Have the animal rights people gone too far?
I went to see Peter and the Wolf the other evening at the Okanagan Symphony as part of their family program. I was rather excited to ponder the story I first learned from a record my parents got me as part of my Record club when I was perhaps in Grade II or III. In fact, as I went into the Cleland Theatre to watch the program, I found myself humming the basic tune of that Prokofiev masterpiece.

The audience was as diverse as this town is…from the very young to those “getting on in life”. The stage was filled: on one side was a compact version of the orchestra; the other side was set up with various backdrops, including a tree, a wall, a farmyard with a gate, and a place for a cat to perch…it also contained the timpani (or, the “kettle drums” as I knew them back in the day). The performance got under way and while there were touches of novelty that I didn’t recall (like news songs that seemed to be there more for the actors than for the story itself), generally I was able to keep my focus (between the orchestra’s playing of appropriate musical sounds, and the young actors).

But then I began to notice that the story was getting a little off-centre. Even the music didn’t quite fit my memory of how it should unfold.Some of the songs or at least musical recitations that the actors were imparting seemed a bit too gentle towards the wolf and had less impact than the narrator in the original version. And the hunter was not nearly as scary or determined as I remembered the original three were. The animals weren’t called by their personal names; just cat, bird, duck, etc… It was becoming a bit discomfiting.

The duck was eaten too soon and never returned, except one brief scene where it was hard to tell if it was still alive — it was sort of shown as in the wolf’s stomach, but not really believable. Then came the confrontation with the hunter (note: not the three hunters) and it was more like a meeting of the UN. Even though the wolf had been captured, there was no desire to do him in. And he had not been captured by the hunter. Moreover, in spite of no return of the duck, everyone was trying to figure out how to save the wolf — that’s right, save the wolf. Finally it was decided that the wolf should go to the zoo and would be marched there in a parade (I’m surprised some animal rights folk didn’t claim that was perhaps more tortuous than being killed — but I digress — LOL).

The orchestra was good. The acting was good. But the revisionists really botched this story. They sacrificed the duck for political correctness, because afterwards in the post-symphony scrum I learned that somewhere, somehow some member of some other orchestra had resigned from participating in this same concert because the wolf was killed and that was being cruel to the wolf. The play has been re-written to take away that part of the story — we are now supposed to love wolves, even when they eat a nice duck that only comes back as being thirsty in the stomach of the wolf.I guess the message is that we are trying to protect kids from being traumatized from seeing a wolf shot, but it’s alright to have the wolf eat the duck.

To me the original was far more realistic: wolf ate the duck… wolf was killed by hunters… the duck escapes… there is the grand parade celebrating the justice and joyfulness of it all. The music always tells which animal is to be present and thus there is a little more apprehension, and yet the overall timing of the original concert is somewhat shorter. This time we lost more than just the key excitement of the original, where music really took us along the ride; we lost an opportunity to show kids an original story and if we don’t like the ending, then take the time to explain why things are different in today’s world (or at least in those homes that want to change the ending).

There was no actual animal hurt, but in this version the duck was deemed expendable. It reminds me of how pipeline protesters want the Kinder-Morgan project stopped because there might be an oil spill, but they don’t say anything about the many high-rises that are being built in Vancouver over an earthquake fault line. Let’s be a little more consistent. Prokofiev composed a wonderful story that has a narration and music — it inspires one’s imagination because there are no speaking actors. As the narrator tells us snippets of the story, the orchestra makes us aware of just how this all is happening. By the end, there is joy because the duck is saved — the wolf shouldn’t have eaten the innocent duck, but he did so the hunters did him in, and in the process, saved the duck (I believe it’s name was Sasha). Don’t change the story just because you don’t want wolves to be hunted: if you don’t like animals to die, then change the story to at least include the rescue of the duck. Animal rights protesters, like so many others (of many different stripes), only see the world through their lenses and can’t believe anyone else has a valid perspective.

Well, I loved the original story. I didn’t then go out and shoot wolves — but I did know that if I was bad like the wolf, I would get punished. Killing the wolf might seem extreme, but Sasha was freed…oh, and by the way, return their original names to the characters too…and use a narrator — makes each of us use our imagination more (and for your animal rights folks — you can imagine the wolf was re-incarnated right after the concert ends and like Matthew in “Anne of Green Gables” he can come back from the dead during the curtain call!!)

g.w.