Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - Watership Down: Mythology & Alienation

Episode Date: February 20, 2022

The 2nd half of our talk about Watership Down! We discuss rabbit mythology, alienation, and why Hazel is a better Odysseus.patreon.com/swordsandsocialismFollow the show @SwordsNSocPodEmail us at [e-mail]: @Himbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69 patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

🎵 Bro. Are you fucking real, man? Come on. The rabbits in this book have some wicked mythology. It's good. The mythology is important to the story and it's actually really well constructed. You have a few characters that recur. You have Lord Frith, which is the sun. You have Prince Rainbow, who is a deity of some kind who serves under Lord

Frith and watches the world. It's not explained who Prince Rainbow is supposed to be. For some reason, I pictured Prince Rainbow as someone who would be like the child of the emperor of the universe from Katamari Damacy. Well, the name, it does sound like someone translated a Japanese character poorly into English. Yeah, I'm just imagining it's like the little dude from Katamari Damacy. He's Prince Rainbow.

Or someone Japanese was just trying to come up with something they thought sounded cool in English, but they aren't a native English speaker, so they don't realize how dumb it actually sounds in English. But again, it does make sense in the world, though, because obviously if God is the sun, and then there's rainbows in the sky because of the sun and the rain, like it makes sense. It's just a fun name.

Just every time you hear just imagine the music from Katamari Damacy playing. So you have him. You have a few other recurring characters, but the main one is the sort of deity, sort of just founder of rabbit kind is alachrara who is in classic sort of indigenous tradition from indigenous from many places be it the americas or africa places like that is a trickster god i mean i don't even remember offhand i probably should look to beforehand if certain cultures have a rabbit trickster as in their mythology i know some cult i mean the english kind of have it like briar rabbit or whatever but i mean i know some cultures had like foxes are often seen as i mean ravens or birds or tricksters sometimes it's it's apparently not particularly unusual. The Algonquin, and I don't know how to pronounce this, so I really apologize to anyone that's Native American,

but the Algonquin, I feel like Algonquin is probably the most Anglicanized version of that. And Ojibwe, the creator hair and trickster rabbit so it's not unusual to see that there there are apparently some of the cherokee the creek the alabama and the uchi as well apparently it's a very common native native american just just because rabbits are tricky little piece of shit uh yeah so again not particularly rare and richard adams definitely pulls from these sort of these traditions of i don't really want to call them creation myths but these myths of sort of like how things came to be and a lot of the stories of el ahara are just ways of explaining the world to the rabbits. You know, why rabbits run fast or why, you know, why rabbits have the enemies or why rabbits do this or do that.

A lot of them are explained through these mythological stories of their trickster god El Elahra Ra, and his sidekick, Rapscuddle. The one starting with this main one that comes off of what we're just talking about with people is the story of how rabbits got their special skills and why they got enemies. So at the beginning of creation, Lord Frith had made all the different animals, but they're all more or less the same. But Alachrara being the god he is, he fucked a lot and had a lot of kids and his kids were basically ate away all of the plants. They were overrunning the world. And so Lord Frith says, hey, man, could you like have less kids? And Elachra Ra says, I don't think so. I think we're the best. So I don't think I will.

And then Lord Frith says, well, if that's how it's going to be, something needs to keep you in line. And as such, he gave many of the other animals predatory instincts. And that is where the rabbits sort of got their myth that they have a thousand enemies the allele these because there's so many animals that will prey on rabbits um it's a fun little story when alachra realizes what's going down he tries to hide frith comes by and sees his butt sticking out of the ground so that's where he gets his blessing is on his butt and that's why rabbits can like run fast and stuff it's a fun little it's again it's a fun little sort of like creation myth yeah it's it's

pretty much how you'd expect a lot of them to go down too it's it's believable um like the thing that just makes me chuckle is that because it's a rabbit creation story myth that the rabbits are like okay listen we are we are the best we. We were so good that everyone else had to get bonuses in order to knock us down. Yeah, he had to power up all the other animals in the world to keep us under control. It's like if you pulled out all of the indicators that the story was written by a rabbit, you'd be like, this story was written by a rabbit. If someone tried to convince you this is the actual create the myth of the world they're like the rabbits were overrunning everything they were too powerful and you're like okay a rabbit like 10 rabbits in a trench coat pretending to

be a human okay alacrara thank you for that um this is though where i think at that one whereas alacrara runs away um we get one of like the hardest lines from the from the book, which is the one at the tagline for the movie poster, which was all all the world will be your enemy. Prince with a thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first, they must catch you. So good. Great line. So that's like as we were talking about, again, the humans essentially, you know,

overrunning the environment with no natural predators. The rabbits have that in their mythos. The fact that they themselves were overrunning the world. And so God had to create predators. Maybe now they're quietly waiting for Lord Frith to knock humans down a peg by making everything else an enemy to humanity look with like one of those big solar flares that people worry about that knock out electronics

would that be lord frith putting us in our place who knows be like oh come on just sit down partly the reason i brought these myths i think this is interesting because it's not this sort of mythological tradition isn't one you see in a lot of sort of white western countries surviving much anymore these sort of like animal-based creation myths or even trickster gods like we don't really have any trickster gods left over from like before the christianization of europe you know what i mean there's mean? Catholics should tell us, are there any trickster saints? Who's the saint of being a trickster?

The saint of being a little stinker. Who's the saint of being a little stinker? There's got to be one. There's saints for everything. The saint that tricked the devil. Yeah, like, you know, who's the saint of trickery? Of sleight of hand and then and gambits okay

i tried to unironically look up saint of trickery and it keeps giving me saint of truckers we don't need him right now there's truckers causing problems uh in canada we don't need the saint of truckers paul a man of trickery look we don't talk about paul i'm about to say that's literally one of the first thing that popped up was saint paul a man of trickery i'm like i'd argue yes but we're not gonna get into how my my personal gripes with paul no i just i think i feel like that's an interesting thing to have in a children's book that became popular specifically in england in the u.s because we don't in our culture don't

have these sort of animal-based mythos anymore i mean jesus was a little stinker sometimes he could be a little stinker to the devil he could be like i know bitch i got you um jesus the little stinker um but you know we typically as i did earlier in this episode, whenever I think of sort of an animal based like mythos of how the world came to be, my mind immediately goes to sort of like African folklore or Native American folklore, places that got to keep their like pre-Abrahamic mythos for a lot longer. And I just think it's interesting that he decided to sort of to go with it that way when he's you know when he's writing this book maybe we should have more animal-based myths let's bring him back hey let's bring back animal myths he will be like aren't you just talking about like aesop's fables no throw aesop in the ocean stop it anti-aesop podcast it's an anti-Greek podcast. It's an anti-Greek podcast. Plato, down with him.

No, I have no respect for Plato. That's for different reasons. The other thing I want to talk about here for the rest of this conversation was less sort of big theme stuff and more like authorship and like story writing type things. and more authorship and story writing type things. So I want to talk about the use of seers or prophets in the story. You know what I mean? Like how they're used. I want to talk about the rabbit language a little bit. You know, just sort of like choices,

sort of like using the animal mythos that Adams used to build like a good, to build a good story. So I want to talk about, speaking of the Greeks, let's talk about seers and prophets in Watership Down. Multiple characters have the power of, of, of prophecy. Fiverr specifically, but Hazen Thlay also does. And then we're seeing that Fiverr's, one of Fiverr's play also does and then we're seeing that fivers one of fivers kids also does so number one prophecy is real like foretelling the future is real and number two it can be inherited which cool my parents clearly didn't have it but so fiver is shown it's like the first thing that

happens is fiver has a vision of the future yeah. They see the sign that they can't read that says that a development is coming to this location. They're going to bulldoze this land. And they can't read it. But Fiverr's like, hmm, hmm, that's bad vibes. That sign, bad vibes. And he later has a premonition of everybody dying the field covered in blood yeah yeah all of fiverr's visions are vibes it's all because he's baby well he basically he doesn't his prophecy doesn't work in that he sees a thing exactly as it will happen. He essentially can like sort of look to the future and feel the vibes of a

thing. You get this all. It happens throughout the story, but I get it. One of its heaviest uses aside from the sort of inciting incident is in cowslips Warren. When everyone else was like, I don't know,

this place seems fine. There's a lot of good food. Everyone's healthy. Yeah. I've immediately is like, this place sucks. I can feel it. And they're like, what are you talking about? And he's like, it just feels wrong.

The roof is made of bones. And you're like, that's esoteric and incomprehensible. And he's like, I can't explain it to you. This place reeks of death. So Fiverr just immediately is like, this place feels horrible. And Fiverr is never, ever wrong. He is statistically correct. 100% of the time.

100% of the time. It just takes, the story is also one of people over time realizing this. Hazel's one of the first ones. Well, he knew because he'd been exposed to it for a long time. Yeah, but Hazel also didn't entirely believe him. Yeah. Until after the incident at the farm where he got shot. That was after he was like, I am never doubting Fiverr ever again.

Yeah, no, it's like I'm going to believe him. And then like Big am never doubting Fiverr ever again. Yeah, no, it's like, I'm going to believe him. And then like Bigwig comes to trust Fiverr and like they all essentially become to trust his visions. Hazenthley also has visions because she has a vision of what happens to Hazel, like riding in a hoodoo, which he does at the very end of the story. um but i was i was thinking about this because the author says in the intro that he specifically designed fiverr on the greek character of cassandra yeah so she's um i did a little bit more looking in cassandra was in troy before it fell and good place to be yeah she had premonitions of the trojan war and no one fucking believed her now the way i've seen it explained and this is just this is pulled straight from i'm not gonna be crazy and try and claim this is my own uh this is this is explained in the wiki but um the tolkien scholar john ratliff oh john rat calls adam's novel an ennead what if book

what if the seer cassandra fiverr had been believed and she and the company had fled troy uh before its destruction so and then oh then this this is this also goes into it like odysseus went to the land of the lotus eaters um that's that's that's cowslips that's cowslips um it's like this this these sort of things are they're kind of in there this is these very old references to the odyssey and the aeneid um whether or not they were intentional um but these same sort of story threads show up uh but yeah like john ratliff at the very least says that he perceives it as a a need what if if cassandra had been able to convince at least a handful of people to get the hell out of troy before it got burnt down which is interesting because i just offhandedly at the start of earlier

in this episode said that hazel was odysseus like that was that was like an offhanded comment and apparently i was intuitively sort of on to. It's bizarrely reversed if you think about it because in the Odyssey he's trying to get home to where he came from. Yeah. And Odysseus is also a piece of shit. Odysseus is objectively a worse person than Hazel. He also doesn't get – Hazel doesn't get everyone killed. He also doesn't get – Hazel doesn't get everyone killed. I don't know if we one day – because I have mixed feelings on Atwood now.

But we might one day might want to read the Penelope ad where she writes a book entirely from the perspective of Penelope during the events of the Odyssey. How much of a piece of shit Odysseus is. How much of a massive piece of shit Odysseus is. But so Hazel is much better than Odysseus yeah again also Hazel's entire crew doesn't die yes that also helps but there are a lot of the story beats of the same you've got you've got visions you've got seers you've got prophets you've got you know the events you go where like you lose a party member to this monster you've got to outwit this one you've got to come up with a new little trick to solve this problem well a classic adventure story i mean to be fair and i think this is something a lot of people like overstate when they talk about the odyssey and they're like

like this is why i hate people like carl jung so fucking much is because they're like ah everything goes back to these mythopoeic tales and this subconscious aspect of humanity and i'm like bro the odyssey was not the first one it's like just the one that we still it's just the one that was written down it's like how many of these tales went back thousands of years before yeah it's not millions back into neanderthalic times i'm referencing this one because it's just the one we know oh yeah cultural um but i just you know trust me if i if i if i if i knew offhand like i don't know some like ancient persian myth oh yeah i would just i would just use that one instead because again i told you this is an anti-Greek podcast. Yes, I do feel very deeply sad every time I think about the fact that the vast majority of ancient literature and epics that we have come almost entirely from Europe.

And almost entirely from the Greeks. And almost entirely from the Greeks or the Romans pretending to be the Greeks. And it's like – where's the ancient Sumerian mythos? We have the Epic of Gilgamesh. That's about it. That's true. But it's like – but it's like I guess you have things like the Epic of Gilgamesh. You have things like Journey to the West or something.

you have things like the Epic of Gilgamesh. You have things like Journey to the West or something. And you've got – we do have a few that – I think there are more that exist that we're just not aware of in the West because we're incredibly bad at learning other people's cultures. Me wishing that early Native Americans had had written language so we could have gotten that shit. I think there's also a lot you could get if you knew them from the Indian subcontinent.

Yeah. There's quite a lot. There are a lot of ancient stories, you know, within, you know, different like cultural groups in India, whether they be, you know, Hindu or Buddhist or various, you know, religious acts from even before that. You know what I mean? So there are mythos there.

We aren't just in America. We aren't aware of them because we don't read the Bhagavad Gita. You know what I mean? And because Europeans were like, we're going to burn down the archives of Tenochtitlan and lose thousands upon thousands of years. Everyone's like,

the Library of alexandria was a tragedy no no that was already copied most of that stuff was multiple copies everywhere that the place was already on the way out when it burnt out i mean this is a this is a side tangent but one point i want to make is something i've seen uh from other historians that when they're talking about europe and the dark ages about like not having stuff and that like the enlightenment started when like the Europeans got back into reading the Greeks, all those Greek sources existed the whole time. They were just all in Constantinople and none of the Europeans bothered to go

there to read them. All the Plato and Aristotle that like the enlightenment, like getting one off about, who didn't get rediscovered suddenly, it had been in Constantinople the whole time. Just nobody went there to read it. The only reason it got rediscovered in Europe was after the Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire, a bunch of the people who fled the fall of Constantinople brought those books with them to like florence or whatever but like they were there the whole time but it isn't just like that it's

like the the reason we call it the dark ages is because the people in the middle of the enlightenment and the renaissance and and the renaissance specifically just didn't they were like we're better now so that that's just the dark ages and you're like just gonna reference dr eleanor yunega's famous booty shorts that say that the dark age is because of a paucity of sources not because of a decline in technology yeah anyway going back to this book i do think it is interesting from like a structural perspective that this matches pretty closely what we think of as like sort of these greek you know sort of travel adventures right like you've got you've got your seers you've got your monsters to dodge you've got places to go you've got your

lotus eaters you know what i mean all these things are are going on throughout the entire story it is a d&D campaign. I wouldn't want to play Fiverr, though. You're pretty useless in combat. Hey, there's some characters that are fine like that. Yeah, I mean, depends on what kind of campaign you're running. If it's combat heavy, you're pretty useless. I'm going to be bored.

I think another story, just story writing thing I wanted to mention is that Adams makes heavy use of foreshadowing in the story. But like all good foreshadowing, you don't realize it is the first time you're reading through as a kid. like number one, all of the tales of a locker raw essentially happen right before that thing is going to happen to the characters in the story. Like they'll find an X, he finds an excuse for dandelion to tell a story. And then you're like, Oh,

well now this thing is going to happen in some form to our characters right now. The other foreshadowing he does, which I didn't even remember before this reread, is every chapter opens with a quote from some work or other, either a song or a novel or something. And every single one of those chapter opening quotes is telling you what is going to happen in that chapter. Every single time. I'm opening quotes is telling you what is going to happen in that chapter. Every single time. I'm surprised he managed to find so many that were distinctly about rabbits. Well, he also, one book he pulled from was just called The Secret Life of Rabbits.

I know. How is some of this specific? I nearly shouted out loud for you, specifically, Ketho, because one of them, the opening quote is from the brothers Karamazov in my head. All I heard was you from the previous episode saying it's always the brothers. It's back. It can't escape it. It's,

it's immutable. It's, it's completely, I had, I had a little bit of a bubble. I had a bit of a bubble burst to like a couple of weeks ago. I had talked to one of my mutuals about the episode of the dispossessed. I mean, not the dispossessed, sorry, the ones who walk away.

And yeah, we're not there yet, but the ones who walk away. And he had mentioned that the Brothers Karamazov, you know, it's fantastic. Even when you realize the fact that Dostoevsky was a raging anti-Semite. And you're like, oh. And he's like, no, he was a piece of shit. But The Brothers Karamazov is still one of the most important pieces of love I've ever written. I mean, he was a Russian in the late 1800s, of course. I mean, he was anti-Semitic.

Don't burst my bubble on Tolstoy. Don't up i don't don't tell me he probably was i don't know um are you googling it right now uh-huh i'm just googling did tolstoy hate jews was leo tolstoy oh that's too much to read i'm not gonna read that right anyway i did like almost shout for you like instinctively when I heard one of the chapters open with a quote from the Brothers Karamazov. I don't remember what the quote was, but- We had to read parts of the Brothers Karamazov for my Intro to Philosophy course back in college because there's just so much in there. It was multiple different passages and multiple different points throughout the- Oh, come on. As though you didn't take-

I didn't take any philosophy classes i took okay i took one i didn't take any philosophy classes i took political theory classes which is on on almost worse i did have to read freeman i took okay that is a tangent we're not ready to get into that's the tension i'm not you're ready to get a bonus episode it was a class yeah that'll be a bonus episode there's a class called modern american political thought oh god that sounds like cancer i'm just sorry it was oh it was horrible uh i read like i had to read milton i had to read milton friedman i read like michael walter it was i actually still have some of the books on the shelf over there we We're not talking about right now. Like no self-respecting person, like at some point in their life,

if they took that class, can't look back at that and be like, that was fine. I mean, I'm. At some point in the future, again, I'm getting you off the hook. Yeah. So the brothers, Adam starts every chapter with a quote, which again, I really like like that i think it's fun i think having a quote at the start of your chapters is fun and because he did take the

time to find ones from widely ranging sources to specifically describe what's going on like he he quotes the brothers karamazov he quotes like an american folk song he quotes? Like he quotes the Brothers Karamazov. He quotes like an American folk song. He quotes Shakespeare. He quotes some like ancient Greek stuff. Like he pulls his quotes from everywhere. And I just think it's really fun. It's an interesting way to like set your story up because then once you realize that's what's happening, it really gets your brain going because you read the quote and you're like oh how does that apply you know what i mean like for me even on this

going through this time even though i know the story like i'd read the quote and i'm like oh that's so cool well he i mean he was a particularly educated individual he went to university for modern history and then served in the army during World War II. Oh, he's in World War II. He does say in the intro that a number of the characters in the book are, and why he thinks he did such a good job at like putting character into all the rabbits is that they're based on people he actually knew.

So like Holly and Bigwig specifically are based on army officers that he knew when he was in the army. Yeah. So he's well read, um, obviously as the, uh, the quotes would imply.

Oh my goodness. He took into, he finished it in 1968, but couldn't get it published for four years. Yeah. He's been a while. He's written a few, a lot of books.

So this is when our listeners realize that I don't, my, my refusal to read extends even to doing prep for this episode. Cause I'm looking at the Wikipedia entry for watership down right now. And there's an entire section devoted to its similarities to the Odyssey and the Aeneid and these other things. And so you can tell that I didn't even read this to prep for the episode. So I was trying to see if it listed where some of the, you know, some of the more quotes. But again, I just, it's a random little authorship thing, the way you

conduct the story. I think it's fun. More books should have cryptic quotes at the beginning that give you a little hint as to what's to come, besides just the title of the chapter or something. I think more books should do that. Holy shit, there was a role-playing game. What? No. I don't know if I'll put this in the episode, but it says right here, Watership Down. Put it in there. Keep it in here. A Watership Down inspired the creation of Bunnies and Burrows,

an early role-playing game in which the main characters were talking rabbits published in 1976 by Fantasy Games Unlimited. It introduced several innovations to the role-playing game design, being the first game to allow players to have non-humanoid roles, as well as the first with detailed martial and skill systems.

The Fantasy Games Unlimited published a second edition in 1982. The game was modified and republished by Stephen Jackson Games as an official GURPS supplement in 1992. Oh, my God. We are playing the Watership Down RPG. Oh, my goodness. If we ever got popular enough to do streaming i would stream we'll be the water RPG it's called b&b oh that's that's beautiful

no more dnd for me i only play b and b oh my goodness the first role-playing game to allow non-humanoid play that is insane came out in 76 yeah for its time the game was considered by some to be light years ahead of the original dungeons and dragons suck it gary gygax i'm a rabbit oh my god that's why you a because of that you could end up playing as freaking whatever the hell you wanted in in third edition you could play as freaking crabs you could play as hey dnd dnd didn't get a rabbit race until like till last year yeah but i say and and one of my players is playing as one price the heron god yes so thank you, Richard Adams, for giving us a rabbit race as a D&D long after the game based on your book actually came out. Now, next time I play, I'm going to be a Herringon divination wizard.

You're just going to be Fiverr? I'm going to be Fiverr. I'm going to be nervous all the goddamn time, constantly. I'm going to be Bigwig. Just be like a rabbit a herring gone barbarian i mean let's you can't say what the what what is a brian jocks yeah uh don't confuse um i think that's all the major notes i wanted to hit well one thing we sort of thought of they wanted to circle back on that we didn't talk about at the time was we were talking about sort of the the existential like dread of cowslip's lotus eater warren something you brought up that

we didn't get to earlier was the idea that they don't do the elachara mythos anymore yeah no they actually they actually get upset when they bring it up like i mean it's part i think it's a little bit partially because uh the story might be a little on the nose for what's going on at the time um and it the story almost the story foreshadows exactly what this burrow is for what like what is going on here so it can be easy to interpret it as they were like, oh, they were aware and hated being reminded of it. But also, you know, this it's a story about rabbits being free. Yeah, it's a lot where Ross stands for the freedom and the cunning and the innovation of rabbits and their like their capacity to like sort of determine their own yeah you know their own lives and the living reality of the rabbits in this borough has

never been that ever like like if you think about it rabbits don't live very long like the they live like five years at like most if they're lucky and yeah and given that this place has constant death looming over top of it probably not probably none of them are're lucky and yeah and given that this place has constant death looming over top of it probably not probably none of them are that old and um so you end up in a situation where the ones that are there grew up there the ones that they are not the first ones to be in this borough they're not the earliest generation to be here in this warren so they they're separated enough from those myths they don't mean anything anymore because to them lived existence has nothing to do with the existence being described by those myths. It doesn't describe anything about their life.

Yeah, and that's good. yeah so removed from where they from like what they are or where they came from and it becomes so comfortable in or so inured to this new like lifestyle that they part of their on you know their sort of existential dread and ennui is the fact that they are sort of unmoored from their cultural mythos. You know, I mean, there's no grounding for them anymore. These stories of Alacrara are sort of like a binding force for rabbits. You know, it like reminds them all who they are and like what they do and what they can do. And I think this sort of becoming untethered from this sort of shared cultural history is part of why these rabbits are so strange and sad all the time. So these rabbits are, you know, disconnected from the mythos that all of the rabbits are aware of.

And it like adds to their sense of listlessness, right? Their sense of like, of weirdness. And I think that like white Americans tend to have this problem, this sort of being disconnected from a shared community. I don't want to say disconnection necessarily from like a cultural mythos, because that's where you get sort of close to weird reactionaries talking about returning I don't want to say disconnection necessarily from like a cultural mythos, because that's where you get sort of close to weird reactionaries talking about returning to tradition with Vs. Right. Like a nonsense. As though the Saxons had anything to do with it.

Yeah. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. So what I'm talking about, though, is in Watership Down, the stories of the Alachua Ra are sort of a binding force across all rabbits. And it helps remind them, you know, who they are, what they stand for. Even General Woundwort and even his rabbits over there would recognize. Yeah, recognize all that. I think white Americans can often fall prey to this problem.

I think I came about this when thinking about St. Patrick's Day. A lot of Americans love St. Patrick's Day, despite the fact that most of the people that love it aren't Irish at all. They just like to claim they are. Everyone knows- I'm 2.2% Irish. Everyone loves to claim they're one Irish ancestor. There's a lot that goes into that. But I think a lot of people gravitate to something like St. Patrick's Day because it represents a community, a cultural mythological community. Forgive me if I don't use exactly the right words here, but I think you know what I'm going for,

is that American society, American culture is just essentially capitalism writ large and doesn't have a lot, the sense of community that you see in a lot of immigrant communities who still have this sort of shared sense of being. Yeah. Like I, and I mean this in a community sense, not like an exclusive we are a culture sense. Well, yeah. It's a sense of community and looking out for each other. American culture doesn't have that. The only time this sort of thing actually gets into reactionary bubbles – because I feel like this would call – this you could just call kind of alienation writ large for the most part.

It is. Yeah, it is. And, and that's something that obviously leftists care a deep amount about, like, you know, one of the biggest critiques of capitalism by Marxists, especially is its alienating presence is what it does to alienate people from, you know, the things that they make and the things that they consume and the world that they're in writ large, you know, the things that they make and the things that they consume and the world that they're in writ large, you know, they get distanced from it in such a way that it's, it's both mentally and materially damaging to, to them and everyone around them. It's like,

it kind of whittles you down and, and reduces community bonds that kind of made people, people. And, and then you end up with situations like the Nazis arising out of that, where, you know, you get this distinct alienation and then people feel as though they don't have a place. They don't have a home, like they don't have a center. And then instead of addressing, and then really what it comes down to is what your diagnosis is you know it's like what you think is causing it is which side of that camp you end up falling on it's like either you think it's oh

because we aren't a pure culture like we used to do so another bullshit and then you end up you know wanting to purge all non-desirables because you think they're the problem or you start to realize that this heavily market-based capitalist way of life is not something that humanity was ever meant or made to be for you know as things get more and more totalized as things become more and more monopolized you end up in a situation where they cater and essentially try and morph culture to benefit them. You know, it's like Apple or Amazon morphing culture to make the next iPhone seem like it's the most important thing. Essentially replacing any community-based culture that used to be there with this worship of consumerism

for the most part. Yeah, and I think what you said, tying it back to the book here, the rabbits of Cowslip Sworn are alienated from being rabbits because they're no longer doing natural rabbit things, running from predators,

sourcing for food, whatever. They no longer do rabbit things. They're alienated from that. And so those cultural myths no longer hit for that. They're no longer important to them because they don't describe the reality they're in.

I feel like that's why white Americans have this tendency to like over celebrate their one Irish ancestor and go out in St. Patrick's day or like talk about, you know, proudly talk about the fact that they're one eighth German to two 30 seconds, you know, Swiss, whatever. You know what I mean? All that delineation, I think a lot of times comes from the fact that Americans are alienated from this communal sense of belonging

and like the sense of being human. So you have, you know, white people just like going all out for St. Patrick's Day. It's funny, like you can see it in almost the aesthetic design of America. Like if you think of – That it sucks? Well, yeah. Think of any given Midwest strip mall town like the one I'm currently living in.

Or the one I'm currently living in. And you're like, okay, look, here's a KFC and McDonald's and da-da-da-da-da-da. And then it's all along the strip, and then you go 10 states over to any other city in America, and you will see a street that looks exactly the fucking same. And you will see those not just in America, but in other countries too, because of the way that it attempts to homogenize itself for the sake of being able to accurately predict and model profit.

So just imagine that the world has been taken over by Cowslip's Warren. That's – And every Warren is now Cowslip's Warren. I mean that's what happens. And then anytime someone is like, I don't want to be there they're like what are you an idiot and then you know they'll kick the shit out of you yeah i just that was something i wanted to bring up was this sort of idea of sort of losing your sort of shared community but like i said that's kind of tricky water it's as soon as you talk about losing your shared culture,

you suddenly get a bunch of reactionaries who are like, yeah, I'm like, white culture. And you're like, white isn't a culture. Shut the fuck up. Yeah. Yeah, that especially. It's like, when they say white or European, I'm like, bro? European culture isn't a culture. You go ask. That's only

a thing Americans would say, because if you ask Europeans how they feel about other Europeans, you realize they are not the same it's like you realize the only reason there hasn't been world war three is because soccer exists right well soccer soccer in the european union in the out of bob yeah well yeah but it's like but it's like people in north italy hate people in southern italy and don't ask any of the italians how they feel about albanians it's like it's like come on like look at yugoslavia look at how many different groups existed in the former yugoslavia and that still fucking hate each other the balkans are a perfect example of why white culture isn't a thing it's not a thing well to be fair so we probably shouldn't use that argument

because some purists in the the white culture thing would tell you that Italians and Slavs are not white. I love those people. And the Irish are also not white, in quotation marks. Well, it's because they're Catholics. Catholics aren't white. You know that. Spanish aren't white either, clearly. Anyway, anyone who follows the Pope can't be white.

Jesus Christ. Anyway anyway this is something um i just wanted to sort of talk about that idea of culture and i feel like that americans by and large are in cowslips warren whether we like it or not our ceiling uh you could clearly say that this country is built out of wire and bones and that's not even like a like a stretch to say that uh do you have any final thoughts about watership down i don't know well do you want to talk about gender roles real quick yeah because this is something that i feel like if we don't touch on that that's not a good look how do we touch this subject are female rabbits people um or are they just things to be saved and then so this art yeah the book focuses largely on male rabbits like it just does the rabbit society is intensely

patriarchal and there is some sort of like gender essentialism going on in that like the the does do just don't generally have the autonomy or the agency that bucks do throughout the story in most of the warrants you go to they are viewed by the male rabbits as somewhat disposable yeah because they they're just like oh we'll sleep here and if one of them dies yeah they're like they lose one of like well that just happens i guess it's just a doe they literally say like it's just a doe so like the female rabbits are clearly seen as as as lesser and that's not good yeah however i do want to point out there is a little bit of gender rule breaking in that most of the warren most of the watership down warren was dug by the all-male rabbit cast because they didn't have any women to do it for them.

And Hazel was like, why don't we just dig it? And a bunch of the dudes were like, why I'm a dude. I don't dig. And Hazel was like, well, we don't have any women.

Do you have a better plan? And interestingly, the small runty rabbits, the less physically dominating ones, AKA Fiverr and Pipkin. Pipkin. Pipkin. Fiverr and Pipkin, the two least physically dominating of the rabbits, are also the two

to first take to doing women's work, a.k.a. digging burrows. So I feel like even in the fact that Hazel's warren like sort of defies the gender norms by having male rabbits dig it is interesting that it is spearheaded by the less physically dominating by the femboy rabbits i think it's i think it's i think it's important to note that unlike something like unlike something like if we read lord of the Rings or if we read something from like Beowulf or something where some of this can be easily kind of just kind of brushed off a little bit. Lord of the Rings doesn't do it that badly. But like in the case of this, remember this was 1972. We've talked a lot about Le Guin.

The Left Hand of Darkness came out three years before this book did. It's like we were deep in the middle of one of the big waves of feminism at the time i mean i think adams might be given a slight pass in that he is describing he i think would argue that he was probably trying to accurately describe how life goes in a rabbit warren it's possibly yes because in real life i think i think it is true that female rabbits do the digging if you have like rabbits in the wild i'm pretty sure that that is true that they do the digging because they need the burrows to have litters that is true so we can give him a slight pass on the fact that he is trying to accurately represent the the structure

of rabbit behavior as it were there's just not there's not a huge reason why he couldn't have just had a couple women come with them at the beginning well he couldn't have the women come with him at the beginning because then you'd lose the back like two chapters the back two sections of the book which is just the search for more women but i mean at least the female rabbits do have agency in that like heisenflay is the one that like makes the escape happen along with bigwig to some extent like she's the one that rounds up the other female rabbits and like makes them go she has a vision she's one of the ones that has suggestions like on their way back to the

Warren to start with, like for a short span, Heisenfly has agency for his first short span. Yeah. Definitively less than all the male rabbits. And she, and she does have, she's got fibrous future sight.

She does get that future sight. So there is that, but he definitively, he didn't try very hard to make the female rabbit do anything a little tiny bit because he was telling this to his daughters to his daughters yeah so again we can give him a little bit of a pass but also come on man yeah no this is 1972 you could do a little better what yeah i mean we started writing it in the 60s or whatever yes regardless like regardless. Regardless, yeah.

I guess at that point they hadn't had girl boss Margaret Thatcher yet. Don't. I think that's about it. But we did want to mention the gender role thing. They're like, it's not the best. It has a bit of a pass. But also, I also do want to bring up the fact that it's the little, tiny, less physically dominating rabbit. It's like, yeah, we could probably do women's work.

And Big Wig's like, why would I do that? And they're like, so you have somewhere to sleep? And he's like, okay, maybe that's a good idea. And they're not very good at it too. No, they're also not good at it because they have no practice. Anyway, I think that should be good for now. The only last thing I have to say is rooodoo is a fantastic fake word for a car. I'm going to start calling my car my Roodoo now.

Yeah, I'm going to get my Roodoo. It's a great onomatopoeia word. Man, my Roodoo just kicked its can on the side of the road. Sorry, I can't come into work. Yeah, my Roodoo won't start. It's too cold uh that is uh the end of this uh these episodes about watership down i do again want to say this book is really really good i enjoyed it quite a lot the story is intriguing it the writing is well done the characters are good it's a lot of fun

it's a classic for a reason it's pretty fun on audiobook too, whichever version you get. You can listen to Peter Capaldi say, It's very satisfying. Also, go watch the movie on YouTube. For now, you can watch the 78 movie on YouTube. The whole thing is on there on the channel for now. It helps if you've read the book before because they don't really explain anything.

But you do get to see the Black Rabbit of Inlay that way, and that's really cool the way they... Actually, no, that's technically supposed to be Bigwig and a snare. I looked at the description on Wikipedia. But you do get to see the Black Rabbit of Inlay and

El Ahrara, which is cool. But that is get to see the Black Rabbit of Inlay and El Ahara, which is cool. But that is going to be it for now. Thank you all for listening to these episodes. If you want to read ahead for the next series, our next series is going to be about another all-timer, another classic. We're going to be talking about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

by Philip K. Dick. Yeah, something that was definitely, unlike this novel, intentionally written to have a bunch of political and philosophical themes. Yeah, well, we're switching back again from fantasy to sci-fi. And I feel like, well,

if we've learned anything across the course of this podcast so far, it's that fantasy stories require us to extrapolate the politics. The sci-fi stories are like, please look at my politics. Like 85% of the time. Again. Again, fantasy oftentimes has a lot to do with reflection, with the past, with things like that. Obviously all in context of the present.

with reflection, with the past, with things like that. Obviously all in context of the present, but then sci-fi is something that's very intensely about the present. The present and the immediate future. It's just like, this is about now. It's like, this might be about the year 2250, but it doesn't matter. This is actually about the year 2022. Yeah.

So come back next time for Listen to Us, talk about Dwayne Dredd's dream of Electric Sheep, which I could be annoying and just call it Blade Runner the whole time. It's actually a completely separate book that he took that title from and just slapped it on a movie. It is, but I could just call it that the whole time to make people angry, but I won't. Well, when you read it, you'll realize there's a big gap there thank you thank you all for listening um if you want to follow us all of our social media links are down in the description and as always we do have a patreon

if you think we're interesting enough and you want to hear a bonus episode where we talk about things like can you actually do a good film adaption of a fantasy story or why star Wars is fantasy and not sci-fi. Or if you want to hear me complain about my, what political education I received in college, sign up for the Patreon. We only have one tier right now, $3.

You get one to two bonus episodes a month. It'll be fun. If there's more of you, we'll add more tiers. If I think of things to offer you. At the time. If I think of anything, if you want to pay more money,

I will figure out a way to do that. But it's $3. You get some bonus episodes. The first bonus episode should be out actually before this episode airs. So thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. Goodbye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bro. Are you fucking real man come on