Some nerds were doing that thing where 40k fans are like "OH NO SEXZ IS HERESY!" when it's pretty definitively not and is basically one of the only things in 40k that isn't heretical (as long as you're not doing evil slannesh shit) and it got me thinking about repression of sex under "in bad country regimes".
And a whoooooooooooooooooooooooooole fucking thing in 1984 was how liberating and humanizing it was that the author's grungy middle aged self-insert was boning a 19 year old member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, and, like... America has several thousand different Junior Anti-Sex League and I'm not sure if the USSR ever had any? Like, yeah, maybe they did, but under capitalism Americans have literally convinced themselves they'll go to hell if they see a tiddy and the English famously just hate joy. So what the fuck was Orwell trying to critique with his "Junior Anti-Sex League" in spoooooky Stalinist England?
It's a long time since I read it, but I think the idea is to suggest dehumanization and artificiality in people who totally subsume themselves to political identity. Which I think is how Orwell basically saw supporters of Stalin, as mindless political fanatics
I remember reading a report by a Japanese think tank on the history of film in the dprk, where they described a film that had a fairly plain romance plot as being incredible because up to that point "state ideology only acknowledged love between the people and the Glorious Leader, not between individuals," which is just the most unhinged take.
It's so weird. There is a literal mural of George Washington displayed as God in the capital rotunda. Like, not next to god, not wearing the attire of god, not god like. As God.
But in bad country...