Dark Animals

Recently I watched “Watership Down”, which has been around since 1978 and for whatever reason I never got around to watching it until now.  This is blog #666, but I have no special fascination with the number or anything else associated with it, so this discussion of darker animals will have to suffice.  Yes, I know this has no relevance to the upcoming Winter Solstice holiday, Saturnalia. 

Charlotte’s Web.   Book written in 1952 by E.B. White, most famous animated adaptation 1973.  Nominally this is an uplifting story about a pig, a spider, and other farm animals.  There’s even a rat, who provides the suitable dose of cynicism we can expect from such an animal and keeps this from being too nice and sweet.  Debbie Reynolds – Carrie Fisher’s mom and the star of “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” – voices Charlotte, while Paul Lynde, the center square on “Hollywood Squares”, famously cynical, voices Templeton the rat.  While Wilbur escapes the Pork Chop Block, Charlotte herself doesn’t survive the story, but her children – thousands of spiders – will hopefully continue her legacy.  I don’t recall seeing Mr. Spider enter the equation at any point to make Charlotte’s pregnancy occur, but maybe I forgot something. 

Watership Down.   Everything I heard about this was always “whoa, dark!  Not for kids” etc.  I didn’t find it particularly cynical, but here’s the story.  The book was written by Richard Adams in 1972, the most famous animated adaptation dates from 1978.  Jon Hurt was the only voice I recognized. 

A bunch of rabbits live in one warren (rabbit complex).  One of them, Fiver, gets all these visions which predict something bad will happen.  Enough rabbits take him seriously to leave and try to find a new place to live.  Along the way they find a goose with an injured wing; in exchange for helping him restore his health, the goose acts as their aerial reconnaissance once he recovers. 

When they arrive at their desired destination, atop a hill, they find a competing warren run by some total asshole old rabbit.   It doesn’t help that apparently 100% of those rabbits who came here were male, and need female rabbits to continue the warren.  They find some “Does” at a farm, defended by a dog on a chain and a nasty cat, as well as some in the police state warren.

Eventually there’s a final confrontation.   For all the “darkness” bitched about, the good guys win, although some of the rabbits have to indulge in devious methods to achieve their goals.  The most cynical thing you might observe about this is a tacit acknowledgement that sometimes the good guys have to do things which aren’t entirely kosher in order to win, but since they’re up against thoroughly bad guys, the latter aren’t really in much of a position to complain.  The story contains many made-up words repeated sufficiently that their meaning can be fairly easily ascertained by the context, e.g. “Owsla”, the secret police/military arm of the warren.

  

Having said that, unlike the next installment, I don’t see “Watership Down” as an allegory for human behavior.  It looks more like a straight story about rabbits, period.  To the extent some human stories have some parallels (e.g. Homer’s Odyssey) that looks more like Adams simply used those as a template for this story rather than intending this story to act as an allegory for anything else.   Count it as appropriate for children in grades 7-12.

Animal Farm.  I’ve commented on Orwell on multiple occasions already.  My sixth grade teacher in Paris referred me to this back when we had a presentation on McCarthy, but I couldn’t digest the story with my limited intellect at the time.  I read it later and purchased the animated film on DVD.  My prior comments on this were actually fairly limited, so it looks like a more detailed description and analysis is appropriate given the current context.  Orwell wrote it during WWII but it couldn’t be published until after the war was over - an obvious critique of Soviet Russia while Hitler still breathes?  Wait a bit....  The most famous animated adaptation dates from 1954, obviously well within the Cold War. 

The animals on the farm overthrow the farmer and establish their own government, run by the pigs, ostensibly for the benefit of all the animals.  Initially the animals are excited and everyone does their part to help rebuild the farm and make it self-sufficient.  Boxer, the horse, naturally does most of the heavy work and the rest of the animals have no choice but to rely upon his brute strength to get things done.  They successfully fight off an attack by farmers to reclaim the farm (farmer with his colleagues worried that their own farms will suffer the same fate) – an excellent analogy to the Russian Civil War.   But the pigs begin dealing with the town banker (capitalist) and begin using the dogs, orphaned in that battle and now grown up under the pigs’ control, as enforcers against the animals themselves (Cheka > NKVD).  Eventually the animals realize that the pigs have simply taken over the role as oppressors and are running the farm for their own benefit, not that of the animals as a collective.  Cue famous addition to the barn-scrawled rules:  ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.

All three stories are worthy in and of themselves, probably suitable for enjoyment by children in increasing age and maturity (Charlotte’s Web >> Watership Down >> Animal Farm).   Perhaps follow this up with Pink Floyd's epic tales of dogs, pigs, and sheep.   :D