la privation ou par l'abondance. Romans d’anticipation ? Cauchemars éveillés ?
A l'heure de leur retour en force en librairie, le film confronte ces deux visions en miroir de nos sociétés de plus en plus contrôlées.
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00:00...
00:27Imagine a globalized world.
00:29A planet under close surveillance.
00:34Where men are programmed, formatted,
00:38conditioned to accept their servitude.
00:41A world of disinformation,
00:44of widespread lying, where two plus two equals five.
00:48Where freedom is nothing more than an illusion.
00:52Today's reality is on the verge of catching up with yesterday's fiction.
00:56Over 70 years ago,
00:58Two writers were the first to raise the alarm.
01:01Two visionary Englishmen, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.
01:05Authors of two masterpieces of science fiction
01:08Brave New World and 1984.
01:14In Brave New World,
01:15Aldous Huxley describes a futuristic London
01:18a civilization of frivolous and hedonistic leisure
01:21governed by technoscience.
01:24On the other side of the Thames,
01:25George Orwell imagines in 1984
01:28citizen-workers placed under the watchful eye and boot of Big Brother,
01:31deprived of all freedom.
01:35And we, at a time of triumphant biotechnology,
01:37mass media and social networks,
01:40On which shores are we likely to fail?
01:42Orwell or Huxley?
01:53On one side, Aldous Huxley, the privileged one,
01:56the intellectual, the dandy.
01:59On the other hand, George Orwell, the humanist, the fighter,
02:02the revolutionary in love with nature and solitude.
02:07Two Englishmen with contrasting temperaments
02:09who rubbed shoulders, appreciated each other, then quarreled.
02:14Huxley was Orwell's teacher
02:16before the two men lost sight of each other.
02:19It is their novels that will bring them together.
02:21but they will never be able to agree
02:23on their bleak vision of the future.
02:27Everything, in their lifestyle as well as in their books,
02:30expresses their antagonisms,
02:32to the place where they wrote.
02:34Orwell would shut himself away for two years between four walls
02:37on a rain- and wind-battered island in Scotland.
02:41Huxley will opt for gentleness
02:42of a Mediterranean seaside resort.
02:46In 1930, Aldous Huxley retired to Sainte-Marie-sur-Mer.
02:49on the French Riviera, far from the Great Depression
02:52and the rise of nationalisms that are shaking Europe.
02:57We are moving into a small house
03:00overlooking the Mediterranean.
03:03Should you ever consider revisiting the Old World,
03:06Please remember our address.
03:0830 minutes from Marseille, 10 from Toulon.
03:12In this haven of peace, frequented by many British intellectuals,
03:16Aldous Huxley, accompanied by his wife Maria Nys
03:19and their young son, Matthew, are enjoying the beach.
03:22Listen to Beethoven and observe closely
03:24the behavior of the European intelligentsia.
03:28At 36, Huxley was a young, fashionable writer,
03:31a caustic social critic and a self-proclaimed socialite,
03:34always drawn in four respects.
03:36He is a writer who has been written about
03:38There's this very amusing anecdote about Virginia Woolf
03:41during a ferry crossing.
03:44She spots Huxley and his wife on the boat.
03:46dressed as if for a Vogue magazine photoshoot,
03:49And since she didn't feel dressed well enough to meet them,
03:53It adapts to the beach atmosphere.
03:55She is a young woman,
03:57which appears to be sheltered from the beach,
03:59but which seems to be sheltered from the beach.
04:01She seems to be sheltered from the beach.
04:04but she seems to be safe from the beach.
04:06He was really very comfortable in social situations.
04:09Besides writing, to which he devotes his days,
04:12Huxley was passionate about science and technological innovations,
04:16radio, which penetrates homes,
04:22but also and especially medicine and biology.
04:25He is a writer who has been written about
04:27and who is a writer who is a writer
04:30who is a writer who is a writer who is a writer
04:33who is a writer who is a writer who is a writer
04:36who is a writer who is a writer who is a writer
04:40and a writer who is a writer who is a writer who is a writer.
04:44He is very athletic.
04:49His grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley,
04:52is an eminent zoologist and anatomist,
04:55great defender of Darwin.
04:57His brother, Julian,
04:59is a biologist and eugenics theorist.
05:02As for his half-brother, Andrew,
05:04I think that was a factor.
05:08What's interesting is that he almost never wrote about it.
05:13Why didn't he say more about this intellectual legacy?
05:17Was it because he wanted to be a modern man?
05:22After the First World War, intellectuals like Huxley
05:25were so angry about the war that had killed so many of their friends
05:28that they wanted to turn their backs on the past and look towards the future.
05:35What Huxley sees looming on the horizon does little to reassure him.
05:39In the turbulent context of the interwar period,
05:42He questions the place of the individual in a world
05:45which is heading towards mass production and consumption.
05:48He wants to make it the subject of his next book.
05:51an ironic and ferocious tale, the antithesis of most science fiction novels of the time
05:56who defend the idea that scientific progress would bring happiness to mankind.
06:01In May 1931, Huxley isolated himself in his office for four months.
06:05and imagine a world where science, under the guise of providing comfort and stability,
06:09becomes an instrument of control aimed at conditioning and enslaving humanity.
06:15His book draws on the eugenic debates that animated the scholarly community of the 1930s.
06:20Huxley is appalled by those who see in the progress of genetics
06:24a way to organize society and justify inequalities.
06:27And even more so by some scientists in the United States and Great Britain
06:31which sterilize the disabled and those deemed socially unfit.
06:39Aldous Huxley lived in a time when people talked about selective breeding,
06:44of eugenics, of the possibility of conditioning human beings
06:50by inducing certain behaviors in them.
06:53By talking to them while they sleep.
07:04Huxley extrapolated from these stories, these technologies,
07:10adding drugs and medications
07:14to turn it into a fable about ultimate control.
07:19The world is stable now.
07:21People are happy.
07:23They get what they want and they never want what they can't get.
07:27They are comfortable, they are safe, they are never sick.
07:32They are not afraid of death.
07:37They are conditioned in such a way that practically,
07:40They are not afraid of death.
07:42They are conditioned in such a way that practically,
07:45They cannot help but behave as they should.
07:52Huxley thus warns us that we could be heading towards a society
07:56which controls us all through pleasure and not through suffering.
08:03And it would then be a civilization from which it would be much more difficult to escape.
08:08Who will rebel against pleasure?
08:13Huxley delights in his book in reversing all the values of Victorian-era Puritanism.
08:18But beneath this apparent liberation of morals,
08:20An unequal society, divided into castes, is emerging.
08:25At the top of the pyramid are the Alpha individuals
08:28and at the very bottom, the Epsilons.
08:31His hero, Bernard Huxley,
08:33is the only one to resist this mass conformity.
08:36An independent spirit that can be explained by an accident during its conception.
08:44Bernard Huxley is an Alpha, even an Alpha Plus.
08:47So this is someone with very significant brain capacity.
08:51But unfortunately, at the very moment it was being conditioned,
08:55the rumor that we hear,
08:58but unfortunately, at the very moment it was being conditioned,
09:01Rumors are circulating that drops of alcohol may have leaked into his bloodstream.
09:06And so, he's small, a disaster, he's Morico.
09:11He's not handsome.
09:13And since he's not handsome, even though he's an Alpha Plus,
09:17He is not a dominant male.
09:19And since he is not a dominant male,
09:21He doesn't have access to all the females he would be attracted to.
09:24and that creates a deep frustration in him.
09:28He felt like an outcast.
09:30And feeling like an outcast, he behaved like one.
09:33This, in turn, increased the feeling he was experiencing.
09:36of being a stranger and alone.
09:38Bernard Marx tries to seduce the beautiful Lenina.
09:42He takes her to a nature reserve, far from the best of all possible worlds.
09:46During their getaway, the couple encounters an individual
09:49which has escaped all forms of conditioning,
09:51John, called the savage.
09:54And so he's going to bring back this savage.
09:56the president of America, by the way,
09:58and the colonies brought savages back to the court of England
10:01to show them.
10:02So he's going to bring back this savage.
10:04and it will become a huge media success
10:07and erotic at the same time.
10:12I had six women last week,
10:14Bernard Marx confided.
10:16One Monday, two Tuesdays,
10:18Two more Fridays and one Saturday.
10:21And if I had had the time or the desire,
10:23there were at least a dozen more
10:25who couldn't have asked for anything better.
10:30In a magazine, Huxley had said
10:32not to be interested in the world of pleasures.
10:35He found it boring.
10:37But I think that's contradictory.
10:39based on what we know of his life.
10:42He lived in relationships that were sometimes very complicated.
10:45with his wife Maria, who was bisexual.
10:48And she often found him mistresses.
10:53To think that back then, in 1920s England,
10:55It was unconventional.
10:57That's an understatement.
11:01Upon its publication in 1932,
11:03Brave New World is receiving critical acclaim.
11:06But several countries, such as Ireland and Australia,
11:09They see it as an incitement to debauchery.
11:11and even demand that the books be burned.
11:13A controversy that Aldous Huxley followed with amusement.
11:16from his property on the French Riviera.
11:22At the same time, on the other side of the Channel,
11:25A man is fighting to survive.
11:27Journalist down on his luck,
11:29George Orwell explores the underbelly of London,
11:32sharing the daily lives of vagrants
11:34written about their living conditions.
11:37But he is unable to make a living from his writing.
11:39and takes on a series of odd jobs.
11:41Until World War II broke out.
11:45Europe is descending into chaos
11:47and now most of the continent
11:49lives under a dictatorship.
11:51In 1943, Orwell wrote "Animal Farm",
11:55satire in which he denounces Stalinism
11:58and the excesses of the Bolshevik Revolution.
12:00George Orwell is 40 years old
12:02and is already thinking about his next novel.
12:05The story of a totalitarian regime,
12:07Nightmarish and destructive.
12:111984, initially, was supposed to be called
12:13"The last man in Europe"
12:15the last man in Europe
12:16So that meant destruction.
12:22It was originally a trilogy
12:24which was called "The Living and the Dead",
12:26So there was a first volume
12:27which has never been written,
12:28"Animal Farm"
12:29constituted the second part
12:30and the third and final one,
12:32It was "The Last Man",
12:34The end is the end.
12:35We destroyed everything.
12:461946, London is nothing but a field of ruins.
12:52George Orwell flees the capital
12:54and boards a ferry.
12:56Next stop: the Isle of Jura, in Scotland.
13:02A barren and austere land,
13:04surrounded by rocks
13:05and populated by deer
13:06which will become her writing refuge.
13:09An elusive place, he writes,
13:11where he will begin writing
13:13of his great work.
13:15A thousand miles from comfort
13:16Aldous Huxley's padded,
13:18he moves into this isolated cottage
13:20at Barnhill.
13:22Four walls,
13:23a typewriter,
13:24tobacco.
13:25Orwell has nothing left to lose.
13:27His young wife Eileen
13:29has just died from cancer.
13:32He finds himself widowed
13:33and father of a young adopted boy,
13:35Richard,
13:36three years.
13:38Richard Blair is alive today
13:39in Long Islington,
13:40in central England.
13:43When we were in the house,
13:45you could hear
13:46the tap-taps of the typewriter
13:48from my father,
13:49in his room upstairs.
13:52Every evening, her younger sister Avril
13:54went upstairs to bring him a cup of tea.
13:58And of course,
13:59where he was,
14:00He was with his little brother.
14:02his little brother,
14:03his little brother,
14:04his little brother.
14:07And he was there.
14:09in his room,
14:10with an oil heater
14:11which produced a lot of smoke.
14:13The windows are closed.
14:15And he smoked like a chimney.
14:17He really was
14:19a very heavy smoker.
14:25At 44 years old,
14:26Orwell suffered from tuberculosis.
14:28He knows his time is running out.
14:32So he types on the keyboard
14:34throughout the day
14:35and smokes like a chimney
14:36until he coughed up his lungs.
14:42He's already working in his bed
14:43because the doctor told him
14:44You don't move from your bed,
14:46Enough with the nonsense.
14:48He coughs,
14:49He has recurring pneumonia.
14:50He is spitting up blood.
14:51Finally, he is ill.
14:52So he hadn't found
14:53typist in Jura.
14:54Obviously,
14:55far from everything,
14:56he hadn't found
14:57someone who could
14:58type his text
14:59And he was the one who did it.
15:00So you can imagine
15:01the enormous typewriters
15:02which were supposed to weigh 15 kilos
15:04and he had that in his bed
15:05and he typed on the typewriter,
15:06That probably didn't help his health.
15:08And I think he worked
15:10in a state,
15:11I think he was working all the time.
15:13He was in a hurry to describe this text,
15:15he had all his ideas in his head
15:17And it was a race against time.
15:211984
15:22describes a world divided into three blocks
15:24who are engaged in a perpetual war.
15:26The population is maintained
15:27in destitution
15:28under the menacing gaze of Big Brother,
15:30embodiment of repressive power,
15:32bureaucratic and omniscient.
15:36In this post-apocalyptic setting,
15:38There is a character named Winston
15:40who is 39 years old,
15:41who has a varicose ulcer on one leg,
15:44who is rather scrawny,
15:45who is a little insecure,
15:47somewhat depressed or sub-depressed
15:50and who, for years,
15:51is an interesting monologue.
15:54It's inadequate.
15:55Thus begins the story.
16:24Insufficiently heated rooms,
16:26crowded subway trains,
16:28dilapidated houses,
16:30black bread.
16:34Nothing was cheap and plentiful,
16:36apart from synthetic jeans.
16:40We always had it in our stomachs and in our skin
16:42a kind of protest.
16:46The feeling that we had been duped,
16:48deprived of something
16:49what we were entitled to.
16:54No one has ever understood it better, I think.
16:57the functioning of totalitarian systems,
17:00not just the functioning,
17:02but the philosophical principles
17:04that which is behind it,
17:06like George Orwell.
17:15From the outset, from the very first pages,
17:17It puts us in a terrifying world.
17:20People live in miserable conditions.
17:23this telescreen that constantly monitors them,
17:25and in his ministry,
17:27people who suddenly disappear,
17:29Silence, no one.
17:31He even notices that he has disappeared.
17:33George Orwell makes us aware
17:36of our own fear
17:38to react like a lever
17:40to incite us to revolt.
17:43Absolutely.
17:45When you read this novel,
17:47It is written with scalpel precision.
17:49The first part of the novel,
17:51This is the exhibition section.
17:53who introduces us to this company
17:55and the place Winston occupies there,
17:57and particularly cold, icy.
17:59The second,
18:01which is the encounter with Julia
18:03and the discovery of sex and friendship,
18:05And why not love?
18:07This one has lyrical moments.
18:09In the olden days,
18:11A man was looking at a girl's body,
18:13He found him desirable,
18:15And the deal was done.
18:17But today, there is no more pure love,
18:20No emotion was pure,
18:22because it was filled with fear and hatred.
18:24Their embrace had been a battle,
18:27their enjoyment, a victory.
18:31It was a blow to the party.
18:33It was a political act.
18:38Orwell thought
18:40that love
18:43is a means,
18:46offers an alternative
18:48to the absurd,
18:50maybe an engine
18:52of very interesting revolts and revolutions.
18:54That's how it is.
18:56Jean Giraud's entire novel is built on this.
18:58One day, Julia was discovered,
19:00love,
19:02And here, this is the new phantasmagoria.
19:04Love is worth it
19:06All the sacrifices, Paris is well worth a mass.
19:10And love brings him
19:12in the dissident movement.
19:14Love is forbidden
19:16within the caste to which he belongs.
19:18Well, he likes it.
19:20and so on.
19:22And so, as a result,
19:24He comes from a universe,
19:26He enters a world where they will clash.
19:28until death.
19:30I am not satisfied with the book.
19:32But I'm not entirely unhappy with it.
19:34I think the idea is good.
19:36but I would have made better use of it
19:38if I hadn't been sick.
19:401984
19:42was published on June 8, 1949.
19:44Despite his doubts,
19:46the novel immediately stands out
19:48like a masterpiece.
19:50Winston Churchill will tell
19:52I read it twice.
19:54And Big Brother will become
19:56for millions of readers
19:58the ultimate figure of totalitarianism.
20:06Totalitarian state
20:08crushing the individual
20:10against the provider control society
20:12of superfluous happiness and pleasure,
20:14Everything seems, at first glance, to be opposed
20:16the universes of Aldous Huxley
20:18and George Orwell.
20:20And yet,
20:22a place 40 km from London
20:24brought the two men together
20:26in the late 1910s.
20:28An enclave outside of time
20:30factory of the elites of the British Empire,
20:32the prestigious Eton College.
20:34They meet
20:36in this classroom
20:38in 1917.
20:40Huxley on the stage,
20:42Orwell behind a lectern,
20:44The master and the student.
20:46Aldous Huxley knows by heart
20:48its walls and the graffiti
20:50that adorn the tables.
20:52He completed his schooling there.
20:54like all members
20:56of British high society.
20:58He is now returning to it
21:00as a substitute French teacher.
21:02Eton Eric Blair,
21:04George Orwell's real name,
21:06does not belong to this caste.
21:08At 14 years old,
21:10he receives a scholarship
21:12to join this heir society
21:14which is completely foreign to him.
21:16For this son of a minor civil servant
21:18of the administration of India
21:20in charge of the opium trade,
21:22the discovery of this universe
21:24constitutes a shock.
21:26Most of the boys educated at Eton
21:28they came from very wealthy families.
21:30They were dukes,
21:32accounts, etc.
21:34They were extremely rich people
21:36who ruled the country.
21:40My father always said
21:42that his family was of high social standing,
21:44middle, lower class.
21:46To explain this,
21:48high society because that's what
21:50they aspired,
21:52middle class because that's where it comes from
21:54from which they came
21:56and lower class because
21:58They really had no money.
22:04Rather than blending into traditions
22:06Orwell became fascinated by college
22:08for the crime novel.
22:10He begins practicing voodoo magic to seek revenge.
22:12of a student who is harassing him.
22:14The good child
22:16transforms into a rebellious teenager.
22:18Only Professor Huxley
22:20captures his attention,
22:22against his will, because the teacher
22:24drags his melancholy around Eton.
22:26The one who dreamed of a life as a novelist
22:28was forced to accept this position
22:30when his father cut him off financially.
22:32He was a disastrous teacher
22:34who had no authority,
22:36incapable of maintaining order,
22:38but Huxley instilled a love of language
22:40and words in the ears
22:42of his young students,
22:44And I think that's a contribution.
22:46who stayed.
22:48Through contact with Professor Huxley,
22:50The young Orwell discovers Zola.
22:52Anatole France.
22:54Huxley and he collaborated on the school newspaper.
22:56Literature, writing,
22:58become for the recalcitrant teenager
23:00a way to make a place for oneself in the world.
23:04Even if he didn't work at Eton,
23:06he was capable
23:08to hold an intellectual conversation
23:10with anyone
23:12because he was very cultured.
23:16He spent most of his time reading.
23:18He read everything that was available to him.
23:20And that spark
23:22which inspired him to write
23:24She was certainly born at Eton.
23:30Neither of them is happy at Eton.
23:32Orwell accumulates bad results
23:34and decides not to continue his studies.
23:36After two years of teaching,
23:38Huxley resigns from his position.
23:40He wishes to dedicate himself
23:42fully immersed in writing,
23:44to put an end to what he calls
23:46his poetic constipation.
23:50The closed and oppressive art of Eton
23:52will serve as a source of inspiration
23:54to the two writers.
23:56It will shape their vision of the future.
23:58that of a compartmentalized world,
24:00unchanging, hierarchical
24:02in a caste society
24:04where no one escapes their condition.
24:10In his novel, Huxley imagines this:
24:12a baby factory.
24:14They are produced on one side
24:16the alphas, the physical and intellectual elite
24:18and on the other hand, the epsilons,
24:20mass of factory workers produced on an assembly line
24:22following cloning techniques.
24:48That's Huxley for you.
24:50Huxley, that is to say
24:52instead of living badly
24:54social determinism
24:56which is inherent to our societies,
24:58which is not entirely wrong,
25:00We're going to biologize ethos.
25:02In other words, roughly,
25:04You wanted to be
25:06fashion director,
25:08You wanted to be
25:10baker, etc.
25:12It will be sorted out from the start.
25:14this story.
25:16And so, like that,
25:18we will prevent both
25:20have other desires
25:22while they have a clear path
25:24and they must adhere to it.
25:30So yes, that's true.
25:32it can be felt
25:34like a delusional dystopia
25:36or a utopia, since people
25:38will no longer even have the option
25:40to raise awareness of their voluntary servitude.
25:42This question of a society
25:44predetermined according to genetic criteria
25:46sparks heated debates within
25:48of the Huxley family.
25:50His brother, the biologist Julian Huxley,
25:52is a proponent of a new eugenics
25:54which would aim to improve human beings.
25:56A repugnant idea
25:58and fascinating for the novelist.
26:00You have a couple
26:02absolutely explosive
26:04between these two brothers,
26:06one who will think
26:08the rational version,
26:10total,
26:12biological,
26:14eugenic,
26:16in quotation marks, on the one hand,
26:18and then the other one who will try
26:20through absurdity,
26:22through utopian fiction
26:24but which is almost dystopian.
26:26to come and counter
26:28That idea. And so you have two brothers
26:30which, within itself
26:32from their family nexus,
26:34from their family bond,
26:36are organizing
26:38the future quarrel of humanity.
26:42The United States is leaning
26:44Today, Julian's ideas
26:46Huxley. Some doctors even
26:48took the plunge into eugenics
26:50and offer custom-made babies.
26:54In California,
26:56at the Fertility Institute in Los Angeles,
26:58the best of all possible worlds
27:00has become a reality.
27:02Dr. Steinberg manufactures
27:04Custom-made alphas.
27:08We currently have 7000 embryos
27:10in these tanks and we know everything
27:12of each of them, from whom they come,
27:14when they were produced
27:16and where they will go.
27:22It was in these vats that Dr. Steinberg
27:24cultivates the humans of tomorrow.
27:30Here, for $20,000,
27:32parents can come and offer
27:34the offspring of their dreams.
27:40What I am doing,
27:42This is surgery on a human embryo.
27:44I extract a few cells for analysis
27:46DNA and everything you need to know about this embryo.
27:50Jeffrey Steinberg reportedly listed
27:52more than a thousand genetic factors,
27:54determining not only health
27:56of the child, but also their physical characteristics.
27:58Based on this data,
28:00he says he can select an embryo
28:02which meets the needs of its customers.
28:04400 expectant parents are turning to him for help.
28:06every year.
28:08The first thing parents ask,
28:10Is it a girl or a boy?
28:12The second thing is eye color.
28:14The third is size.
28:16Tall people want shorter children.
28:18The smallest ones, older children.
28:20People always want what they don't have.
28:22We get some pretty crazy requests.
28:24regarding size or certain characteristics
28:26to become a good football player,
28:28a good dancer,
28:30a good singer,
28:32a good athlete.
28:34Incredible requests
28:36on the different things.
28:38Obviously, we don't have all these possibilities yet.
28:40We have redesigned our technology.
28:42There's even more to have fun with.
28:44The design of human beings
28:46bespoke represents today
28:48a colossal market.
28:50In 2020, the sector is expected to generate revenue
28:52up to $20 billion.
28:54Something to be afraid of
28:56The advent of a new caste society?
29:02In the future,
29:04There will be several kinds of human beings.
29:06And some will be superior
29:08either way.
29:12If the rich have access
29:14to these technologies first,
29:16then their children will be gods
29:18compared to the rest of us.
29:22That's what kings
29:24in ancient societies, they used to say.
29:26They said their children
29:28were better.
29:30It was a lie.
29:32But this time, it will be true.
29:36After their time at Eton,
29:38the two writers
29:40take opposite paths.
29:42In 1927, while Aldous Huxley
29:44He is living happily in Italy.
29:46George Orwell returns from Burma
29:48where he spent 5 years in the ranks
29:50of the colonial police of the British Empire.
29:54When he returned,
29:56he told his parents
29:58that he wanted to become a writer,
30:00but that it wasn't enough.
30:02They told him
30:04Why did you give up?
30:06a very good police officer's job
30:08In Burma, well paid
30:10To become a penniless writer?
30:12In other words,
30:14you train the family
30:16to the depths
30:18where you seem to want to go.
30:20That's one of the reasons
30:22for which he changed his name.
30:24Eric Blair has become George Orwell
30:26to protect his family.
30:28But at the same time,
30:30He also accepts it
30:32because it's his choice
30:34to live as close as possible
30:36of those who are victims of the system.
30:38He developed this idea quite quickly.
30:40that it was the proletariat
30:42that would the solution
30:44and the revolution,
30:46and that it was better
30:48to be on that side.
30:52The 1930s.
30:54A pivotal period
30:56If Huxley is worried
30:58the rise of extremism,
31:00he will always keep his distance
31:02of any form of ideology.
31:04George Orwell, on the other hand,
31:06is a seasoned socialist activist
31:08who sees in the Spanish social revolution
31:10a hope for change.
31:12In 1936,
31:14He's going to Barcelona to fight
31:16against Franco's nationalist forces.
31:18The writer joined the ranks of the POUM,
31:20the Marxist Unification Workers' Party,
31:22which he describes as a kind
31:24of the ecosm of the classless society.
31:30And that delights him.
31:32because he thought it wasn't possible,
31:34that society was irrevocably divided
31:36in insurmountable social classes,
31:38There, everyone mixes together.
31:40And he thought to himself, so it's possible.
31:42And there is a wild hope, in fact,
31:44which is born from these days.
31:46So he first went to the Aragon front.
31:48They are very happy to get it back
31:50because he, at least,
31:52He never handled a rifle.
31:54So he becomes an instructor, in fact.
31:56because there are lots of young people
31:58who have never handled a weapon in their lives.
32:00And well, we're fighting on the Aragon front.
32:02We don't put up posters.
32:04Shots are being fired.
32:06So he becomes an instructor.
32:08And besides, Roel, he liked to fight.
32:10It was somewhat in his nature.
32:14And there, he is injured.
32:16He takes a bullet to the throat.
32:18That's absolutely incredible.
32:20And no vital organs are affected.
32:22He's just injured in the larynx.
32:24which will cause him to lose his voice
32:26which will last for some time.
32:28And then afterwards, I think he'll keep it
32:30a slight veil in his voice
32:32which will stay with him for the rest of his life.
32:38Betrayed by Stalin and the Communist Party,
32:40who do not want a revolution in Spain,
32:42Roel and his brothers-in-arms are threatened.
32:46In June 1937, the English writer
32:48must leave Catalonia in haste
32:50to escape prison.
32:58Upon his return to London in early July,
33:00his dream of a fraternal revolution
33:02and libertarianism collapses
33:04when he discovers the false information
33:06disseminated by the communist press.
33:18The very notion of objective truth
33:20is disappearing from this world.
33:22For all intents and purposes,
33:24The lie will have become the truth.
33:28The injunctions found in 1984,
33:30War is peace.
33:32Freedom is slavery.
33:36Ignorance is strength.
33:38Love is hate.
33:40through these reversals of meaning,
33:42Roel reports well
33:44of this perversion
33:46totalitarian regimes
33:48who use language
33:50by emptying words of their substance
33:52and by replacing it
33:54by the exact opposite.
34:16This manipulation of language
34:18is common to both novels,
34:20just like the falsification of history.
34:22Inspired by the ministry
34:24information from the United Kingdom
34:26where his wife worked,
34:28Roel invented in 1984
34:30a ministry of truth
34:32who is responsible for truncating the information.
34:34His hero,
34:36Winston Smith,
34:38is the first man
34:40to do the truth
34:42the truth.
34:44His hero,
34:46Winston Smith works there
34:48and has the task of rewriting
34:50historical facts
34:52so that they match
34:54to the perpetually changing line
34:56of the party.
34:58It penetrated your skull,
35:00was hitting against your brain,
35:02frightened you to the point of making you
35:04renounce your beliefs.
35:06The party told you to reject
35:08the testimony of your eyes
35:10and your ears.
35:12The party told you to reject
35:14the testimony of your eyes.
35:16An idea taken almost word for word
35:18and perfectly accepted
35:20by Donald Trump
35:22in Kansas City
35:24in a speech
35:26facing American veterans.
35:28And just remember,
35:30what you see
35:32and what you read
35:34is not reality.
35:36What he said
35:38in this incredible speech,
35:40It's "I am your only friend".
35:42It's straight out of 1984.
35:44Philippe McMahon
35:46is the director of the Human Rights Center
35:48from Berkeley,
35:50the cream of Californian universities.
35:52Every year,
35:54it trains more than 100 students
35:56to uncover the truth
35:58in the uninterrupted flow
36:00of contradictory information
36:02and deceitful
36:04which are pouring out today
36:06on the planet.
36:08Huxley feared those
36:10which would give us so much information
36:12that we would be reduced to passivity
36:14and to selfishness.
36:16In a world,
36:18You have people who want to eliminate the facts.
36:20In the other world,
36:22a system that says facts don't matter.
36:26We see today
36:28these two worlds in the discourse of those in power.
36:30They are trying to tell us
36:32that facts don't matter
36:34at the same time as they tell us
36:36that there are no facts.
36:40The lecture having ended,
36:42Philippe McMahon moves on to practical exercises
36:44with first-year students,
36:46Monica, Harry and Nicky.
36:48He shows them how the mechanisms
36:50the crudest propaganda
36:52are still relevant.
36:56I'm going to show you a video.
36:58This is not a fake.
37:00These are trusted sources.
37:06This is balanced journalism
37:08that CBS 4 News produces.
37:10But...
37:12Fake news has become
37:14too common on social media.
37:22On dozens of television channels
37:24Sinclair Broadcast,
37:26American media giant,
37:28journalists have repeatedly stated,
37:30for several weeks,
37:32a monologue dictated by their boss,
37:34Donald Trump.
37:36A propaganda exercise
37:38seen by 38% of American households.
37:48Okay, friends,
37:50I ask you, what do you think?
37:52Nicky, Harry, Monica, tell me.
37:56I wonder why this happened
37:58on local news channels.
38:00Why did they have to repeat that there?
38:02Because these news channels
38:04are accessible to every household
38:06And that everyone watches the local news?
38:10Politically speaking,
38:12information manipulation
38:14is more important than ever
38:16to retain power.
38:18The tactic is to disorient people,
38:20to make them reject the truth
38:22which they see with their own eyes.
38:24The relationship between politics and language,
38:26Today, he is...
38:28So, once again,
38:30I apologize in advance.
38:32But it's quite disastrous.
38:34What constitutes democracy?
38:36What constitutes the rule of law?
38:38This is precisely a preserved relationship
38:40to the quality of speech.
38:42Why? Because of the rule of law
38:44considers that the first regulatory tool
38:46In a democracy, it is the spoken word.
38:48It's not violence.
38:50And so, speech, in order for it to be regulatory,
38:52She needs to be identified.
38:54as viable, as honest.
39:00Because otherwise, you'll drain its vitality.
39:02the performative power of speech.
39:04And so, as a result,
39:06you make a statement which, at a certain point,
39:08is identified as nothing.
39:10This or something else, it's nothing. And so, as a result,
39:12Okay, let's go directly to
39:14which will regulate the violence.
39:16Violence, hyper-security,
39:18hyper-order, etc.
39:20Therefore, preserving democracy
39:22the qualitative relationship to speech,
39:24It's a political issue.
39:30"The divine ones,
39:32"Give the victims thirst."
39:38As surprising as it may seem,
39:40George Orwell himself was a cog in the machine
39:42of the history manipulation machine.
39:44In 1941,
39:46He is a correspondent for the BBC.
39:48in charge of propaganda towards India
39:50that he must convince to participate in the effort
39:52war against the Nazis.
39:54He complied without flinching for two years.
39:56before resigning.
40:00"I have the feeling that if I go back
40:02to my life as a journalist and writer,
40:04I will be more useful than I am.
40:06"Now."
40:08During the war,
40:10The paths of the two writers intersect.
40:12Again. George Orwell
40:14discovers the novel of his former teacher
40:16and quickly writes a review
40:18acerbic.
40:24"Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
40:26was a good caricature
40:28of hedonistic utopia.
40:30The kind of event that seemed possible
40:32and even imminent before Hitler's rise to power,
40:34but which had no connection with the future
40:36as it is emerging.
40:38"That's good."
40:44This is where we are heading
40:46right now it looks more like the Inquisition
40:48Spanish, or probably much worse.
40:50thanks to the secret police.
40:52There is very little chance of escaping it
40:54unless belief can be restored
40:56in the brotherhood between humans.
41:04I understand that Orwell,
41:06during the Second World War, around 1940,
41:08appeared annoyed
41:10compared to Huxley's vision,
41:12whom he found a little too intelligent,
41:14too complacent with Hitler's rise to power.
41:20He considered Huxley
41:22like an intellectual
41:24without his ivory tower.
41:28Huxley doesn't bother to reply.
41:30which will not prevent Orwell
41:32to send him a copy
41:34from his novel "1984".
41:36Does he hope to convince him?
41:38the validity of his vision?
41:40Aldous Huxley receives the book
41:42from his former student in California,
41:44where he has lived since 1937.
41:46This time, he addresses a letter to Orwell.
41:48"By the next generation,
41:50I think the world leaders
41:52will discover that conditioning
41:54children and hypnosis
41:56sub-narcotic drugs are more effective
41:58as a governance instrument
42:00than batons and prisons.
42:04And the thirst for power
42:06can be just as satisfied
42:08by suggesting that the people love their servitude
42:10rather than hitting him
42:12and by whipping him to make him obey.
42:18In other words,
42:20I feel like the nightmare of 1984
42:22is intended to modulate the nightmare
42:24of a world more resembling
42:26to what I imagined
42:28in "Brave New World".
42:38Never the two authors
42:40will fail to find common ground.
42:42George Orwell will just have time
42:44to read Huxley's reply
42:46to his 46-year-old wife,
42:48less than a year after the appearance of 1984.
42:52In January 1949,
42:54he left the island of Jura
42:56for the last time.
42:58I was with him in the car.
43:00He was transferred
43:02at the University Hospital of London
43:04in October 1949,
43:06where he remained until his death
43:08in January 1950.
43:12Richard Blair was about
43:14to celebrate its sixth anniversary
43:16at the time of George Orwell's death
43:18January 21, 1950.
43:24The same year, from the top of the terrace
43:26from his villa in Hollywood,
43:28Aldous Huxley casts an ironic eye
43:30on the aberrations of the American way of life.
43:34He gave that famous description
43:36in a letter
43:38when he lived in California.
43:40He was looking out the window
43:42from his house,
43:44he saw a young man
43:46which lasted for two hours
43:48was polishing his red car.
43:50And Huxley didn't understand.
43:52why waste time
43:54to do that.
43:56He was not at all
43:58a man of the consumer society.
44:02The former French teacher
44:04will seek to extricate himself
44:06of the prevailing consumerism,
44:08in his own way.
44:10I took a dose of mescaline
44:12to experiment
44:14the effects of this drug
44:16on the mind, on consciousness.
44:18I took mescaline
44:20once or twice
44:22and lysergic acid
44:24two or three times
44:26with several doctors
44:28and physiologists.
44:30And that's one thing
44:32truly extraordinary
44:34because we're doing the exploration
44:36from a terra incognita
44:38of the mind.
44:40We realize
44:42that we carry with him
44:44a kind of continent
44:46completely unknown
44:48in his brain.
44:52We were entering
44:54in a species
44:56of the black continent
44:58which looks nothing like it
45:00to the ordinary world.
45:02In his work
45:04The doors of perception,
45:06Huxley recounts his first experience
45:08under mescaline.
45:10He, the English aristocrat,
45:12at the same time becomes one of the icons
45:14of the beat generation
45:16and the hippie movement.
45:18Jim Morrison will name his group
45:20rock band The Doors
45:22in homage to the title of the book.
45:3213 years after the disappearance
45:34by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley,
45:36British author, visionary thinker
45:38and guru of the counterculture,
45:40chose to die under the influence of LSD
45:42November 22, 1963.
45:44He knows he won't win
45:46against throat cancer
45:48which has been eating away at him for 3 years.
46:02But the crises and the tears
46:04which shook America that day
46:06are not for him.
46:10He had the intelligence,
46:12wisdom,
46:14to die the only day
46:16where no one would notice it
46:18where no one would notice
46:20that Aldous Huxley had just died.
46:26He chose November 22, 1963,
46:28the day John Fitzgerald Kennedy
46:30was killed.
46:32So if you want to escape
46:34from the city without anyone
46:36don't notice it.
46:38That's how it should be done.
46:4270 years later,
46:44which of these two English authors
46:46Had he best anticipated our world?
46:48Orwell or Huxley?
46:50Are we living in the 1984 universe?
46:52Or in the best of all possible worlds?
46:54Unless it's some kind of
46:56a hybrid of the two.
46:58A country today presents itself
47:00like a perfect synthesis
47:02of both novels.
47:04Between mass surveillance
47:06and high-tech company,
47:08between totalitarian regime
47:10and consumerist paradise,
47:12China embodies the best
47:14Orwellian worlds.
47:16With more than a billion citizens
47:18guinea pigs at his disposal,
47:20China is becoming
47:22a gigantic laboratory
47:24In China,
47:26There is social credit.
47:28You have a certain
47:30number of points,
47:32a note,
47:34and this one climbs
47:36if the government approves
47:38what you do.
47:40Or fall
47:42if, for example,
47:44you communicate with people
47:46lower rated than you.
47:48It's an instrument
47:50very powerful to force you
47:52to obey
47:54and to submit to you.
47:58Extra points on your record
48:00citizen notes for the purchase
48:02Chinese products
48:04good performance at work,
48:06or posting on a social network
48:08from an article praising the merits
48:10of the national economy.
48:12Points deducted in case
48:14of dissenting political opinions,
48:16suspicious online searches
48:18or pedestrian crossings
48:20Obviously,
48:22A bad report card results in sanctions.
48:24Ban on buying a train ticket
48:26or by plane for a year.
48:28Unable to obtain a loan,
48:30to access certain social services
48:32or even to register on a dating site.
48:34We're going to have a mix
48:36Huxley-Orwell
48:38with, indeed,
48:40on one side a company
48:42carrots,
48:44a society of pleasure,
48:46of consumption, of the well-rated,
48:48of the good student
48:50because it's true that social credit,
48:52It can be in deficit, but it can also be
48:54excess, so that gives you access
48:56to a quantity of small ones,
48:58mini-privileges, and so you trade
49:00your immense freedom for very small
49:02privileges,
49:04narcissistic or materialistic,
49:06Anyway. And then on the other side,
49:08the stick, which can be
49:10Indeed, rather Orwellian.
49:12even if it's a bit of a caricature,
49:14by saying, there you go,
49:16If you don't do this, you will be immediately
49:18ostracized from society.
49:20And so that nothing escapes
49:22on the diet, 400 million
49:24facial recognition cameras are being
49:26to be installed throughout the country.
49:28It is now impossible to evade this.
49:30to that all-powerful eye for more than 7 minutes.
49:32Whether you are in the street,
49:34whether on public transport or at home,
49:36Big Brother is watching you.
49:40The TV screen was receiving
49:42all the sounds emitted by Winston,
49:44above a very low whisper.
49:46He could be seen
49:48as well as understood.
49:50Naturally,
49:52there was no way of knowing if,
49:54At one point, we were being watched.
49:56How many times
49:58and according to which plan
50:00Was the thought police getting involved?
50:02on any individual line?
50:04No one could have known.
50:06Big Brother is
50:08obsolete in its version
50:10vertical,
50:12however in its version
50:14atomized, fragmented,
50:16egalitarian of the Little Brothers,
50:18panopticon everywhere.
50:20But in the sense of a revisiting
50:22of the panopticon, there is not just one place,
50:24There are eyes everywhere.
50:26There are sensors everywhere.
50:28That's probably the way
50:30to naturalize surveillance,
50:32to make it invisible,
50:34to make it "falsely egalitarian",
50:36that is to say, everyone
50:38may harm me, but in fact,
50:40It's possible to harm everyone.
50:42And that, of course, is social media.
50:44a magnificent tool for social order,
50:46but also not simply an overarching order,
50:48but in horizontal order,
50:50that is to say, we pay attention
50:52We stage our behaviors.
51:06There was a sentence
51:08that Huxley repeated
51:10Regarding modern society,
51:12about how we were made to love
51:14our condition of slavery,
51:16how we get the impression
51:18that we are in control
51:20while we do
51:22that which is being asked of us.
51:24Huxley thought
51:26that we allow ourselves too much
51:28to manipulate us
51:30to think that we were free
51:32whereas we are not.
51:38What would I feel?
51:40What if I were free?
51:42If I were not enslaved
51:44through my conditioning?
51:48Don't you have the desire
51:50To be free, Lenina?
51:54I don't know what you mean.
51:56I am free.
52:00Free to treat myself to a good time,
52:02the best there is.
52:04Everyone is happy now.
52:34I am not free.
52:36I am free.
52:38I am free.
52:40I am free.
52:42I am free.
52:44I am free.
52:46I am free.
52:48I am free.
52:50I am free.
52:52I am free.
52:54I am free.
52:56I am free.
52:58I am free.
53:00I am free.
53:02I am free.
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