Pigs in popular culture

Pigs, widely present in world cultures, have taken on many meanings and been used for many purposes in traditional arts, popular culture, and media. As one scholar puts it, people all over the world have made swine stand for "extremes of human joy or fear, celebration, ridicule, and repulsion." They have become synonymous with negative attributes, especially greed, gluttony, and uncleanliness, and these ascribed attributes have often led to critical comparisons between pigs and humans.

A number of idioms related to pigs have entered the English language.

Several of these idioms refer to the negative qualities traditionally ascribed to pigs. Thus, pigs are commonly associated with greed of various forms. The phrase "as greedy as a pig" can therefore be used in many contexts - in reference to gluttony ("to pig out") or the monopolisation of time or resources ("road hog" or "server hog", for example). Pigs are also associated with dirtiness, probably related to their habit of wallowing in mud.

As a general derogatory term, "Pig" can be used as a slang term for either a police officer or a male chauvinist, the latter term being adopted originally by the women's liberation movement in the 1960s. It has also been widely used by many revolutionary and radical organizations to describe any supporter of the status quo, including police officers, industrialists, capitalists, and soldiers.

The most famous children's tale concerning pigs is that of the Three Little Pigs, which has appeared in many different versions since its first publication in the 1840s.

A popular English nursery rhyme and fingerplay, "This Little Piggy", originated in the 18th century and has been used frequently in film and literature. Several Warner Brothers cartoons, such as A Tale of Two Kitties (1942) and A Hare Grows In Manhattan (1947), use the rhyme to comic effect.

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