Rabbit: Silent But Deadly

Here’s another silent short from the archives: 2005’s Rabbit by Run Wrake, an illustrator and animator who works out of London. Rabbit is, in BananaWho’s opinion, Wrake’s most successful short film out of a body of very interesting work, but you, Dear Reader, are welcome to choose your own favorite here.

Sadly, the critically-condemned Fun with Dick and Jane was released the same year as Rabbit and perhaps usurped the more appropriate title, but here it is in full, Rabbit:

Rabbit is a 21st century play on Dick and Jane, the trusty baby boomer era characters from post-war reading primers. Wrake subverts the innocent-enough act of learning to read into a fable about the repercussions of our society’s humanistic approach to consumption and greed, and our proclivity for capitalizing on death. Using Dick and Jane cut-outs makes for fun and interesting visuals that pay homage to Lichtenstein, Richard Prince, Warhol, pulp fiction, and pop art of the classic and the digital varieties, but they also provide a glaring generational context. Since Dick and Jane are baby boomers, Wrake may be condemning our parent generation for the exploitation of our animals and natural resources, a generation that accelerated the tradition of turning indiscriminate killing into wealth. Dick and Jane see the world in labeled objects for their use and kill accordingly, but Wrake draws the scenario back to the present day by tying in videogame-like sensibilities using archetypes, jewels, ink, feathers.

If this political exegesis of a harmless animation is a bit too caustic for your tastes, the violence from these cherubic tykes is pretty funny in its brutality, and Wrake takes full advantage of the animated format, achieving omniscient “camerawork” and apocalyptic skies that would have required animation anyhow if this was a live action film. Well done, Run Wrake. —Christianne Hedtke