Beast Fable: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|''"Aesop, or Babrius (or whatever his name was), understood that, for a fable, all the persons must be impersonal. They must be like abstractions in algebra, or like pieces in chess. The lion must always be stronger than the wolf, just as four is always double of two. The fox in a fable must move crooked, as the knight in chess must move crooked. The sheep in a fable must march on, as the pawn in chess must march on. . . <br />

 

If an author wants to make an [[Anvilicious]] point about human society, there's no better way than replacing people with an [[Animal Stereotypes|animal stereotype]]. An entire class of people will be replaced by a type of animal, and different animals will reflect the different social classes of a society.

 

 

 

[[Beast Fable|Beast Fables]] feature [[Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism|a range]] between [[Intellectual Animal|Intelligent Wild Animals]] and [[Petting Zoo People]]. These are [[Older Than Dirt]] (going back to Mesopotamia and [[Ancient Egypt]]), which means, in the oldest stories, it's hard to tell if the original teller saw actual animals as equal to people, or saw them as humanoid versions of animals; a character may behave as a human one minute and a talking animal the next. It's been argued that the modern cartoon [[Funny Animal]] is an inheritor of this tradition.

== Comic Books ==

* A number of underground and alternative comics use this device:

** The underground comic ''[[Horndog]]'' portrays African-Americans as black cats, and police officers as pigs.

 

 

== Film ==

* ''[[An American Tail]]'' uses the metaphor of mice as the oppressed races of the world, and the cats as their oppressors.

* The penguins, and emperor penguins in particular, in ''[[Happy Feet]]'' have been interpreted as both critiques upon religious conformity and, by some, as Christianity by itself, among other things. The director has also talked about the film as an allegorical straight "first contact" story, from the perspective of an undiscovered tribe, and how this relates to the penguins, as one of the layers. Looking at it like this, several astonishing thematic and visual similarities to ''[[The Abyss]]'' are revealed.

== Folktales ==

* The classic example is [[Reynard The Fox]], a series of medieval folk stories satirizing the feudal system with the [[Heroic Sociopath]] Reynard as the hero to the downtrodden peasants. His most favorite antagonist was Isengrim\Ysengrin the wolf who represented the [[Corrupt Church]] of the time. Disney was originally going to film the story but it ended up becoming a telling of [[Robin Hood]] with Robin as an anthropomorphic fox.

* The Kalila and Dimna stories are essentially the Middle Eastern version of Reynard the Fox. They're about [[Guile Hero|two wily jackals]] who sometimes work as viziers to the king ([[King of Beasts|a lion, of course]]).

 

 

== Western Animation ==