Animal Farm in popular culture

"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.

References in popular culture

As with Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" ("1984") references to this novella are frequent in other works, particularly popular music and television series.

In music

* 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.
* The famous quote from the final chapter of the book, in which the animals look "from pig to man" and see no difference was used as the back cover of anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba's second LP, Never Mind The Ballots.
* 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 communism, "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 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".
* 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
* In the "NOFX" song 'Wolves in Wolves' Clothing', there is a line stating "We are Animal Farm pigs."
*The Clash used an image from the movie Animal Farm on their single "English Civil War" .
* A popular Dutch rock band is named Animal Farm. [ [http://www.animalfarmmusic.nl/ Animal Farm] ]
* Animal Farm is a song on the Kinks' album "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society."

On television

* 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.
* In an episode of "Sealab 2021", the captain starts a Communistic reign over the station and even buys a large pig named Napoleon (he seems to have read the book but not understand anything from it).
* In an episode of "Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps", "Animal Farm" is parodied as a book called "Piggy Goes Oink".
* In the first episode of "Moral Orel", there is a book in the pile "to burn" clearly labeled "Animal Farm" in all caps.
* In an episode of the Australian comedy series CNNNN the network covers the story of a new reality show called Animal Farm, a parody of the reality series Big Brother (hence the use of another Orwell fiction name).
* In an episode of "X-Men", the character Beast is seen reading a copy of Animal Farm while sitting in a jail cell. The guards, obviously not knowing what the book is all about, teases him and says that he problably "just looks at the pictures."
* The "Lost" episode "Exposé" involves flashbacks with Nikki and Paulo involving an argument with Kate about the handgun case. During this scene, Dr. Leslie Arzt yells at Kate that "The pigs are walking," a reference to "Animal Farm" where Napoleon and his generals begin to adapt human characteristics and change their oath from "Four legs good, two legs bad" to "Four legs good, two legs better."
* In an episode of the Food Network series "Good Eats" about pork, the episode opens with Alton Brown reading an excerpt from the book to a group of feeding pigs.
* In an episode of "Rocko's Modern Life", Mr. Bighead adopts a campaign slogan of "Ed Good! Rocko Bad!" to win an election for dog catcher against Rocko
* In an episode of "The Colbert Report", Stephen Colbert, discussing the film "Over the Hedge", referred to the animated film adaptation of "Animal Farm", saying "The trailer would have us believe this is a harmless family cartoon along the lines of "Animal Farm" or "Fritz the Cat"." [cite web |url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0802473/movieconnections |title=Movie connections for "The Colbert Report" Episode dated 9 May 2006 (2006) |accessdate=2008-02-29 |last= |first= |coauthors= |date= |work= |publisher=Internet Movie Database]
*"Animal Farm" is mentioned in the "Jericho" episode "The Day Before".
*In the episode of Transformers Animated, "Blast from the Past", Grimlock goes around yelling "Cars and trucks bad, car robots worse" This could be a reference.
*In episode 12 of Greek "The Great Cappie" character Rusty uses Animal Farm to point out corruption of man as an example of the situation they are facing and how they should not fall into the trap due to the rivalry between the two houses.
*In season 2, episode 5 of the Canadian TV show Trailer Park Boys, the character Ricky reads it in his trailer and tries to understand the deeper meanings of the novel as he thought all the book was about was animals talking.
*In My Family when Ben angers the cyclist they chant: "2 wheels good. 4 wheels bad." As opposed to: "4 legs good, 2 legs bad."
*In british channel 4 show 'When Women Rule the World' Richard refers to it when talking about the chance of revolution, he also says that the women are probably not educated enough to know the story of the book.

In other media

* "Snowball's Chance", a 2002/03 bestselling book by U.S. author John Reed updates/parodies Animal Farm in a 9/11 context. The controversial work was criticized by the Orwell estate.
* The online game contains an imaginary pro-bicycle environmental group known as "Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad."
* In the comic book series "Fables", the second edition (issues 6 to 10) is titled "Animal Farm" and features a plot line very similar to that of the book.
* 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)."
* In "", Frank Poole notes of the future society that it still has some 1000 super-citizens and remarks that it seems that some will always be more equal than others.
* In the game Mass Effect, a captain standing guard against large insect-like aliens makes the backwards remark: "Even hopped up on stims, my men know the rule: two legs, good, four legs, bad."
* The graffiti crew 'Animal Farm' based in Belgium and later on expanded towards the Netherlands pay homage by using it as their group's name. Their work can be seen on subways, commuter trains and walls mainly in their home countries, most often with characters of various animals.
* In a Far Side comic, there's a room with a donkey reading Animal Farm and a rabbit watching TV. The donkey thinks, "Dumb bunny," and the rabbit thinks, "Smart ass."
* In "Planet of the Apes", the following conversation occurs:

Dr. Zaius: "Tell me, why are all apes created equal?"
George Taylor: "Some apes, it seems, are more equal than others."

References