An odd coincidence today, the film of Animal Farm was on TV, and it was also one of the questions on Pointless.
I watched the film. I remember studying the book at school. Sadly the teacher never explained the background to the book but just focused on the text. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more with the context explained.
One part of the film stood out to me. The animals decided to destroy everything that reminded them of the hateful farmer. They had a book burning. I wondered about how that related to the statue removal going on. Maybe not so much a clear relation to the statues, but certainly there is a relation to Gone with the Wind.
It reminded me of the Mary Whitehouse days, where she declared which films she found offensive. There is no doubt she represented a large group of society – but should we have withdrawn those films because of their offence?
There is no doubt that many oppressive regimes start with book burning. It was interesting that one of the first actions of the Trump regime was to purge documents. Likewise the UK government website has reduced access to a wide range of documents that used to be readily available (does government produce documents for the political class, or for the people).
Perhaps the more difficult thought I had was about that famous line “All animals are equal”. Are we currently saying “All lives are equal, but black lives are more equal than others”? I think probably not. But it did remind me that I needed to think twice about how popular right can so easily become wrong.
An interesting book with some pointers to the problem of lust for power.