Don't Blame The Pigs: China's Take on Animal Farm

Nick Gillespie | December 9, 2002

"What I wanted to stress was not the ruling class, but the horses, the sheep and the chickens, the animals that represent the masses and their attitudes. I wanted to criticize them for being selfish, indifferent, ignorant, fatuous and lazy."

So says Shang Chengjun, the 30-year-old director of a big Beijing production of George Orwell's allegory about totalitarianism.

You really do get the government you deserve, I guess. Especially in a dictatorship. Just ask that fatuous and lazy guy standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square.

Comments

|12.9.02 @ 7:22AM|#

The angle he may want to cover is "I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."

Oh wait, you said Animal *Farm*

Nevermind...