PIC: Zoomorphic Revolutionaries

[backupmemories]

Yes, yet another joke on Thermidorian propaganda. I promise to post the other two Vampire Hunter Rousseau pictures soon, they're more interesting. ^^;; maelicia and I were talking about various depictions of revolutionaries in Thermidorian propaganda, and the popular description of Maxime as a cat came up.

I commented that it's a good thing no one who had read that particular story had then gone onto a career in anime, or else we'd be faced with catboy!Robespierre and other such things...

Inevitably, I actually did draw it. ^^







I'm contemplating continuing this, because it takes me about two minutes to do each one. Any ideas? Snake!Marat? Something for Saint-Just? And what is Camille - some sort of pigeon???

Suggestions welcome, please. Accuracy to Thermidorian preferred for the joke value, but not required. ^__^

Comments

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Hm, really? That's too bad. But I feel then, in this case, the need to separate the author from his work--except, obviously, in the case of the English version. Music, after all, can't have political sympathies, and I agree largely with the sentiments expressed in the original French libretto, which, as I mention above, actually *does* say things like "to reign is an immense crime."

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

It's such a live political issue here that it's impossible for me to seperate the 'work' from the author's politics - and it just strikes me as truly bizarre that someone can premiere a work about the revolution in front of, for the financial benefit of, and as an active member of a group of people who stand for everything the revolution - in its Jacobin form - wanted to destroy: that audience would literally have been full of the people whose forebears were, with Pitt, the destroyers of that revolution.

(I know, I know, with all the things in the world today, my concern for fox-welfare on a small, cold, wet island seems trivial, but it's actually how I became politicised as a child - age 6 or 7, I couldn't understand why one social group was allowed to kill animals for 'sport' when any normal person would be imprisoned for cruelty...and then I found out about the class system..!)

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

The original French libretto isn't his work and is pretty Jacobin though (ie, not only pro-Revolution, but pro-regicide and recognizant of the necessity of the Terror and even of Robespierre's opposition to the war and his role in the abolition of slavery, so I don't feel particularly bad about liking it. Especially since the librettist wrote it for the bicentennial of the Revolution - though that didn't work out - and had no idea about the circumstances of its premiere (having died in 2004).

As for the issue of supporting Waters by paying for it--well, I've already done that, unfortunately, and ceasing to listen to it or selling it or breaking it wouldn't change that.

(But I completely understand your feelings about the putridness of class systems, and of England's especially. I share them--and feel that fox-hunting is barbaric.)

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Ah - I didn't know the libretto was by someone else - I suppose that explains a lot! Waters probably just thought 'revolution - that's kind-of big and cool and dramatic! I'll set it to music!' whilst knowing little about it, in the same way that Coldplay are doing at the moment...

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Exactly. It certainly explains the "(un)improvements" he made to the English version.