December 2005 Archive

I think I can remember being told that Miffy was a rabbit (or a ‘bunny’) as a very small child, and I can also remember strugging to come to terms associating those clean flat shapes with the soft furry thing with big eyes, that just might bite your finger off if you stuck it through the wire-mesh of the wooden box that the thing lived in.

It’s a similar mental process that allows us to think of a furry mammal thing when we say ‘rabbit’, but applied visually rather than through sound. Obviously most written words have only coincidental physical resemblance to the object they are refering to (note: the type is Clarendon Black), wheras Dick Bruna’s Miffy drawings have a basic resemblance, not to a rabbit itself but to an anthropomorphised idea of what a rabbit is. i.e. its a long-eared thing, similar to ourselves. …[more]

Some fuss might well be made of the funding of the movie by an american Christian group, and the obvious theological symbology of the narrative. Well, yes. But The Chronicles of Narnia wears its faith on its sleeve, and the subtext lays elsewhere…

An alerting factor was that Peter Pevensy, the eldest male child, who naturally assumes leadership, is played by a boy who bears more than a passing resemblance to the second in line to the throne of England!

…[more]