I have returned to 1984 after realising I never read the full book and have been relying on snippets, reactions and reviews.
So...something that isnt often picked up on..
In the dystopian world of George Orwell’s 1984, there is a machine called a “versificator.”
The versificator is one of the entertaining distractions made by the Party. A versificator generates songs , music and fiction that are “composed without any human intervention whatever.” The results range from insipid love songs like “Hopeless Fancy,” to the “savage, barking rhythm” of the “Hate Song”—designed to stir rage against political enemies.
But the Proles like it fine. The song “Hopeless Fancy,” takes hold among them and “haunts” London for weeks.
It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.
In this case, the art of the machine seems adequate for consumption.
There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime, and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means.
The Proles make up the majority of society, and so the Party provides them with various sources of entertainment to keep them from getting too restless.
Orwell gets more terrifyingly accurate every year.