If you read George Orwell’s classic political satire Animal Farm in seventh grade, you probably remember the basic contours of the plot: tired of human rule, a group of well-intentioned house animals form their own egalitarian society, with disastrous results. Published in 1945, Animal Farm has a timeless (and, of course, relevant) message: It’s about how the drive to maintain power will always come at the expense of our basic morals.
That message, however, seems lost on many MAGA activists who were assigned the book in middle school (if they read it at all). After their failure to cancel Barbie or i They are not bad movies, conservatives have moved on to a new version of the film Animal Farm. (Animated film, directed by The Lord of the Rings star Andy Serkis, opens May 1).
The problem, however, is that they have failed to reach consensus on what the real message is Animal Farm is something.
The cycle of right-wing outrage over a movie featuring Seth Rogen making fart jokes appears to have been fueled by activists like Emily Saves America and Riley Gaines, who recently posted a trailer for the movie. In an April 28 X post, Gaines tweeted that the film was “amazingly well done. They do an excellent job of reminding viewers that Marxism is always wrong and will always fail.” He tweeted #AnimalFarmPartner, leading people to speculate that the position was the result of a paid partnership between him and Angel Studios, the Utah-based entertainment company that distributed the film, which was also behind religious blockbusters. The Sound of Freedom again King of Kings.
Many on the left and right found Gaines’ tweet odd, in part because of the season Animal Farm it is certainly a critique of Stalinism, and clearly not a blanket endorsement of capitalist ideology. The human farm owner is a capitalist, and after being overthrown, the power-hungry pigs imitate his behavior, adopting human clothing and profiting from the labor of other farm animals. The book is ultimately less a critique of certain systems of governance than a critique of humanity’s lust for power and blind adherence to ideals.
In a later adaptation, Serkis reworked the plot by adding a selfish human character (played by Glenn Close) who wants to buy a farm, describing the film to USA Today as “about tyranny and the power of corruption and our response to that”—a message that, in theory at least, would resonate with audiences in 2026.
However, it obviously didn’t sit well with many supporters of Gaines’ views, who attacked him for being a Marxist shill. “Promoting communism is the new paid gay,” right-wing broadcaster Tim Pool said on Twitter. Earlier this month, he wrote that he had turned down an offer from Angel Studios to promote the film because it was “high-level communism and anti-capitalism.” Promoter Peachy Keenan also admired the film, calling it “reduced social propaganda.”
Inability to reach a consensus on the true message of youth Animal Farm A film may be a reflection of its artistic merit, or lack thereof. (Indeed, the film currently has a 23 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) But it’s also often a reflection of how little media information exists in our current information environment—a story that, to be fair, is far from right. Unless the moral message of a work of fiction is clearly and consistently telegraphed throughout, there seems to be a total inability to accept ambiguity or contradiction, or to acknowledge that many ideas can be good or bad at the same time.
Although middle school students can quickly grasp the takeaways from animal farm, it says something that high-level political analysts cannot. To be fair, Orwell himself, sought after right and left during his lifetime and beyond, would probably have appreciated the confusion his novel created—even if he might not have appreciated Seth Rogen’s humor.
