I was ok with Animal Farm, but...

[intertribal]

Yann Martel:  I needed to find two animals that might represent the Jews. So trading on positive stereotypes, donkeys are held to be stubborn, they’ve endured, in a sense. Jews are historically have been stubborn in a sense, they’ve held onto their culture, to their religion, despite centuries of discrimination. At the same time, we hold monkeys to be clever, to be nimble. Well, historically, Jews have proven themselves to be exceptionally nimble and clever, they’ve adapted to all different kinds of circumstances, all kinds of different countries, cultures, and also historically, they’ve contributed enormously, disproportionately to the arts and sciences.  So trading on those positive stereotypes, I chose, well, here, how can I represent Jews? Well, here, I’ll represent them as this combination, these two animals, monkeys and donkeys. It could also be that the donkey is sort of a representation of the body and monkey the representation of the mind of Jews.

David Sexton:  What is one to say? Perhaps, to be kind, that Martel, not Jewish himself incidentally, is just not very bright.

Yann Martel:  If he says that of me, I wonder what he feels about Art Spiegelman in Maus. In Maus the Jews are characterised as mice. But were the Jews mouse-like in the Warsaw ghetto uprising? I wonder how he feels about that characterisation.

Hey hey hey hey,or: we could not use different animal species to symbolize different groups of people, especially when you're using stereotypical animal traits to match up with stereotypical human group traits.  We could not reduce huge groups of God's creatures to one or two sweeping adjectives.

Just a thought!

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I know. But we don't really 'like' predators, generally speaking, and the predators we do 'like' we ignore the predatory aspects of. (I'm using 'like' here as something more like "have positive stereotypes of," when I don't think that actually correlates with individual people liking that animal in real-world instances) Seeing owls, lions, dogs, etc. in all their bloodthirsty glory would likely put people off. Maybe even be frightening. I could easily see owls as representing the downfall of intellectual utopianism turned authoritarian killing spree or something.

Yes, but that's the sort of representation I'm concerned with.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

uh, the point of the first part is that we are very pro-victim.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Is this related to rooting for underdogs, or is it related to not wanting to relate to things that kill other creatures (as opposed to mice, who simply devour lifeless cheese)? But yeah, except for a subset of people who are into bloodthirsty glory (e.g., killer sharks eating baby seals, fuck yeah!!), that's true. I think the owl thing would be cool, but now I'm like, "what if I really really liked owls?"

No, yeah, I get that.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Aren't those both kind of the same impulse, the pro-victim impulse? Slave morality! Support weakness! Only weak things are so good they don't hurt other things, even though it's only because they can't.

Actually, I do really like owls. Probably better than I like cats. But I don't think I'd freak out about their representation.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Huh... but the underdog narrative relies on the underdog coming back and beating the "top dog." Or is this part of the whole revenge fantasy thing? Oh dear. The Bambi narrative, though, yeah, I guess. Feminine little deer.

Probably because you do not have a hang-up about it. I have refused to see movies because a cat gets sliced in half in the movie. But in my defense it was just a slasher movie.