A closer look
Imagine dropping a gritty, totalitarian nightmare on unsuspecting post-war viewers. When the BBC aired a live television adaptation of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, it sparked a massive pearl-clutching panic. One viewer literally died of a heart attack while watching. The outrage was so severe that Parliament actually wasted hours debating if television was a weapon of mass trauma. It’s deeply comforting to know that politicians blaming the media for society's collapse is a time-honored tradition.
