FOUR LEGS GOOD ~ ANIMAL FARM REVISITED (YET AGAIN!)

 

WILD RICE CELEBRATES AN ORWELLIAN CENTENNIAL

Ivan Heng’s 2003 restaging of George Orwell’s classic is wonderfully thought-provoking

IT’S BEEN AGES since I last read Animal Farm, undoubtedly one of George Orwell’s best-known works. So it was a pleasure indeed to be reacquainted with this timeless allegory - “A Fairy Story,” Orwell called it - through Wild Rice’s production of Ian Wooldridge’s faithful stage adaptation, for an appreciative Singapore audience in September 2003.

Singaporean theater prodigy Ivan Heng

Directed by the immensely gifted Ivan Heng, Animal Farm impressed with the caliber of the performers, the quirkiness of the set, the artful make-up, and Philip Tan’s animated live music (a performance in itself). Heng opted for an unexpectedly sober and only slightly zany dramatization of the plot.  

Relying largely on stylized movements and a very disciplined cast, Heng’s directorial vision was reminiscent of the “3D effect” of computer-generated animation (e.g., the Dreamworks production of A Bug’s Life in which the characterizations blur all boundaries between cartoon and realism). With well-defined physical mannerisms, the actors effectively created vivid animal personas that somehow made them human without anthropomorphizing them.

Lim Yu-Beng and Selena Tan were convincingly horsey as Boxer and Mollie, steadfast but a bit slow on the uptake. Ivan Heng, Gene Sha Rudyn, and Pam Oei were pricelessly piggish as Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer. As the ruthlessly ousted deputy, Sha Rudyn’s Anwarish goatee harked back to Leon Trotsky - and he was equally brilliant as Benjamin the literate but phlegmatic donkey, and cockily comical as the resident rooster. Michael Ian Corbidge’s Farmer Jones was a John Bullish political cartoon down to his Union Jack underpants, and he also doubled as Pilkington - a cross between Uncle Sam and a redneck evangelist entrepreneur. 

The casting of ruddy-faced angmoh Corbidge as Jones was an oblique allusion to our colonial past - a political subtext that wasn’t lost on the audience. When Napoleon harangues the animals and asks querulously if they want Farmer Jones to return and reclaim Manor Farm, it sounds like the sort of dire warning against the dangers of globalization you might hear at any Umno General Assembly.

Ivan Heng’s Napoleon was a masterful study of a charismatic leader’s steady metamorphosis into demiurgic despotism. The political scapegoating of his erstwhile deputy into Public Enemy No. 1, leading to inquisitorial witch-hunts and party purges to divert attention from gross mismanagement, were chillingly, goosebumpily real - as Heng pigged out completely on his juicy rôle without ever succumbing to the temptation to “ham” it up.

 

As agitprop chief Squealer, Pam Oei’s high-pitched stridency evoked eerie memories of China’s cultural revolution when party cadres in Mao suits brandished copies of the little Red book at all potential dissidents and heretics. But hysterical Squealers are found in every ministry of “information.”

Audience participation consisted of our being invited to recite the post-colonial doctrine of “Four legs good, two legs baaaaaaaaaaaad!” in appropriately sheeplike tones. Indeed, since the only farm animals not represented on stage were the sheep, it fell to the audience to take on that rôle like good law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. For our valiant efforts we were paid off in sponsored pre-election apples.

But with changing realities - and lucrative joint ventures signed between the porcine farm management and Pilkington the American corporate representative - leaflets had to be dropped from the rafters in four languages (English, Tamil, Malay and Chinese) proclaiming the new-era ideology of four-legs-good-two-legs-better. Another “Farm Development Project” to serve the needs of progressive animals, brought to us by Napoleon, the fine upstanding porker in a well-cut dark suit and red tie - standard uniform of the nefarious Illuminati World Management Team sported by NWO executives and their political proxies on all important occasions.

What Ivan Heng has achieved through this hip and savvy re-staging of Animal Farm with a distinctly ASEAN flavor is a revitalization of Orwell’s classic study of the neo-feudal mechanics of political power, giving it a fresh, contemporary sheen, rich in local color.

The somber theme of bad times getting worse is dynamically offset by very physical performances, and the insertion of a garish, carnivalesque grand finale - abetted throughout by the vigorous live music - mostly percussive - provided by an enormously exuberant and talented Philip Tan: he performs offstage for the most part, though visibly, but occasionally leaps onstage and contributes to the surrealistic mayhem. Air-conditioning ducts feature prominently as multi-purpose stage props, representing the pseudo-mystical fascination of newfangled technology - as well as the animal butcher’s van in which Boxer is carted off for slaughter when he outlives his usefulness to the System.

In short, Wild Rice’s Animal Farm was a totally credible - and more than creditable - tribute to George Orwell’s acute insight into the ploys and pitfalls of political power, and his dystopian view of the human condition. The production has been invited to tour New Zealand in early 2004 - and, hopefully, Malaysian audiences will get to see it soon after that. [Note: Ivan Heng's Animal Farm was successfully staged in New Zealand, Tasmania, Hong Kong, and restaged in Singapore - but it still hasn't happened in Malaysia, although in August 2017 a Malay version titled Kandang, directed by Omar Ali, is to be staged at KLPAC]. 

Ivan Heng’s first staging of Animal Farm in 2002 earned him the DBS-Life Theatre Award for Best Director. In his director’s notes for the souped-up 2003 version, Heng states: “This production was a gut reaction to the ‘War against Terror’ in Iraq. I remember sitting in front of the television on March 20th, feeling sick to the core as I watched the first bombs on Iraq fall. If there is one thing I’m learning, it is how Governments can become so separate from the very people who vote them into power. Watching the news made me think about how the media has the power to distort and manipulate the truth. It made me think about my responsibility as an artist. If only to understand my personal response to the events of the world, I was searching for a way of expressing my confusion and disappointment.”

“In the world of Animal Farm, most speechifying and public palaver is bullshit and instigated lying, and though many characters are good-hearted and mean well, they can be frightened into closing their eyes to what's really going on.” ~ Margaret Atwood

George Orwell @ Eric Blair

BORN ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR on 25 June 1903 in Bengal, George Orwell’s centennial in 2003 stirred up some controversy about the validity of his status as a literary icon, with leftwing critics bristling over the fact that Animal Farm had been co-opted as an antisocialist tract by rightwing interests.

His detractors have remarked on Orwell-Blair’s long history of hobnobbing with the secret police - as a police officer in Burma, BBC propagandist for India and Southeast Asia, and British Intelligence consultant on anti-communist strategies during the early days of the Cold War. Whose side was he on? Was he in truth the maverick Winston Smith or master manipulator O’Brien (two key characters in 1984) - or was he perhaps both?

Some of the sharpest minds are recruited for psyops (psychological warfare) and Eric Blair just happened to have an acute literary flair - and a profound loathing for the cynical mass-control mechanisms installed by the ruling elite to perpetuate its feudalistic stranglehold on the human imagination. Upon leaving Burma he embraced anarchism with a vengeance, and then swung to the extreme left, fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Then he got disenchanted by the communist movement and chose the life of a penniless vagabond for several years - an experience that spawned his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), and later The Road to Wigan Pier (1937).

The soul’s yearning for freedom is doomed to futility in Orwell’s universe, and one gets the sense that he finally gives up fighting the Status Quo because he can see no way out: it’s a task he finds morally repugnant, but he will serve the Dark Lords of the Matrix by inserting himself into 10 Downing Street as a future prime minister - not as an Orwell, of course, but as a Blair - in any case, as someone supremely fluent in Doublethink and Newspeak.

Therein lies the poignant irony of Orwell’s dark, visionary novels - especially 1984 (written in 1948) which is a perfect prescription for a Big Brother power elite ruling through sloganeering, disinformation and public relations - and when all that fails, ruthless police brutality. Precisely the sort of world we find ourselves living in today, where war is peace and might is right, and history an infinitely rewritable cut-and-paste business.

Winston Smith, the chief protagonist of 1984, is turned around by the mind control experts in Room 101 where, confronted by his deepest, darkest fears, his rebellious individualism is broken - and the novel concludes bleakly with the socially rehabilitated citizen Smith drinking Victory gin at the local and watching Big Brother on the boob tube along with all the other faceless plebes - while the chorus of a popular ditty echoes in his brain: “Under the spreading chestnut tree/I sold you and you sold me.”

But Orwell’s intellectual integrity and his extraordinary skill as a writer more than redeem his own internal conflicts - and his readers are left with the onus to seek, and ultimately find, a non-polarized resolution beyond the dire straits of divide-and-rule dualism.

25 November 2003 [First posted 14 August 2012. Reposted 25 june 2014]

Slow drivers most likely cause of road accidents!

Sir Percival, my trusty 24-year-old Satria, is no boxy car!

Just before Chinese New Year (2015) I had to pick up my laptop from a shop in Tanjong Malim. Not knowing the traffic cops had set a trap for motorists between Kerling & Kalumpang, I was shocked to find a speeding ticket waiting for me in the post months after the festive season. There was a B&W image of my car (so no argument) & I was accused of traveling at 70kmh in a 60kmh zone. Long story short, I got hit for RM150 but at least the lady cop who issued the receipt passed me her mobile number (which remains unused).

This got me a little annoyed, you can imagine. I'm used to thinking in mph, not kph, so a speed limit of 60kph translates as 36mph - that's slower than your average Kancil or Kelisa driven by an 80-year-old granny. I know the cops aren't really concerned about my safety - they only want the money. It's legalized extortion, no less. But it got me pondering once again the abysmal lack of insight of those who purport to administer departments, states, even entire countries & who take it upon themselves to constantly enact new laws (oblivious of the truism that more laws equal less justice).

To my mind the primary cause of highway accidents is slow drivers. The secondary cause is often tow-truck operators working in cahoots with workshop owners who deliberately spill oil on the roads & then await their prey.

But let's focus on the slow coaches for now. I've been driving since I was 15 (first two years without a licence, couldn't wait) & I had the best driving instructor in the world - my dad. He told me how you can tell a confident driver from a timid one by observing how often they use their foot brake, especially around corners. He taught me how to apply the accelerator for better traction on wet roads while taking a bend, instead of jamming on the brakes, which could cause a tailspin. Over the decades, I have found his advice entirely sound & when I see a driver ahead of me overusing his or her brakes I can tell at once we have a timid, incompetent driver (well, I guess not everyone has a dad like mine who taught me so many practical things as a kid).

Anyway, these timid drivers are often also nervous & overcautious & they seem to favor boxy cars that resemble horse-driven coaches, which reveals their conservative taste. Apart from that, their fearfulness tends to make them more insular - with the unfortunate result that they become insensitive to other drivers. Often they seem so preoccupied with keeping their eyes on the road ahead they become unaware of the long line of vehicles behind them, unable to overtake on narrow or busy roads. Now don't get me wrong. There's a place for everyone under the sun - including nervous, fear-driven types. In almost every case, these neuroses are acquired through family dynamics (overprotective mum, overbearing dad) & can be quite easily transmuted - so long as the sufferer is open to jettisoning unnecessary emotional baggage & getting on with life.

What I'm driving at is simply this: why punish confident, competent drivers by imposing absurd speed limits on us? I'm willing to bet that if a statistical study was conducted, at least 80% of road accidents result from drivers getting impatient & taking unnecessary risks after being stuck for some time behind slow-moving vehicles, especially on narrow single-lane roads. 

I'm not suggesting that slow, timid drivers be banned or penalized. Indeed, nobody needs to be punished for being what they are - but those inclined to be fearful, overcautious, nervous would do well (for themselves & for others) to be open to healing their childhood traumas & replacing fear-based outlooks with more dynamic, more self-confident tendencies. Then they might discover that driving can be joyful & pleasurable - not a terrifying ordeal - & that becoming a better, more alert driver is self-rewarding. Fear & anxiety fuels incompetence, no doubt about that.

Those who insist on clinging to their anxious, timid dispositions can always opt for public transport & help ease traffic congestion.

21 June 2015

MY POST-JUNE SOLSTICE 2021 DREAM (repost)

Muladhara
(Root)

Right after the June Solstice 2021, I awoke from a vivid, exciting dream in which I saw three shiny discs (like tiny CDs or chakras) spontaneously begin to realign in every human being I encountered. They appeared to be supercharged electromagnetic fields compressed into toroidal discs and I felt a deep sense of satisfaction when I saw all three discs slide magically into position along the spines of each human being.

Anahata
(Heart)

As this occurred their emotional bodies began to reactivate and resensitize and they found themselves feeling reconnected with everything around them - plants, animals, other humans, even inanimate objects like buildings.  

Now they could see through their hearts again - not only through their minds (where their nonsensical beliefs, prejudices and ideologies are collected and stored). 

Sahasrara
(Crown)

It was truly wonderful - indeed, ecstatic - to witness the Great Awakening and Quantum Transformation of an entire species, suddenly liberated from a deep robotic trance that had been gradually imposed on them over countless generations! 

Antares Maitreya

22 June 2021

The Khinzir* Report (revisited)

THE PIG is one of the oldest forms of livestock, having been domesticated as early as 5000 BC. It is believed to have been domesticated either in the Near East or in China from the wild boar. The adaptable nature and omnivorous diet of this creature allowed early humans to domesticate it much earlier than many other forms of livestock, such as cattle. Pigs were mostly used for food, but people also used their hide for shields and shoes, their bones for tools and weapons, and their bristles for brushes. Pigs have other roles within the human economy: their feeding behavior in searching for roots churns up the ground and makes it easier to plough; their sensitive noses lead them to truffles, an underground fungus highly valued by humans; and their omnivorous nature enables them to eat human rubbish, keeping settlements cleaner than they would otherwise have been.

Pork is the most widely eaten meat in the world, providing about 38 percent of daily meat protein intake worldwide, although consumption varies widely from place to place. This is despite religious restrictions on the consumption of pork and the prominence of beef production in the West. Pork consumption has been rising for thirty years, both in actual terms and in terms of meat-market share.

Throughout the Islamic world, as well as in Israel, many countries severely restrict the importation or consumption of pork products. Examples are Iran, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Pork is one of the best-known of a category of foods that are forbidden under traditional Jewish dietary law. The biblical basis for the Jewish prohibition of pork is in Leviticus 11:7. The Qur'anic basis for the Islamic prohibition of pork can be found in surahs 2:173, 5:3, 5:60, 6:145 and 16:115.

Seventh-day Adventists likewise eat no pork. Rastafarians too avoid the consumption of pork, their basis is also the book of Leviticus. [The Rastafarian religion is essentially a quirky spin-off of Judaism.]

The Scottish pork taboo was Donald Alexander Mackenzie's phrase for discussing an aversion to pork amongst Scots, particularly Highlanders, which he believed to stem from an ancient taboo. Several writers who confirm that there was a prejudice against pork, or a superstitious attitude to pigs, do not see it in terms of a taboo related to an ancient cult. Any prejudice is generally agreed to have been fading by 1800.

(From the Wikipedia entry on PORK)

Think about this for a moment. Several ethnic and religious groups on earth share a pork taboo: Jews, Arabs, Malays, and Rastafarians. Okay, some Seventh-Day Adventists avoid eating pork - probably because of the Gadarene swine story in the New Testament that describes how Jesus arrives in an area called Gadara and encounters a man possessed by demons. Jesus then chases the demons into the bodies of 2,000 innocent swine... who, maddened by the demons, stampede into the sea and drown. In this scenario the pigs were blameless and ought to be profusely thanked for taking on the possessed man's evil karma.

What else do these pork-fearing tribes have in common? A deeply-embedded religious fervor, perhaps, that makes it virtually impossible for them to get close to other tribes - especially the pork-loving ones. In effect, the pork taboo serves as a tribal, cultural and culinary barrier isolating a few groups from everybody else.

Problem is, even though the Arabs and Jews don't eat pork, they still can't get along with each other. In fact, they've been at loggerheads since Abraham, on the wicked advice of his wife Sara, dumped his mistress Hagar. You see, Hagar was the mother of Ishmael, Abraham's firstborn and forefather of the Arabs; while Sara gave birth to Isaac, forefather of the Jews. Yup... deadly sibling rivalry, owing to parents playing favorites among their kids.

Who are the world's biggest pork-eaters? The Chinese, Germans, English, Irish, most Scandinavians, Balinese, Papua New Guineans and Americans (in that approximate order). What characteristics do these racial groups share? Well, they are all known for pragmatism, industriousness, resourcefulness, an ability to learn from other cultures and enjoy a joke at their own expense. Doesn't that make you wonder if there may be some hitherto unidentified substance present in the flesh of pigs that tends to ground people in common sense, good humor, and enhances their long-term survival quotient?

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*Khinzir = Arabic for "swine"

ADDITIONAL RESEARCH 

The Gadarene Swine Fallacy

[First posted 11 August 2008, reposted 19 September 2015, 8 February 2017, 6 February 2023 & 14 February 2026]