Even though in the film this frame is kind of a joke it really jumped out at me. Context is important for this sort of thing. In the Bible I take it to mean something along the lines of "make sure you cut stack enough firewood for the winter or else you might freeze". When Lenin invokes it I hear something more like "fuck the idle rich, and also we will need to get a ton of work done if the revolution is successful in order to build a durable socialist society". In this cartoon it is meant to poke fun at the older generation whose attitudes were shaped by growing up in the period of rapid industrialization and coming of age during the Great Patriotic War. The main character literally turns into a propaganda poster in this scene. “He who does not work, neither shall he eat!” hits different in the context of a society where there is both very little unemployment and very few idle rich.
Even though in the film this frame is kind of a joke it really jumped out at me. Context is important for this sort of thing. In the Bible I take it to mean something along the lines of "make sure you cut stack enough firewood for the winter or else you might freeze". When Lenin invokes it I hear something more like "fuck the idle rich, and also we will need to get a ton of work done if the revolution is successful in order to build a durable socialist society". In this cartoon it is meant to poke fun at the older generation whose attitudes were shaped by growing up in the period of rapid industrialization and coming of age during the Great Patriotic War. The main character literally turns into a propaganda poster in this scene. “He who does not work, neither shall he eat!” hits different in the context of a society where there is both very little unemployment and very few idle rich.