Inktober #9: That bunny film
Added 2017-10-09 20:14:10 +0000 UTCIn 1986 around Easter, I was staying with a friend overnight. Her mother had taken out a few videos for us, asking us to watch "that bunny film" with my friend's younger siblings.
The siblings were something like three and five. We decided we'd not tell them about the videos at all, but send them to bed. We almost didn't watch the "bunny film". We were eleven years old, far too old for cartoon bunnies. In retrospect, not letting those two kids watch Watership Down with us probably saved them from serious mental harm.
An hour and a half later, my life was transformed. As soon as I was home, I dug out my mother's copy of the book - which I'd stared at in the shelf for ages; she'd never read it - and read it pretty much straight through. It was the book of my life. I thought I'd never read anything that good. The adventure, the mythology, the stories of El-ahrairah, the humour, the way the story flowed. (Five years later, there was The Silmarillion.) But until then, I was madly in love with a leporine. I must have drawn something like a hundred pictures from the book back then. Hazel was my hero.
A year later, on holiday in England, we saw rabbits at every turn of the road at night, I got the book in English, read it though I was missing about half the words but didn't care, and I fell in love with England. That love, especially for the language and the countryside, has never gone away.
And all because of that bunny film.
Comments
This was a transformative book for me, too. I love your rendering of Hazel! Can Fiver and Bigwig be far away?
Sam Ramji
2017-10-12 15:13:03 +0000 UTCI have a cousin who has never forgiven librarians for the one who thought bunnies=kiddies and shelved the book in the children's section
Mary Catelli
2017-10-10 02:06:07 +0000 UTCWatership Down is not a children's film - there must be untold children out there who were traumatised by it. And hopefully still many who were swept away by the language and the themes and the nobility...
Freyalyn
2017-10-09 21:49:51 +0000 UTCSuch an awesome personal story along with the wonderful art. Watership Down is one of my all-time favorites!
Teddi Deppner
2017-10-09 21:48:06 +0000 UTCLove it :)
Matthew Vosper
2017-10-09 20:55:25 +0000 UTCI love this tale! Thank you for resurrecting childhood nostalgia!
ianflyhi アイアン
2017-10-09 20:31:04 +0000 UTCXD my parents thought it would be a nice film for kids (aka lil me) because it's a cartoon. It...kind of wasn't. It took until a couple years ago for me to re-watch it with a bit of apprehension, but having grown and gotten past any leftover bunny issues I definitely could appreciate the movie a lot better, mostly because I actually understood what was happening this time ;) I had no idea there was a book though. Now guess what I'll have to read at some point ;) Beautiful art!!!!
Tári
2017-10-09 20:25:25 +0000 UTC
