Is It Wrong to Call Someone a Pig?

I hate to wade into our cultural obsession with celebrities, but I thought it might be worth linking to an article in Salon about Alec Baldwin's now infamous phone message for his 11-year old daughter Ireland, whom he called a "rude, thoughtless little pig." Heather Havrilevsky's op-ed (here) asks the question "What's so wrong with name-calling? anyway. While it doesn't have much to do with pigs beyond a clever reference to Ralph and Piggy from Lord of the Flies, it was accompanied by this illustration of a pig-like child that called to mind the 1946 film Johnny Learns His Manners that I blogged about last week . I suppose it further testifies to the ease with which western culture uses its ideas of pigs to comment negatively about a person's supposed traits.

Johnny Learns His Manners (1946)

There are all sorts of treasures in the Prelinger Archive of ephemeral films, including the 1946 film Johnny Learns His Manners produced by Hugh Harman. While it is not a finished film, just an animatic of the storyboard with narration, it features some amazing and clever drawings of a boy who turns into a pig until his "good self" triumphs over his "bad self." To make a long story short, Johnny thinks manners and good behavior are for "sissies" until he turns into a pig and his mother (who doesn't seem too upset that her son has changed form, by the way) shows him film clips of soldiers and athletes. Realizing that these young men can be neat, play fair, and still be manly, Johnny changes his tune, cleaning up his room and demonstrating good sportsmanship on the baseball field. After all, as the narrator notes: "Any drip can be a pig, but it takes a smart guy not to be one." You can watch the whole film, all 18:07 of it, here.