For the Rest of Us: A Reader-Oriented Interpretation of Apple's "1984" Commercial

Scott, Linda M. "'For the Rest of Us': A Reader-Oriented Interpretation of Apple's '1984' Commercial." JPC 25.1 (Summer 1991): 67-81.

A Kenneth Burkean/reader-response interpretation of a 60-second Macintosh commercial associating IBM with George Orwell's dystopian Oceania and the Apple Macintosh with the human opposition symbolized by a hammer-throwing athlete: a young woman who throws a huge hammer into a telescreen image of Big Brother. The setting for the commercial "is at once mechanistic and organic" (73) and reminiscent of ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER (q.v.)— earlier works by Ridley Scott, the producer-director of the brilliant and culturally significant "1984" commercial.