The Meaning of Watership Down & The Plague Dogs
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- čas přidán 28. 05. 2023
- [Remaster - Originally Published 4/16/2021]
Watership Down and The Plague Dogs share a central element in their confrontation with the frailty of life, and the inevitability of death. Here, I’ll be embarking on a critical examination of Richard Adams’ literary masterpieces and their brilliant animated adaptations.
Note: Portions of this script originally appeared in my review, “Watership Down by Richard Adams: A 50th Anniversary Retrospective.”
furrybookreview.com/watership...
If you would like to see more videos from me, please consider supporting my channel on Patreon:
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And if you are interested in finding more xenofiction, my debut novel, Winter Without End, is now available for purchase from Fenris Publishing in both ebook and paperback format:
www.fenrispublishing.com/winter
A post-apocalyptic story told through the eyes of a dog, Winter Without End follows a Labrador retriever who, after being abandoned by his human family in the aftermath of a devastating pandemic, makes an uneasy alliance with a wounded wolf in order to survive.
Additionally, two of my short stories, “Mark of the Stranger” and “The Merchant and the Martyr,” can be found in volumes 1 and 2 of our ongoing anthropomorphic historical fiction anthology, available here:
Volume 1 (“When the World Was Young”): makyo-ink.square.site/product...
Volume 2 (“In the Light of the Dawn”): makyo-ink.square.site/product...
Original Upload: • Video
The idea that life is meaningless because it's mostly suffering and boredom, is like the idea that I am a pond because I'm 70% water.
Yes, we are all sapient walking ponds.😂
I don't think the contention is that an overwhelming preponderance of suffering and boredom make life "meaningless," but rather, that it makes life more bad than good.
I kinda like this comment lol
It must be horrifying beyond description to find out that literally every friend you've known was killed in a war.
At least it was a war his countrymen won. Imagine knowing all your friends died in Afghanistan, and then the Nov 3rd Coup happens and a dementia patient just surrenders post-victory and gets all the allies you made killed, too.
War is ugly and we need to go back to a time when leaders actually had to appear present in the battle field.
@@fnamelname9077Surrender is wise when one cannot win.
Why is this so hard to grasp while all of y'all scapegoat the president?
@Sara3346 hard to grasp?
Fucks sake I've never seen such a tone deaf statement. All war is hell and all soldiers suffer, but you want to excuse a member of the government that engaged in it and belittle someone's opinion that perhaps it wasn't needed? I've known men who died in that graveyard of empires. And I loathe to my bones every single person who decided it was expedient to deploy
And they did so with the blessing of fools like you, who will think it unfair to judge the actor for his role now, when his role only ever led him thus. As if he would look to you for approval.
Disgusting
@@fnamelname9077 Afghanistan is called The Graveyard of Empires for a reason.
Plague Dogs is the only film I know where there’s a moment of pure joy and relief right before a sudden gut wrenching jumpscare of concentrated misery.
alright go off shakespeare ❤️🔥
Yeah that scene broke me when I first saw it because it's an instance of the right time and place falling in line... and then a random innocent variable comes along like Snitter accidentally stepping on the trigger and it just turns to ash in his mouth
The end of evangelion (movie) does this to exponentially more extends degree with the death of Asuka
@@chistinelanethat movie fucked me up for months upon first viewing. I haven’t watched it since, and my heart still went into the pit of stomach reading your comment.
Plague dogs and watership down will forever be dear to me. We need stories to help us ponder the meaning of this great mystery called life.
The Plague Dogs was a movie I saw too young and it haunts me to this day. It is an unrelenting roller coaster of misery, inflicted upon wholesomeness personified. Every time you think they might catch a break, something goes horribly wrong. I just want to hug them both close. It's one of those films that is very much worth a watch, but I don't think I will ever watch it again. I don't need to, it stays with me.
My favorite ttrpg is Bunnies and Burroughs, heavily inspired by Watership Down. It perfectly captures what it means to be a rabbit, the fear, the specture of death being an additional companion on your adventures. It embodies memento mori to a tee. Yet, the beauty of the game is the role-playing, players conversing and reminiscing on fallen friends, and the beautiful countryside of the story.
There’s another TTRPG inspired by Watership Down and Bunnies and Burroughs called The Warren.
“I wanted to be a good dog. I would have done anything for them. Anything but the metal water.” Destroys me everytime
I'm only half-way through but I must stop to compliment you on your voicing of Rowf and Snitter. It's so movie accurate it's almost scary. Oh and you have me in tears with the retelling of their story. Every. Damn. Time.
I finally read The Plague Dogs about six months ago after watching a few of your videos. As I read, I told my friend about the book and he asked me "Why would you ever read such a depressing book?"
I honestly don't know if I have a good answer for it. Richard Adams' writing is just so compelling, and I think this video really gets at why
My answer; catharsis. We read it because we wish to confront reality, wield it in our hands, and armor ourselves against the harsh wall. Life is not inherently pleasant, or joyous. Neither is it inherently terrible. Life simply is. When we confront these darker ideas and themes in fiction, we may better avoid the downfall that comes from listening to charlatans who try and convince us that there is a way to live without avoiding it.
This confrontation is the path to epiphany, and enlightenment.
I never knew snitters owner was actually alive, that just makes the ending all the more sad
He's not, the editor just made Adams alter the ending
The movies 'animal farm', 'The plague dogs', 'watership down' were played at afternoon bc the station thought "it is a cartoon" - and I am greatful for that. I was 10-12 years and it changes my life for the better, bc I grew up in a narcisstic family and it was my first start into freedom thinking.
I've recently read Watership Down for the first time, and I have to say the Black Rabbit of Inle was probably the most terrifying incarnation of death I've come across at 34 years old. I don't think I would be able to tell why, though.
I read the book and watched the film religiously as a young Gen x kid in the early 80s - I loved mythology, and the figure of the Black Rabbit was mesmerizing as a grim reaper figure or Hades or the Pardoner (Canterbury tales) or the Green Knight... The end of the film is a bit different from the book as it is shows clearly the Black Rabbit himself coming for Hazel. That felt so beautifully correct though (not trickster legend el-ahrairah) as the figure of Death himself leads heroic Hazel into the “land of moonrise” and Hazel, so wise yet humble, joins the Black Rabbit’s owsla
@@AleisterCrowleyMagus I finally watched the film and I'd say both versions are interesting and have totally different conotations. El-ahrairah welcoming Hazel into death suggests Hazel is one of his peer, a hero by Adams' rabbits standard for using cunning and trickery in order to have its people survive and thrive, and implies some sort of heroic Elysium where such heroic figures go after death. The Black Rabbit picking him suggests Hazel is a rabbit among many other and he has to welcome the inevitability of death when the time is right and not before. Both versions are very in line with the book's themes, but considering there wasn't so much room for El-ahrairah in the movie because of the lack of storytelling scenes (which makes it weird that Hazel still uses the line about poor Dandelion being the one who'll tell their story, considering he was pretty much an extra in this version), the Black Rabbit makes far more sense here.
At the end of the Plague Dogs, I like to think Snitter met again with the Hunter, who meets him and Ralph happily.
Arthur Shopenhower sounds like had clinical depression, it’s not actually normal to be bored when you’re not suffering and to be filled with total emptiness instead of a winding, hilly road with varying highs and lows
You’ve been feeling tired…haven’t you?
If you’re ready… we might go along now.
just settling in to watch this and glanced at the Content warning- As a person with pretty severe depression, I had to come thank you explicitly for warning about nihilism and pessimism specifically.
people complain about trigger warnings a lot, but having them there makes videos like this so much more accessible for someone like me.
P.S.: speaking of accessibility, I would love to see manual captions on your videos! personally I prefer them and always use them when available (I can sort of scrape by without subtitles, but not everyone can do the same! 💜)
This is my third time watching this video (twice with the original, once with the remaster) and I will never not cry to it. I have never read The Plague Dogs, yet your descriptions and passion for the book move me to tears each time, and the novel has earned a special place in my heart. Thanks to all the work and justice you do for showing the world these wonderful xenofiction novels, in a way that isn't only about their shock value.
Finally, the reason to listen to this again I've been waiting for
You don’t need a reason! Watch it 20 times lol I know I almost have
I love the Plague Dogs novel and film. Truly my favourite book I’ve ever read. Thank you for making a video on it! ❤️
"while it is one thing to read about violence... it is another to have it presented in graphic visual detail". I find this an interesting take since my imagination as a child was so vivid that any movie/adaptation seemed visually weak and tame, at least now I know why books are often much more graphic than films, and I don't want to lose that, films are too censored, but I just want to point out that it's not always the case visual media hits harder
The intro narrative of Watership Down is unforgettable to me.
For years, I've been a... Positive nihilist, I guess? No religious belief, extreme determinism as world view, and that life nor anything else has any inherent meaning to find/discover. But that doesn't mean that nothing *has* meaning-- not inherent of itself, but placed on it by people. The only thing important in this world is that shared experience. Even if animals don't understand concepts like "meaning" in the same way as people do, they still have enough awareness that they're covered by my philosophy, too, at least as far as my goal being to reduce suffering in the world. Bc as much as I struggle with depression, I don't think existence itself is to suffer, necessarily.
Suffering is meaningful, just not intelligent.
It pushes us to change.
Fear is pain too, processed in the same area of the brain.
I don't get why in the producers of the American release of The Plague Dogs felt the need to cut those few extra seconds. Usually American movies are ones to tack on a hokey ending, but instead they cut the ending that let the viewer ponder how it should end (similar to Inception for more recent movies).
Maybe they thought American viewers (especially children) didn't like movies that were not clear cut?
If I recall correctly, they trimmed about 15 minutes total from the movie for the American release, and subsequent releases have added parts, but not all, of this material back in. Between 1982, when the movie was released in the UK, and 1984, when they secured distribution in the US (it took more time because they were an indie film, I think?), the US introduced the PG-13 rating, and the MPAA was going to rate The Plague Dogs 'R' if certain scenes were not cut. Additionally, the 100 minute runtime was deemed too long by their distributer, who wanted it under 90 minutes. Ironically the shotgun scene stayed in, but the shot of the hunter's body was removed, or at least shown more briefly. Most of the other cuts were just minor bits with the trio wandering, or one of them hunting frogs (the score for this one still appears on the soundtrack), but I will never understand why they felt those last few seconds needed to be cut.
@@CardinalWest good to know the details. Perhaps it was just one of the things they forgot to add back in due to all the different cuts. Thanks for the info!
I don't know how this video could've been made any better, but I'm excited to dive into it, yet again.
Thank you.
Rowf and Snitter got to their island... whatever that truly meant
Another amazing analytical video, it’s astounding how much thought and research goes into your work!
Woah, I did not expect to find such a well-made and comprehensive analysis of this subject matter. Thank you for making this.
i sincerely want to thank you for opening my eyes to the world of xenofiction and especially to the works of richard adams
i’ve always enjoyed reading stories told from an animal’s perspective but i didn’t know much about the genre and never looked deeper than the surface level
however, after watching (or rather binging) your videos my interest has peaked, and richard adams has become one of my favorite authors. i recently finished “watership down”, rewatched the movie and now rewatching this video, feeling extremely grateful for stumbling upon this channel one day
This is my favorite video of yours, already strong enough to make me cry super hard, and to see a remaster of it is incredible. You are easily my favorite creator, and I commend your ability to make a good video.
YOOOO SO EXCITED ABOUT YOUR BOOK!! Can't wait to read it!!! 😭😭😭😭😭💕💕💕
I never thought Witcher ambiance music would fit in a breakdown of Watership Down, but you did it!
Always a pleasure to listen to you talk. Thank you so much for these videos, your passion shines and your voice is soothing yet gripping. Your little funny edits and references always make me smile. Keep doing you 🩷
this video encompasses everything i adore about richard adams' work- and your dedication and passion about it shines through. excited to rewatch it again! thank you for sharing your videos!
i hate pessimism, i believe there is much more in the universe than human beings know, human beings are miserable compared to the magnitude of the universe! we can be happy, we can follow our dreams and learn to admire the smallest beauties in life ❤
What a wonderful introduction to you and your work. This is a beautiful piece and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I look forward to watching more of your videos.
An incredibly excellent video on some of my favorite novels! Also your reading of the passages in both Watership Down and Plague Dogs are excellent! If you ever released a full reading/ audiobook of the two books, I would love to hear it!
Hype dude, I've been waiting for this one. And a full 2 hours too! Good job Cardinal.
Edit: I've finished it, and it really did live up to my expectations. This was a really good video, on some really good books.
I loved this video the first time, I was so happy to see it again, I'm glad you got to fix what you felt needed fixing!
Excellent work, as always.
That was a treat. Thank you 🥲
I never read Plague Dogs. Watched it a few times, but never read it. I've heard of lots of people crying when they see the movie, I never have, but the excerpts from the book seem so much more haunting than the already haunting movie. The personification of hope, and it's enemy acceptance, as two dogs fighting for survival in an inhospitable landscape has to actually be the most terrifying thing I have ever had narrated to me.
You do such a great job voicing the Plague Dogs characters, I would LOVE a reading from you
This was absolutely incredible, thank you for your work!
I gotta say seeing warrior cats there as an offshoot/inspiration of Watership Down, is odd but also oddly fitting. Especially when you look at the first arc of the series.
Nice. I recently checked out Watership down and loved it. So look forward to your critique of it.
What a fantastic film, thank you for taking the time to research and explain these incredible stories so well. Am very keen to read the actual books now
Cowslip's warren reminded me of Brave New World, how the characters choose between being human and being happy.
Had a chance to read your book, finally, when I met up with Fenris publishing at a local convention. I really enjoyed it!
Watership down deeply scared me as a Child.. not so much the black rabbit which I learnt to embrace, but the vision of the blood red meadow Fiver sees.. never left my mind.
This video was the reason I found your channel and it's one of my favorites. Good to see you remastering them!
Doing one of my re-reads of Watership Down after watching this video made me really enjoy the book in a new angle; until then I focused on the Journey, not in the subject of Death, so this angle sure made me re-consider many scenes in a new light.
As always, love from Argentina 🇦🇷
Interesting video. Just so you know, people form the Lake District aren't geordies, in fact only the Tod is geordie. Geordies are from tyneside as you said which is in the north east, lakes are cumbria in the north west. So the Sheep dog et al. are speaking with cumbrian accent/dialect, not geordie. Apparently the Tod drops a line about having crossed the Pennines (the mountains seperating east from west), which explains his geordie accent.
Or if you're like me it gives you PTSD at age 12.
reupload?? Best video on watership down and plague dogs that’s on youtube
cant wait to watch this
The voice acting for the dialogue readings in this video was pretty good; save, perhaps, the performance for Rowf.
Well, didn't think I'd be crying on the way to work today >
i was traumatized bywatershipdown but plague dogs made me weep nerly constantly.
The Animals of farthing wood A 100 Year Celebration
Ths v9de0 broke me for a bit, i had to remind myself its just a movie and i hugged my dogs
I'm SO glad you finally covered Watership Down and Plague Dogs! They were my first ventures into Xenofiction, and they're absolutely wonderful works, so I'm not surprised you'd cover them eventually.
If you're hunting more lovely Xenofiction titles for future videos, I would like to suggest the Wings of Fire, and Warrior Cats book series. Warrior Cats has 40+ books, while Wings of Fire has 17. While both titles are directed towards younger readers, they still both contain rich lore and species-relevant customs. I think you'd love em!
I was in grade 9 when this book showed up in the school library in '79. Could not get enough of it. There was only one copy, and I had it out for 4 months straight. The day after I returned it, it was stolen, and the reason I know that was because the thief brought his or her car to the auto shop class I was taking, and I just happened to see it on the console when I was working on that car. I was so ticked off when I heard it had been stolen, because I was the last person to see it before it vanished. Probably read that book 30 times before I returned it (this was before anyone even recognised Asperger's...}. I wanted to remember that story because I lived so far out in the sticks that the only critters we saw on a regular basis was moose... and finding a copy of it was near impossible...
Half a year later I was given a copy of the paperback, and had never felt so grateful as I did that day. I wasn't into birthday gifts before, but after that...
And I still have it. And all the others, too.
Thank you for this presentation! It brought back a lot of welcome memories for me!
thanks
Why was the original video unlisted?
Why do you keep taking down your videos and reuploading them?
My oldest videos were made on a laptop with a cheap mic and barebones audio editing software, and very little personal knowledge on how to edit, so I want to update them to a proper quality now that I've got the resources, knowledge, and a bigger presence. Also, there are plenty of little changes I wanted to make to a lot of the scripts, and this gives me the opportunity to make those. Additionally, a lot of those videos had problems with claims, blocks, restrictions, etc. because I was much less careful with using copyrighted music and lengthy segments of movies and shows back then, so some of them had to be set to private to avoid problems for the channel as a whole.
I'm almost done with the process now, though, and I have several new videos in the works as well. In a few weeks, a remastered version of the Zuko video should be out (it had been hit with restrictions and claims, and recently got fully blocked for using extended segments of the show). Beyond that, the only other remaster I want to do is the NAX video (which I won't be releasing until early next year, because I have so many other books and authors I want to talk about in it), and possibly a very short video revisiting the Animals of Farthing Wood at some point.
If you want to see the original versions, as well as the comments on them, I put links to the original videos in the bottom of the description of the remasters.
Cheers for the explanation 🙌
@@CardinalWest You've my respect for the effort you put into this remastering work, and for taking the time to give this detailed reply.
I've enjoyed reading Watership Down (several times) and Shardik (once), but I didn't finish The Plague Dogs when I was an adolescent.
Having just watched the introduction of your video, I think I'll pick it up again soon.
I haven't yet decided as to whether I'll delay your video or live with the spoilers. I guess that I'll take the spoilers thinking that it will make me read the book even more attentively.
Where can I find either the original or remaster of your animals of farthing woods video?
The video about the animals of farthing wood was 30 minutes long if you don't want it to get copyright close the parts were they show clips of the show kee
the clips in the end from the land before time the iron giant they're emotionally amazing and will you leave the link to the original video in description
Loved Shardik by Ri chard Adams
This is starting to hit real close to home. Anyone else? 1:58:28
4:24
1:08
Isn't this a re-upload?
I have only seen the Netflix adaptation of Watership Down.
If you will, I wiuld enjoy your comparison to the Book and original animated feature.
8:45
Plague dogs is the only movie I cried at, Literally
I personally hold that it would have been better for the film adaptation to retain the revised ending of Plague Dogs, changing it only by foreshadowing the deus ex machina. Where possible, preserving authorial intent and decisions seems best when adapting a work.
I think I remember hearing that Richard Adams considers Watership Down to be too mature for a kids' book, but also too childish for an adults' book.
10:00
Have you considered doing an animal farm video?
👏👏👏👏👏
What a magnificent work of appraisal, thank you.
These works, unknown until I saw the animated features, informed me of footnoted fiction- something I’d never even thought was a thing. World building was, at that moment, suddenly illuminated as a fascination. The allegory of xenofiction to contend with larger philosophical ideas by shifting to their brutal setting, was a stroke of genius by the author. While the use of animation creates a reality that is unmatched by any other form of visual storytelling. #Animate_Everything 😊
39:41 - 40:16
3:05 - 3:46
Not even a rabid dog, there's no rabies in the UK.
Really?
That’s great, you got rid of rabes?
Did the us?
I’ve never seen a rabid dog.
@@tell-me-a-story- just never had it, it's an island, if an animal enters the island, they have to be vaccinated. The US does have rabies but it's mostly in wild animals, especially bats.
@@IsThatEtchas Huh.
I read skunks are very likely to have rabies, even though their cousin the ferret is immune to it.
I wonder why most popular xenofiction is about European or North American animals.
Anglophone audiences I guess?
Largely, cultural hegemony. There exists a huge amount of what we would now call Xenofiction, but which are probably more accurately called 'therianthropic' stories (tales of heroes and god via the metaphor of animal) from cultures all over the world. Yet in terms of 'popular' fiction, the western canon is so extremely dominant that 'minority authors' who would write tales inspired by their own cultural zeitgeist have very little traction.
-Source: xenofiction was the subject of my degree thesis.
@@josephpotter5766 wow, that was actually really insightful.
So what you're saying is that the reason why most popular xenofiction is about mammals and birds from Europe and North America is due to eurocentric biases.
That's such a shame, because xenofiction story about lizards, kangaroos, monkeys, or elephants would be pretty neat.
Most xenofiction writers are American or European.
Write what you know.
So, the incredible power of the original story, as much as it certainly is a touch of an asspull, when observed from a humanist perspective, is that THIS IS THE WORLD, UNLESS WE, AS PEOPLE WITH THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. God will not save us. We must save ourselves.
I wish I could have been there to save those dogs. Their story is sickening and a disgrace to “science”. Every part of me wishes so badly that I or someone could have rescued them.
Click the book if you like stories!
So far, I have some chapters of my historical fiction novel, but it will someday include many bevels and some comics, including an animal xenofiction about wolves. ❤
800th like
I think one of the reasons I prefer Watership Down over Plague Dogs is (other than Plague Dogs feeling tired in the age of internet death irony) that WD is such, SUCH a Jewish story, that I was surprised to find out Richard Adams was Catholic.
The story of an exodus to find safety or homeland, semi-ethnic inter-community diaspora among different sects, strife via European authoritarianism, the weaving of folklore into our historic ability to survive/survivor's intuition, Anansi-type trickster heroes like Joha (who is an inspiration for Bugs Bunny, created and voiced by Jewish people!!), seers of community health like Baal Shem Tov in Fiver, and the sentiment of final peace- death being an end, but not Our End... it all reads as incredibly Jewish.
Of course, a lot of that is super intertwined with the history of WW2, it wasn't a Jewish-exclusive experience. But hope and resiliency is a huge cultural theme for Jews- along with enjoying tranquility while we have it, being vigilant of suspicious regimes, and preserving the memory of loved ones through our survival- and it flows through every part of Watership Down's story.
The Catholicism is a lot clearer- nearly looms- in Plague Dogs, especially the parts where it insists that someone raised outside the church or in a non-traditional family dynamic will lead to them being arrogant heathens. Not to mention that respect goes both ways- conservative religions love to use 'respect for elders' to mean 'we don't have to listen to younger people's ideas, boundaries, or autonomy'.
Imo, Adams and Tolkien's best work are around fiction world-building, character relationships, and environment conservation; when it gets more into cultural values and its reflections, it's way easier to clock that it's an old, white, British, Christian guy writing it, because it's suddenly much more stiff and frankly, less creative.
I absolutely adore your videos, thank you so much for your work!!
Sounds very Scaven-like. 👍
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On other notes..., that of Suffering yet if not therefore hope to be had or worth being had; That God Is thus We Are and that "Tis through Adversity we come to Know and Grow." That if not for evil we would not know by against it as strongly the values of Good or else its value or worth in contrast as the same we if not for the wrongful or the what shouldn't one need have to face it might would be or seem that we would not be pushed to know of or follow faith in He Who Is all things nor know of faith.
That "Fear of God is The Beginnings of Wisdom" and that only through Wisdom we might in it come to know or find Faith, Courage, Will, or Strength and thus our personal individual freedom in as much as from within a cursed corrupted doomed world to know a greater one that we might come to know and within things help to make things closer towards as it could or ought to be made for all people as to what Americanist Ideology were founded upon per Christianity's fundamentals.
Still the same no matter else that Truth is Absolute, Truth Shall Be Upheld, and that Truth Upholds.
(Glory to the Truth, amen.) Best wishes.
The problem I have with these movies is that this is sacred knowledge. The realization of how death is waiting for us all is sacred. Traditionally would be taught through ritual. The child would be the hunter killing the rabbit realizing that it killed a living thing. This knowledge shouldn't just be thrown at a child in some kids movies. This knowledge is important but it is more sacred than what belongs in a child's movie.
What happened to the Star Wars rewrites?!