Fifty Orwell Essays Read online

  Examination of a large number of these papers shows that, putting aside

  school stories, the favourite subjects are Wild West, Frozen North,

  Foreign Legion, crime (always from the detective's angle), the Great War

  (Air Force or Secret Service, not the infantry), the Tarzan motif in

  varying forms, professional football, tropical exploration, historical

  romance (Robin Hood, Cavaliers and Round-heads, etc.) and scientific

  invention. The Wild West still leads, at any rate as a setting, though

  the Red Indian seems to be fading out. The one theme that is really new

  is the scientific one. Death-rays, Martians, invisible men, robots,

  helicopters and interplanetary rockets figure largely: here and there

  there are even far-off rumours of psychotherapy and ductless glands.

  Whereas the GEM and MAGNET derive from Dickens and Kipling, the WIZARD,

  CHAMPION, MODERN BOY, etc., owe a great deal to H. G. Wells, who, rather

  than Jules Verne, is the father of 'Scientifiction'. Naturally it is the

  magical Martian aspect of science that is most exploited, but one or two

  papers include serious articles on scientific subjects, besides

  quantities of informative snippets. (Examples: 'A Kauri tree in

  Queensland, Australia, is over 12,000 years old'; 'Nearly 50,000

  thunderstorms occur every day'; 'Helium gas costs �1 per 1000 cubic

  feet'; 'There are over 500 varieties of spiders in Great Britain';

  'London firemen use 14,000,000 gallons of water annually', etc., etc.)

  There is a marked advance in intellectual curiosity and, on the whole, in

  the demand made on the reader's attention. In practice the GEM and MAGNET

  and the post-war papers are read by much the same public, but the mental

  age aimed at seems to have risen by a year or two years--an improvement

  probably corresponding to the improvement in elementary education since

  1909.

  The other thing that has emerged in the post-war boys' papers, though not

  to anything like the extent one would expect, is bully-worship and the

  cult of violence.

  If one compares the GEM and MAGNET with a genuinely modern paper, the

  thing that immediately strikes one is the absence of the leader-principle.

  There is no central dominating character; instead there are fifteen

  or twenty characters, all more or less on an equality, with whom

  readers of different types can identify. In the more modern papers

  this is not usually the case. Instead of identifying with a schoolboy of

  more or less his own age, the reader of the SKIPPER, HOTSPUR, etc., is

  led to identify with a G-man, with a Foreign Legionary, with some variant

  of Tarzan, with an air ace, a master spy, an explorer, a pugilist--at

  any rate with some single all-powerful character who dominates everyone

  about him and whose usual method of solving any problem is a sock on the

  jaw. This character is intended as a superman, and as physical strength

  is the form of power that boys can best understand, he is usually a sort

  of human gorilla; in the Tarzan type of story he is sometimes actually a

  giant, eight or ten feet high. At the same time the scenes of violence in

  nearly all these stories are remarkably harmless and unconvincing. There

  is a great difference in tone between even the most bloodthirsty English

  paper and the threepenny Yank Mags, FIGHT STORIES, ACTION STORIES, etc.

  (not strictly boys' papers, but largely read by boys). In the Yank Mags

  you get real blood-lust, really gory descriptions of the all-in,

  jump-on-his-testicles style fighting, written in a jargon that has been

  perfected by people who brood endlessly on violence. A paper like FIGHT

  STORIES, for instance, would have very little appeal except to sadists

  and masochists. You can see the comparative gentleness of the English

  civilization by the amateurish way in which prize-fighting is always

  described in the boys' weeklies. There is no specialized vocabulary. Look

  at these four extracts, two English, two American;

  When the gong sounded, both men were breathing heavily and each had great

  red marks on his chest. Bill's chin was bleeding, and Ben had a cut over

  his right eye.

  Into their corners they sank, but when the gong clanged again they were

  up swiftly, and they went like tigers at each other. (ROVER)

  * * *

  He walked in stolidly and smashed a clublike right to my face. Blood

  spattered and I went back on my heels, but surged in and ripped my right

  under the heart. Another right smashed full on Ben's already battered

  mouth, and, spitting out the fragments of a tooth, he crashed a flailing

  left to my body. (FIGHT STORIES)

  * * *

  It was amazing to watch the Black Panther at work. His muscles rippled

  and slid under his dark skin. There was all the power and grace of a

  giant cat in his swift and terrible onslaught.

  He volleyed blows with a bewildering speed for so huge a fellow. In a

  moment Ben was simply blocking with his gloves as well as he could. Ben

  was really a past-master of defence. He had many fine victories behind

  him. But the Negro's rights and lefts crashed through openings that

  hardly any other fighter could have found. (WIZARD)

  * * *

  Haymakers which packed the bludgeoning weight of forest monarchs crashing

  down under the ax hurled into the bodies of the two heavies as they

  swapped punches. (FIGHT STORIES)

  Notice how much more knowledgeable the American extracts sound. They are

  written for devotees of the prize-ring, the others are not. Also, it

  ought to be emphasized that on its level the moral code of the English

  boys' papers is a decent one. Crime and dishonesty are never held up to

  admiration, there is none of the cynicism and corruption of the American

  gangster story. The huge sale of the Yank Mags in England shows that

  there is a demand for that kind of thing, but very few English writers

  seem able to produce it. When hatred of Hitler became a major emotion in

  America, it was interesting to see how promptly 'anti-Fascism' was

  adapted to pornographic purposes by the editors of the Yank Mags. One

  magazine which I have in front of me is given up to a long, complete

  story, 'When Hell Game to America', in which the agents of a

  'blood-maddened European dictator' are trying to conquer the U.S.A. with

  death-rays and invisible aeroplanes. There is the frankest appeal to

  sadism, scenes in which the Nazis tie bombs to women's backs and fling

  them off heights to watch them blown to pieces in mid-air, others in

  which they tie naked girls together by their hair and prod them with

  knives to make them dance, etc., etc. The editor comments solemnly on all

  this, and uses it as a plea for tightening up restrictions against

  immigrants. On another page of the same paper: 'LIVES OF THE HOTCHA

  CHORUS GIRLS. Reveals all the intimate secrets and fascinating pastimes

  of the famous Broadway Hotcha girls. NOTHING IS OMITTED. Price 10c.' 'HOW

  TO LOVE. 10c.' 'FRENCH PHOTO RING. 25c.' 'NAUGHTY NUDIES TRANSFERS. From

  the outside of the glass you see a beautiful girl, innocently dressed.

  Turn it around and look through the glass and oh! what a difference! Se
t

  of 3 transfers 25c.,' etc., etc., etc. There is nothing at all like this

  in any English paper likely to be read by boys. But the process of

  Americanization is going on all the same. The American ideal, the

  'he-man', the 'tough guy', the gorilla who puts everything right by

  socking everybody on the jaw, now figures in probably a majority of boys'

  papers. In one serial now running in the SKIPPER he is always portrayed

  ominously enough, swinging a rubber truncheon.

  The development of the WIZARD, HOTSPUR, etc., as against the earlier

  boys' papers, boils down to this: better technique, more scientific

  interest, more bloodshed, more leader-worship. But, after all, it is the

  LACK of development that is the really striking thing.

  To begin with, there is no political development whatever. The world of

  the SKIPPER and the CHAMPION is still the pre-1914 world of the MAGNET

  and the GEM. The Wild West story, for instance, with its cattle-rustlers,

  lynch-law and other paraphernalia belonging to the eighties, is a

  curiously archaic thing. It is worth noticing that in papers of this type

  it is always taken for granted that adventures only happen at the ends of

  the earth, in tropical forests, in Arctic wastes, in African deserts, on

  Western prairies, in Chinese opium dens--everywhere in fact, except the

  places where things really DO happen. That is a belief dating from thirty

  or forty years ago, when the new continents were in process of being

  opened up. Nowadays, of course, if you really want adventure, the place

  to look for it is in Europe. But apart from the picturesque side of the

  Great War, contemporary history is carefully excluded. And except that

  Americans are now admired instead of being laughed at, foreigners are

  exactly the same figures of fun that they always were. If a Chinese

  character appears, he is still the sinister pigtailed opium-smuggler of

  Sax Rohmer; no indication that things have been happening in China since

  1912--no indication that a war is going on there, for instance. If a

  Spaniard appears, he is still a 'dago' or 'greaser' who rolls cigarettes

  and stabs people in the back; no indication that things have been

  happening in Spain. Hitler and the Nazis have not yet appeared, or are

  barely making their appearance. There will be plenty about them in a

  little while, but it will be from a strictly patriotic angle (Britain

  versus Germany), with the real meaning of the struggle kept out of sight

  as much as possible. As for the Russian Revolution, it is extremely

  difficult to find any reference to it in any of these papers. When Russia

  is mentioned at all it is usually in an information snippet (example:

  'There are 29,000 centenarians in the USSR.'), and any reference to

  the Revolution is indirect and twenty years out of date. In one story in

  the ROVER, for instance, somebody has a tame bear, and as it is a Russian

  bear, it is nicknamed Trotsky--obviously an echo of the 1917-23 period

  and not of recent controversies. The clock has stopped at 1910. Britannia

  rules the waves, and no one has heard of slumps, booms, unemployment,

  dictatorships, purges or concentration camps.

  And in social outlook there is hardly any advance. The snobbishness is

  somewhat less open than in the GEM and MAGNET--that is the most one can

  possibly say. To begin with, the school story, always partly dependent on

  snob-appeal, is by no means eliminated. Every number of a boys' paper

  includes at least one school story, these stories slightly outnumbering

  the Wild Westerns. The very elaborate fantasy-life of the GEM and MAGNET

  is not imitated and there is more emphasis on extraneous adventure, but

  the social atmosphere (old grey stones) is much the same. When a new

  school is introduced at the beginning of a story we are often told in

  just those words that 'it was a very posh school'. From time to time a

  story appears which is ostensibly directed AGAINST snobbery. The

  scholarship-boy (cf. Tom Redwing in the MAGNET) makes fairly frequent

  appearances, and what is essentially the same theme is sometimes

  presented in this form: there is great rivalry between two schools, one

  of which considers itself more 'posh' than the other, and there are

  fights, practical jokes, football matches, etc., always ending in the

  discomfiture of the snobs. If one glances very superficially at some of

  these stories it is possible to imagine that a democratic spirit has

  crept into the boys' weeklies, but when one looks more closely one sees

  that they merely reflect the bitter jealousies that exist within the

  white-collar class. Their real function is to allow the boy who goes to a

  cheap private school (NOT a Council school) to feel that his school is

  just as 'posh' in the sight of God as Winchester or Eton. The sentiment

  of school loyalty ('We're better than the fellows down the road'), a

  thing almost unknown to the real working class, is still kept up. As

  these stories are written by many different hands, they do, of course,

  vary a good deal in tone. Some are reasonably free from snobbishness, in

  others money and pedigree are exploited even more shamelessly than in the

  GEM and MAGNET. In one that I came across an actual MAJORITY of the boys

  mentioned were titled.

  Where working-class characters appear, it is usually either as comics

  (jokes about tramps, convicts, etc.), or as prize-fighters, acrobats,

  cowboys, professional footballers and Foreign Legionaries--in other

  words, as adventurers. There is no facing of the facts about

  working-class life, or, indeed, about WORKING life of any description.

  Very occasionally one may come across a realistic description of, say,

  work in a coal-mine, but in all probability it will only be there as the

  background of some lurid adventure. In any case the central character is

  not likely to be a coal-miner. Nearly all the time the boy who reads

  these papers--in nine cases out often a boy who is going to spend his

  life working in a shop, in a factory or in some subordinate job in an

  office--is led to identify with people in positions of command, above

  all with people who are never troubled by shortage of money. The Lord

  Peter Wimsey figure, the seeming idiot who drawls and wears a monocle but

  is always to the fore in moments of danger, turns up over and over again.

  (This character is a great favourite in Secret Service stories.) And, as

  usual, the heroic characters all have to talk B.B.C.; they may talk

  Scottish or Irish or American, but no one in a star part is ever

  permitted to drop an aitch. Here it is worth comparing the social

  atmosphere of the boys' weeklies with that of the women's weeklies, the

  ORACLE, the FAMILY STAR, PEG'S PAPER, etc.

  The women's papers are aimed at an older public and are read for the most

  part by girls who are working for a living. Consequently they are on the

  surface much more realistic. It is taken for granted, for example, that

  nearly everyone has to live in a big town and work at a more or less dull

  job. Sex, so far from being taboo, is THE subject. The short, complete

  stories, the special feature of these papers, are ge
nerally of the 'came

  the dawn' type: the heroine narrowly escapes losing her 'boy' to a

  designing rival, or the 'boy' loses his job and has to postpone marriage,

  but presently gets a better job. The changeling-fantasy (a girl brought

  up in a poor home is 'really' the child of rich parents) is another

  favourite. Where sensationalism comes in, usually in the serials, it

  arises out of the more domestic type of crime, such as bigamy, forgery or

  sometimes murder; no Martians, death-rays or international anarchist

  gangs. These papers are at any rate aiming at credibility, and they have

  a link with real life in their correspondence columns, where genuine

  problems are being discussed. Ruby M. Ayres's column of advice in the

  ORACLE, for instance, is extremely sensible and well written. And yet the

  world of the ORACLE and PEG'S PAPER is a pure fantasy-world. It is the

  same fantasy all the time; pretending to be richer than you are. The

  chief impression that one carries away from almost every story in these

  papers is of a frightful, overwhelming 'refinement'. Ostensibly the

  characters are working-class people, but their habits, the interiors of

  their houses, their clothes, their outlook and, above all, their speech

  arc entirely middle class. They are all living at several pounds a week

  above their income. And needless to say, that is just the impression that

  is intended. The idea is to give the bored factory-girl or worn-out

  mother of five a dream-life in which she pictures herself--not actually

  as a duchess (that convention has gone out) but as, say, the wife of a

  bank-manager. Not only is a five-to-six-pound-a-week standard of life set

  up as the ideal, but it is tacitly assumed that that is how working-class

  people really DO live. The major facts arc simply not faced. It is

  admitted, for instance, that people sometimes lose their jobs; but then

  the dark clouds roll away and they get better jobs instead. No mention of

  un-employment as something permanent and inevitable, no mention of the

  dole, no mention of trade unionism. No suggestion anywhere that there can

  be anything wrong with the system AS A SYSTEM; there arc only individual

  misfortunes, which are generally due to somebody's wickedness and can in

  any case be put right in the last chapter. Always the dark clouds roll

  away, the kind employer raises Alfred's wages, and there are jobs for

  everybody except the drunks. It is still the world of the WIZARD and the

  GEM, except that there are orange-blossoms instead of machine-guns.

  The outlook inculcated by all these papers is that of a rather

  exceptionally stupid member of the Navy League in the year 1910. Yes, it

  may be said, but what does it matter? And in any case, what else do you

  expect?

  Of course no one in his senses would want to turn the so-called penny

  dreadful into a realistic novel or a Socialist tract. An adventure story

  must of its nature be more or less remote from real life. But, as I have

  tried to make clear, the unreality of the WIZARD and the GEM is not so

  artless as it looks. These papers exist because of a specialized demand,

  because boys at certain ages find it necessary to read about Martians,

  death-rays, grizzly bears and gangsters. They get what they are looking

  for, but they get it wrapped up in the illusions which their future

  employers think suitable for them. To what extent people draw their ideas

  from fiction is disputable. Personally I believe that most people are

  influenced far more than they would care to admit by novels, serial

  stories, films and so forth, and that from this point of view the worst

  books are often the most important, because they are usually the ones

  that are read earliest in life. It is probable that many people who would

  consider themselves extremely sophisticated and 'advanced' are actually

  carrying through life an imaginative background which they acquired in

  childhood from (for instance) Sapper and Ian Hay. If that is so, the