Animal Farm in popular culture
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story is a satirical novella by George Orwell, ostensibly about a group of animals who oust the humans from the farm on which they live. The book was written during World War II and published in 1945.
As with Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four ("1984") references to this novella are frequent in other works, particularly popular music and television series.
- Bob Dylan's 1965 song, Ballad of a Thin Man, repeatedly refers to a character named Mr Jones. Dylan is a known fan of the novel, and this may be the origin of the name, though the song itself has little to do with Animal Farm.
- Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals was partially inspired by Animal Farm. It categorises people as pigs, dogs, or sheep. The songs are all deeply linked with Orwell's Animal Farm. The album cover has an image of Battersea Power Station which is also an image used in the film of 1984. While Animal Farm catalogs the excesses of socialism, Animals does the same regarding capitalism.
- Half Man Half Biscuit's song Arthur's Farm was inspired and named after Animal Farm.
- Radiohead's song, "Optimistic," on their 2000 album, Kid A, contains the lyrics, "This one dropped a payload/Fodder for the animals/Living on Animal Farm."
- In an episode of Johnny Bravo ("Aunt Katie's Farm"), Johnny, while dressed in a pig costume, goes crazy and yells, "Four legs good! Two legs bad!" over and over.
- The online game NationStates contains an imaginary pro-bicycle environmental group known as "Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad."
- In Moxy Früvous's live performances of their cover of the Spider-Man TV theme song, singer Mike Ford often led the chant, "Eight legs good, two legs bad!"
- Rappers Dead Prez released a song called "Animal in Man" off their debut LP, Let's Get Free, re-telling the story.
- A song on Canadian band Protest the Hero's debut CD A Calculated Use of Sound, called "Red Stars Over the Battle of the Cowshed" is presumably a reference to Animal Farm.
- Canadian rapper Buck 65 also used "Four legs good, two legs bad" in a remixed version of his song "The Centaur," found on the ZeD compilation CD Live Off The Floor
- Metal band Clutch has a song "Animal Farm" on their self titled album Clutch.
- The band Oingo Boingo's song "No Spill Blood" from their Good For Your Soul album (later reprised on Boingo Alive and Farewell) is a reference to the story.
- In the comic book series Fables, the second edition (issues 6 to 10) is titled Animal Farm.
- In an episode of Sealab 2021, the captain starts a Communistic reign over the station and even buys a large pig named Napoleon.
- In an episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Animal Farm is parodied as a book called Piggy Goes Oink.
- The Who's song "Won't Get Fooled Again" tells the tale of a nation that has a revolution only to find out the new leaders are just like the old. The song ends with the line, "Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss."
- In the first episode of Moral Orel, there is a book in the pile "to burn" clearly labeled "Animal Farm" in all caps.
- In the NOFX song 'Wolves in Wolves' Clothing', there is a line stating "We are Animal Farm pigs."
- The 2000 film, Chicken Run, has the similar plot to Animal Farm. The characters (chickens) are hoping for freedom from the evil farmers who kill them for food.
- Canadian Musician/Composer Friendly Rich energetically chants the phrase "Four legs are good; two legs are bad" at the end of the song Science Diet on his 2005 album We Need a New F-Word
- Dale Grover and John R. Deller, in their textbook Digital Signal Processing and the Microcontroller, explain their choice of notation: "Although we will work a lot with continuous-time signals and systems in this book, we finally decided to stick with the convention that Oppenheim and Schaefer established, which is: 4 legs good, 2 legs bad. No, wait -- that's Orwell's Animal Farm. Make that: Continuous-time frequency: F (Hz) and Ω (rad/sec), Discrete-time frequency: f (dimensionless) and ω (rad)."
[edit] Adaptations
- 1954 animated film — The book was the basis of an animated feature film in 1954 (Britain's first full-length animated movie), directed by John Halas and Joy Batchelor and quietly commissioned by the American CIA.[1] This version softened the theme of the story slightly by reducing the role of Moses, the character representing religion. It also added an epilogue where the other animals successfully revolt against the pigs immediately after the novel's iconic concluding imagery is depicted.
- 1999 live-action film — A live action film directed by John Stephenson, with voices by Kelsey Grammer as Snowball, Patrick Stewart as Napoleon, and Ian Holm as Squealer. Despite a few differences (such as completely different songs), the plot generally resembles that of the book. The film diverges from the book with an additional epilogue in which Jesse the dog and several animals escape and return years later to a post-Napoleon era Animal Farm. This is an update which could be seen as an analogy to the fall of the Soviet Union.
