Sunday 14 December 2008

Pigs as symbols of capitalism

Piggy-banks are an obvious tool for accumulating capital, and thus a symbol for capitalism.

Read more about piggy banks! In the Anglo-Saxon cultural sphere, the pig shape is often dismissed as an etymological mistake between "pig" and "pygg" - a type of clay that was often used to make jars where money was stored. But as we have previously seen, pigs have been regarded as a symbol for prosperity since ancient times, so I don't entirely want to believe that explanation ...

Anyway, this video by Belarussian rock band Lyapis Trubetskoi has a lot of piggy-bank imagery.


Lyapis Trubetskoy «Capital» from Alexey Terexov on Vimeo.

The animation, by Alexei Terekhov at Cosmosfilm.tv, depicts various politicians who are officially anti-imperialist and opposing globalization, but who in fact are more or less hypocrites motivated by personal lust for power and wealth.