2014 - Year of the Rabbit

Disclaimer: PLEASE DO NOT SEND THE MOUSE POLICE. I DO NOT OWN THE ABOVE IMAGE, NOR ANY OF THE CHARACTERS MENTIONED HEREIN. RABBIT, WINNIE THE POOH AND ALL OTHER CREATIONS BELONG TO A. A MILNE AND HIS ESTATE AND THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY. I DO THIS ARTICLE ONLY FOR EDUCATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES, AND MAKE NO PROFIT IN ANY WAY FROM IT. All views expressed are those of the writer of this article and in no way represent the Walt Disney Company. Thank you.
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In my articles you are used to seeing things like the usual Top 10, movie reviews, and Versus essays, where I talk about works in whole. Today I want to do something different: this character comes from one of my most favorite of all time TV shows and story 'verses, but I'd like to not discuss the franchise. Just one of the most interesting, tragic, and depressing of characters in the Disney roster from it.  He is someone most people, even die-hard of Disney fans, KNOW, yet never seem to recall. And if they do recall him, they don't think much about him, or at worst seem to despise him-...even though time and again he has proven in (almost) every incarnation he has, to have hilarious dialogue, good animation, tender moments, and has usually taken up a large amount of significance in his universe. He is NOT a side character...but is treated as such. He is not given proper due even from a toy merchandising standpoint, or in a stinky direct-to-DVD sequel. Yet he is one of the most funny, tragic, neurotic, and most HUMAN of animated characters in the entire Disney canon, if not one of the most tragic out of all Saturday morning cartoons created. This is the story of a rabbit. THE RABBIT....known as 'Rabbit.' Not Roger Rabbit.  Not Thumper or that rabbit who always pops up beside the birds & chipmunks whenever a princess shows up-(reality would so descend into chaos without THAT GUY)  Just Rabbit. I felt a need to draw attention to him, because W.T.P is still to this day an enormously popular Disney franchise. But one of the biggest tenets of it is still being given total apathy, even though he is hugely responsible 80% of the time that the W.T.P. stories even have any drama or conflict, that is, ARE INTERESTING, at all. While he may not be as cute as Piglet, as sweet as Pooh, as funny as Tigger, or as pathetic as Eyeore, he still deserves our love and attention regardless anyway. It may sound off, but Rabbit is one of the most dearest to my heart of the Disney roster. So here I go, on another useless rant:

Rabbit, if you weren't in the know, is a character from A.A Milne's 'Winnie the Pooh' books, and many Disney adaptions,  in which a boy named Christopher Robin goes on adventures with his uncreatively named very eccentric stuffed animals.
Rabbit has been voice acted by several people, and has undergone a few subtle changes in look, attitude and color...but overall, he has been like the other characters, mainly the same over the years. According to Disney Wiki, he made his first Disney appearance in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. He was voiced by Junius Matthews in the first film, then by Ray Erlenborn in Winnie the Pooh Discovers the Seasons, then by Will Ryan in both Welcome to Pooh Corner and A Day For Eeyore, then by the late Ken Sansom in later television shows until his death in 2012, and most recently by Tom Kenny in the 2011 film. For me, it is Ken Sansom's voice that cements this character into who he is, which makes sense as he had the most exposure as a character in this later era, but also it is just the most powerful and emotional of all the Rabbit voice. Tom Kenny does a good job, but he just sounds too much like The Ice King or Spongebob to be comfortable. Tom Kenny has a very funny stifled aggravated delivery, which is very funny as always, but lacks the dark subtlety of Sansom's work, and it just doesn't feel like 'Rabbit' as much to me. Still, I feel this was as good as it could get. Rabbit is a complicated piece of animation, and if you are an artist or animator who really wants to learn good anatomy and even more important FACIAL EXPRESSION, god help me, if Rabbit is one of the best models out there for you to study from. Don Bluth himself worked on scenes for Rabbit in the original films, and they are atmospheric, funny, and kinda creepy all at once, and even after Don Bluth is gone, he still as a character often manages to deliver such a performance. While all of the other WTP characters tend to range from 'happy' to 'less happy' to 'tired but cute', Rabbit's face expressions can range from simpering to grieving to diabolical evil to utter panic to bottled up pain to hilarious joyful laughter. He's a very complex, yet very sleek design, and an excellent study in silhouette and hand movement.

But enough technical stuff.

Winnie the Pooh, in all its offshoots, while rarely having at least mildly dangerous conflicts, is actually more of a gentle slice of life 'Seinfeld' series, in that things really do not happen at all to anybody. What seems important and gets overly-discussed are really silly things that have no point. (Just like these blog entries!) Although these stories are innocent, and don't usually have a threat, Rabbit often fulfills the role of being the main false 'antagonist'. He is 'The Newman' of the group:the cunning devious one. Either he's causing trouble with his schemes for self gain or feeling he can always no matter what solve a triviality with a complicated solution usually by believing himself to be a lot more important than everybody else-...the difference between Newman and him is that technically he really IS smarter! At least compared to everyone else in the Hundred Acre Wood. Rabbit is slightly anti-social, yet he is always shoving into others' business. Always taking the lead of tasks and setting people off on missions of their own without asking permission, he'd be almost kind of a jerk, if everybody else in the series- Pooh, Piglet, Tigger and the rest of them; weren't so naively kind, sheep-like, and fluff-brained, to never mind his ordering them around. As the other animals all humbly know exactly how fluff-brained and sheep-minded they are, they all very openly admit to having no choice but believing nearly every single thing Rabbit says, only because they just don't have the IQs big enough to determine what else better they should do instead...or care. Usually they just blindly follow Rabbit's orders because they enjoy it. With the exception of Kanga and Owl, Rabbit technically really IS actually the brightest member of the Hundred Acre Wood. What he lacks in book smarts, (which really none of these characters have, even Owl or Christopher Robin, given they're playthings of a small boy)he more than has in street smarts. Rabbit is the most adept at gardening, cleaning, and OCD-level bureaucratically organizing things. This is both useful and detrimental, depending on the writer or the plot. He can be easily too obsessed, and like Twilight Sparkle go on a splurge of organizing behavior to the point he acts like a complete psycho. Rabbit's main problem and humanoid flaw is that he simply cares WAY TOO MUCH about everything. Unlike everybody else in the wood, who in his or her own way minds their own affairs, and takes things just as they come...Rabbit has to ALWAYS be sure SOMETHING is being done, and that something is 100% being done RIGHT. He actually has his heart in a very good place. But the stress of all this worrying and nitpicking over everybody and every little thing unnecessarily is clearly driving him sick. Unlike Gopher, who is also pretty cunning and even more handy than he is, (but "NOT IN THE BOOK!") Rabbit is emotionally connected to the affairs of everybody else, while Gopher just has his own fish to fry. If Rabbit sees something not going to plan, or to the way that he wants-...it's not just a bad case of the Mondays, it's a bad flaw seen within HIMSELF, and he cares if others see it. He is outwardly very egotistic, but like all egotistic people, secretly they feel deeply insecure and worried about how others perceive them- they only want to be appreciated. And Rabbit, oddly enough, IS actually deserving of that appreciation, not just because he IS really smart, at least compared to his friends, but he truly does care, at the end of a day, about how they are all doing. And obviously, when left to all their own devices, the other folks in the Hundred Acre Wood don't usually get about very well at all. (Heck, they're often lucky that their heads are still attached to their body at the end of the day!)

As if this weren't bad enough, not only are the other members of the forest oblivious child-like fools, they also are quite irresponsible and immaturely lack thinking of Rabbit's concerns. Never intentionally, mind you, but it clearly causes him great frustration: with most emphasis particularly on Tigger, to the point they're almost bitter rivals. For instance, Rabbit's pride and joy is naturally his vegetable garden. Gardening isn't a hobby I do, but I know  it's complicated, and takes a huge amount of patience and hard work. It is Rabbit's creative private space, much like a studio or personal sanctuary is for any person, a spot where someone can quietly be alone and enjoy being themselves. And this space gets the most destruction and constant interruption out of anywhere else in the story, and especially the most from Tigger, who destroys it with an almost troll-level glee. When you are a kid, Rabbit's shouting at Tigger's bouncy destruction is very funny, and it still is, but as an adult, especially if you are someone who has days where they prefer to be just left alone in their own private space to do creative work, only to be always pulled away by obnoxious distractions or having to clean it after someone makes a mess there, you can really feel his resentment. The garden is not only Rabbit's hobby, but Rabbit's main source of FOOD, as well as probably everyone else, and so he's understandably upset every time Tigger has to be repeatedly told to stay out. He's upset not just because Tigger has ruined all his effort on purpose for fun, but he is depleting the actual stock they have to survive on! And it is not only Tigger who he has to worry about, but ever-hungry crows, swarms of bugs, Piglet and Roo and Pooh as well. Or Gopher always trying to blow it up with dynamite. Add to that Pooh having to repeatedly be told not to borrow his tools without returning them back, or asking in the 1st place, and you can see why Rabbit always has to be in an authoritative and crabby mood. Unlike Squidward, he's not just a pompous snob who isolates himself- he's really looking out for everybody's benefit, or at least his own peace of mind, and instead of just one Spongebob causing a silly ruckus, he has to deal with literally a destructive ARMY of them. And they just never stop ruining or breaking or taking his favorite things, and never care. Can you imagine living like that? If any of you readers ever have had a sibling, or a bunch of siblings, then you know EXACTLY the experience of arguing about something precious to you being destroyed or 'borrowed', or private space being disrespected, whether for deliberate sadism or just simple innocence. You can definitely pity Rabbit's general unhappiness, as this kind of thing is constantly happening to him, and as he is a lot like a kid himself in spite of his responsibilities, he has had in multiple canons many huge emotional breakdowns on screen.
He has gone from weeping, to howling angry, to complete lip-flapping "I GIVE UP LOOK I'M A CHICKEN BWOOAHAHA" insanity in the face of it all. You would be hugely annoyed by Rabbit's situation. But most of all though, you would probably feel very lonely and sad, because all of your hard effort has gone unappreciated. In someone like Rabbit's case, not only does one go underappreciated, but mentally nobody else can even TRY to relate with your problems and level of responsibility, even if they do care about you personally, simply because they just plain CAN'T. They are too young, too stupid, or outside your personal experiences to ever understand how hard it is to be you. It's not their fault entirely, it's just the way nature is. Parents, teachers, elderly caretakers, anyone whose ever had to babysit or look after somebody or something very necessary yet NEVER gets truly appreciated or could be able to receive appreciation because their charges are just too innocent, selfish or mentally underdeveloped, can totally relate to this. Anyone whose ever been an ambitious and studious nerd, surrounded by drunk idiots or stoners who just want to party all day, or was someone trying to get others involved in a project or to do the right thing, but it never caught on or the goal was failed thanks to the laziness or incompetence of others, can sympathize deeply with Rabbit. Rabbit is like an actual rabbit in that he is the most frequently paranoid, and often inflates in every situation a sense of urgency, danger, or alarm. When things are in need of being motivated forward, he is the main one who acts like a cheerleader, hopping to his feet, and smashing his fist in and saying "ALL RIGHT EVERYONE! Let's get off our bottoms and DO something about all this!!!" Without him, things that might suck but are necessary to function, like chores or cleaning, or systems of rules that ensure everybody's safety, just won't get done, and he, along with everybody KNOWS this!  He literally holds together, or at least perceives that he holds together, the sanity and organization of everyone, because without him, total anarchy would reign, and while the show/books ask the question: "Is total anarchy really so bad, if you are just zenned out and not bothering too much about everything?"...Rabbit poses the sometimes correct answer that yes, YOU DO have to give a damn about doing the right thing the right way, if it is important enough to be done at all. ...You just have to learn to not sweat the small things too much, and enjoy life too along the way. He's a lot like Benson from "Regular Show" in this regard. He knows how to have fun, it's just the more important stuff should always be put first in his mind, and since there is always important stuff left to do thanks to other people slacking off...well, you know.

But probably the most overlooked, under-explored, and saddest trait that demonstrates Rabbit's inner charm is his Love.
In the original books and some of the movies, Rabbit is the coldest member of the group, but becomes warm-hearted when he is introduced to little Roo. He becomes almost a brother or father figure of sorts to Roo, and is a freer spirit than usual whenever they rarely get to play together. But when you take into consideration how much more Roo idolizes and loves spending time with the equally bouncy and spontaneous and just overall cooler Tigger, you can see a very sad situation similar to a child favoring one 'parent' or sibling or friend over the other. While it is never truly addressed, you can see how it adds depth to the already troubled friendship between Tigger and Rabbit. In 'Springtime for Roo', and 'The Tigger Movie' in particular, while there's other issues at hand, you can see the awareness Rabbit has about this, and boy does it hurt. The psychological toll Roo's closer relationship with Tigger is having on him when he has to make the decision whether to help seek Tigger out in a storm, only because he knows just how much Tigger means to Roo's heart, makes this a very sad movie...(as if the 'Tigger Movie' was not ALREADY a devastatingly sad movie.)  While taking care of all his friends causes him stress, you realize over time that Rabbit doesn't just do all this work because he just cares about his friends, HE ACTUALLY NEEDS TO LOVE AND NURTURE SOMETHING or else he is very sad. Rabbit more than anything else wants to be a parent. But he has no outlet to do so, which is why he obsesses about the others so much. He often addresses his carrots as if they were infants, coddling them and dressing them up in sweaters when the weather gets cold, and acting as if they were real living babies. It is a common mistake for people to think Rabbit is female, and I can see why. Asides having a pretty androgynous voice/mildly effeminate way about him, Rabbit clearly wants to be a dad/caretaker to a point it is tragic.

In the infamously known episode "Find Her Keep Her", we see perhaps one of the saddest and best demonstrations of voice acting talent imaginable: If you have not seen this episode, you ought to, and if you don't have a box of tissues, heaven help ya. If I ever have the fortune to find this episode on Youtube, I promise to link it here, but as of this date I cannot- UPDATE: YES I CAN, YOU CAN NOW TOTALLY WATCH IT RIGHT HERE! www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpxcdL…

But it doesn't matter almost, because those who know what I am talking about will remember it perfectly well. It is probably one of the defining and most memorable Winnie the Pooh animated moments there is. This episode is so sad and moving beyond words, that it shocks me. In a nutshell, this is an episode of having to let a child go. But it can be attributed to letting parents, close friends or loved ones go too. Some of the most poignant moments I have ever seen in any animation, let alone a children's Saturday morning TV show are in here. I do not cry very much when it comes to most films, but oh wow, this episode used to make me bawl my eyes out as a kid, and it still gets me kind of misty eyed. The music, the atmosphere, the animation, the dialogue, the scenes where this a LACK of dialogue....oh wow. Just God, it hurts so good, but does it ever HURT. It is definitely schmaltzy at times, but it is still one of the saddest things I have ever seen. That part when Rabbit says "You don't need me to read you a bedtime story....You don't need me for anything..." then cutting to an image of just Rabbit holding the doll in silence, while Kessie the little bird he's raised for so long sobs hysterically from behind the closed door... Jesus. This episode is on par with the death of Bambi's mother and Mufasa, Simon and Marceline's big reveals in Adventure Time, Grave of the Fireflies, and The Plague Dogs all at the same time in my book. I weep like a starving baby sometimes just thinking about this story. I know that is kind of pathetic, but yknow what, there will be a day when YOU WILL understand the power of this episode, if you ever become a parent yourself, or grow up to watch your parents grow old, or feel any sort of deep love for anybody who you have to let go of. I hope to God this episode sees more light of day, because the writers, the animators and artists all worked so hard on this, and especially the late Ken Sansom who put so much of his soul into that Rabbit reading. I do not know WHAT he was going through spiritually at the time, but what I would give to find out, you would not believe. Even in the sequel episode, which is far more a comedy than this one, when Kessie has returned and she has grown up, Rabbit STILL delivers an incredibly heartfelt and moving performance. He is still affected by Kessie's presence, and Ken Sansom delivers in the face of everyone else's somewhat wooden performance a really hurt and saddened 'Rabbee'....not to mention a pretty decent weasel guest character, named 'Sly'. Ken Sansom was a very talented professional, and did many other cartoons besides Rabbit. But he will live on in my heart the most as his role, because I feel like he was the character he brought the most of himself into. I do not know if that is true or not, but it's what I feel pretty sure of anyway, just by judging how intense even his silliest of monologues always was with his character. It breaks my heart we no longer have Ken Sansom with us, and that he could not have been reunited with the rest of the Winnie the Pooh crew for the latest 2012 movie. He was an incredible voice actor, and deserves just as much love as all the rest of the great voice actors of our time. If there was any point whatsoever in my writing this article, I really hope it is that this episode gets more exposure, and the name of Ken Sansom doesn't ever fall into obscurity. And if enough people create demand for it, maybe there will exist someday a DVD print of all the seasons of 'The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.' But in the meanwhile, please watch this episode, and tell me what you think in the comment box below. Thank you and have a Happy 2014!!!!