Conflict Between Two Pigs Named Napoleon and Snowball

The movie titled ‘Animal Farm’ is a British animated comedy- drama that have a run time of 72 minutes and was published in 29 December 1954 in New York, America. This movie that was directed by John Halas and Joy Batchelor was made as an adaptation from the original 1945 ‘Animal Farm’ novel that was written by George Orwell. Even though this movie seems like a kid’s movie, it has a very deep message and also meanings behind it. There are several themes that are shown in the movie, but the main themes are leadership and corruption. This movie basically tells us about the events that led up to the Russian revolution and also the stalinlist era of the Soviet Union in the form of a fable, with animal characters that represent Russian politicians, voters, and also workers. This movie started off with human- like animal characters that tried to rise a rebellion against its human owner in order to achieve a righteous living.

Animal Farm begins with a drunken farm owner, Mr. Jones that wasn’t doing a great job. One night, a very old and wise pig in the farm, called Old Major encourages the other farm animal to do a rebellion against their owner and run the farm on their own with one main value, which is all animals are equal. Right after the talk, all the animals rose up and kicked out their two-legged oppressors in order to control the farm. The pigs, being the most intelligent animal in the farm, took the leadership role. After the dust settles, a conflict between two pigs named Napoleon and Snowball happened because of the idea of building a windmill and also competition for leadership. At the end, Napoleon ended up expelling Snowball using propaganda that are spread by Squealer and badly educating the other animals, slowly destroying Snowballs legacy and turning the other animal against him. Without Snowball in the picture, Napoleon finally become the dominant Farm leader that are guarded by his private army of nine vicious dogs. He imposes his will on the other animals to work harder, while the pigs are living a happy and fancy life. He ordered the construction of a windmill, which is Snowball’s idea to make the life of the other animals more prosper. One day, Napoleon and the other pigs realized that they couldn’t fulfill their needs and want, so they conducted a trade with their two-legged enemies. Suddenly, the farm was attacked by a farmer, Fredrick and his human friends. The animals managed to protect their farm, however their windmill was destroyed in the attack. After the attack, a noble work horse, named Boxer was badly injured and was later sent away to slaughter and the other animals are lied to about what happened to Boxer. As the life in the farm are getting worse, the original guiding or rules that the animals lived by has been modified to a single commandment, which is “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Pigs walking on two legs, and are also the only educated animal. At the end it was shown that, the pigs became a more oppressive and cruel government and leader than the humans ever were and the other animals are no longer able to the difference between pigs and humans.

To start off, this movie was very interesting and it is also a very good satire that criticize oppressive government rule, like communism. Knowing that the issue that he was trying to deliver was very sensitive, he uses a very smart alternative in delivering his message, which is by using human- like farm character. He interpreted the story in a simple way that can be easily understand because of the well-made plot that gives a clear representation of the real-life events. As the story goes on, there are many problems that occurred in the story, which are the animals going against Mr. Jones, Napoleon versus Snowball, the other animals going against the pigs, and also the animal farm going against their neighboring humans. Even though there are many problems that happened throughout the story, it all has something in common because all the problems are just expressing the tension or pressure between the side that are exploiting and being exploited, and also between the lofty ideals and the ugly truth of socialism. The revolutionary of power movement takes place when the Old Major gave the idea to get rid of Mr. Jones because of how poorly he takes care of the animals and also introduced the concept of equality towards the farm animals, that was later developed in to “Animalism” which is considered as a communist philosophy. As time goes on, this revolution turned in to a total nightmare because of how the revolution opened a way to achieve individual and class self-interest because no one was in power so anyone that are intelligent enough are going to be able to take over. This leads to Napoleon being able to become the leader of the Animal Farm and keep gaining power until it eventually reaches absolute.

The movie is closely connected to the present day politics that are happening in Indonesia and the world. Just like in the movie, hegemony or ISA are commonly used in Indonesia for political advantages. As the country with the most Muslim population, trying to gain political benefits by bringing up Islam is not an uncommon thing anymore. Multiple political candidates used this strategy in order to gain votes and public support, one of them was Prabowo, which was the 2019 president candidate. During his presidential campaign, he used all kind of ways to attract Islamic votes, such as by raising his Islamic identity, using Islamic approach to the people, promising that he would bring back Habib Rizieq, (Islamic scholar and leader of Islamic Defenders) once he wins the election, and using Islamic scholar to influence their followers. In addition, just like how Squealer spreads false information about Snowball, during the presidential election in Indonesia, multiple hoax spreads throughout Indonesia. The people from both sides of the candidates constantly attacked each other with false informations with the aim of influencing the people to have a bad perspective towards that specific candidate