Hollywood it girl Jennifer Lawrence ran out of a Broadway production of 1984 to puke, proving that, oh my god you guys, celebrities are totally just people like us! According to her friends, the star was sick from a stomach virus and not because of the content of the play. I don’t see how this is news, but the world loses their mind every time she scratches her ass. No, seriously.
You might have assumed I was joking when I suggested the play may have made Lawrence sick, but you’d be wrong. Apparently, the second half of the play is a very graphic depiction of Winston’s torture and audience members have been dropping like flies at the production, particularly when we get to Room 101, where The Party tortures you with your worst fear. Winston’s worst fear is having his face eaten off by rats, which seems like a fairly universal fear and we may be giving Big Brother a lot more credit than he’s actually due for personalizing these tortures.
People lining up for a Broadway show that’s been making people vomit sort of reminds me of the South Park episode “The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs” where the boys write a book they intend to be as shocking and disgusting as possible, and while everyone who reads it throws up at nearly ever passage, they also hail it as a work of literary genius. The point of Room 101 in the novel 1984 isn’t on how horrible the torture is physically, it’s that Winston is forced to give up the one thing that matters to him, his love for Julia.
But why bother with all that fussy politically allegory when you can just make torture porn? I mean, you can claim your show was so unsettling it made J. Law boot in the lobby! Throw in a few rapping presidents and you’ll run for years.