Animal Planet - Hardcover

Bradfield, Scott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312134282 ISBN 13: 9780312134280

Publisher: Picador USA, 1995

Synopsis

On Animal Planet, animals possess the ability to talk as well as any human. They rebel against their human keepers, breaking out of zoos and leaving homes to live as independent beings. For most animals, however, freedom means working a steady job (usually for human bosses) and enjoying the comforts and complacencies of human life.
Into this mix flies Charlie the Crow, rabble-rouser and avian revolutionary, whose mission it is to wean animals from the bottle of contemporary culture. But the animals find that freedom depends on who's defining it, and Charlie becomes a media celebrity - appearing on talk shows to promote books, movies, and other endorsement opportunities. As the revolution is co-opted by savvy profiteers, like the marketing maven Bunny Fairchild, Charlie goes underground, traveling with his reluctant pal Buster the Penguin (who longs for his domestic life back in Antarctica), pursued by an assortment of animal activists, CIA and military operatives, reporters, movie moguls, publishers, and others. Everyone wants a piece of Charlie's radical action...even if they have to kill him to get it.

About this title

Reviews

Comparisons to Animal Farm may inevitably trail this novel, but this arch fable offers neither the political complexity nor the biting social satire of Orwell's classic. Instead, the narrative wanders uneasily between farce and social criticism, settling comfortably into neither. Here, the instigator of animal revolution is one Charlie the Crow, whose incendiary political commentary rouses the inmates of a London zoo to riot. ("You can't expect the public to continue paying your bills forever," the animals are told.) The disturbance is quelled, but the animals' consciousness has been raised; heeding raucous Charlie's exhortation to "be goddamn articulate," they learn to speak in words, and they venture into the human world, taking jobs and establishing relationships across species boundaries. Charlie flees to Antarctica, where in the company of Buster the Penguin, Rick the Husky and Muk Luk, a sexually aggressive Eskimo, he tries to warn his fellow creatures about the dangers of human politics. Meanwhile, marketing agent Bunny Fairchild sells the rights for Charlie's story for millions; a wildebeest named Scaramangus disseminates anti-Charlie propaganda; and renegade soldiers set out to hunt down Charlie and his friends. Instead of genuinely inventive satire, Bradfield (What's Wrong with America) settles for a series of cheap jokes, launching broadsides at numerous targets but hitting very few.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In Bradfield's last novel, What's Wrong with America , a Southern California grandma took control over her own life by killing her husband (and others). Here he imagines a wider rebellion: an animal revolt against human oppression. When animal-rights activists open the London Zoo's cages, Charlie the Crow convinces the zoo's puzzled denizens "we are all different . . . yet all somehow the same." The humans respond with tear gas and tranquilizer darts, then auction off welfare-dependent zoo animals as au pairs, field laborers, and corporate symbols. The military chases Charlie to Antarctica, and the crow eludes them with the help of a penguin, a husky, and an Eskimo woman relocated to the icy continent by public housing. By the time the fugitives reach Tierra del Fuego, Worldco Entertainment considers Charlie and the animal liberation movement a High Marketing Concept, and the celebrity machine is in overdrive. It's not Animal Farm, but Bradfield's Animal Planet is a funny, penetrating satire: it's so hard to sustain imagination and solidarity and hope in a media-mad world where "the revolution will be commodified." Mary Carroll

At first glance, Bradfield's novel about a worldwide wildlife uprising seems to be an update of Orwell's Animal Farm. Yet its sharp critique of mass marketing and the "culture industry" puts it closer to 1984?the difference being that it's 1995 and Big Brother isn't watching you; rather?as critic Mark Crispin Miller has put it?"Big Brother is you watching." Charlie, chatty and sardonic for a crow, foments a rebellion at the London Zoo. The animals rise up, but Charlie's credibility is coopted by his involvement in a merchandising deal with media giant Worldco, and his role is usurped by the mysterious Mr. Big, a masked wildebeast who orchestrates the revolution and the wholesale slaughter of humans that follow. Charlie becomes an enemy of the people, hunted both by the newly liberated animals and the remnants of the human government. The supporting cast?Bunny, the human literary agent who represents Charlie; Wanda, a lovelorn gorilla who tries to assimilate into the human population with mixed results; and Buster, a penguin and Charlie's best friend, who tries to learn how to fly?are as much fun as the send-up of modern culture. A fine, on-target satire in the tradition of Swift and Orwell. Recommended for popular fiction collections.?Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador USA
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312134282
• ISBN 13: 9780312134280
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 231