Abstract
This article presents a critical reading of the function of the animal-human allegory or the “humanimallegory” in both the animated films Animal Farm and Chicken Run. Based on George Orwell’s novel of the same name, Animal Farm provides an allegorical representation of the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism in the Soviet Union by relaying Orwell’s story of a revolution led by a group of farm animals and its aftermath. Animal Farm ultimately reduces its fictional animal characters to simple metaphors for real human subjects, thus serving the most common function of the animal-human allegory in literature as well as film. In contrast, improvising on the many prisoner-of-war films that were produced during the first few decades following World War II, Chicken Run tells the story of a group of chickens who attempt to escape from an egg farm. Chicken Run complicates the function of the animal-human allegory, though, by resisting the allegorical reduction of its fictional animal characters to simple metaphors for real human subjects. By presenting a critical reading of these two different films, this article suggests that the literary concept of allegory itself remains circumscribed within the philosophical tradition of humanism.
Highlights
This article presents a critical reading of the function of the animal-human allegory or the “humanimallegory” in both the animated films Animal Farm and Chicken Run
The neologism that I have coined for the title of this paper is what we might call a second-order neologism—a neologism that is composed of other neologisms—the word “humanimallegory” formed by crossing the words “humanimal” and “animallegory” with each other, neither of which word I can claim to have coined myself
Based on George Orwell’s novel of the same name, Animal Farm provides an allegorical representation of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent rise of Stalinism in the Soviet Union by relaying Orwell’s story of a revolution led by a group of farm animals and its aftermath [6]
Summary
This article presents a critical reading of the function of the animal-human allegory or the “humanimallegory” in both the animated films Animal Farm and Chicken Run. I would like to argue that Chicken Run complicates the function of humanimallegory, by resisting the allegorical reduction of its fictional animal characters to simple metaphors for real human subjects.
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