Rousseau, Marx, and Freire use animals as a point of contrast to define what it means to be human. Beast fables have historically used animals as allegorical stand-ins for humans rising up against power. Jack Halberstam’s reflections in The Queer Art of Failure illustrate how animals were frequently used as a site of rebellion in early computer-generated cartoons. In stories like Animal Farm, Watership Down, Babe: Pig in the City and Over the Hedge, the characters grapple with human issues of corruption, oppression, abuse of power, habitat destruction and propaganda.

Carnival of the Oppressed features creatures going about their day. They work hard. They buy things to let others know that they work hard. They have a personal brand. They TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES. They vote.

The creatures in these images have devalued the communal and collective in favour of the pursuit of productivity, individualism and self-optimisation. Their suffering is framed as a tool for personal growth, leaving them blind to any radical or collective sense of rebellion. They have no reason to question the system, and in that complacency, the very structures that exploit them are reinforced.

THE END.