The animal died!

the Bête is Mort E! is an album of Cartoon published in 1944. He was written by Victor Dancette and Jacques Zimmermann and was illustrated by Edmond-François Calvo.

the animal died! tells in two original booklets the Second world war and the fall of Hitler, in the form of animalist satire of the occupation.

It is one of the rare cartoons carried out under the occupation, with the Three Musketeers of the maquis of Marijac. Work is carried out shortly after the Blitz Wolf of Tex Avery, but it seems not very probable that the authors could see it. Calvo on the other hand car obviously its inspiration of the cartoons of Walt Disney.

Some, like Didier Pasamonik, see the first data base there to evoke the Shoah, while others regard it as a simplified vision of reality considering that the victims of the Nazi regime are only political opponents, the awakening of what was Shoah not having taken place at the exit of this cartoon. Continuing more particularly their revenge against certain tribes of peaceful animals than we lodge and with whom we had very often opened our doors to shelter them against the fury of the unchained Animal, the hordes of the Large wolf had begun the most atrocious plan of destruction of the rebellious races, dispersing the members of their tribes in remote areas, separating the women from their husbands, the children of their mother, thus aiming the total destruction of this inoffensive crowd which had made of another crime only that not to submit itself to the will of the Animal ”. --> the first clear reference to Shoah as a cartoon goes back to 1955, in an American cartoon entitled Master Race . In France, the first not-disputed evocation of Shoah in a cartoon goes back to 1985.

An extract

The indisputable, total, decisive defeat inflicted to the Barbarians by the Bisons and Dogs after their unloading, the splendid rising of Rabbits of our capital, the release of the nine tenth of our ground by the Bisons, the delivery of the country of the Lion cubs by Dogs, advance striking down and irresistible Bears through Cruelty, all these amazing events until we wait since more than one gloss and who precipitated, fulgurating, in the space of some moons, the knell and the domination of the Large Wolf sounded well.
The unchained Animal - whose reign was to last thousand years! was finally embanked after five years of fights, sufferings and sacrifices of all the peaceful animals. His very close anguish was guessed and already the mode which it had founded felt the corpse.

Two booklets

When the animal is unchained . Between Vésinet and Ménilmontant, in the mouth of the large wolf, with the face mask of the decorated pig, and without the authorization of the talkative fitchet, this album was designed and written by Victor Dancette and Jacques Zimmermann, and was illustrated by Calvo under the artistic director of Williams Péra. It was engraved and printed by Néogravure, during the third month of the Release.
When the animal is embanked , conceived under the occupation and realized in freedom, this second booklet was written by Victor Dancette under the calm shades of Vésinet, still illustrated by Calvo and completed to print in June 45 with the hope which the animal died well .

Republications left in 1977 at Futuropolis and 1995 at Gallimard. That of 1977 also comprises monochromic engravings on the atomic bomb, drawings carrying the claw of Calvo.

Mathieu Kassovitz announced the film adaptation of the album, in the form of animation (in production in 2005).

Transpositions

Animals

The various people implied in the war are represented by animals (between brackets, leaders appearing in the album):

Rabbits = French (" notre" national stork = Charles de Gaulle )

is also represented by frogs, the squirrels and the storks
'' [[Poland|Poles] are also Rabbits, which then gives the idea of the strategic agreements in place with France, as well as the imminence of the disaster of the rout, as the fate was thrown during the invasion of Poland]

the German Wolves = the (the Large Wolf = Adolf Hitler , the Decorated Pig = Hermann Göring , the talkative fitchet = Joseph Goebbels )

the Hyenas = the Italy NS (the Hyena with skin of she-wolf = Benito Mussolini )

the yellow Monkeys = the Japan board (the Large Monkey = Hirohito )

Dogs = British (the Prime Minister of Dogs = Winston Churchill )

American Bisons = (the Elected official of the Bisons = Franklin Roosevelt )

Kangaroos = Australian S

Polar bears = Soviet (the Large Bear = Stalin )

Lions = the Ethiopia NS (the King of the kings of the Animals = Hailé Sélassié )

Lion cubs = them Belgian

Cows = Dutch (visible through the possessions in Indonesia within the framework of their colonial empire)

Danish (with peeling Dalmatien) = Danish

Leopards = French colonial troops, particularly the Spahis, taking into account their atours.

the Imperial Cat = the Shah of Iran

Buffaloes and Dragons = Chinese

Toponyms

the country of the ten wounds = Egypt
Livarot = Line Maginot
the Cruelty = Large Germany of the IIIe Reich

the term “forces the feature” by amalgamating the Germanic people of the cruel invasions of Antiquity, inducing the idea opposed to the civilized values; this amalgam Revanchard persisted in the French media like in the teaching programs for small blond since the war of 1870.

Comments

the style wants to be popularizer and full with patriotic liveliness, bringing to the future generations (represented by small wire of the squirrel unijambist, avoided veteran of glory which acts as narrator throughout the account) a point of view without nuance on the horror of the conflict: the animal , it is the Nazisme and that which incarnated it.

the scenario makes the ellipse of the episode of Vichy in its description of the French context, to present under accents of glory the national recasting which is the watchword generalized of the moment of publication of this album (writing in 1944).

the representation of the sufferings lived by the occupied populations is very realistic, which corroborates the context in which this cartoon was designed, context in which these sufferings were still lived. The accent given on the episode of the Exodus and its pains shows that the authors put themselves at the tuning fork of their public, the French just released, in their delivering a means of catharsis. Thus, in a label, Calvo evokes the bleeding of the repairs poured with the title of the armistice, and shows Criquet S which carry helmets of the German army ruining corn harvests, helped in their task by tattooed Colorado beetles of swastika. The animals suffer crûment in this cartoon as much as those which lived the events, Calvo shows to the reader child the hardness of the war, energy at ends that Disney, in the field of the representation, would replace by an evocation except field.

Mocking remarks of the argumentations of the Propaganda: the elastic defense on the face of the East, represented by wolves of Wehrmacht in retirement held ones with the others by straps.

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