User blog:EtherBot/RABBITS! -- Surreal Horror and the TERROR OF DREAMS

I'm going to admit something sort of embarassing. Something that I'm sure many of you feel similar too, or at least have at some point, or will sooner or later feel yourself. (Hehe, he said 'feel yourself')

I haven't actually been frightened by a story in a very long time.

Sure, I grew up wth horror, sure, I'm obsessed with horror. Granted, I might be desensitized, I'll admit. I'll even admit that it might be my own fault. But I don't particularly care. It's sort of shameful to me. I've spent years with a singular goal of frightening myself with stories, and haven't succeeded in that goal. Until now. Sort of.

Rabbits
It has been a long time since I was, legitimately, terrified by a piece of art, and although this one isn't a creepypasta, it was originally published on the web, and it does qualify as "short horror fiction."

Rabbits.

The David Lynch movie.

It destroyed me.

Here we have a 40 minute featurette in which 3 humans dressed as rabbits dressed as humans wander like wind up toys through a single set from a single camera angle, having basically meaningless conversations and occasionally giving lengthy "speeches" of a sort to the audience. There are no jumpscares, no coherent thoughts, no blood, no monsters, no paranoia, no relatable protagonist, no tools of traditional horror of any kind.

I haven't been this uneasy while watching a movie since for as long as I can think of, off the cuff. This movie wracked me, genuinely. I've found it difficult to sleep. Just thinking about the images or iconography seriously stresses me out.

It also fascinates me.

Dreams
Please watch the movie first, its dirt cheap and 40 minutes long. If you read what I'm writing instead of paying the people who made it, you don't deserve to write horror.

Terms acknowledged? Let me walk you through this nightmare.

For about a minute and a half we have a single uninterrupted shot of two female rabbit people in a living room, one is ironing in the background. Nothing happens. The viewer starts becoming impatient, straining for any details. It is likely that their eyes will be drawn to one of two things: the ironing rabbit, who is slightly irregular with her movements, and the shadow cast by the other rabbits ears on the back wall. There are no realistic lightsources in the room that could cast such a shadow, and another shadow of bunny ears which fades into the title might make the viewer wonder if these ears belong to some other character we cannot see. Then, the door opens.

Relief! Something is happening! The crowd even cheers, and the viewer might mistakenly laugh at this moment. It seems almost like an ironic nod to the tedium. It doesn't last. The male rabbit who just entered through the door hovers awkwardly until the cheering ends, and then takes a seat, silently.

The first words spoken in this "teleplay" of sorts are "I'm going to find out one day."

Nonsense
I couldn't explain why "I'm going to find out one day...when will you tell it?" and the subsequent response of "Were there any calls?" are so unsettling. At this point in the movie, the viewer has no idea what they're getting into. What's composed like a sitcom is framed like a snuff film and scripted like a dream. The male and female rabbits have an incoherent conversation for a while until the rabbit with the iron walks over and stands behind the couch.

More nonsense, then things take a turn for the weird. Iron rabbit walks out of the room, the lights go out, and she returns with two candles as a shapeless being chants in some weird language. Then he goes away and everything is normal again. Then the episode ends.

Boxes
The human brain is made of boxes. These boxes have things in them. There's a box for every person you know, theres a bigger box for the concept of people in general, theres a "city" box, a "bug" box, a "house" box. Surreality is the art of taking things from boxes and just kinda messing with them. Lets take the stuff from the "rabbit" box, put it in the "people box," just for kicks.

How about we take the "business man" box and replace its label with the "falling rain" box. What if we took a trumpet and tossed it into the elephant box?

A succesful surrealist does so in a way that makes you question the stability of these boxes entirely. Are these boxes metal safes? cardboard? If you can see things that dont match up presented as plainly as things that do, it can be funny, "ran dem", humorous, surprising, alarming, unsettling, unnerving.

Importantly, though, the actual boxes don't matter. Its the presentation that matters. Dont Hug Me I'm Scared for instance has a very similar bent to Rabbits. Both webshows with direct although perhaps irrelevent satire of televised entertainment of some kind, both with surreal ideas and presentation, both intending to unnerve. Difference is?

DHMIS is hilarious. (Fight me.)

Rabbits is terrifying.

DHMIS has comic timing, amusing performances, funny (although creepy) songs.

Rabbits has slow moving actors, no jokes whatsoever, and an oppressive droning soundscape. It takes the time to build atmosphere.

Surreality
When you were a kid, were you ever ever afraid of things that, looking back on it now, weren't even supposed to be scary? Old black and white cartoons, sesame street, clowns, weird flash animations, street signs, santa claus, etc. As a kid, reality is so tenuous, you know you know so little, you're forced to latch onto whatever essential "truths" are taught to you.

Somethings, though, you'd see something that didn't match up with those truths, something that didn't belong in any boxes, and you'd reject it. You though it was creepy. Even if that thing wasn't supposed to scare you, you resented it. This is a kind of terror that's felt less and less as you grow older. You rarely question the stablity of your boxes, because for the most part everything has proven to be stable, generally, at least. Surreality is an adults attempt at crafting a world so inane, one that messes with the boxes contents to the point that the labels in questions cease to relate to the contents even whatsoever.

"this isn't a sitcom. these aren't rabbits. the laugh tracks are random. these people dont act like people. they dont act like rabbits either"

People get frustrated trying to read meaning into Lynch's work, but that's never been the point. The point is about flippant disregard to "boxes" or idea clusters. These people aren't rabbits because of some deeper philosophical motive, they're rabbits because people aren't rabbits.

Moving on
I'm actually legitimately anxious thinking about this movie. I'm going to stop writing about it now. Hopefully you thought my thoughts on surrealism were interesting, bye?