History Main / BeastFable

{{Beast Fable}}s feature [[SlidingScaleOfAnthropomorphism a range]] between [[IntellectualAnimal Intelligent Wild Animals]] and {{Beast|Man}}men. These are OlderThanDirt (going back to Mesopotamia and AncientEgypt), 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 FunnyAnimal is an inheritor of this tradition.

{{Beast Fable}}s feature [[SlidingScaleOfAnthropomorphism a range]] between [[IntellectualAnimal Intelligent Wild Animals]] and PettingZooPeople. These are OlderThanDirt (going back to Mesopotamia and AncientEgypt), 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 FunnyAnimal is an inheritor of this tradition.

* ''The Insect Play'' by Josef and Karel Čapek has the lives of fickle-hearted butterflies, capital-hoarding beetles, predatory ichneumons, home-loving crickets, warlike ants etc. as an allegory for human society.

-->--'''Creator/GKChesterton'''

* ''Anime/ApocalypseMeow'' is a beast fable manga about the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar. Vietnamese (North, South and Montanyard tribesmen) are all cats, Americans are rabbits, Soviets are bears, Chinese are pandas, French are pigs, and Japanese are monkeys.

* ''Disney/{{Zootopia}}'' comments on discrimination by depicting a world in which predators and prey live in relative harmony, but with the predators as a distrusted minority. The main characters are a rabbit battling misconceptions about her species as she tries to make her way in the police force; and a fox who has embraced the prejudices associated with his species as a matter of survival, having given up on getting respect on his own terms. The story involves a conspiracy feeding on predatory species' deep-rooted fears of predators, a comment on the deep socio-political divisions of America society at the time.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Antz}}'', the ant society represents a totalitarian political system where the individual is insignificant; the wasps are the [[StealthPun White Anglo-Saxon Protestant]] elite; and the flies and other bugs in "Insectopia" are free-willed hippies.

* The ants (and [=wasps=]) in ''WesternAnimation/{{Antz}}''
* The ants (and grasshoppers) in ''WesternAnimation/ABugsLife''

If an author wants to make an {{Anvilicious}} point about human society, there's no better way than replacing people with an [[AnimalStereotypes 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 human society.

If an author wants to make an {{Anvilicious}} point about human society, there's no better way than replacing people with an [[AnimalStereotypes 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.

[[Literature/AesopsFables Aesop]] himself was famous for these. It is particularly common in children's stories in an attempt to make [[AnAesop moralistic messages]] more entertaining and palatable for the tykes.

* ''Disney/{{Zootopia}}'' is a more sophisticated example. On the one hand, it is like a classic beast fable, using anthropomorphic animal characters to give a commentary on human society. On the other hand, instead of simply using AnimalStereotypes like most beast fables do, its main message is that stereotyping is wrong - and thus most characters [[SubvertedTrope subvert]] these stereotypes.

->''"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. [[KingOfBeasts The lion must always be stronger]] than the wolf, just as four is always double of two. The fox in a fable [[CunningLikeAFox 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. . . \\

* ''ApocalypseMeow'' is a beast fable manga about the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar. Vietnamese (North, South and Montanyard tribesmen) are all cats, Americans are rabbits, Soviets are bears, Chinese are pandas, French are pigs, and Japanese are monkeys.

** RobertCrumb's underground comic ''ComicBook/FritzTheCat'', portrayed African-Americans as crows. The [[WesternAnimation/FritzTheCat 1972 film]] adaptation, directed by Creator/RalphBakshi, specifically portrayed police officers as pigs, whereas Crumb's comics did not make this distinction. Creator/ArtSpiegelman credits ''Fritz the Cat'' as paving the way for all adult-oriented comics featuring anthropomorphic characters.

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

* 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.

* Many of AesopsFables, of course.
* The classic example is ''ReynardTheFox'', a series of medieval folk stories satirizing the feudal system with Reynard as the hero to the downtrodden peasants. His most favorite antagonist was Isengrim\Ysengrin the wolf who represented the CorruptChurch of the time. Disney was originally going to film the story but it ended up becoming a telling of RobinHood with Robin as an anthropomorphic fox.

* George Orwell's ''AnimalFarm'' used a rural setting to critique communist societies decaying from their high ideals. Communist commissars were replaced by pigs that walked on two legs, who literally skimmed the cream of the farm's labor for themselves.
** Music/PinkFloyd's ''Animals'' does the same for capitalism: the dogs are the business executives/social climbers, the pigs are those who "rule on high", and the sheep are the everyday proletariat.
* ''WatershipDown'' replaced frightened peasants with rabbits. Popularly thought to be a fable about the dangers a democracy faces from appeasement and fascism. The rabbit heroes escape a monarchy, discover a seemingly idyllic warren with a horrific secret coming from placating humans, arrive at their new home and create a democracy that must lock horns with another warren that is a fascist tyranny.
* ''TheBookOfTheNamed'' tackles child abuse and racism, among other things, using prehistoric sentient cats.

* ''{{Tasakeru}}'', more or less.

** Reynard the fox, Isengrim the wolf, Tybalt the cat, and many other characters from the folktales appear as humanized versions of themselves in David R. Witanowski's ''Reynard the Fox,'' as well as its sequels. Naturally, the characters tend to retain the characteristics of their animal counterparts.

** RobertCrumb's underground comic ''ComicBook/FritzTheCat'', portrayed African-Americans as crows. The [[WesternAnimation/FritzTheCat 1972 film]] adaptation, directed by Creator/RalphBakshi, specifically portrayed police officers as pigs, whereas Crumb's comics did not make this distinction. Art Spiegelman credits ''Fritz the Cat'' as paving the way for all adult-oriented comics featuring anthropomorphic characters.
** The graphic novel ''ComicBook/{{Maus}}'' took place in WWII Poland, with the Germans depicted as [[CatsAreMean cats]], the Jews as mice, Poles as pigs, the French as frogs, and American soldiers as dogs. It also played with the trope by showing a half-Jewish, half-German as a mouse with tabby stripes. Also, at one point, the author discusses with his wife whether he should try to symbolize her conversion by making a frog turn into a mouse. When visiting his psychiatrist, he notices he has dogs and wonders [[FurryConfusion whether depicting them will ruin the metaphor]].

* Creator/DavidSedaris' short story collection ''Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk'' is his (largely successful) attempt to apply the logic of the beast fable to modern concerns.

[[folder: Meta]]
* DyingLikeAnimals, anyone?
[[/folder]]

* ''WatershipDown'' replaced frightened peasants with rabbits. Popularly thought be a fable about the dangers a democracy faces from appeasement and fascism. The rabbit heroes escape a monarchy, discover a seemingly idyllic warren with a horrific secret coming from placating humans, arrive at their new home and create a democracy that must lock horns with another warren that is a fascist tyranny.

** Pink Floyd's ''Animals'' does the same for capitalism: the dogs are the business executives/social climbers, the pigs are those who "rule on high", and the sheep are the everyday proletariat.

* Walter Wangerin's ''Literature/TheBookOfTheDunCow'' and sequel ''The Book of Sorrows'' are fascinating beast fables; though their moral isn't simple enough to put into one line, this troper feels they qualify because the animals are definitely used to represent distinct, stylized human roles & personalities.

* ''ApocalypseMeow'' is a beast fable manga about the VietnamWar. Vietnamese (North, South and Montanyard tribesmen) are all cats, Americans are rabbits, Soviets are bears, Chinese are pandas, French are pigs, and Japanese are monkeys.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Thundercats 2011}}'' critiques the racism and classism of the privileged by portraying the {{Catfolk}}-populated kingdom of Thundera as practitioners of AnimalJingoism by way of FantasticRacism, mistreating [[{{Dogfaces}} Dogs]] and [[LizardFolk Lizards]] based around their CulturalPosturing that CatsAreSuperior. They pay for their hubris by seeing their kingdom destroyed by their enemies the Lizards.

->''"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. [[KingOfBeasts The lion must always be stronger]] than the wolf, just as four is always double of two. The fox in a fable [[CunningAsAFox 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. . . \\