Animals in La Fontaine and in Modern Cinema: From Allegory to Anthropomorphic Polyphony

The combination of the name of the French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695) with the phenomenon of modern cinema at first glance seems anachronistic. However, it was La Fontaine, who systematized and elevated the allegorical model of animal use to an artistic norm, that laid the foundation for their subsequent representation in mass culture, including cinema. A comparative analysis of his method with the practices of modern cinema demonstrates both the continuity of tradition and its radical transformation in the postmodern era.

1. La Fontaine: animals as rhetorical masks and social types.

In La Fontaine, animals are primarily fixed allegories of human qualities and class characteristics inherited from the ancient (Aesop) and Eastern traditions. Their images lack individual psychology and serve strictly didactic purposes:

The lion — an allegory of royal power, strength, but also tyranny.

The fox — the embodiment of cunning, flattery, and a sly mind.

The wolf — a symbol of predation, brute strength, and eternal hunger (both social and physical).

The ass — the personification of foolishness, obstinacy, and ignorance.

The animals in La Fontaine speak in the refined language of the XVII-century high society salons, their dialogues are full of irony and elegance. They are not characters in the modern sense, but functions in a moral fable. Their animal nature serves only as a conditional mask, behind which lies an immutable human essence. The task is not to explore the inner world of the animal, but to illustrate a universal moral law.

2. Modern cinema: from psychologization to mask deconstruction.

In the 20th–21st centuries, cinema, especially in the genre of animation, inherits the La Fontaine model but fundamentally reinterprets it. Several key directions can be identified:

A) Psychologization and individualization (Disney and his successors).
The Golden Age of Disney ("The Lion King," 1994; "Zootopia," 2016) takes the La Fontaine allegorical bestiary as a basis but fills it with deep individual psychology. Simba the lion is not just an abstract "king" but a character with a complex inner drama, an existential crisis, and a path to adulthood. Nick Wilde in "Zootopia" is no longer a "rascal" scheme but a multifaceted character with a traumatic past and a social mask he is forced to wear. Here, animals are full-fledged characters-people, whose animal appearance serves for visual characterization and the construction of a metaphor for society.

B) Deconstruction and parody (a postmodern approach).
This direction consciously plays with the clichés laid down by La Fontaine and Disney. The most striking example is the "Madagascar" series (2005–2012). Alex the lion is not a noble ruler but a narcissistic showbiz star. Marty the zebra suffers from an existential crisis and rejects his "typicality." These films mock the very idea of a fixed natural essence, showing how stereotypes collapse when confronted with reality. "Shrek" (2001) is also built on a parodic reversal of fairy tale and fable clichés.

Of interest: In the film "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009) by Wes Anderson, anthropomorphic animals, while retaining their natural instincts (Mr. Fox is a predator and a thief), lead a complex human life with a mid-life crisis, ambitions, and family problems. This is a direct but ironic reference to the La Fontaine fox rascal, placed in the context of psychoanalysis and existentialism.

C) Philosophical allegory and total anthropomorphism.
Some directors use the animal world to create complete philosophical models. "The Cat in the Hat" (2001) depicts total espionage and inter-species conflict in a grotesque form as a metaphor for the Cold War. "The Chronicles of Narnia" (2005) with its talking animals continues the tradition of Christian allegory, where animals (such as Aslan) are bearers of the sacred, not just social meaning.

3. Fundamental differences: from morality to identity.

Goal: La Fontaine — moral instruction, the assertion of universal truths. Modern cinema — the exploration of identity, social norms, trauma, the search for oneself.

Level of anthropomorphism: In La Fontaine, animals only speak as people. In cinema, they look (in animation), act, think, and feel as complex human personalities, while still retaining a residual animality.

Attitude towards nature: La Fontaine uses nature as a conditional backdrop. Modern ecological consciousness often makes the theme of the natural environment and its destruction central ("Wall-E," "The Legend of the Dolphin").

Poliphony: If in La Fontaine each animal is the bearer of one dominant quality, then in cinema one species can represent many different characters (e.g., many individual rabbits in "Zootopia").

Conclusion

The tradition that goes back to La Fontaine has not disappeared in modern cinema but has been deeply deconstructed and complicated. From a simplified allegory, the world of cinema has moved to polyphonic anthropomorphism, where animals serve not for illustrating ready-made truths, but for modeling complex social systems, psychological states, and philosophical dilemmas. The La Fontaine mask has turned into a mirror reflecting not typical vices, but the multifaceted and contradictory nature of modern man. The modern audience sees in the screen fox or lion not a didactic scheme, but themselves — with all their fears, ambitions, and searches for their place in the world. Thus, the evolution of the animal image from fable to the big screen is a path from moral didacticism to a complex dialogue about the nature of human nature itself.

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