Fred Patten Reviews: Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm

Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm

Author: Daniel J. Leab
Publisher: The Pennsylvania State University Press
ISBN 10: 0-271-02978-1

ISBN 13: 978-0-271-02978-8

George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the famous allegory about British farm animals whose attempt to create a republic based on animal equality is subverted by the pigs – “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” – became an instant literary classic in 1945. In 1954 it became the first British animated feature film.

There was gossip at the time that the movie could never have been made if America’s Central Intelligence Agency had not financed it. But the CIA stonewalled all requests for information, and those involved with the film refused to talk about it. The big question of scholars was whether the CIA simply provided money or exerted any editorial control over it. Were the Animal Farm film’s differences from Orwell’s book due to normal movie-studio rewriting, or did the CIA dictate the changes?

After fifty years, the CIA still refuses to release information, but many of the principals have died and their papers are now available. Professor of history Daniel Leab, who has written several books on World War II and Cold War espionage and propaganda, has spent years interviewing those involved with the filming and studying their papers, including fifty boxes of producer Louis de Rochemont’s uncataloged records at the American Heritage Center made available for research in 2004. This book is not only an in-depth study of the production of Britain’s first animated feature, but is a fascinating “warts and all” description of how the American and British governments tried to manipulate public opinion, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, during the 1950s.

Leab shows that making Animal Farm into a movie became a CIA project in 1950, with de Rochemont as producer because he had made several anti-Nazi and anti-Communist espionage dramas with FBI cooperation during the 1940s. De Rochemont, with the CIA’s approval, picked the British husband-wife animation studio of Halas & Batchelor to produce the film; it was never an independent movie production taken over by the CIA. “The financiers” requested script changes from the start, to turn Orwell’s allegory of a successful Socialist revolution perverted by a tyrannical ruling clique, into a strident sermon that Communism was inherently evil. Halas & Batchelor rejected some overly-blatant requests, such as giving the pig Napoleon a Stalinist pipe and moustache, but accepted those that were more subtle yet turned the story into strident anti-Communist propaganda. The biggest change, the ending where the other animals rise up to overthrow their pig oppressors, was indeed demanded by the CIA (it hoped to incite audiences in Eastern Europe to revolt against their Communist governments), but Halas & Batchelor had decided on their own that a more upbeat climax than Orwell’s bleak ending was needed to make the film commercially successful. Most critics agreed upon the film’s release.

So the CIA did finance Animal Farm, and did try with some success to make it more blatant propaganda than it might have been otherwise; but on the whole the finished film was pretty much as it would have been without the “investors”’ politically-motivated revisions. Leab buttresses his findings with almost fifty pages of academic notes and bibliographies.

Diego

Diego
Author: Jonah Winter
Illustrator: Jeanette Winter
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers; Bilingual edition (January 9, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0679919872
ISBN-13: 978-0679919872

Diego is an information packed little picture book that focuses on the young life of famed Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera.

The book tells the story of Diego as a little boy, struggling with school and how his parents supported him in his art. It also tells that he was a twin born in Guanajuato, Mexico and that his twin brother died before he reached age two. Diego was then sent to live with an old curandera in the hills for fear that he would take sick and die as well. While being separated from his parents caused some trauma, for the most part his life with Antonia the curandera was pretty magical and influenced his art for the rest of his life.

Both the author and the illustrator have done such a great job in teaching small children about this very important artist. Diego’s love of his culture and homeland shine through the book as does his social conscience. His tumultuous personal life is not addressed and personally, I don’t think it needs to be for a book that caters to such a young age. They’ll figure that out later because they’ll have a great interest in Diego after reading this book.

Each page has a great picture done in the style of a Diego Rivera painting with succinct sentences that convey much in both languages. Each page is lavishly illustrated in Diego’s own style. Paintings are bordered in Mexican style with birds and other tropical nuances. There are some great illustrations of Diego as a little boy holding a paintbrush.

The Spanish translation is clear and simple. It flows easily. I think the book is great learning tool for children trying to learn Spanish or English as well as learning about art and the artist himself. Jonah Winter is so eloquent in the short sentences that he compels the reader to like Diego, want to try to understand him and know more about him while Jeanette Winter’s lovely and lively illustrations show her love of the subject and suggest that she was very influenced by this artist. Her brilliant color choices also reflect Diego’s love of nature and of Mexico itself. Highly recommended!

Book description from the publisher:


Diego was a boy who loved to draw; he drew on everything, even the walls. In time, he would become known as one of the greatest muralists in all of Mexico—in all the world. "An accessible picture book about the life and work of Diego Rivera sounds like an oxymoron, but Winter and Winter succeed beyond belief," announced School Library Journal in a 1991 starred review. With spare, lyrical text—featured in both English and Spanish on every page—accompanying miniature murals done in Rivera's own vibrant style, this celebrated picture-book biography now makes a much deserved return to hardcover after a seven-year absence.

Ringside Seat to a Revolution

Title: Ringside Seat to a Revolution
Author: David Dorado Romo
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
ISBN: 03854253090-938317-91-1


Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez : 1983-1923 by David Dorado Romo

El Paso/Ciudad Juarez was a big deal in my family. It was where my great grandparents walked to from Abasolo, Guanajuato when they left Mexico trying to escape the Mexican Revolution. It is where my great grandmother Teresa waited, out of money for word from her husband, my Papa Tino (Florentino Gonzalez) who was then working in the orange fields of Piru, California. There are many family stories about Ciudad Juarez and I've often wondered what it was like back in that wild and crazy time. David Dorado Romo's incredible book takes me right there. I'm sitting in that bar, watching the revolution happen.

Ciudad Juarez was more than just my great-grandparents landing/waiting place. It was host to Pancho Villa, the Santa de Cabora, Teresita Urrea, photographers, spies, soldaderas, escapees, immigrants, the movie industry, journalists, bullfighters, feminists, military bands, deserters, armies, you name it – it was in Juarez. The author calls it "one of the most fascinating periods in the region's history." It's amazing. There are great stories like the one about El Paso's gringo mayor wearing silk underwear because he's afraid of Mexican lice. The book is replete with photos from the era. There are over 200 black and white photos that give this fascinating and a little surreal place surprising depth and humanity. There are newspaper clippings and timelines as well.

Pancho Villa is pervasive throughout the book, after all Juarez was his town. The author admits that it was hard to find a place that Pancho Villa hadn't been. The town was a favorite of Villa's wife Luz Corrales as well. There are photos of the most random and what I think are unthinkable things like white tourists posing as soldaderas for photos to send home to family back east. Weird. You don't think of a war that your family left home to get away from as entertainment. At least I don't. It's wild to me that so many people came to this town to just sit on grandstands and watch the war. It's crazy. I guess it's no more crazy than me sitting in front of my TV and watching a war movie or the nightly news, but still, reading this book is an eye opener.

Romo's writing is clear and profoundly descriptive. He brings to life the happenings and time so adeptly that you feel you are there. His writing draws you in and keeps you rapt. I loved it all, the pictures, the writing, the essay by John Reed. This book is an education. Some of the photos are hard to take, there are executions, a man dying alone in the street, some of the faces and expressions are so heart-wrenching that it hurts to look. The face of the Mexican Revolution is a weary, pained one that changed millions of lives and I for one, feel the pain of that time still. I'm a product of the change and upheaval it brought. I think we're still all so connected to our Mexican past, us Xicanos, connected and disconnected. We're a strange breed and this book helps fill the gaps we have, those disconnected little pieces and ties them to the connected parts. At least that's what it does for me. For those that aren't Xicano, it is still an amazing and educational book.

My favorite part of the book is the quote from Enrique Flores Magon that says, "We are aliens to no country, no are we aliens to any people on earth. The world is our country and all men are our countrymen. It is true that, by birth, we are Mexicans, but our minds are not so narrow, our vision not so pitifully small as to regard as aliend or enemies those who have been born under other skies."

About the Author:
David Dorado Romo, the son of Mexican immigrants, is an essayist, historian, musician and cultural activist. Ringside Seat to a Revolution is the result of his three-year exploration of archives detailing the cultural and political roots of the Mexican Revolution along la frontera. Romo received a degree in Judaic studies at Stanford University and has studied in Israel and Italy.

Las Soldaderas

Las Soldaderas: Women of the Mexican Revolution by Elena Poniatowska
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press http://www.cincopuntos.com/
ISBN: 1-933693-04-5

Originally published in Mexico as Las Soldaderas, a coedition of Ediciones ERA and Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, © copyright 1999


Anyone who knows me even just a bit knows that Elena Poniatowska is my favorite author and hero. She, along with Eduardo Galeano have opened my eyes over the years and have given me the strength to fight for indigenous rights, immigrant rights, and the lifelong battle to regain and preserve our lost traditions and culture. Her writings on the Mexico earthquake, Nothing, Nobody and on the 1968 massacre of unarmed student protestors at Tlateloco, Massacre in Mexico moved me greatly, changed how I viewed the world, my Chicanismo, put a fire in my soul and were my first introduction to her work. Those books made me a lifelong fan and avid reader of anything she writes. Imagine how excited I was to find this little book through Cinco Puntos Press!

The soldaderas of the Mexican Revolution have always fascinated me. There are stories in my family of them and I’ve always wanted to know more. Elizabeth Salas, in her excellent book Soldaderas in the Mexican Military fed some of my thirst for knowledge of these extraordinary women as did Ms. Poniatowska’s Hasta No Verte, Jesus Mio her biographical book about the experiences of an actual soldadera in the revolution. Still, I found myself wanting to know even more. I have dreams of the soldaderas, they want more, they want their stories to be out there, to be told. This book is one of the answers to them.

Ponitowska writes, “Without the soldaderas, there is no Mexican Revolution – they kept it alive and fertile like the earth.”

I believe her. Her narrative of the amazing contributions and tribulations of these valiant women really give you the feel of what it was like to march hungry, search a battlefield for your man, to really suffer as they did, to be fierce and indominiatble. I stand amazed at how much they did, how strong they were and how little they were valued by most people.



This little book is crammed with photos from the incredible collection of Agustin Victor Casasola in the Fototeca Nacional of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico. The incredible photos of the time give voice and face to these women. There are tenderness, anger, rage, sadness, determination, weariness, happiness, romance and excitement. There are young women with rifles, holding baskets of food, setting up camps. These women were EVERYWHERE in that revolution on all of the fighting sides.

I learned of Nellie Campobello, the only female novelist of the Revolution who was also a soldadera and was amazed that I had never heard of her. There are a lot of little details like that in the book, little bits of information that are tremendous in what light they give to the darkness of knowledge I have about them. Finding out about Nellie has me on a quest to find out more, to dig deeper, to go to Mexico and dig up her writings. I want to see for myself, read for myself a soldadera’s memories.

I could go on for days about this important little book, but I won’t. Run over to Cinco Puntos or your local independent bookstore like Tia Chucha’s or Imix and buy it now. You NEED this book. The Soldaderas need you to know them.

Massacre in Mexico

Writing the review for Paco Ignacio Taibo’s book, “68 made me start thinking about another book I read years ago on Tlatelolco – Elena Poniatowska’s masterpiece entitled Massacre in Mexico. I went over to my shelf and pulled it down to re-read it. Wow! It still packs a punch and makes a deep impact.

Elena Poniatowska’s chronicle of the 1968 massacre at Tlatelolco is an astounding and must read book. An estimated 325 unarmed students were shot and bayoneted that night by Mexican police and Army troops in what had been a peaceful protest about the lack of political freedom and the one-party government. La Plaza de las Tres Culturas has been called Mexico’s Tianamen Square. The President at the time was Gustavo Diaz Ordaz.

Ms. Poniatowska calls it a “collage of voices bearing historical witness” and truly it is. The book is packed with first person accounts and interviews from witnesses, students and people anxiously looking for their children, wives, husbands and friends. In startling black and white photos, Poniatowska takes us there, back in time to that bloody October. There are photos of bodies lying in pools of blood, of police hauling students off to jail, of people crying, in agony, in despair.

Be prepared to cry, to rage, to be haunted for this is a brutally honest look at what happened in Mexico City that day. The voices beg out for justice, they ask why and they grieve. Some of the stories are just so heartbreaking that I have to stop, catch my breath and wipe my eyes.

Octavio Paz wrote the touching forward to this amazing chronicle. This is another must for any library, especially a Chicano one.

Soldaderas in the Mexican Military by Elizabeth Salas

Elizabeth Salas’ Soldaderas in the Mexican Military: Myth and History is such a fascinating and useful book. I first came across it when I wanted to find out more about the Soldaderas in the Mexican Revolution. I was shocked to find that there wasn’t very much material on the subject except for brief mentions in books about the Mexican Revolution and of course songs like La Adelita. I was angry that there was so little material on a subject that I believed to be highly overlooked.

I bought the book, not expecting much after all the dead ends that I had found on this subject and was blown away by it’s detail and wealth of information.

Ms. Salas book is an excellent reference tool and an absorbing read. It sheds light on these amazing women who fought bravely for their country. Ms. Salas not only references the Mexican Revolution, she goes from pre-Conquest times and the warrior women who fought then to the Xicana activism of the 1970’s.

Soldaderas in the Mexican Military breaks the stereotype of the soldadera being a camp follower or a basket toting wife of a soldier. Sala’s tells of women who held high ranks in the military and even drew pension. She lets the reader know just how important these women were and how hard they fought. These women were spies, lieutenants, corporals and generals. They provided food, smuggled in arms and fought just as hard as any man. Viva la Mujer!