David Godwin- Bunny

A while ago, we watched the short animated film “Bunny” in class. I remember being really surprised by the class discussion afterwards, because I saw the film from a completely different perspective than most people in the class. Although the film seemed to have clear and identifiable symbols of eastern religions, the class constantly used terminology typical of western religion. Some people discussed the moths as symbols of “angels,” and referred to the light in the oven as the “light at the end of the tunnel.” These symbols could definitely be applicable, but I think some other, more eastern, symbols in the film were overlooked.
For one, I saw the moth not as a nameless angel/ messenger, but the very husband over which Bunny was mourning. Thus, the moth was not just an anonymous supernatural being, but an actual (and personal) reincarnation. Obviously, the idea of reincarnation is not a western idea, but one attached to eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. So, when the class discussed the film, it was understandable that reincarnation was not the most obvious or pronounced symbol we saw. The symbol, however, was definitely there. One way the moth indicated it was, in fact, a reincarnation was its desperate attempt to point out Bunny’s wedding picture. In the picture was Bunny’s husband, exactly the image that the moth kept ramming himself into. And, whereas moths are normally attracted to light (and most commonly the flickering flame of a candle; where we get the saying “like moths to a flame”), this moth finds himself attracted to an object that cannot even give off light. Interestingly, a popular Buddhist document entitled, Milindapañha (“The Questions of King Milinda”) compares the passing of the soul to its next vessel to the passing on of a dying flame to another candle. Perhaps the husband in the photograph was once a dying flame that passed on into the form of this moth. Perhaps the moth is simply the vessel preparing itself to “catch flame” before Bunny dies. Either way, the moth’s attention to the picture does not make any natural sense outside of this possible candle analogy. The last shot of the film seems also to suggests the filmmaker’s allusion to reincarnation. In this scene, the transparent outlines of moths rest on the shoulders of Bunny and her husband.
Another major eastern idea overlooked was that of Brahman. In Hinduism, Brahman is the center and source of everything. When one meditates, one is attempting to be “one” with Brahman. Because we are individual souls (atman), too aware of ourselves, we get in the way of this undivided union. However, after one has cycled through the various levels of reincarnation, one’s individual atman unites with the all-encompassing Brahman. After Bunny enters the oven, she begins to float in another realm. Bunny has wings in this realm, and as she floats closer and closer to the bright light in front of her, she seems to look more and more like the moths surrounding her. Eventually all the moths fly so far away that you can’t distinguish them from the light into which they are floating. I see this light as Brahman, and all these indistinguishable little moths as separate souls coming together to be “one” with Brahman.
Finally, the fact that Bunny crawls through an oven struck me as well. The scene was somewhat jarring to me, especially to think that little children would be watching it. I mean, crawling through an oven just seems so graphic, violent, and at least unpoetic. The whole time I was thinking, “Is Bunny really in there? She’s going to burn to death!” That was me and my western perspective. Perhaps an easterner would see this action as poetic imagery. In Indian culture, the tradition used to be that once a man dies his wife follows behind him out of her devotion to him. She kills herself, and thereby joins her husband in death, by jumping into a fire. The oven has obvious connections with fire, so Bunny’s crawl through the oven seems to serve as a modernized example of this fire-jumping tradition.
I think the feeling of shock that I felt (and perhaps that others felt) as Bunny crawled through the oven was only a natural response resulting from my innate western perspective. It was good to feel shocked, though. Whenever films incite such emotions within us, we should not ignore them. Chances are, the filmmaker knows that we’ll have them and has instigated these reactions purposely—so that we will take and consider a cultural perspective foreign to us, a perspective so foreign that it takes animated bunnies before a cute family film for us to see them.