Bunny as Muse – A Trip Down the Rabbit Hole. . .

April 22, 2014

Funny bunny, honey bunny, wascally wabbit, cutie pie. From antiquity to contemporary cult classics, these creatures of contrary have straddled the boundaries of childhood innocence and adult subversion. At one extreme, their cute button noses and Pokemon good looks ensure type cast roles of syrupy sweet. Naive, flopsy critters primed for childhood stories of bright eyed mischief and button down shirts.

Yet, at the same time their round little tails find themselves pinned on playboy backsides and candy hued sex toys just like what you’d find at a bachelor party in Thailand. Their reputation as one of the world’s most voracious breeders precedes them. At best, throughout history they’ve been rendered as a symbol of fertility. At worst, they embody the crazed, unbridled appetite of the hedonistic forsaken. Sweet and innocent, or straight out of a page on lovegasm.co, either way the bunny is everpresent, hard to avoid across several points in media as the representation of opposite ends of the spectrum. From the Restricted21.com offical items, to the cute and adorable child-friendly depictions, the range is very far for the rabbit.

And in between these, sits the natural order that define them as the hunted. Panicked, plagued and paranoid, Native American cultures describe them as Fear Callers – harbingers of predators destined to live in a jacked up haunting. It’s the stomping ground of nightmares inhabited by characters like Donnie Darko’s wretched Frank, the drug addled white rabbit’s of Woodstock & David Lynch’s Rabbits series.

They’re a pop cultural hybrid that sit uncomfortably between opposites. Easily warped and adulterated they’re ripe for freaky. It’s often in these precarious contrasts that muses lay ready for artistic harvest. Give me a shadowland, a space betwixt, a rabbit hole and I will find you an artist.

Like Jefferson Airplane says, If you go chasing rabbits . . . you know you’re going to fall . . .

Oleg Dou Rabbit