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Copyright of Rivista Italiana di Conflittolgia is the property of Edizioni Labrys and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Rivista Italiana di Conflittolgia is the property of Edizioni Labrys and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In George Orwell's 1984, Big Brother is the inscrutable leader of Oceania. Thanks to his media pervasiveness, his image assumes, an iconic value, expression par excellence of control and power. However, he is an icon without reference: no one has ever really seen the Big Brother. He is a strongly iconic entity and at the same time he is not visible, perhaps not even existing: a mere representation of the apparatus of power. He is a fictional icon circulating first of all in the narrative universe of 1984. He emerges from the pages of the novel and becomes an icon (or meta-icon) also within contemporary culture: in the game of his translations across the media, through the reuses and reconfigurations to which he was subjected in the arts, in popular culture, even in advertising, the Orwellian character (or non-character) becomes the emblem of the vision: image of control and mass surveillance, but also - weakly - of spectator's voyeurism (the TV program).