Animal Farm, betrayed

[selenak]

Yesterday evening, I saw the 1999 American version of Animal Farm on TV which I hadn’t watched yet, and it provoked extremely mixed emotions, mostly due to the ending. And no, I don’t mean that they added a “downfall of the regime” moment; that’s what they did in the cartoon, too, and I never expected this version to actually keep Orwell’s ending, with the pigs victorious and still in power.

However. Animal Farm, despite a more universal appliance, is very obviously a satire on the Russian Revolution and Stalinism. (Snowball as Trotzky, Napoleon as Stalin, etc.) And the 1999 movie kept these parallels much more than the cartoon had done. So the end, not a counterrevolution, but a breakdown complete with the arrival of new owners, a smiling, waving human family (blond to boot), which per voiceover gets defined as true freedom, pretty much ruined the film for me which until then I felt mostly positive about. Because Orwell? Wouldn’t have thought being taken over by new capitalists had anything to do with freedom. Better than Stalinist tyranny, yes. A free state of being? No.

The confusing thing is that until this point, the humans were presented as rotten, the film drawing the pigs/humans parallel long before the other animals did. Other new elements, such as TV being used as opium for the (animal) masses to keep them from protesting against the work conditions and the pigs taking more and more privileges, were well-thought of, either. So why the ending? Why not leave us with the breakdown, and the return of the exiled animals, or go, as the cartoon version did, for a counterrevolution, if you think Orwell’s ending is too depressing?

On that disgruntled note, happy new year, everyone.

Comments

[kitsune76.livejournal.com]

I think the new farmers are supposed to be Bill Clinton et al. Which prolly doesn't help the symbolism much either, but renders the blonde bit mreaningless.

Although I am now amused with hte idea of Al Gore as Clinton's wife.

No, in that case...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

...Gore would have been one of the two kids, with Hillary sitting up front.

Hm. Or maybe the new farmers were supposed to be Clinton and Blair? Wasn't there a Bambi-turned-Stalin comparison anyway?...

Animal Farm

[cavendish.livejournal.com]

Hi there!

So why the ending? Why not leave us with the breakdown, and the return of the exiled animals, or go, as the cartoon version did, for a counterrevolution, if you think Orwell’s ending is too depressing?

Since I am on an "Culture Industry" trip anyhow ;-):

Because the last thing that the culture industry wants is to have an audience that switches of the TV (or leaves the cinema) disturbed, and, beware, thinking or asking questions.

"Everything will be fine". This is the constant undercurrent, the inherent message. "Do not worry." (The other one is: "There are wrongs in our society, but they have to be accepted") ...

A happy new year to you too,

F.

Agreed...This version actually works better...

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

...if you shut it off before the end of the film. Because up until that point, it's remarkably faithful to the tone and plot. Leave it to a Hallmark production to need a tidy, shiny, pretty bow of an ending.

Quite. If...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

...they had ended with the beginning, i.e. the image of the crumbling watertowers (I think that's what they were?), then it might not have been the original ending literally, but would have been consistent with the tone, and I would have been happy with the production. As I said, I admired additional touches like the use of TV as opium for the masses, and Pete Postlewaite (it was him, right?) was very good as Farmer Jones, a role which could easily have been a total caricature. But the ending - arrgh!

A Hallmark production? I didn't notice that - they cut the credits for the advertisments. Explains a lot.

[neuralclone.livejournal.com]

The ending of this movie sounds like a travesty of the book, and would probably have Orwell, a socialist libertarian, spinning in his grave.

Someone has apparently written a sequel - Snowball's Chance - which satirises the collapse of the Soviet Union. The reviews I've read suggest that some of the satire is a bit too topical, but it certainly sounds true in spirit to the original.

CIA involvement

[lakrids404.livejournal.com]

Orwell got very irritated, when American rightwing groups declared him as one their own. And he did reply when heard that, they were welcome to see his Labour member book. Orwell was he was young a communist, later on he got more disillusioned on the idea about the absolute regime, the right thought set etc. And he became therefore more pragmatic, in his preferred methods for social reforms.
I saw a link to this article about CIA changing of the film from 1955 ending

That ending was altered in the 1955 animated version, which removed the humans, leaving only the nasty pigs. Another example of Hollywood butchering great literature? Yes, but in this case the film's secret producer was the Central Intelligence Agency.
http://staff.washington.edu/jonah/orwell.html
The real world is a pretty strange place.