Summary Of Guest Column: Why Animals Now

Why do people call the cops “pigs” in the form of an insult? “Taken up by protestors, the term ‘pig’ had been used early as the mid-1500s to refer to a person who is heartily disliked.” A staff member of Straight Dope Science Advisory answers this question stating that the name runs back to the early police force, Bow Street Runner. The characters that pigs or snakes typically symbolizes are considered human’s unacceptable behavior. Pigs are often depicted as a character who’s unclean, greedy, and conceited; being the displeasing character in stories or in religions. Marianne DeKoven, who wrote the article “Guest Column: Why Animals Now?”, explains how anthropomorphism removes the animal’s real purpose in this world. “All literary representations of animals no more form a unified or even meaningful category than do those of women or the working class.”(363) She claims that it is belittling the
animals and it is no different than animal cruelty. “The turn toward animals is also based on a more broadly generalizing premise: the idea, or conviction, that the human species is destroying, and perhaps has irretrievably destroyed, the planet.”(367) “We live in a hybrid, indeterminate set of interlocking relations, in constant flux.” (367) Based off of the facts in Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia, pig’s behavior has nothing similar to the ones that are anthropomorphized. Pigs are very territorial and usually stay in groups, a sounder of swine or a pastel, with around one or two males surrounding the females. Pigs are used as a source of protein, often raised on farms in the United States for produce (for uses of leather, card, glue, fertilizer, medicine, and meat). Even though pigs are smarter than dogs and most domesticated animals, they aren’t many who are kept as pets. When they are wild, they are considered as pest, because they cause damage around the area.
B.J. Epstein and Mitch Johnson both have a similar argument to DeKoven in their article, As Happy as a Pig in Lit? The Dangers of Anthropomorphism in Children’s Literature, claiming that “Anthropomorphism has the ability to make animals disappear.” George Orwell created Animal Farm, “A successful farmyard revolution by the resident animals vs.
the farmer goes horribly wrong as the victors create a new tyranny among themselves”, to represent the uprising Russian Revolution during a Communist society. Orwell wanted to let people know that even though it sounded good in the beginning it was no different to the rules in the past, they alter it to their bidding. In the book, the pigs were manipulative, selfish against the other animals, and showed greed. They were not as lazy because they were the leaders, but they did not do any work. The pigs were acting just like the other human farmers, taking the produce from the animals without putting in labor. Orwell quoted towards the end, “Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike…The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”(155). After years of the pigs treating the other animals unfair, it was claimed they could not tell the difference between man and
pig. The same reference was used in Spirted Away, “During her[Chihiro] family's move to the suburbs, a sullen 10-year-old girl wanders into a world ruled by gods, witches, and spirits, and where humans are changed into beasts.”, written by Hayao Miyazaki. Yubba, the antagonist who ran the bathhouse, turned Chihiro’s parents into pigs because they constantly ate something that wasn’t theirs, which symbolized greed in the movie. In the movie Chihiro has a dream that she wouldn’t be able to recognize her parents from the other pigs if they constantly ate too much. Unlike the famous looney toon Porky Pig, a pig who had a stuttering disablilty, he supposed to be used to show kids that disabilities cannot stop you from going far in life. Instead, it caused bullying and kids that stuttered being teased and called “Porky Pig”. Even though Porky pig had a negative result when he first appeared, he still was anthropomorphized as a pig who is successful and emotional. “Porky’s stuttering may have contributed to the way the other characters treated him, but a more plausible explanation for Porky Pig becoming the foil is simply the cartoon characterization that became [his] trademark.” Porky Pig’s creator, Friz Freleng, wanted to show the audience that no one was perfect.