Transcript
Nate Day: Welcome to Adaptation, the Book to Movie podcast. I'm Nate.
Chris: And I'm Chris.
Nate Day: And today we are discussing George Orwell's Animal Farm. But before we dive into that conversation, how are you, buddy?
Chris: I'm good. I'm good. I don't know if you can see, but I got myself quite a bit of sun today.
Nate Day: Oh, you were outside?
Chris: Yep. Took the kids up to the park. And you know what?
Chris: i wore I wore my boots because Friday we went to the park and I wore my shoes and I did entirely too much running around.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: So I thought this was my little cheat code so I wouldn't get pulled into running too much. Still did 17,000 steps.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: And you got sunburn to show for it.
Chris: soable And a pile of stuff. Well, I wore a hat Friday, and it was a little more overcast today, so I didn't. And that's that was dumb and wrong. But that's poor quality audio content for our dear listeners.
Chris: Let me tell you what I've been reading.
Nate Day: Yeah, please do.
Chris: So I'm almost done with that that one with the real fancy cover that I got when we were down in Omaha.
Nate Day: Oh yeah. Cool.
Chris: Among the burning flowers. Now, I do have a little bit of a bone to pick with this one, if I may be picky.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: Please.
Chris: It's one of those series, I've been seeing this more lately. The Witcher series did this. Another very good series that I highly recommend, I hope they do an adaptation of it, is Fonda Lee's
Chris: Bone... Oh my gosh, almost said Bone Crusher. That's not it. The Jade... Jade City? Oh gosh. Jade...
Nate Day: those Those are not even similar. Bone Crusher and Jade City.
Chris: No. Also... How do I remember the author's name and not the series?
Nate Day: Well, that's just a Chris-ism.
Chris: great Oh, okay. I was actually nearly spot on. Number one is Jade City, the first book in the Greenbone Saga.
Nate Day: Oh, okay.
Nate Day: Oh, okay.
Chris: But fabulous series, but they did this... Oh my gosh, Sarah J. Maas did this with the ACOTAR series. There's this, I don't know, this emerging...
Chris: I don't want to be so on the pessimistic or crass side, it appears like, oh, you still had the notes and realized you could squeeze out another book that people would pay money for.
Nate Day: Oh.
Chris: i I don't want to believe that that's what's happening. But anyway, this I'm seeing more often now where a full series is out or, you know, one and two from a trilogy are out, and then they'll go back and release book 0.5.
Chris: Have you seen this?
Nate Day: Really? No.
Chris: Or book? Like, with ACOTAR, it was very famous. It's a super tiny one that you do not have to have read the rest to understand. It's like a standalone in the same universe, and it's like technically book 1.5 or something.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: It's like a Christmas special. Yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah, yeah, I get it.
Chris: And so this is Samantha Shannon. Well, I can show you. It's a beautiful cover. Absolutely beautiful. You were there when I bought it, I know. But for viewers interested, it's Samantha Shannon who wrote prior Priory of the Orange Tree, which was incredible, phenomenal.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I have trouble recommending it to people because it's a freaking tome. Yeah.
Nate Day: i see I remember seeing that one in your house. It's huge.
Chris: like, I want to say 900 pages. And this is, I was chatting with the, oh no, do you remember the shop name?
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: We should give them a plug. That place rocked.
Nate Day: No, but I'll find it and I'll put it down in the show notes below.
Chris: Okay. Yeah. that Over by Ariel's house. Yeah. I chatted with that lady for a while and we both had to go look it up. And I believe it's technically like titled point two in this series. Yeah.
Nate Day: Oh, God.
Chris: Like way back in time before the... I know I... Listen, the Star Wars expanded universe being the epitome of this, I am a big fan of... We've got a universe we love. Yes, more. Give me more.
Nate Day: Sure, sure.
Chris: Actually, we we just touched on it last week. Night of the Seven Kingdoms. You know, same thing.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Same same un universe, different timeline.
Nate Day: Mm-hmm.
Chris: So... Anyway, her writing is always as fabulous. It's a universe I'm already familiar with. So I'm really, really digging it. I just, the, oh yeah, book one came out.
Chris: Here's book point two, 18 months later.
Nate Day: Yeah, right.
Chris: I don't know.
Nate Day: It's a little silly.
Chris: I don't, it rubs me in an odd way. Like just say it's in the same universe, but not the same. I don't know. You know, there, yeah.
Nate Day: Right. Yeah, now I hear you.
Chris: Yeah. So there. But that's what i've been that's what I've been reading, and I love it.
Nate Day: So that's your rant?
Chris: And you know i am not one to pay full price for books often.
Nate Day: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: And so this was a little bit of a gamble in that I just thought, this is an author I love. Let's go for it. And well, well worth whatever $20, $25 gave them.
Nate Day: Good, good. And it's supported a local business.
Chris: what's been what's been Honestly, that was the tipping point for me. Cool shop.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Super awesome lady. I presume she's the owner. I guess I didn't even ask her that. So I was like, yeah, I'm going to buy something.
Nate Day: I think she is, I think based on what I've seen and heard, she is.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: cool. Well, I've been watching a lot of movies, which of course I love to do. so I'm just going to run through the handful.
Chris: Good.
Nate Day: Are you ready?
Chris: I'm ready.
Nate Day: Okay, I saw The Devil Wears Prada 2. Liked it a lot.
Chris: Obviously.
Nate Day: It's a goodie.
Nate Day: Then I also saw Remarkably Bright Creatures, which is an adaptation that is now streaming on Netflix. And I actually thought it was pretty good. My sister loves the book.
Nate Day: It's about a a woman that's a nighttime janitor at an aquarium in like small town, Oregon. Pretty cute.
Chris: Oh
Nate Day: And then i actually saw another adaptation that we intentionally kept off the list because we thought it looked stupid. And we were really freaking wrong. The Sheep Detectives, which is which is a whodunit murder mystery where a flock of sheep solve their shepherd's
Chris: oh no
Nate Day: murder and it was actually really surprisingly good and cute and made me cry so that's a little bit embarrassing but
Chris: Oh, nuts.
Nate Day: that
Chris: Okay, so we we turn it back around. That's fine. We can admit we were wrong.
Nate Day: maybe yeah maybe that empty slot later this year
Chris: we can
Chris: I mean, the description sucks.
Nate Day: It looks, it looks stupid.
Chris: Okay.
Nate Day: don't look up a trailer for the movie because it looks ridiculous, but it's actually not terrible. I mean, it's like a family movie.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: It's not meant to be a brain twister or anything, but it's, it's cute.
Chris: yeah
Nate Day: So, so some fun stuff.
Chris: Okay. Wow.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I mean, if I recall correctly, we've had a number of episodes now where you were on pretty slim pickings. You really made a tear here.
Nate Day: Yeah, this was a pretty slow start to the year cinematically for me, but catching up now and it's summer movie season and next, next, next weekend, this weekend, something is Star Wars, the Mandalorian movie. So, you know, I'll be back in the theater.
Nate Day: There's plenty, plenty coming down the pipeline.
Chris: Yeah. Wonderful.
Nate Day: Good. Well, on that note, let's talk about, well, one of the movies I left off, actually, is an adaptation, the brand new adaptation of Animal Farm. But before we get into this latest movie, Chris, tell me a little bit about George Orwell's book.
Chris: Of course.
Chris: Yes, of course, of course. Okay, so George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blake. Did you know George Orwell was a pen name?
Nate Day: Oh. Nope.
Chris: Me neither. Okay, so we're all...
Nate Day: kind of wish i Kind of wish I never learned that, in
Chris: Yeah, he really, he made a good choice here. He made a good choice.
Nate Day: Yeah, he did.
Chris: I mean, imagine looking at a book and saying, yeah, Eric Arthur Blake, I'll read him.
Nate Day: Well, it's not a bad, all three, it is boring.
Chris: Born.
Nate Day: It's like three very standard names.
Chris: First of all, and you know my thoughts on this, it's three first names.
Nate Day: you know but it's Yeah, yeah that's true
Chris: So you know that guy sucked. No, in this case, not quite. But he made a good choice.
Nate Day: yeah
Chris: Born in 1903. Nate, how do we do this? We got ourselves another freaking Brit.
Nate Day: Oh, I think you and i are closet Anglophiles.
Chris: That hurt a little to hear out loud. Yeah, put that on the list to speak to a therapist about. Okay, so enough Anglophiles?
Nate Day: What? Is it that big a deal?
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: Isn't that people that's people that like Britain?
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: Yeah. I mean...
Chris: In all its colonial terror glory.
Nate Day: Oh God, we're American. We're white Americans. We don't get...
Chris: Yeah, okay, fair, fair, fair. No, that's
Chris: Anyway, I love watching their rugby team lose.
Nate Day: Oh, there it is.
Chris: And you know what? A fun little, if anyone's got a spare two and a half hours, the most recent women's cricket T20 between New Zealand and England was a very fun watch. And I love watching England lose. So bonus there. Anyway.
Chris: Mr. Blake here. I did go back and forth, and just for your information, I am, for the entirety of the episode, going to call him George Orwell.
Nate Day: Okay, please and thank you.
Chris: Great. Okay. So, Orwell, he is a British citizen born in, i hope I'm getting this right, Murtahari, India.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: British colony, you know, 1903, the the Arguably heyday of the Raj. I think, I feel pretty confident saying this. I did want to bounce it off you, see what you thought. Arguably more famous for his dystopian novel 1984.
Chris: How do you feel about that statement?
Nate Day: More than Animal Farm?
Chris: Right.
Nate Day: Sure. I mean, pretty even. Like, that's not an offensive comment.
Chris: You think so? No, certainly not.
Nate Day: But yeah, I guess I do. I guess my mind probably does go to 84 before it does Animal Farm, even though i I've watched three Animal Farm movies recently.
Chris: I mean,
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: which is an interesting choice in and of itself.
Nate Day: Yeah, well, commit to the bit, baby.
Chris: i the The difference is almost everyone I know I can confidently say has read 1984.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: And I would not say the same of Animal Farm.
Nate Day: Really?
Chris: Well, have you read 1984?
Nate Day: I feel like I've not read either of them.
Chris: Really? You guys didn't? We had like a big unit on 1984. I want to say seventh grade. They do like a dystopian...
Chris: uh mega unit i remember it was fahrenheit 451 1984 and then i think like flowers for algernon are like all one big unit
Nate Day: Which one do they burn books?
Chris: fahrenheit 451.
Nate Day: Okay, I've read that one.
Chris: okay so maybe your school was like a one or the other
Nate Day: I guess.
Chris: Okay, interesting. So maybe you're proving me wrong. I don't know. But I mean, both massive, massive books by George Orwell.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah, sure.
Chris: Coined terms that are far too relevant, like Big Brother.
Nate Day: Mm-hmm.
Chris: which I did not know until I was looking into this, that that was a Orwellism. And then along those lines, the term Orwellian is now applied to situations of you know dystopian, generally disliked autocratic or dictatorial regimes.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: Even on a smaller scale, things will you know be described as Orwellian if they've got that vibe, right?
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Right. Yeah. And that actually that exact vocabulary word is why I do think 84 sort of has the edge over animal farm, because you almost think of this like science fiction type, oppressive.
Chris: Yes. Yes.
Nate Day: system, even though Animal Farm points out that we live in those systems.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: But yeah, definitely along the same lines.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, let's talk about the book itself, Animal Farm, a wonder-filled and light-hearted tale much akin to its spiritual successor, 1952's Charlotte's webb
Nate Day: Yes, yeah.
Chris: Just kidding. I was expecting a better response from you.
Nate Day: Well, I mean, in some ways, oh, sorry. I mean, it is, of that's not true.
Chris: No, it's nothing akin to that. It is not kind-hearted.
Nate Day: It's trying to tell a lesson using farm animals, come on.
Chris: Okay, okay, and that's where the similarities between Animal Farm and Charlotte's Web stop.
Nate Day: well, I know that you're also an EB white head so I was like, maybe there's some stuff about EB White that I don't know.
Chris: Huge E.B. White Man.
Chris: No, nowhere near the same writing style. Nowhere near the same... warm No, it is diametrically opposed in every capacity besides the presence of pigs.
Chris: Okay, well, that's not what this is. This is a satirical allegorical novella which i love it had an alarming list of crazy subtitles originally he wanted it titled animal farm a fairy tale it's something
Nate Day: yeah. yeah Yeah.
Nate Day: Oh, that's funny. Because I think some of those have been used in marketing materials for the movies.
Chris: oh interesting okay
Nate Day: I think the latest one is called a cautionary tale, but it's spelled T a I L.
Chris: Yes. Oh, oh.
Nate Day: Cautionary something. Yeah. Yeah. Cringy.
Chris: That's a groaner. Yeah.
Nate Day: There's a lot of cringing going on. Just wait till we get to the movies.
Chris: Yes, there is. There is. No, it's, I mean, it's inherent, right? We're listening to a bunch of pigs talk to each other, which we will also get back to later.
Nate Day: Right. Yeah. Allegorical stuff is sort of cringy.
Chris: Right. Yes, yeah I mean inherently, and you can see, yeah. I want to double back because I had written my notes in the wrong order. I just thought that would be a cool transition, and I was wrong.
Chris: So this was published a in 1945, and fun little interaction with our discussion of cats, which is apparently now going to keep coming up every episode.
Nate Day: Talk about Orwellian. Yeah, no kidding.
Chris: He had trouble getting it published because this is immediate, well, writing it during the end of World War II and published immediately after.
Chris: and there was still a lot of pro-Soviet sentiment in England because they were allies in the war.
Nate Day: OK.
Chris: And we've got this tricky interaction going on where Orwell himself was a staunch democratic socialist and his beef, his pork, really was with...
Nate Day: Bad.
Chris: It's not even worth it either because there are cows in the book.
Nate Day: No. Right.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: Yep. Canceled.
Chris: was with Stalin and Stalinism in particular. Right?
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: So it's not like the dude was also a socialist.
Nate Day: Yep.
Chris: So a lot of places refused to publish it, including a particular publisher at Faber and Faber, T.S. Eliot.
Nate Day: What a turd.
Chris: Isn't that fun?
Nate Day: It is kind of funny.
Chris: Fun little fun.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: That being said, it did get published. Someone did pick it up. And...
Nate Day: Good.
Chris: I mean, obviously, we're still talking about it. They're still making many renditions. Has seen tremendous success since 45. Time Magazine chose it as one of the 100 best English language novels for the time period, 23 2005.
Chris: Number 31 on the modern list of best 20th century novels.
Nate Day: Oh.
Chris: Number 46 on the BBC's Big Read poll. Won the Hugo in 96, five decades later.
Nate Day: Whoa.
Chris: And is included in the the great books. We've talked about that, yes, the great books.
Nate Day: Yeah, i think so. We have, yeah.
Chris: Okay, yes. And is included in there for Western literature. I mean, yeah, this puppy's done numbers. And for good reason.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: One of my favorite things about this book is the description, satirical, allegorical novella, not just because of the fantastic reference in the cartoon Archer.
Chris: Where he, we've we've got this, that interaction I was just discussing. He also supports socialism, big advocate, had a lot to do in the Spanish Civil War, fairly active in England after he was deemed medically unfit for full service and was a part of the home, oh gosh, home guard, I believe they were called, and supporting essentially the British Socialist Party.
Nate Day: OK.
Chris: uh, at home that whole time and wrote this entire thing specifically to criticize Stalin and what had happened, you know, in the, what was that?
Nate Day: Right.
Nate Day: right
Chris: Yeah, a fascinating interaction. So he didn't intend for this to be this critique of communism or socialism necessarily itself, which kind of surprised me when I found that out, because that's not what I take away from it.
Chris: And I think what a lot of people take away from it.
Nate Day: Totally.
Chris: i want I want your side of this because I've felt a certain way about this book for many years since I read it the first time, 2010, probably. in In modernity, I think it is almost certainly viewed as a critique of communism as a whole.
Chris: Do you get that impression?
Nate Day: Yeah, that's certainly how people see it, including other storytellers. We'll talk a lot about communism in the the film section.
Chris: Okay.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, and I mean, I would say certainly we know the author's perspective. Well, I guess... Maybe I'm splitting hairs. Maybe he was also not a fan of communism, but I find it difficult to say you are a democratic socialist, but also adamantly opposed to communism.
Nate Day: Right, right.
Chris: What what he was against was what was literally taking place in the Soviet Union, which was strictly Stalinism.
Nate Day: Yeah, like totalitarianism.
Chris: Exactly.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: We can now look back and view this as the... autocratic authoritarianism that it became. And I mean, I've had the argument with people too many times, do not reply to this and tell me you want to have a discussion.
Chris: Stalin's Soviet Russia was absolutely not communism.
Nate Day: Correct.
Chris: Different discussion, different podcast, I guess, probably.
Nate Day: Right.
Nate Day: yeah Yeah, maybe.
Chris: But I think what's, yeah I don't know. I mean, I would love to get into it, but that's not, that's out of our purview.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: So what's interesting is this was such a specific individual and regime in power at the time that he's talking about. And we see these shadows now.
Chris: in modern reading of these infamous regimes that we all have grown up thinking along the same lines, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il, President Xi is probably pushing into some tough territory.
Nate Day: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: Oh.
Chris: But, you know, as the modern successor of this system, that is certainly strayed far and away from where Zedong started,
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: not
Nate Day: Yep.
Chris: advocating for him necessarily, but you see my point.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: So it's almost this self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't know that any of them were reading Animal Farm and going, yeah, man, I could do that too. But we see these very specific recurrences of what happens in the storyline.
Chris: And then we see them happen for us historically, but for them, you know, 40 years later in Vietnam or North Korea or Cuba, right?
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Which I thought was fascinating because I'm picturing all of those things as it goes and completely forgot. No, this was published in the 40s. All of these other things I'm picturing happened after.
Chris: You know, the the storyline itself, it is considered technically a beast fable, which I love and had never heard of before.
Nate Day: Right. Yeah.
Chris: Had you heard that term?
Nate Day: Yeah. and No, but there we do use like, Beast, like a, uh, oh, creature feature is what I was thinking of the term for movies about animals.
Chris: oh
Chris: Yep.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I do like Beast Fable better, but but both quite clear about what they're talking.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah. yeah
Chris: We follow some mistreated anthropomorphized animals who rebel to take control of their farm. This is a thinly veiled even for allegorical standards, a thinly veiled reference specifically to the Russian Revolution execution of the last czar, Nicholas II.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: There was another part that I really wanted to delve into. Orwell himself, crazy, as I was trying to give some description, I was like, this is going to be too much. This has to become another lightning round. We we don't have time for everything there because there's so much in the book.
Nate Day: Sure.
Chris: So I kind of wanted to focus my discussion specifically around this aspect that stood out to me much more now than again, I guess, 16 years ago when I went through it the first time.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: and Okay.
Chris: And I'm curious how close... You said you've not read it, right?
Nate Day: Correct.
Chris: Do you know anything...
Nate Day: I seem
Chris: go ahead.
Nate Day: i was just going to say, everybody else in my high school read it. I don't i don't recall if I skipped it or if I maybe was in a class that didn't require it, but i I feel like the only person on earth that hasn't read the book.
Chris: We didn't. it Well, I guess same thing. Maybe it was just the classes I was in, but we didn't do it in high school either.
Nate Day: No? Okay. and I know a lot of my friends did because I've seen the physical copy like 1 million times.
Chris: Interesting.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Nate Day: I just never read it.
Chris: Huh.
Nate Day: maybe i Maybe I skipped it.
Chris: Okay, that's even more interesting.
Nate Day: I don't know.
Chris: interesting
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm wondering for myself now, too. So maybe more people have read it than I think. It is, as a novella, it is terribly easy to get through. I want to say it's like 96 pages.
Nate Day: Whoa. Okay.
Chris: I mean, you can you can easily do this book in a sitting.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: sit down and write this series of rules. they're They're seven commandments.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Obviously clear, right?
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Ten commandments, seven commandments.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: That part didn't even catch me the first time. I had to go back to it. But the lines of them, the way they were written, were so... It could not be anything else.
Chris: It had to be deliberate on his part. They're worded as whatever goes upon two legs, blah, blah, blah. Whatever goes upon four legs, blah, blah.
Nate Day: one
Chris: This very Old Testament syntax.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: So i did I did some digging. I could not find what I expected to see, especially from a you know what's considered a very leftist party at that time. So... Well, this is England, so it didn't have to be hard to be leftist, but you know what I mean. I'm expecting a pretty scathing view of organized religion from him, and the the that caused dissonance for me because, of course, a big tenet of communism, certainly at that time, also certainly now, is the abolishment of any organized religion because it is this
Nate Day: Sure.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: opiate of the masses. That's their excuse. What they don't like is someone else having power, right?
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: Which, you know, you look at something like the institution of the papacy and you go, okay, you guys have some fair points. But I expected to find just this immediate, very clear disdain for organized religion on his part and this to be sort of his way to take a jab at it.
Nate Day: Sure.
Chris: It is, in fact, different than what I was looking for. Sorry, I'm looking for my notes here. So the Old Testament language is considered to be putting forward these ideas for in terms of the power of the writing. The prophetic tone, you know, these individuals giving this message of hope, message of liberation.
Nate Day: Sure.
Chris: the The parables often used to teach, to disseminate in an historically oral tradition, how how are these lessons being taught?
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: And that's very much what we see among the animals, right?
Nate Day: hu
Chris: these ideas of covenant sacrifice and then ultimate commandments. This is what we do. This is how our society works.
Chris: Right. so it, again, there could be more information out there. I did not find anything that this was on his part, deliberately pro or anti religion,
Nate Day: Sure.
Chris: I would say to all of those points, yes, uses it to wildly successful ends, right?
Nate Day: Yeah, I think so.
Chris: And then as I'm looking, I find this was not an animal farm thing. This is just something that he chooses in his entire body of work.
Nate Day: Oh.
Nate Day: OK.
Chris: double-edged sword here where he's making these historical again publishing in England in 1945 it would have been well assumed that everybody there is far more familiar with the church than you could do now either here or in the UK
Nate Day: Sure.
Chris: Also, as a highly educated individual, it would be expected that this is stuff that of anybody else he would be very familiar with and can turn to critique power dynamics globally.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: So that was fascinating to me. I did not know... mean, I don't know how much for other individual readers that's coming through or how it strikes them, but I just had to go through this process step by step of, that's interesting. Why is he doing that?
Chris: That's not why I thought he was doing that. That's really not why I thought he was doing that.
Nate Day: Yeah. Interesting.
Chris: So i yeah, part of it, a a part of it, both that I didn't necessarily intend to dive into and,
Chris: Something that is like truly not the purpose of the book at all that I found fascinating to dig into.
Nate Day: Yeah. Oh, totally.
Chris: But the the rest of the characters, I mean, this is another one, again, whether you've read it or not, I feel like culturally we're all pretty familiar with.
Nate Day: Yeah, I think so. I mean, this was, it was a whole new experience for me because I just, like I said, I, I don't even recall why I haven't read it.
Nate Day: Uh, that's how much I like put it out of my mind.
Chris: Okay.
Nate Day: But, I knew that it was a, a text that's like extremely famous and that most people had read it.
Chris: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's that's why I'm kind of skipping a lot of plot that I think is interesting, but I'm just presuming people will be familiar with this use of, you know, one leader comes in with this grand utopian-sounding vision.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Perhaps initially that is the case. You've got Boxer, the face What is his personal phrase? I will work harder. Just...
Nate Day: Oh yeah, just like loving loving to work hard, yeah.
Chris: just Yes, it almost to me they are put forward, these characters are put forward in order to progress narrative in such a way that it had to be an animal allegory.
Chris: Because as a human, that character would have just had such a punchable face.
Nate Day: Oh yeah, and I mean, any excuse me, how do you how do you condense this enormous portion of russian history and really global political history into 96 page novella that is intended to be a warning of what could happen when you let this system become manipulated and and uh you know misshapen if it's not talking animals
Chris: Yep.
Chris: Yep, exactly. No, i think that's I think that's exactly it. And again, kudos to him.
Nate Day: yeah
Chris: I mean, I enjoyed it the first time. I enjoyed it this time. Tremendous approach to the writing that otherwise should frankly be so corny, so tired, right?
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I think some of the individual interactions, perhaps from the lens of us having to learn about this over and over again in history classes, but I think either way, it must have felt this way at least a little when it first came out as well.
Chris: It's so choreographed, what is going to, the logical ending that's going to come from these individual vignettes, that some of those parts, it's not even that they're dull.
Nate Day: yeah
Chris: But you you want to move, but that's why it's 96 pages. it It keeps moving on its own anyway.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: You know, the pigs discovering the case of whiskey in the basement. Suddenly they have a massive party that night.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: The dude goes on. You have to, like, you can fill it in for yourself so easily. This rotund leader that rarely leaves the house anymore. Oh, that's weird. They found a case of whiskey nine hours ago and suddenly he just went for a run around the yard. You you just picture these jerk face leading generals and party heads getting schnockered and daring their buddy to take his shirt off and do a lap around the yard, right?
Nate Day: Yeah. Oh, and we've got lots of people in the government today that are getting in trouble for doing exactly that.
Chris: and And I absolutely love... This is the first time they've ever found alcohol. Have a rager.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: The next day, they declare, he is unwell. He will pass. Oh, and also, new rule, no booze. And then two days later, the, in parentheses, hangover gone, he orders an entire field tilled and sown with barley to produce their own beer.
Nate Day: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: To make more.
Chris: Just... phenomenal. Boxer, the dumb as a box of rocks, learns the first four letters of the alphabet and can't get past that.
Chris: But he's just going to keep working.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: the The sheep, absolutely perfect for this.
Nate Day: Yep.
Nate Day: Funny.
Chris: The sheep.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: Oh, the leader's having any problem? They'll start a chant. The subtle...
Nate Day: Mm-hmm.
Chris: the subtle incorporation or references to you know strong oratory propaganda and what that can create amongst a mass yes we see it time and time again and it's it's as true if not more now than it was when he penned it yeah that's the again there were a lot of details that i was like oh that's so important that's so important and then i'm like no
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: these are These are stock characters, unfortunately representing very real real people then.
Nate Day: Real people. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: Very much fit to a T real people now, but the message is larger. So I've declined some of those details to share here.
Nate Day: Sure. Sure. Well, cool. Thank you for that.
Nate Day: Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we will dive into the movies.
Nate Day: All right. Welcome back to adaptation, the book to movie podcast. We are going over animal farm originally a, how did you say it? Satirical allegorical novella.
Chris: Correct.
Nate Day: That's like a bouncy ball.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: It's fun. It's so fun.
Nate Day: Yeah, written by George Orwell. There have been several film adaptations, which shouldn't come as a surprise, considering how famous it is. There are three really major adaptations that we're going to go through, and i I have seen all three. i i think I told you the other day off mic that I tend to, or I try to...
Nate Day: space out when there's a lot of adaptations to get through. I try to start early. Just totally forgot this time around. I don't really know what was happening and had to watch three Animal Farm adaptations in one week.
Nate Day: So you'll have to forgive me if I sound a little tired of this story, because like you were saying this to to be an effective allegory, it's a little bit cringy.
Chris: That sucks. That sucks.
Nate Day: It's got to beat you over the head a little bit. So I'm a little bit just like tired of thinking about communism.
Chris: There.
Nate Day: But anyway, still some very interesting stories behind these movies. All three of them have made pretty significant changes to the plot, particularly the ending. And I think that, I mean, it will become clearer sort of for the most part as we go through these. But I think that's just done because it is such a sensitive topic and America has been so...
Nate Day: sensitized to the word communism and the word socialism and even the word propaganda that I think a lot of these productions were trying to avoid sort of being detected that way or or being read that way especially the very first version of the movie an animated film in 1954
Nate Day: Co-directed by John Hallis and Joy Batchelor, which is actually pretty exciting because it was a woman directing a movie in the 1950s, which was virtually unheard of.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: the it's There's very little dialogue in this movie, and it's told mostly through narration. I don't know how they handle dialogue in the book, but there's only one, I believe one or two actors in this movie because there's so little dialogue. They just needed...
Chris: Hmm.
Nate Day: somebody to sort of narrate, say what was happening going on.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: I know I just sort of gave this movie some flowers for having a woman director, but in typical Hollywood fashion, they also threw the woman under the rug because this movie was actually covertly funded by the CIA as anti-communist propaganda for
Chris: Incredible.
Chris: Jeez.
Nate Day: so So some CIA operatives, I forget what the what the department was called at the time, which no longer exists, technically, air quotes around that. but But there was a department dedicated to to basically generating propaganda and monitoring the social read that people had the social what's the word like when yeah the zeitgeist for toward communism the social
Chris: Like the zeitgeist?
Nate Day: i don't know what the word i'm looking for is so we'll stick with zeitgeist anyway
Chris: They got their finger on the pulse.
Nate Day: Yeah, exactly. they These operatives went undercover as film executives to produce the rights and and got the rights from Orwell's widow. Kind of shitty thing to Yeah.
Chris: Wow. Wow. wow
Nate Day: And the directors they chose were British documentarians, chosen because the CIA didn't trust anyone in Hollywood to tell a conservative take on the story, because as you may know, if you know anything about Hollywood history, it was an industry that was once very populated by communists and com communists, sympathizers, I suppose.
Chris: Oh.
Nate Day: And, uh, including in, in this era. So they went with these British people who didn't make a lot of narrative films so that they could sort of control the narrative, no pun intended better.
Chris: Jeez.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Very much frames communism as attracting chaos, conflict and destruction. And luckily it ended up being a huge, huge flop at the box office. Nobody was interested in it. I think these ones, they're they're pretty much all that way. These three that we're going to talk about, they all perform very, very poorly.
Nate Day: I think it's because there's some tonal disparity between political allegory and talking animals. I know we we talked about how it's almost essential, but I mean, like imagine taking a kid to see Animal Farm.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Nate Day: Like, why would you do that?
Chris: Goodness, no. Yep.
Nate Day: yeah but But what adult would see an ad for a movie with talking animals and go see it on their own, unless they are co-hosting a podcast in which case they do it and hate it.
Chris: Indoctrination.
Nate Day: Anyway, people caught on to the changed ending at the time and were just sort of put off and felt like that wasn't really what Orwell was getting at. It seems like maybe there was a better understanding that that was not an anti-communist text back then.
Nate Day: So people sort of caught on to the fact that this movie was like phooey.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Nate Day: But it went technically unconfirmed for decades that the CIA had had had funded the movie. There were a few hints, a few people sort of slipped up in interviews, but it wasn't confirmed until somebody like a historian, and i believe an Orwell historian, found some documentation that that confirmed that the people that bought the rights were employed by Central Intelligence Agency.
Nate Day: Sentiment, public sentiment, by the way, is the word that I was looking for 10 minutes ago.
Chris: Wow.
Chris: Yes. There we go.
Nate Day: Anyway, so kind of an interesting story. Also weirdly, despite the fact that they made some changes and it's got some problematic politics in it, probably the best of the three adaptations, just in terms of filmmaking craft.
Chris: Really?
Nate Day: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: Huh.
Nate Day: The next major one we got was not until 1999. long, long there. so a long long jump there it's a live action movie in air quotes because, they're, they obviously had to do a lot of animating, of like animal mouths and things like that.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: But they did actually use some real animals and and built a lot of animatronics and puppets and things like that so that they could tell the story in live action.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: What was really interesting to me about this movie was how difficult it was for me to find any information about it i don't have information about why it was made or why it was a tv movie instead of a theatrical film or i mean i could tell you you know who the writers and directors are like i do with every movie but i couldn't tell you why they were attracted to it i can't tell you why the changes they made were made
Chris: Oh.
Nate Day: Anything. It's really difficult for me to find, or it was really difficult for me to find any legitimate, verifiable information about this one, which I think is a little bit fishy, considering the history of this story.
Chris: Is that, yeah, like to the to the extent that it's, are you seeing like a deliberate, like trying to make some space away from this decision 27 years ago to make this?
Nate Day: No, I don't think I'm picking up on that necessarily. It is a television movie from the 90s that aired on a network that's not... I mean, TNT is a well-known network, but it's not like it aired on NBC or something huge like that. So it could just be that the interest over time has waned so much.
Nate Day: But i don't I don't know. Just considering this story has a history of... being manipulated by higher powers, it makes me wonder a little bit if the, if that wasn't done on purpose, you know, if this had, if this had been an HBO movie instead of a TNT movie, we'd certainly have a lot more information about it than we, than we do.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Nate Day: Things just would have been recorded better.
Chris: Weird.
Nate Day: So fishy, I'm not saying anything except that that's, it's really, it's strange.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nate Day: It's really strange.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nate Day: Also worth pointing out, I believe it had a $23 million dollars budget, which is huge for a television movie in the 90s. Again, just another indicator that like what the hell is going on here? It's like nothing's very clear.
Nate Day: And actually, it's – I mean –
Chris: The CIA just took a second crack.
Nate Day: The other one sort of fun fact that I was able to find was that the animatronics that were built were created by Jim Henson's company. And that's the guy. He's a very famous puppeteer.
Nate Day: He did the Muppets and and several other high profile things throughout the 80s.
Chris: Yes, yes. I don't live under a rock.
Nate Day: Well, sometimes you kind of do. Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, but five to not know who Jim Henson is, you have to be a monster.
Nate Day: Well, I bet you there's a lot of people listening that have no idea who Jim Henson is because he wasn't, it's not like he was the famous one, right?
Chris: Sorry, guys.
Nate Day: His creations were. but anyway, I don't even know if it was like a hit on television.
Chris: Yes, okay.
Nate Day: I don't know. I don't know any of that. I can't find any of that information. So that's all I have to say about that one.
Chris: Weird. Okay.
Nate Day: I know. Isn't that strange?
Chris: That's very strange.
Nate Day: Then we got a new version this year. It's another one. I think we've talked about this before. it technically debuted a festival last year. So a lot of places will cite, we'll call it a 2025 movie.
Nate Day: I feel like it's not, it hasn't been born until the public has access to it. So in my opinion, it makes it a 2026 movie, but that's just kind of one of my,
Nate Day: Cinephile Irks directed by Andy Serkis, an actor that we like, who has dipped his toe into directing a handful of times.
Chris: Whoa.
Nate Day: This is a weird choice for him because I don't know why his other films have been live action and mostly period pieces.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: i don't know if it's because he's played so many animal and animal like characters that somebody thought that was a good fit. or what, but I guess he did direct an adaptation actually of the Jungle Book for Netflix.
Nate Day: So just again, the same similarities that it has with Charlotte's Web are also existing in the the the Jungle Book, right?
Chris: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Nate Day: Talking animals. But otherwise, i don't know, weird pick.
Chris: Yep.
Nate Day: Written by Nicholas Stoller, mostly does kids stuff and comedy. Again, a weird combination. i don't know why you would have somebody like that write an adaptation of this.
Nate Day: But what's also really strange is that it has this mega all-star cast.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Nate Day: Andy Serkis is in the movie as well. But it stars Seth Rogen, Woody Harrelson, Kieran Culkin, Glenn Close, Steve Buscemi, Jim Parsons, Kathleen Turner, Laverne Cox, Iman Villani, and Gaten Matarazzo.
Nate Day: And those are just, yeah, I mean, unbelievable.
Chris: Oh my gosh.
Nate Day: That's like, I don't even know. i should have tallied up how many Oscar and Emmy nominations and wins. that is This is Kieran Culkin's first movie to come out after winning an Oscar, I believe, which is a shame because the movie is horrendous.
Chris: Yeah.
Chris: Oh.
Nate Day: And it its reviews reflect that, as did its box office performance. It only made like $3 million dollars in its opening weekend, which is abysmal, yeah.
Chris: Fair. the
Nate Day: So... I'm sure that there's plenty of information about how this one was was created and why, but i between it being my third one and one of the worst movies I've ever seen, and the fact that I just don't trust that it's not from the CIA, I didn't really look into how this movie came about.
Nate Day: I'll never see a version of this that I don't wonder is whether it's made by the CIA. Yeah. because of where we live and when.
Chris: I think you're correct.
Nate Day: So very interesting to me that the these movies, they all kind of stink.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: They all have some weird circumstances around them. And I don't think any of them, much like the you know so public sentiment, key word, around the novel, I don't think any of them really understand what Orwell was actually saying because they they have been
Chris: Uh...
Nate Day: distorted into anti-communist propaganda.
Chris: Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah.
Nate Day: So, I know.
Chris: Wow. I'm still reeling Andy Serkis because he's lovely. His interviews are lovely, but I'm going to forever picture him as Gollum.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: Directing this very serious political satire with Seth Rogen.
Nate Day: It is not a serious satire. It is, it's full of like fart jokes and, like physical comedy, you know, like slapstick.
Nate Day: There's a whole sequence where the pigs are learning to walk upright like humans, that is played purely for laughs.
Chris: Yes.
Chris: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Chris: Yeah. And breaking their foremost rules.
Nate Day: It's yeah, exactly that as well.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: yeah, the movie the movie's a comedy and they, they tried to make it kid friendly. I know I've said earlier, imagine taking a kid to see this movie. There were a lot of families in the theater. When I saw this movie, every single one of them walked out before it ended because, because it's not, I mean, it's, it's not a family movie.
Chris: Okay. Yep.
Nate Day: but, uh,
Chris: No, I mean, in essence, it is the worst of both worlds.
Nate Day: Yeah, yeah, really. No, no kidding. It's just God awful. I just can't believe it's real. It's unbelievable.
Chris: Wow.
Nate Day: I would have had we not been doing this podcast, I would have walked out of the theater and I rarely do that.
Chris: I mean...
Chris: really
Nate Day: I think the only time I've done that before is cats.
Chris: The other anthropomorphized animals.
Nate Day: Yeah, exactly. I think I've got a thing about uncanny valley thing or an anti-type.
Chris: You've got a type or a not type.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I do. Had you not mentioned it, or I guess more appropriately put it on the calendar, I've not heard a word about this. No ads, no trailers, nothing popping up on, not a sniff.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah, I don't, I mean, part of that comes from, like I said, it debuted at a fast festival last year, and it got terrible word of mouth right out of the festival. And so the the studio behind it, which is actually worth talking about, I'll mention that here in a second, probably was like, yeah, we can't sink a ton of money into advertising this and turning it into the
Chris: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Nate Day: summer animated hit that it could have been under a different set of circumstances. but, uh, it was funded or not funded.
Chris: Interesting. Yeah.
Nate Day: It was purchased by a studio called angel studios, which has been making it. They're fairly new film distribution studio, extremely conservative studio. Another reason why I'm like, do you watch the movies?
Nate Day: Do you know what this is about?
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: And they've gotten in a lot of trouble before for like gaming the numbers for their movies. Let me see what the if I can find what the one was called.
Nate Day: Where they they asked fans basically to purchase movie tickets, donate movie tickets. Sound of Freedom came out a couple of years ago, and it was everybody was like, why is this movie doing so well? The box office numbers were really strong.
Nate Day: It was Angel Studios' like first major movie because they were asking anybody that went to donate tickets online. So you would go, and you would get guilted into...
Chris: Uh-huh.
Nate Day: it's like It's a Christian studio as well, so there were a lot of church groups that were like, or churches that would buy out a screening and then nobody would go because the movie looked awful and got bad reviews because it was awful.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Nate Day: and But it was like flying up the box office charts. It was performing really well because of all of these church buyouts and this buy a ticket.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Nate Day: for someone in need is what they said. So yet another reason to believe that maybe this one had some nefarious background is because the people that brought it to us have proven to be a little bit, yeah, fishy.
Chris: some nefarious background.
Nate Day: So weird, just weird stuff.
Chris: Wow.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: That's wild.
Nate Day: I know it is wild. And
Chris: and And they go, you know what our studio's missing? Animal farm.
Nate Day: I know, I mean, they're trying They played like three or four ads for other Angel Studios movies before this one, which were other movies that I just had did didn't have on my radar whatsoever. There's like Young George Washington and some other ones like that.
Nate Day: and So I can see why they snatched up this adaptation of a literary classic, you know, to sort of boot boost their library, I guess.
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Nate Day: But based on the politics of their... studio all of their films have been wildly conservative sometimes problematically so i'm like well so you didn't do your research then i don't think uh
Chris: Not at all.
Nate Day: yeah
Chris: Not at all.
Nate Day: but i think that's a good time to transition into our discussion questions so why don't you hit me with what you came up with
Chris: Huh.
Chris: True.
Chris: Yes, this is this is going to be annoying at some point. But once again, for like the seventh one in a row, much of the book worked very well for me in book form.
Nate Day: Sure.
Chris: And in this case, maybe it's because we're so familiar with fairy tales that it was like, you don't question, farmer comes in, pig's talking to him immediately. I can't picture this being anything...
Chris: besides ridiculous on screen again especially because it's in reality a very heavy topic is there I mean I guess you you really kind of answered this with the third one they just tried to ditch heavy entirely and made it funny animals
Nate Day: uh yeah the third one they they did i mean to answer your question i don't think it really does make for a good movie i think that tonal imbalance that i was talking about between like subject material and delivery method it just doesn't work in this medium and that's fine there are a lot of stories that don't work as movies we've talked about that since the beginning of this podcast when we did
Chris: Yep.
Nate Day: The Hobbit, right? They thought it was unadaptable or unfilmable. That's just how it goes. And this, I think, to be honest, I think any film version of this has been a complete failure of an experiment.
Nate Day: it's It's absurd. I mean,
Nate Day: You can't, yeah, it just works it works better in a book because I think you you like you pick up a book intentionally knowing what you're going to get into, right? You pick up George Orwell and you're like, well, I'm going to get some sort of story about how the world is kind of shitty, right?
Chris: Yes. Yes.
Chris: Yep.
Chris: Yep.
Nate Day: I don't know that if you if you see an ad like on on TV for a bunch of pigs running around farting and laughing at each other, of course you're going to bring your six-year-old daughter and she's going to cry because it's the most boring thing she's ever seen.
Chris: does It doesn't... Oh, that's actually... Yeah.
Chris: Mm-hmm. Hey, why did they just kill the farmer? Well, honey, let me tell you about revolution.
Nate Day: rights
Nate Day: Right. Well, and, you know, the way that they depict, because they want to make it it family friendly or television friendly, they don't, you don't really see them kill the farmer.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Nate Day: Like it's all, it's very implied or it's very cartoonish.
Chris: Uh, yep.
Nate Day: They kind of just like stampede him, which of course would work in real life, but we all know that stampedes are different. You know, it's not like the Lion King in real life.
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: You know what I mean?
Chris: Yep. Yep.
Nate Day: So, I, yeah, I just, I don't really have an answer for your question because that it's a, you can't, this is unadaptable.
Chris: Okay. It's just as exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.
Nate Day: Yeah. Oh yeah. They should maybe, maybe they should try doing like, you know, every once in a while audible or some other, ebook company will produce a version with like movie stars doing the voices.
Chris: Okay.
Chris: Yeah, like a dramatized reading.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah. That would work probably a lot better.
Chris: I think that would be fabulous.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: That's for sure what I would do over or yeah, an audio drama.
Chris: Huh.
Nate Day: Those are becoming more popular too.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: That would work a lot better than.
Chris: Or maybe just like, maybe just put them in costumes and like CGI them a little bit, but then hire Jason Derulo and Taylor Swift and give them strange teeth.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: Maybe that would, would that fix this?
Nate Day: And, and do it all in song. Like one long song that's not good?
Chris: Yeah, would that? Would that fix this?
Nate Day: Yeah, probably.
Chris: Memory slaps and I'll die on that hill.
Nate Day: Yes, it does. And we we probably didn't say that loudly enough on on our podcast, but the one and only good song on that show.
Chris: That's the problem.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Fair. Yeah, quite fair.
Nate Day: Yeah. Okay.
Chris: Okay.
Nate Day: what I want to ask, I know that you and I have established that this is not an anti-communist text.
Nate Day: how,
Chris: no No, no, no, no, no. Let me be clear. It's not, it's also not not anti-communist.
Nate Day: okay.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: It's just he had a very, very, very specific, literal one man.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: This was intended to be a chastisement of how Stalin did communism.
Nate Day: Yeah. Right. Okay.
Chris: So it is more globally still as as we know it, but it is utterly ignoring and not discussing what communism is philosophically or in its design.
Nate Day: But it's.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: I guess what I meant.
Nate Day: Okay. Yeah, I mean, i walk away, having seen all three versions of this these movies, and then I've also read the Wikipedia synopsis of the book because i i understand well because all three of the movies have different endings, and I was like,
Chris: Okay.
Nate Day: which one's true or which one's you know written by George Orwell. My reading was very much that the book is, yeah, is like you said, it's more a condemnation of Stalin and Stalinism. And it's is supposed to, I think, like yellow highlighter the potential weaknesses Stalinism.
Nate Day: Communism, why did they make communism and capitalism words that sound so similar?
Chris: So similar.
Nate Day: Highlight the potential weaknesses so that like as a warning sign, right? Like do not go this way, road closed.
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: Yeah, okay.
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: How do you think we went from that coming from George Orwell's pen to this being seen as a firmly and routinely used as a firmly anti-communist manifesto?
Chris: yeah. No, no, no. That's a very good question. I do, because you'll be surprised to know, I did not have the wildly
Chris: shocking and interesting information that the CIA funded the first one.
Nate Day: Yeah, yeah.
Nate Day: It's been out there since the Yeah.
Chris: I think... I think the problem is twofold. One is you'd need to be at least somewhat more intimately familiar with exactly where the shift happened from Marxism-Leninism to Stalinism.
Chris: to be familiar with that difference in the first place. And the second is exactly what I experienced reading through it because everything that he warns about is essentially, all right, I said we weren't gonna get into it, but we're gonna get into it.
Chris: As a straightforward written out policy, philosophical map, communism is perfect.
Nate Day: Sure.
Chris: Okay, the problem is
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: humans
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: You know, stealing from other people, just the autocrats getting rich, the scapegoating of Snowball later on.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Hmm.
Nate Day: Yeah, I know.
Chris: You know, that even...
Nate Day: Snowball.
Chris: That surpasses communism and is seen in just nearly every political happening everywhere, right?
Nate Day: Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm.
Chris: And what he highlights is essentially an advertisement for communism, as Marx put it forward. And here are the common pitfalls that humans will experience. Because I think another thing that is often ignored is we do, we have these massive examples simply because of the countries, for the most part, who have followed this.
Chris: of of communism because it's what they call themselves failing. We also have many, many examples of communism working wonderfully. The difference is, and I think on a human level, this would need to be the difference in a full state implementation, is they almost always have to be a theocracy.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: And so the inherent communist flavor of religion is the opiate of the masses, get it out of here, is diametrically opposed to this.
Chris: But if everybody in a given group that wanted to run a society has the same foundational moral philosophies, like the commandments, like the way that he wrote how they started, again, and this is historically what we see when they started, wonderful, brilliant.
Nate Day: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: Right, right. Until somebody swoops in, yeah.
Chris: And until someone stoops in and decides to get greedy or power hungry, right?
Nate Day: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Chris: This is the critique of the power systems more globally that I was talking about that I think are utterly lost. People go, oh, communism bad. That's it for Animal Farm. No, he's talking in an anthropomorphic pig's mouth saying not far off from the same things that Noam Chomsky did in his discussion of modern power systems.
Nate Day: Yeah, that's true.
Chris: And again, unless you've read Noam Chomsky, you're not going to make that connection. So you're going to say, no, he's talking about communism. And that's it.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Which was not his goal. The dude also thought socialism was a great idea, which I know they are not synonymous, but that Venn diagram's helpful.
Nate Day: David Price- they're related yeah
Chris: Yeah, yeah. So, but yeah, that's a curious question. i think it also just is easy, again, with the examples that we have, to accept that and go along with that condemnation.
Nate Day: yeah. David Price- yeah oh yeah exactly I mean my my answer to the question was just going to be that American people can be really dense and.
Chris: Which is fair.
Nate Day: we've been propagandized to death for years against communism.
Chris: Which is fair.
Nate Day: And if this has even a whiff of it, which it totally has more than a whiff, then
Chris: Exactly.
Chris: A stench.
Nate Day: hey a foul odor.
Chris: A full manure pile. Oh, dang!
Nate Day: Oh, that was good. A manure file.
Chris: That was better! No, yours was better.
Nate Day: but
Chris: Foul odor rocks, but F-O-W-L.
Nate Day: Yeah. See, but I wasn't, I wasn't even thinking of that.
Chris: Right? There were a few geese in there. Yeah, there were a few geese.
Nate Day: So yeah, no.
Chris: Oh, oh, I thought that was a brilliant pun. Yeah, there were some geese in there.
Nate Day: Yeah. There's some geese and ducks.
Chris: Yeah, so obviously very naturally, I mean, as we discussed at the beginning, until I researched for this, this was my second reading through it, I thought it was brilliant, and I also had not made the connection that this was pointed at Solon specifically.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: wood Would he himself have approached the topic differently in 2026, given the myriad of new options that have become available?
Chris: Who knows? Yeah.
Nate Day: Right. Yeah.
Chris: So there's an amount of, is that what he meant? And there's an amount, I mean, this is just ham fisting it, but I feel somewhat comfortable. There's an amount of, does it make a difference?
Nate Day: Oh, yeah. totally Yeah, I totally agree with that.
Chris: Right.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Because again, it's not like Pol Pot was better. It's not like, now Mao is tough and divisive. I almost don't even want to discuss it. I would not put him on this list, so I'll stop at that. But Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il.
Chris: You know what? Actually, two that I'm also hesitant to put on the list, President Xi and Castro. I think it's an even more gray area. But like Stalin, no one questions.
Chris: You starved 40 million of your own people.
Nate Day: Right. Yeah. He's known as one of the worst leaders that ever lived.
Chris: Yeah, again, the Kim regime in North Korea. Yeah, they say they're communist.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: in what form, in what facet, why are we even going along with this anymore?
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: And so I completely agree with you. I think that's a post-McCarthyism problem that unfortunately hasn't changed much. I mean, when I moved to China, that was only eight years ago, and I still had people close to me, well-educated people going, oh, wow, what was it like living in a communist country?
Chris: Did it suck? Did you have food? I'm like, No, my whiskey sours that were delicious just only cost 75 cents, and I was served a whole grilled fish next to it.
Nate Day: or Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Chris: Calm down, buddy.
Nate Day: Yep.
Chris: Like, I don't know. It is, yes, it's, this is a lot of what I promised at the top of the episode not to discuss, but here we are.
Nate Day: No, that's, I mean, i think it's impossible not to. I think one of the reasons it's short is so that there's literally room and, and you know, mental capacity to explore these ideas, right?
Chris: Yes, and it it indeed introduces a lot. I do not believe you could finish this very short, quick read and not have to find someone in chat.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Chris: You got to digest, you know.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Okay, well, I mean, it seems quite clear at this point, but Nate Day, recommendations?
Nate Day: I said just skip them. They're not good or and or true to Orwell, so i I don't have anybody to recommend them to.
Chris: Not a single one's worth the watch.
Nate Day: If you're studying propaganda, you can choose you can study that 54 one, but like I don't know why else you would.
Chris: Okay.
Nate Day: Why else would you subject yourself to that?
Chris: That's actually a great pitch. Yeah. Are you looking to take over a small country?
Nate Day: Right. Exactly. why
Chris: We have a blueprint.
Nate Day: How about you? Who do you recommend the book to?
Chris: It's tough. I mean, first, like we discussed already, probably most people have already read it or have declined deliberately.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: But I do think both because of the... He truly does a brilliant job in his writing, the allegory aspect.
Chris: Yes, parts are inherently hitting you over the head. But for the most part, it is in a palatable way.
Nate Day: Yeah, sure.
Chris: And so to get this information and discussion in such a tightly wrapped package, i mean, I had no qualm with reading it a second time. Will I read it a third? I guess I have no idea.
Chris: But I clearly anticipated this because I went back to look and I gave it five stars the first time.
Nate Day: Oh, okay.
Chris: So 18-year-old Chris thought he would want to reread it.
Nate Day: Well, that's when they get you.
Chris: I think there's an amount, you know, were it already a discussion I was having with someone, again, because it's so short, I would maybe say, let's, you know what, take it take a gander through this, let's discuss it again.
Chris: I don't know what that context is.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Discussing, probably discussing this, discussing dystopian literature, you know, what could be
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I don't know. i don't know. Because also, there's a part that's very much a downer when you're reading it and you know it's supposed to be allegory and it's not far off from the things we're actually seeing, you know?
Nate Day: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's some parts of it that are sad and scary and a little too real, you know?
Chris: Yeah, yeah. Here's, you know what, let me give you a concrete pitch. Here's who I would recommend it to, because this is my first time reading it solo. the The first time I truly read it was with a book club, and I think that's the right place to do it.
Nate Day: Yeah. In a, in a group setting.
Chris: Yes, where you know you're going to debrief together after.
Nate Day: Discuss. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: You know, if... If a book club, you just got done with one of those big meaty like nine nine book series or something and you just want a little bit light, it's, well, holidays is a crazy example.
Chris: Maybe summer, everybody's traveling, no one's got time for a full, this is such an easy, oh, toss her in.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: Let's discuss Animal Farm next month, you know?
Nate Day: Yeah, that's cool. That's a good suggestion. I wish I could say the same for the movies, but I don't think you get anything out of talking about them, except for the crazy CIA fact.
Chris: No.
Chris: Yeah, that's so cool. That might make it worth seeing that one just as an exploration of its own kind. That's so cool that you found that.
Nate Day: i will say i I will say up until the end of the movie where it sort of flips on its own agenda in order to share the CIA's agenda.
Nate Day: it's not It's not a bad movie, but the fact that it is the ending and that's what you walk away with, you know the image, you're like, okay, well, that sucked.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Chris: Cool.
Nate Day: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: So what what did you rate it this time around?
Chris: This one's... I'm going to say a stout four.
Chris: Yeah. Definitely not a five. I'm not going to say I'm definitively going to read it again. but it...
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: it has the accolades it does for good reason. It is first and foremost excellent writing.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: He's a great writer.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: It's very vivid.
Nate Day: Oh yeah.
Chris: You're not battling to get through the text.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: And I think, yeah especially of his goal, which was to point out this difficult thing, but discuss it in a manageable way, flawless. This is like the example of allegory to me.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: So yeah, a very stout four out of five.
Nate Day: cool uh yeah pretty low yeah i so i gave two and a half stars to both the 54 and 99 versions and that's probably more generous than i should have been because the 2026 version i only gave one and a half star which is star one and a half stars is that plural
Chris: And again, yours feels pretty clear, but...
Chris: Wow.
Chris: One and a half stars. Yeah, it's still more than one.
Nate Day: but it's less than two. Interesting.
Chris: No, plural is just more than one.
Nate Day: Okay. Well, then I guess it's not that interesting. But anyway, one one and a half stars. Yeah. it's It's among the worst movies I've ever seen.
Chris: Wow.
Nate Day: Yeah. It's bad.
Chris: This is like, I don't know, some sadism crap, but that almost makes me want to see this one than when you're like, this was incredible, everyone go see it.
Nate Day: know. I knew...
Chris: Because I just need to see what a dumpster fire this is.
Nate Day: Yeah, I know. That's the thing is that part of me was, I i knew going in that it had these terrible reviews and i wasn't really looking forward to it because it was going to be my third animal farm in seven days.
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: And i was like, okay, just just try and enjoy how awful it is. Like, it's that, you know, like, it's It's come to that point where it just like, do what you can to have a good time at this movie.
Nate Day: And even that was hard.
Chris: Yep.
Nate Day: i was like, i didn't I didn't like the humor.
Chris: Yep.
Chris: Oof.
Nate Day: I didn't like the performances. i didn't like just nothing.
Chris: a
Nate Day: So anyway, on that note, thank you for joining us for our discussion today about our Animal Farm.
Chris: huh Okay. Great.
Nate Day: I'm actually really looking forward to the next one that we're going to do, which is Rebecca.
Chris: What are we doing next?
Nate Day: You're going to have to help me by, with this author name, Daphne.
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: do you know how to say that?
Chris: Dumare.
Nate Day: Okay. I'm going to leave that to you with films by Alfred Hitchcock and Ben Wheatley. I believe we'll have a special guest as well.
Chris: Yes. Oh, my gosh. Yes, yes, yes.
Nate Day: But I'm very much looking forward to that. I'm a huge Hitchcock fan. So that's going to be a really great, great episode. So thank you again.
Chris: I'm very excited.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah, me too. Thank you again for joining us today. And we look forward to our next chat. Bye-bye.
Chris: Bye.
