Ridley Scott 1984

Film director and producer, Ridley Scott, in his Apple advertisement, “1984,” revives George Orwell’s dystopia to introduce Apple’s new product, Macintosh, as an icon of technological freedom. Scott’s purpose is to persuade the audience that Apple’s new product symbolizes a revolution in the technology industry as it would individualize technology from IBM’s industry. He adopts a revolutionary tone in order to appeal to individualistic characteristics in the public or future buyers.

Scott’s initiates the advertisement by creating a sense of sameness that is challenged by Apple’s new product or the symbolic model representing it. The director uses the words “you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984,” to create a challenge as he is insinuating that technology is going to change not because of time frames but because of this new product.
IBM’s representation, that can also be call Big Brother or Big Blue, is represented by sameness and lack color, which symbolizes a monopoly on technology. On the other hand, Apple’s representation is a woman wearing athletic red shorts and holding a hammer, which represents the future freedom from monopoly. Scott’s appeals to the individual characteristics of the public by calling into question the public’s willingness to be part of Big Bother’s sameness society or Apple’s society, which provides freedom of expression as the woman is her own person, not a clone. This individualistic “freedom” ideology comes from the woman’s actions as she smashed the gigantic screen where Big Brother was talking, with her hammer, liberating everyone. Her act of liberating the clones was design in order to make the audience want to join the technological revolution she represents. Scott’s personification of freedom creates a revolutionary tone that calls for the public’s participation