• Varyk@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          9 months ago

          Sorry, I don’t get the relevance of the reference?

          As far as I understand, it’s from 1984?

          I never saw the movie so I might be missing some context here.

          • swordsmanluke
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            9 months ago

            Spoilers for 1984 - so if you didn’t get assigned that book in high school, look away I guess.

            The villainous government in 1984 has a special “re-education” room they torture dissidents in. Famously no one knows what’s inside - but everyone knows. It’s simply “the worst thing in the world”. The surveillance state - knowing everyone’s worst fear - then puts people in contact with their worst fears in order to break their mind and coerce them to obey.

            The protagonist of 1984 is pathological terrified of rats. So when the government breaks him, they lock his head in a cage with a rat in front and threaten to open the door keeping the rat away from his face…

            Which is the scene above.