Cultural References To Pigs - Literature and Film

Literature and Film

• In The Odyssey, the goddess Circe turns Odysseus's men into pigs.

• Zhu Bajie is a part human, part pig, literary character from the Chinese novel Journey to the West.

• The Learned Pig was a trained animal who appeared to be able to answer questions. It was referred to in numerous poems and cartoons.

• In George Orwell's allegorical novel Animal Farm, the central characters who represent different Soviet leaders are pigs.

• In Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus, the Poles are represented by pigs.

• In P. G. Wodehouse's comic stories set in Blandings Castle, the eccentric Lord Emsworth keeps a prize pig called the Empress of Blandings. The pig features prominently as a plot device, being frequently stolen, kidnapped or otherwise threatened.

• In William Golding's Lord of the Flies there is a character who is nicknamed Piggy because he is obese. Additionally, the pig is used to represent Beelzebub, depicted here as a boar's head on a stick ("lord of the flies" is the direct translation of בעל זבוב, Hebrew for Beelzebub).

• In the magical girl parody manga series Super Pig the main character can transform into a superpowered pink piglet.

• In the Saw films, the symbolism of pigs was used as a motif of an implicit theme relating to the dark side of human nature.

• Paul Shipton's book The Pig Scrolls features Gryllus, a former member of Odysseus' party who was transformed into a pig by Circe.

• The movie Razorback is about a killer hog/razorback.

• The famous English expression "damn pig-luck" applies when playing Minesweeper at work.

• In the Guy Ritchie movie Snatch the, character Brick Top claims that Pigs can be used as a means for disposing dead bodies, and that is the origin of the term "As greedy as a pig".

• The movie Layer Cake features a scene in which pigs are devouring remains of a human corpse to dispose of any possible evidence of murder

• In the slasher/drama film Hannibal, pigs are trained to eat Hannibal Lecter, however he escapes and turns them upon his captor and a henchman, who are both gorily devoured.

• In the 2006 Alfonso Cuarón film The Children of Men, a pig is anchored between the chimneys of Battersea Power Station in an accurate recreation of the cover of Pink Floyd's album Animals. The pig can be seen prominently on screen for several minutes.

• School days with a pig (ブタがいた教室) (2008) is a Japanese film about a teacher and his class students feed up a pig and send it to the meat factory.

• In Lloyd Alexander's fantasy books The Chronicles of Prydain one of the characters (Hen Wen) is a pig possessive of foresight and is used to see the future and locate mystical items such as The Black Cauldron.

• Arthur Leung's poem What the Pig Mama Says is about a pig mama's feeling about her three children being killed. It won the 3rd (global) of the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition 2008.

• Heraclitus referred to the preference pigs have for mud over clean water in the Fragments.

• In The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson, the protagonist is attacked by swine-creatures.

• In Hayao Miyazaki's animated film Spirited Away, the protagonist's parents are transformed into pigs, as punishment for eating "spirit food"; an example of their greed and gluttony. Hayao Miyazaki uses this theme to represent the consumerism and materialism he sees in modern-day Japan's society.

• In John Boorman's film Deliverance, one of the characters is ordered at gunpoint to "squeal like a pig" as he's being raped by a mountain man.

• In National Lampoon's Animal House, John "Bluto" Blutarsky (John Belushi) is eating untidily. Disgusted at the sight of Bluto's bad manners, a woman calls him "...a P-I-G pig!", which eventually leads to a food fight.