Animal Farm

[rynner2]

We have a thread on 1984 which mentions Animal Farm, but the latter doesn't have a thread of its own. I think it deserves one, having just discovered this animated version on iPlayer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... imal_Farm/

Animal Farm

Animated version of George Orwell's classic political fable which was the first full length cartoon made in England.

Farmer Jones's animals revolt against their cruel and drunken owner, and run the farm on their own, led by the pigs. But although they begin as a democracy, it gradually develops into a dictatorship in which the pigs are the elite and Napoleon, the most powerful and corrupt of the pigs, is the brutal dictator.

Duration: 72 minutes Available until: 10:29AM Sat, 21 Dec 2013

This may be a cartoon, but it's not the kind used for the amusement of young children - the mood is fairly dark, and close to the tone of Orwell's original story. The basic premise of the tale is well known, but I had to watch to the end to see how it worked out. Well worth viewing.

 

[Analogue Boy]

It was made in 1954 - You've never seen it before? :shock:

 

[DrWhiteface]

We read this at school - and saw the movie - but it always makes me wonder why people haven't actually seen it by adulthood...

 

[dreeness]

It was produced by Halas-Batchelor, one of the great old animation companies.

Remember Do-Do?

Do-Do, the kid from outer space!
Do-Do, can go-go anyplace!
He's a science-fiction pixie
From a strange atomic race
Do-Do, the kid from outer space!



Okay, maybe not...
I'm an idiot...

 

[rynner2]

It was made in 1954 - You've never seen it before? :shock:

No, but I've spent a lot of time at sea, far from TV, etc, and in my student days and early working life TV was not as ubiquitous as it is now. And even now I don't own a TV!

(I read the book years ago, however.)

 

[JamesWhitehead]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Far ... mbiguation)

It was funded by the CIA. I wonder if they still do cartoons and which ones?

 

[stu neville]

I've seen it argued that it could equally be read as a satire about the American Revolution - fat and complacent farmer (George III), well-meaning and initially principled revolt, the rise of strong and opportunist personalities who exploit the newly levelled playing field and then in effect establish their own ruling class within it. Orwell was more multi-dimensional than he tends to be given credit for - his cynicism faced in all directions - but given the timing of publication most were read and interpreted (especially in the classroom) through the prism of the Cold War.

 

[rynner2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm_(disambiguation)

It was funded by the CIA.

That explains the grim tone, then! Cold War propaganda from the CIA.

But then Orwell himself based the story on the slogans and violent purges of Russia's communist Party:

According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union.[1] Orwell, a democratic socialist,[2] was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, especially after his experiences with the NKVD and the Spanish Civil War.[3] The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

 

[stu neville]

Our George also knew on which side his bread was buttered .

 

[Anome]

Yes, it's important to remember that Orwell was a Socialist, and the criticism is of Stalin specifically, and not Lenin and Trotsky or the ideals of the October Revolution.

Also, there is an argument to be made that all revolutions follow a pattern. The initial fervour gives way to a new dictatorship as the original revolutionaries are removed from power by other interests. Compare the French and Russian revolutions. And the plot of Animal Farm.

 

[Heckler]

Yes, it's important to remember that Orwell was a Socialist, and the criticism is of Stalin specifically, and not Lenin and Trotsky or the ideals of the October Revolution.

Also, there is an argument to be made that all revolutions follow a pattern. The initial fervour gives way to a new dictatorship as the original revolutionaries are removed from power by other interests. Compare the French and Russian revolutions. And the plot of Animal Farm.

As far back as the French revolution Jacques Mallet du Pan coined the phrase: "the Revolution devours its children".

 

[GNC]

The cartoon is very faithful - until the ending which was the opposite of Orwell's message. Many have speculated the CIA forced the animators to change it, but it's still not as bad as the TV movie of fifty or so years later, the one with the puppets which had no such interference.

 

[Urvogel]

The cartoon is very faithful - until the ending which was the opposite of Orwell's message. Many have speculated the CIA forced the animators to change it, but it's still not as bad as the TV movie of fifty or so years later, the one with the puppets which had no such interference.

If it's the live action movie I'm thinking of, I quite liked that. The propaganda films were a nice touch and the chanting of "four legs good two legs BETTER!" was chilling. Also, even though the ending was slightly changed, I still think it fitted quite well.

SPOILER: The resistance realise things are futile and leave the farm. Years later they return to find the regime has collapsed under its own rotten weight.

 

[dreeness]

And the quality of of the animation was amazing, you just don't see that kind of hand-drawn attention to detail in things anymore.

 

[rynner2]

The real Animal Farm:

The Indian Animal Farm where Orwell was born
By Suhail Haleem, BBC World Service, Bihar

George Orwell is one of the UK's best-known 20th Century authors but he's also claimed by a town in north-eastern India. Orwell was born here - and his home is being turned into a museum.

There are farmyard animals everywhere. An iron door lies wide open, as if the rebellious animals have forgotten to bolt it after chasing their human masters away.
Pigs have the run of the place. Two horses, their frames withered with age, stand in one corner, swishing their tales to drive the flies away, and there are many more animals - cows, goats, sheep, hens. Only the buffaloes would have looked out of place in Animal Farm.

This is where Orwell spent the first year of his life, before he and his mother moved to Henley on Thames.
Close to the bungalow where they lived are the remains of a warehouse which was used to store opium.
This was poppy country back then, and Orwell's father worked for the opium department of the British government, overseeing the production and storage of the drug before it was exported to China.

More than a century after the Orwells left, the dilapidated colonial-era bungalow is being turned into a museum. The four families who have been living in it are in the process of being unceremoniously turfed out - a move it's hard to imagine Orwell approving of.

Among them are Aditya Abhishek, a government employee, his mother and a younger brother. He was born here 29 years ago, "narrowly missing 1984", he says with a smile.
"That's something I share with George Orwell," he tells me. "We were both born in the same house, but he became famous, I didn't."

He's sad to go. "I have so many memories associated with this bungalow, I grew up here. My parents got married in this house, my father died here," he says.
It was because Abhishek's father was a teacher that the place became their home - it was government property leased to the school.

After being served with orders to leave, they started hurriedly building a small house nearby, They are moving in before it's finished. One of the other residents is a widowed classroom assistant at the school. "We will move out soon, Sir," she says nervously in Nepali, mistaking me for a government official.

The house is located in the sleepy town of Motihari, capital of the Eastern Champaran region, close to the border of Nepal ("Champaran" meaning "magnolia forest"). In 1917, Gandhi led a civil disobedience campaign among indigo workers, who were being exploited by their colonial employers. It's one of the least developed parts of Bihar, India's poorest state.

As very few people understand English, it's perhaps no surprise that few know much about George Orwell. Most of those who do say he was a great "Angrez sahityakar" - Hindi for "English author" - but confess that's the limit of their knowledge.
Motihari has no bookshop selling anything other than school and college text books. You cannot easily lay your hands on any of Orwell's books here.

But at the town's best educational establishment, the Munshi Singh College, it's a different story. Prof Iquebal Hussain, who heads the department of English (and is its only member) has several portraits of great English writers on his wall, with George Orwell occupying pride of place right next to William Shakespeare.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28739420