Film adaptation integration into Media Studies curriculum 12/10

In light of all the media discussion around current conservative rhetoric surrounding the election of Barack Obama, in addition to this new digital world that we live in where privacy is an afterthought (and this generation is alright appears to be OK with this), national wiretapping - U.S.A Patriot Act on library circulation, and information is less and less offered in tangible formats (e.g., 1984 being silenced on the Kindle) I would encourage students in my ideal media studies class to read and then view film portions of Orwell's/Radford's 1984 with a mind on these particular discourses.

Some key text reading differences:
In the spirit of the Rachel Malchow Lloyd assignment (I know her family, by the way), I think it might be helpful to recognize some of the political differences in the two mediums. It's been a couple years, but apparently two major differences according to the Wikipedia entry are 1) evidently in the film party members are called "brothers"/"sisters" instead of comrades, which is interesting considering the Cold War was still very much in effect during 1984 (boycotted Olympics), but still fits with the 1980's language. In addition, Neo-Bolshevism is also mentioned explicitly in the book but not in the film.

Going back to my original point, I would like to students in my class produce a modern adaptation of 1984 (not a futuristic one mind you) within the contexts of media defined "conservative attitudes", information privacy, and information permanency. I think the distopian feel would still need to be there, so I would be careful for the students to make the film too modern. That said here is a possible story idea using many of the elements from the book/film.

For example, in producing some video or through image/audio on Voicethread, I could see students getting creative with a Kindle that has an e-book of 1984 on the screen, and then someone playing "Winston" in the Ministry of Truth pushes a button, and all of a sudden the book is gone.

Or someone is using Skype, and types something that is an NSA code word (e.g., Facebook on Obama assassination), and then an FBI agent shows up to the door - and you get some notoriety on the 24 hour news stations (themselves a kind of Big Brother in the cult of amature).

Students could even weave in our own cultural discourse on the influence of 1984 in the way we think about rights, privacy, and government roles/manipulation.

The point of this would be to show how the sounds and visuals inherent to the text provide a different level of texture, but not necessary a superior one. I think by bridging the gap between the 1940's when this was written (likely a reason why Neo-Bolshevism was not brought into 1980's film) and its very real application in the modern world; I think students could get a real understanding of how Orwell's world came to be and perhaps how it exists today in certain regions of the world (e.g., Iran, North Korea). Finally, not to be too alarmist as the Internet has a multitude of perspectives, but also how it could come to be within our society with so few true independent mass media channels.