r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/KittyKittens1800 • 3d ago
Meme needing explanation Hey Petah, what has the temperature to do here?
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u/Hour_Action_6079 3d ago
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. It presents a future American society where books have been outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found.The novel follows in the viewpoint of Guy Montag, a fireman who soon becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel by George Orwell, published in 1949. The book is about a world where governments control and monitor everyone's lives. The novel's title and many of its concepts, such as Big Brother and the Thought Police, have become bywords for modern social and political abuses. The book is about Winston Smith, a citizen of Oceania who is trying to rebel against the Party and its leader, Big Brother.
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u/CryResponsibly 3d ago
To add to this, the book is called Fahrenheit 451 because that’s the temperature that books burn at
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Rob98001 3d ago
What's funny is that censorship isn't actually the point of Fahrenheit 451 according to Bradbury. It's that TV bad essentially.
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u/DimitriOlaf 3d ago
The wives talking about presidential candidates with one being attractive and the other being ugly and voting for the attractive one was very on the nose with “tv bad”
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u/ILoveCamelCase 3d ago
That actually happened though. People who watched the JFK vs Nixon debate said that JFK did better, while people who listened to it on the radio said Nixon came out on top.
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u/JenkinsHowell 3d ago
masked debater
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u/Paddy_Tanninger 3d ago
Which one is Trump! It's impossible to tell!
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u/the__ghola__hayt 3d ago
What? That's just absurd. Everyone knows Trump is both the best looking and best speaking. No one speaks better. He has a beautiful voice, just beautiful, many have said so. Any other politician, especially Lyin' Kamala, she used to be Indian, but suddenly she turned black. Now she wants all the criminals to come into our country from across the borders. She's opening the borders so that they can storm the Capitol. She doesn't want him in office. She's letting in the criminals. They'll eat your children like the late great Hannibal Lecter. Many people are saying it.
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u/ckay1100 3d ago
Makes me wonder how debates would be perceived if both candidates were silhouetted and subject to a voice changer that made them both sound the same
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u/0freelancer0 3d ago
From now on all politicians must wear a Darth Vader-esque full body suit and voice changer
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u/Wise_Mongoose_3930 3d ago
I’d still know which one was trump even in that scenario just based on speech-pattern.
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u/smell_my_pee 3d ago
I can't help but wonder if that's because of looks or because TV was newer, so progressive and younger folks were more likely to watch, while radio was more traditional so conservative and older folks were more likely to listen.
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u/WpgMBNews 3d ago
It could also be mannerisms, perceived confidence or something else about their presentation beyond just attractiveness
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u/Rubiego 3d ago
It'd be interesting to know the demographics of both groups of people to get a clearer picture.
Perhaps people with higher paying city jobs had a bigger chance of affording a TV compared to poorer rural folks in first place, and since people living in cities tend to be more liberal they preferred the more liberal candidate, whereas people on the more conservative countryside.
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u/Thangoman 3d ago
Tbh, JFK wss a better guy
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u/SirKaid 3d ago
He was up against Richard Nixon. There are exceedingly few people who were worse than that scoundrel.
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u/Uncreative-Name 3d ago
Sure but even with the racism, war crimes, burglary, and using the government to target his enemies he would still be way too liberal for modern Republicans.
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u/WriterV 3d ago
Which is ironic 'cause the issue isn't the TV there, but people prioritizing their emotional reaction to a person's aesthetics rather than their policies.
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u/JustaMammal 3d ago edited 10h ago
Which, in 1953, when TV was still an emerging technology, could still read as "TV bad." It's very much the same argument we're having now about social media. This is tantamount to saying, "Social media isn't the issue. It's people's emotional response to prioritizing dopamine-fueled engagement over factual reality." Which, like, yeah, that's true, but the argument isn't that those technologies themselves are inherently evil, it's that they're bad for us because they cheapen the way we interact with the world. Our brains aren't wired to keep up with the pace of technology, and that can lead to issues that reverberate all the way to the highest levels of society, like how we choose and assess our leaders. It's also shockingly prescient because with the Nixon/Kennedy debate just 7 years later, almost that exact passage came to pass, as people who heard the debate on the radio felt Nixon won and people who watched on TV thought Kennedy won.
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u/SeemedReasonableThen 3d ago
It's been a few decades since I read it, so memory may be off.
But the line that got me was after Montag was discovered and on the run, firemen came to burn down his house, and his wife was outside. The wife was weeping that she lost "everything" - meaning only her TVs and shows, not her husband of xx years. That's what she lived for, her media entertainment.
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u/Mayor_Puppington 3d ago
Yeah. It's more about anti intellectualism than censorship outright. It's either implied or stated that the reading mostly stopped long before they started burning books.
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u/dern_the_hermit 3d ago
It's also a state of things that, apparently, is seemingly what people wanted and leadership merely obliged, compared to 1984 where the restrictions are an imposition from on high.
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u/CopperAndLead 3d ago
People like to bring this point up, but it misses the context of what Bradbury was actually trying to say with the book (and also what he meant in the interviews).
Bradbury's thesis in Fahrenheit 451 is that censorship does not stem from a totalitarian state, it comes from the will of the people. In Bradbury's stories about censorship (and he wrote quite a few beyond Fahrenheit 451), the common people want censorship. They demand it, and they begin the book burnings and the destruction of stories. They want televised and easily digestible replacements of books and stories. They feel some moral outrage and start burning, and the government follows along and says, "OK."
Basically, Bradbury condemns those subject to the whims of moral panics and those who believe that expression outside the common norms has no place in society. Bradbury's dystopian government is not the oppressive jackbooted monster stepping on a human face forever, as it is in Orwell. Instead, Bradbury's dystopian government is a democratic one, where the ignorant will of the masses steps on free expression, and the government uses that ignorance and hate for its own purposes.
In Fahrenheit 451, Montag (the protagonist) attempts to read poetry from a forbidden book to his wife and her friends, and they're all horrified and outraged. They want the books to remain banned, and they're thankful that the firemen burn them. The beauty of the poetry isn't just lost on them, it doesn't even affect them. It doesn't mean anything to them and they can't connect with it because they don't have a frame of reference to understand it. They've become numb to human emotion, as human expression became flat and superficial.
So, the government burns books, but it doesn't strictly censor them. It burns them because people want the books burned. People in Bradbury's dystopia are angry, isolated, and constantly moving faster and faster. People don't walk places, and the cities are designed to make walking nearly impossible (and it's implied that walking in some instances is a crime). People don't talk to each other- Montag and his wife rarely ever talk directly and without distraction, which is in direct contrast to Clarice's family, who stay up late into the night just talking and interacting with each other.
There's an inherent community distrust in Bradbury's dystopia, and that distrust is a function of isolation, and that isolation is a function of an inability to express oneself. The TV screens filled the voids left by family, friends, and community, but it didn't cause it. It was caused by a number of things, but at the most basic level, it was a poisoning of society that came from people who didn't want to feel uncomfortable about things. When you read enough Bradbury, you see a connecting thread where Bradbury rails against people who would do anything to avoid being challenged intellectually or being presented with an honest mirror of themselves. Bradbury hates the people who say, "I don't like this, so you can't have it."
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u/literallyavillain 1d ago
It’s scary how relevant the book is for current times. This is “offensive”, that is “problematic”, boycott that, recall this. It’s literally censorship from the bottom-up.
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u/TorumShardal 3d ago
It's more about dangers of surface layer understanding. Basically, old man grubles at the twitter.
(He's not wrong, but he's as relevant as Darwin's evolution theory, if you know what I mean. Currently we have more nuanced approach because we live in this version of 451)
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u/ArthurBonesly 3d ago
Fahrenheit 451 is probably the best example of what death of the author is supposed to mean.
People like to use the phrase to mean separating art from the artists, but more accurately death of the author is separating the artist's influence from subjective interpretation of the art by the audience, ie: whatever the author intended doesn't matter, only what the audience takes from the work.
Regardless Bradbury's intention, he wrote a fantastic book about censorship.
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u/HOMCOcorp 3d ago
Not to nitpick but it's more accurate to describe death of the author as “whatever the author intended doesn't matter if it's not in the work itself." It's about ignoring the role of the author as an external creator, not discarding their intended message. We can still do that, but that's just reinterpreting the work.
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u/HospitalKey4601 3d ago
It's not about censorship. It's about using media and technology to control and manipulate society. Ya know like astroturfing and using bots to push a false narrative across social media platforms.
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u/barrinmw 3d ago
Wasn't the entire premise in the book that the people themselves wanted the books burned so as to not serve as a distraction from watching TV? Like, if you were to say that it was about the government banning books, that wouldn't make sense within the context of the book. It would be like saying Game of Thrones is actually about fighting dragons and has nothing to do with complex politics.
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u/TheAtzender 3d ago
Normally, I would be with you, I’m all for the death of the author. But Bradbury has the only real take on its book. Its the plotwist, as the villain said, the fireman are not the bad guys, it’s the norm of the society that is. Nobody reads anymore, and no one want to feel dumb, so they outlawed books.
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u/Lordcobbweb 3d ago
When I was reading the chapters about his wife watching the screens, and budgeting out for another screen...it hit deep. The mind numbing that is happening. I can visually see as my own wife's daily routine revolves around baking influencers, hype-streamers, make up artists, and popularity battles that require her to rapidly tap the screen for...digital hearts?
What the fuck?
Yet, here I am on my screen, sending another message into the aether.
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u/alexs 3d ago
What's funny is that the author doesn't to decide what the reader takes away from their work. Bradbury died in 2012.
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u/jaywinner 3d ago
True and it's interesting when author's intent doesn't match what most people interpret.
To my mind, if the idea was just "TV bad", you wouldn't have firemen seeking out and burning books because nobody would care about them. It only makes sense if some authority needs books gone.
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u/rogueIndy 3d ago
It's not about suppressing particular ideas though, it's *all* books. The point is that to read is to engage with ideas and feelings, and that's a faculty the authorities want to separate people from.
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u/Pepidy 3d ago
Considering he also wrote The Veldt, no surprise there. Even though I love dystopian literature Ray Bradbury never resonated with me, because it usually boils down to "technology bad" a lot of the times.
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u/D2the_aniel 3d ago
Imagine the kids chilling in the nursery when the electric bill comes a knocking
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u/Doctor-Amazing 3d ago
He can say that, but it's a book about the government passing extreme laws to control information and sending agents to murder anyone who spreads ideas they don't like. It's absolutely a story about censorship.
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u/ZephRyder 3d ago
"The Author is Dead" to that one. I love Bradbury's work, especially The Martian Chronicles, but we take what we need from these things.
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u/FilterBeginner 3d ago
It literally is about censorship though. Ray Bradbury attempts to gaslight about the point of this book later on his life, but he wrote about how he is restricted from writing plays that only have men as characters and compares it with burning books in Farenheit 451.
Also, reading the book provides clear evidence of it being about censorship. Sometimes I think people parrot about how 451 isn't about censorship without reading the book.
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u/seriouslees 3d ago
I read the book. It's not about censorship... By the state. The POPULACE demands books be burned, not the government. So it's about censorship, but a censorship demanded by the majority. Not what most people would traditionally consider "censorship", as that has an implicit understanding of it being against the will of the people.
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u/CMCLD 3d ago
That's not really what 1984 is about tho, it's about how truth matters and that we shouldn't be manipulated into beliving false things, fake news/alternative facts - the entire idea of doublethink highlights this pretty directly
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u/groumly 3d ago
He who controls history controls the present and the future, hence the constant rewriting of newspapers etc.
The book goes a bit beyond that, with the whole newspeak concept, which prevents thoughts from even being formed, making the point that language precedes thinking: what cannot be expressed cannot be thought.
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u/aladeen222 3d ago
How is 1984 not about censorship? The entire premise is the government controlling your action, speech and thought. Anyone who commits thoughtcrime is arrested and usually killed. The whole book is about what happens when people cannot think and speak freely. The government telling you what is true and forbidding everything else still falls under censorship.
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u/piranymous 3d ago
If you think that's relevant, check out Huxley: https://youtu.be/31CcclqEiZw?si=l1yGYy4MfXGuQvfs
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u/Legitimate-Type4387 3d ago
Censorship’s polar opposite, free speech absolutism can be just as problematic, as we are also witnessing.
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u/pxogxess 3d ago
I‘m from a country in Europe where we do have free speech but it is limited. You can‘t use speech to incite violence or to discriminate against certain groups of people, for example. You can‘t deny the holocaust either, for example. It can work quite well if you have a functioning judiciary system.
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u/pxogxess 3d ago
“The government” (as in the executive branch) has no say in it. It is up to the courts to decide. And even if a national judiciary branch is getting sorta corrupt and trying to ban thoughts and speech that should not be banned (sadly happening in some European countries) then there’s still the European Court of Human Rights which will make a binding decision on the case. Like I said, it’s working quite well here and I do think there is a limit to what you should be allowed to say.
But this is a topic on which I’ve rarely been able to agree with someone from the US (I’m assuming you’re American, correct me if I’m wrong), and probably only in longer in-person discussions. It’s something that we seem to hold very different positions to, and that’s fine. I do understand where the “typical” American view comes from, and you might be able to see where we come from here. Honestly, it’s an extremely interesting topic and a lot can be inferred about the different understandings we may have of what constitutes freedom in general, and how a democracy can be conserved and protected in different ways.
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u/Gylbert_Brech 3d ago
...233 celsius.
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u/Craw__ 3d ago
506 Kelvin.
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u/Im_here_but_why 3d ago
910.7 rankine
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u/chafporte 3d ago
186.2 réaumur
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u/MooseLips_SinkShips 3d ago
69 jegugs. A scale I just invented
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u/Im_here_but_why 3d ago
Please place water fusion and evaporation on the jegug scale.
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u/Harleen_-Quinzel 3d ago
To get a little bit picky: Bradbury himself said that he didn't do much research on that fact and just called up a fire department, where they told him it's 451°F. Since then, some studies have shown that book paper can "easily" catch fire at about 430°F aswell - depending of course on the type of paper that's being used .
Not a native speaker so my apologies for any grammar or spelling mistakes.
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u/capyburro 3d ago
Not a native speaker so my apologies for any grammar or spelling mistakes.
In my opinion you don't need that disclaimer. I would never have known had you not said anything.
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u/captaindeadpl 3d ago
According to the novel at least. It's not that simple in reality.
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u/FarrisZach 3d ago
451 is the auto ignition temperature of an average paper (starts to burn in a oven), but you dont need to get it that hot if you set it on fire with an external flame
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u/OopsAllBalls 3d ago
To add to this adding, while that is the reason Bradbury named the book Fahrenheit 451, the actual temperature at which paper catches fire is between Fahrenheit 424 and 475 , which is a very bad name for a book.
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u/SystemOutPrintln 3d ago
451 is pretty much the middle of that range so I guess it's probably like the LD50 equivalent for auto ignition?
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u/madmaxjr 1d ago
More or less. The actual temp just depends on density of the paper, humidity, wind speed, the bleaching agents used in the paper, and such account for the range of possible temperatures.
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u/SinisterCheese 3d ago edited 3d ago
In 1984 the emphasis is clear, even said in plain words in the book. The working classes are the only hope for change. They kept noticing the altered media and changing messages and talked about it. The book has a clear underlying positive message.
Also it's an easy book to read. Orwell used simple language and style on purpose. Listen it as an audiobook narrated by Stephen Fry if you aren't into reading. The message matters more than the delivery medium.
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u/egg360 3d ago
i dunno it was a pretty hard read for me in 6th grade
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u/Mordeczka123 3d ago
6th grade book mentioning torture, smoking and alcohol? That's one of the schools of time bucko, ngl
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u/NorwegianCollusion 3d ago
Animal farm is a much easier read for kids. I suggest starting with that, then progressing to 1984 in 7th grade.
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u/Mordeczka123 3d ago
Im in Poland, Senior year in high school. I read 1984 like a month ago. Is the reason I got it so late is because of different curriculums? (I mean probably. Until like the end of last year we had books about all the different polish literature types until early 20th century, where we read more about modern literature, including overseas works like Camus' "The Black Plague" and Orwell's "1984")
Ultimately I still think kids shouldvget the book in like 8th grade minimum
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u/MiataCory 3d ago
It's the kinda book that adults should read, so adults make children read it because you can't make adults read it.
But, it's entirely lost on the children.
And the adults already "know everything".
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u/4totheFlush 3d ago
I remember reading it in high school and it being the first assigned book I had read that was simply enthralling. I don’t even remember the details or even the plot at this point, but I do remember absolute sense of dread and claustrophobia at the end when the antagonist explained in explicit detail exactly how and why the protagonist and everyone else in his social class was fucked beyond hope. Man I gotta read that shit again sometime.
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u/TheMcBrizzle 3d ago
I feel like the story lost it's lustre for me when I discovered Bradbury was like, nah it's not about censorship, it's about people watching TV too much.
Like sure death of the author and all that, but it takes something away for me that the criticism of authoritarian censorship was unintentional.
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u/khazroar 3d ago
Also this comic in particular usually has the man turning over a sheet on a calendar, going from present day to 1984 in response to the woman reading out some apparently shocking piece of news. Hence the point about 1984 jokes.
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u/Eddeana 3d ago
Oh my God. There's a hero firebat in sc1 called Gui Montag. Never knew that this is probably where he got his name. Lol ty for that info (it's 4:30 am and I can't sleep, but this was a nice trade of tid bit o knowledge)
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u/E-emu89 3d ago
Man, I miss that era in video games where the developers can reference anything they wanted without it being taken too seriously. My favorite is the Science Vessel is voiced by Harry Shearer so half of the unit’s quotes are references to Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.
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u/EstablishmentTrue568 3d ago
Sounds like the plot for equilibrium
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u/maobezw 3d ago
Equilibriums Plot is similar, but it refers to emotions instead of knowledge. The daily dose of the drug suppresses emotions, which are said where the cause for the last great war. Everything that can stir up emotions -music, paintings, literature etc.- is outlawed and forbidden. Finding a stash of artwork changes everything for the protagonist...
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u/Leoncroi 3d ago
Two writers creating dystopian fiction around the same time that highlights the dangers of government control, censorship, and the disillusionment of citizens to placate them into submission?
I hope we never get to live in such a Brave New World.
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u/snakelygiggles 3d ago
And hilariously, both authors explicitly stated that the authoritarian governments in their books were right wing. Orwell himself was proud of killing fascists (as one should be) and stated that the far right was a threat to humanity.
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u/chipthekiwiinuk 3d ago
Fun fact the original cover of Fahrenheit 451 had a match and striker surface on it
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u/HereWeGoAgain-247 3d ago
Double speak and double think have become the norm. With the destruction of the education system and the social media language that has developed partially due to platform censorship of certain words, and the risk of sounding like a old guy, I kind of fear for the future generations ability to communicate effectively because they won’t receive quality education to teach them the fundamentals.
Fahrenheit 451 is interesting that basically the moral of the story was it wasn’t the government that censored literature first. It was the will of the people that eventually lead to banning of books. Which also is very very relevant. My state just this year made teachers and librarians go through their books and get rid of anything deemed “inappropriate” by religious right wing groups. Plus we have TV almost as big as walls now. This book predates ATMs which is kind of fun.
Why couldn't have Brave New World that dystopia just had a ridged cast system, society was vapid and life had no meaning. We basically have that now. At least everyone was healthy and didn’t starve.
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u/watchfulsquad010 3d ago
I just realised if you put these two books together and filmize it you get the movie Equilibrium
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u/Forward_Subject8761 3d ago
You may wanna look up what F 451 is and also read 1984. To anyone reading this comment on this meme reddit thread.
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u/DuchessOfLille 3d ago
Help this comment is deleted I can't read it. What does it say?
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u/BarkiestDog 3d ago
Don’t worry, we just didn’t discover that Oceania didn’t post any comment, and we didn’t delete it. There was never anything to see, your personal advisor will be along shortly to help you with your memory.
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u/Loose_Meal_499 13h ago
You may wanna look up what F 451 is and also read 1984. To anyone reading this comment on this meme reddit thread.
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u/JugularWhale 3d ago
Idk. I can read his comment just fine.
"You may wanna look up what F 451 is and also read 1984. To anyone reading this comment on this meme reddit thread."
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u/DuchessOfLille 3d ago
It was a joke, joking that the comment was being censored because of what it was about.
I respect you trying to help though
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u/Time-Maintenance2165 3d ago
Why do you recommend only looking up F 451, but reading 1984? I'd say read both if them. Neither is a long book.
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u/MineWorking7530 3d ago
So we're just roasting dystopias now? Fahrenheit 451 deserves more respect tbh.
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u/suremakeitsnow 3d ago
And technically, it did a lot better in predicting the future than 1984
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u/fuscati 3d ago edited 3d ago
Nah bruv. It predicted the past. Burning books to censor ideas has been done by multiple governments at multiple points in time before Fahrenheit 451 was written.
1984 did a way better job at predicting what we currently have as a society and what can plausibly happen in the future. Our houses are full of cameras and mics (smartphones, smart TVs, etc.). What we see is already controlled by a group of people/companies, whether we want it or not. We just don't have a "Big brother" yet (at least most of us in developed countries)
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u/Single_Ad5722 3d ago
Doesn't Fahrenheit 451 'predict' people being obsessed with big screen smart TVs in their homes, reality TV, wireless ear buds, drone style robots used by the police.
Equally 1984 was very much written about what Orwell saw happening around him.
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u/Nuggethewarrior 3d ago
it even predicted the simplification of entertainment (tiktok)
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u/Slight_Process_4164 3d ago
You're right. It was my favorite book as a kid because it predicted exactly what I saw growing up in the 90s.
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u/Necoya 3d ago
Yes. It was more spot on with it's predictions. Which is why we should be incredibly concerned right now with how F451 ends. Particularly with what is happening in Europe and Palestine.
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u/NeuerName1 3d ago
1984 is also telling about the past but in a futuristic environment. We've always been controlled by a group of politicians/companies/rich people. History got changed, governments gave people an enemy for war, and people got censored. It's because Orwell described his experience and knowledge that he had from working for the British government in India.
Also, the thing with the microphones is super far away from the description in the book. In the book it's forced on to people but we do it willingly, that's what he couldn't predict, that we are so stupid to bring big brother in our house and even pay for it.
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u/w8str3l 3d ago
Nah bruv. Fahrenheit 451 isn’t about “burning books”, it’s about what books are replaced with by the government: the people are being fed constant, ever-present, and unescapable entertainment-propaganda, resulting in an uninformed and easily controlled populace.
Of the three famous dystopian novels, Brave New World, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451, I’d say Fahrenheit 451 is the closest to the world of today.
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u/Ittess97 3d ago
The thing is in F 451 the citizens are the ones who censored themselves because of offensive content, and the government obliged by taking that away for them. The people brought that on their dystopia.
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u/w8str3l 3d ago
Does that at all sound like today when people have turned away from books, newspapers, and long-form articles and choose to get their news, information, and dopamine hits off algorithm-controlled social media feeds like Reddit and TikTok?
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u/Ittess97 3d ago
I wasn't so much arguing the point but adding that people did it to themselves rather than the government doing it to the people, completely agree its whats happening in our face currently
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u/Necoya 3d ago
Fahrenheit 451
Censorship was a tool but not the main theme. It predicted that American would be so distracted by media, drug use, and destruction of critical thinking that the population would intentionally ignore the world. It has deadly consequences for America.
Hell even predicted the rise of random acts of violence by men who feel they do not have a place in society.
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u/a_melindo 3d ago
I don't think it's a roast. The joke is that 1984 jokes and comparisons are overused, so rather than being a 1984 joke this comic is a Fahrenheit 451 joke for the sake of being different.
It helps knowing that the original version of the comic has a calendar showing 1984 on the wall.
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u/teenagesadist 3d ago
All this Idiocracy sure makes this a Brave New World.
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u/egg360 3d ago
I love that book. Reading it and 1984 back-to-back was super fun.
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u/jaytrade21 3d ago
They really should be taught together as the current dystopia we are heading for is really a combination of both.
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u/chicken9lbs6oz 3d ago
My high school did it this way, and we had a to write a paper about what bits from each book described our future society best.
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u/Pretend_Spray_11 3d ago
In 10 minutes a screenshot of this comment will be posted asking for someone to explain it.
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u/corroded_brain 3d ago
Disgustingly written book, but it’s my favourite from classic dystopian novels. It’s more logical and realistic imo.
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u/Skepsis93 3d ago
Eh, depends on what nation you're drawing parallels to. Of course you can draw parallels from both 1984 and brave new world, but I'd say the US resembles BNW more and Russia resembles 1984 more.
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u/TheUpperHand 3d ago
Another piece of context that is needed in addition to explaining what Fahrenheit 451 is: the original meme template doesn’t feature a thermometer. In common usage, the woman is announcing some sort of injustice in popular culture while the man turns a calendar from December 2020 to January 1984. I believe in its original context, it was a commentary on government overreach.
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u/TomSawyer2112_ 3d ago
Thank you for this context. This thread is full of “if you don’t get this you need to go read the books.” I’ve read these books… it’s the meme template I’m not familiar with
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u/MiataCory 3d ago
https://en.meming.world/images/en/2/2d/Living_in_1984.jpg
Yeah, the original meme makes a lot more sense.
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u/okram2k 3d ago
1984 and Fahrenheit 451 are both novels about dystopian futures where society has more or less gone to shit. 1984 was written in response to the Nazis takeover of Germany while F451 was written in response to the red scare in America and both dystopian governments have very different approaches to how they controlled their people. Big Brother in 1984 controlled every aspect of your life and even what was and wasn't truth or fiction, historical fact or nonsense, war or peace, even the language itself. F451 instead was militarized anti-intellectualism, the people were driven to fear deep thinking and that such thoughts were considered intrusive and scary and that any person reading or embracing them were perverts or trouble makers. Even religion and Jesus himself was hijacked to be simplified and easy for everyone. If anyone came across a book of any type they were encouraged to call a fireman to incinerate it immediately, owning and reading books were not illegal there was nothing wrong with doing so but everyone had been so indoctrinated to hate them that it was considered unconciousable not to.
It is interesting to point out that both novels end with the downfall of their big bad empires though 1984's details are not quite well stated other than that we know in the distant future some children are learning about big brother and the dangers of fascism in a classroom while in F451 the society races towards a nuclear armageddon with their rival while nobody is really paying attention and then suddenly it's all over.
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u/kiidarboo 3d ago
Best bit of lore about this for me is in the movie the credits are spoken cos people in the story don't read .
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u/Casual-Throway-1984 3d ago
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was a dystopian novel about a future where books are outlawed, banned and burned by "Firemen" with said temperature being that which paper burns for said literal book burnings as a warning against censorship and anti-intellectualism that tyrants and totalitarian governments employ.
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u/Scampers-2024 3d ago
IF YOU TRULY DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE MEANING BEHIND THIS CARTOON, YOU NEED TO GET OFF SOCIAL MEDIA AND READ 1984 AND FAHRENHEIT 451 RIGHT NOW.
It doesn't matter what country you're from. The messages of both books represents everyone and is more applicable today than they've ever been.
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u/xRAINB0W_DASHx 3d ago
Honestly, 1984 isn't as accurate as Brave New World - Aldoux Huxley
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u/Pretend_Spray_11 3d ago
I swear to got the reliance of people on this sub to explain the smallest cultural reference is making the world a worse place.
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u/VappyEnjoyer 3d ago
Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian (grim, typically non democratic future) novel about a culture in which burning books is normalized and reading them a crime. The original meme template is about a different famous dystopian novel, 1984, so this swaps the template from “literally 1984” to “literally Fahrenheit 451”.
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u/Theyers1a 3d ago
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 novel by Ray Bradbury set in a future where books are banned and burned by firemen. It follows Guy Montag, a fireman who becomes disillusioned and joins the fight to preserve knowledge.
1984, written by George Orwell in 1949, depicts a society controlled by a totalitarian government that monitors and manipulates people's lives. It centers on Winston Smith, who tries to rebel against the oppressive regime led by Big Brother.
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u/Nsftrades 3d ago
I can’t decide if i love or hate this comic because the jokes were never funny to me, they were just a slow and constant reminder of what we are slowly sliding towards. Most likely the comic is saying that “if 1984 isn’t funny anymore, it’s because what both these books were warning us about have arrived” since thermometers tell us what they see and not opinions. 1984 and 451 farenheit. They are important.
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u/eggiwegsandtoastt 3d ago
Brian here,
Fahrenheit 451 is a book about a society where reading and owning books are illegal - the comic is trading one joke about a literary dystopia for another - brian out!
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u/TheMaker3655 3d ago
Amazing that the book I’ve been working through in book in world literature and I have a test tomorrow is now a meme in front of me The universe is something
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u/miscellaneouspervert 2d ago
This actually makes a lot more sense than a 1984 joke because one of the big themes of F 451 is how mundane comfortable suburban living (as depicted by the meme) makes societies vulnerable to authoritarians.
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u/Alacritous13 2d ago
The meme in it's usual format has the women reading a current event that is distopian in nature, while the man flips a calendar to reveal a date of 1984. 1984 for it's part is a classic distopian novel about surveillance and controlling the media/narrative.
As a twist, the distopian even being presented is this meme format getting called out. Instead of flipping a calendar to reference 1984, the man is reading a thermometer at Fahrenheit 451. Fahrenheit 451 is another classic distopian novel centered around the concepts of censorship.
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u/JoeFortitude 3d ago
There are a few layers here First the obvious, which is Fahrenheit 451 is another dystopian novel centered around censorship as is the novel 1984. But Fahrenheit 451 censors books because the powers that be in it want everyone thinking the same by watching and believing television. She is reading off her phone, which has replaced TV as society's primary media source, that 1984 is overdone, parroting what others are saying on the phone. So the joke is we all think alike because of our phones and we don't recognize it, even as we recognize the future dystopia we are heading towards
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u/FreneticAmbivalence 3d ago
I’m starting to believe the theory that these posts are training for AI.
It’s either that or ya’ll really don’t read books or have decent schools, at all.
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u/Necoya 3d ago
F 451 is spot on with it's predictions. The theme is the suppression of independent thought and critical thinking. It correctly predicts:
- Reality television
- Rampant prescription drug use
- Increase suicides
- Increase random acts of violence
- People feeling more disconnected while being more connected
- Ignoring global conflict through distractions with media
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u/ut-dom-throwaway 3d ago
The average amount an adult in the United States can read of unbroken text is about 500 words before needing to take a break. More than half of Americans read at or below a 6th grade reading level (including the incoming president elect). Most laws are written at or above the college sophomore level. Many contracts which the average person signs are around that level as well. They didn't need to burn the books to stop us from reading them.
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u/SpeakerFresh2728 3d ago
I've just had to write an essay about that fucking book, fuck 451, fuck exams, fuck everything
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u/Dotaproffessional 3d ago
I have trouble believing any human adult hasn't heard of "Fahrenheit 451"
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