Bare necessities

In Minima Moralia, Sur l'eau Adorno argued against modelling the image of emancipated society on the productive process. Unbounded productivity and ceaseless activity are not expressions of freedom, but of the blind subordination under the unleashed means of production. The emancipated society would be one in which the internalised imperatives of productive forces would not be the essence of the individual but a tool to be used to satisfy human needs. In such circumstances possibilities could be left unexploited. Happiness, not boundless productivity, would be the final word. "To lie on the water and peacefully gaze into the sky," would take the place of "process, activity, achievement." The immanent demand of emancipated society is quite simple: "Only the roughest would be tender: that nobody should go hungry."

One would not expect to find such critical materialist views expressed in a Disney movie, but in the Jungle book this is exactly the case:



It is interesting to compare this to the German translation:



In the English version the first stanza goes like this:

Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
Old Mother Nature's recipes
That brings the bare necessities of life

In the German version it is:

Probiers mal mit Gemütlickeit
Mit Ruhe und Gemütlichkeit
jagst du den Alltag und die Sorgen weg
Und wenn du stets gemütlich bist
Und etwas appetitlich isst
Dann nimm es dir egal von welchem Fleck

The meaning of the lines could be translated as:

Why don't you try relaxation
With calm and relaxation
You can chase away the everyday worries
If you are always relaxed
And something is attractive
Take it and do not concern yourself

The materialism of the English version is lost completely. The idea that satisfying basic needs is a precondition for happiness and that human needs, not the quest for ceaseless accumulation, should be the driving force of life, gives way to a litany that preaches a subjective attitude as a way of transcending "everyday worries". In this version the dictate of being happy in not political, but becomes the responsibility of individuals. Not only does the present society inhibit the possibilities for happiness, failures of the system are grotesquely transformed into failures of individuals. Bare necessities are the demand that goes against the grain of this ideology.