A black rabbit silhouetted against a darkened sky, caught in a vicious snare that will almost surely end his life by slow suffocation. This is not a PETA campaign poster, or an animal rights campaign, but the cover of a children’s movie.
The 1978 animated version of Richard Adams’ novel stands the test of time as one of the best children’s adaptations of the last century, but how can something so gruesome, so harrowing, possible be suitable for children?
The simple answer is, because it’s real. Watership Down does not dilute the harshness of life, in either the human world or the animal kingdom. The ecological statements (and warnings) are made very clear from the offset: We will by our own hands, destroy this world in which we live. The political subtext is represented by the Owsla’s, the military structure that exists in each warren and the restrictions that it brings on its inhabitants. The plight of the common man (or rabbit) is represented, his pleas falling onto the deaf ears of those who can make a difference.
There is as much can be read into Watership Down as George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm‘, and in ways, the former has more dimensions. All of these factors aside, the film remains a wonderful and spellbinding adventure, in the purest sense of the word. It does nothing to curtail its brutality, something which is wholly represented in the cover to the VHS version of the film.
Even the write-up on the back represents the film perfectly:
‘One dim moonlit night, a small band of rabbits leave the comfort and safety of their warren and set out on a long and dangerous journey after a premonition of a terrible disaster that will overtake them. None of them know where they are heading, or of the dangers that they will face in their search for a new warren where they can live in peace.’
The tone of those sentences is imposing, dark and treacherous.
This leads me to my main point. In the recent reissue of Watership Down on DVD, the cover is changed to this:
‘The sky is bright and the fields are sunny, look at the smiling, inquisitive bunnies, aren’t they gorgeous. Oh, but there’s a big mean bunny too, it’s ok, I bet everything works out fine.’
No. It won’t. All this cover does is set children up for a fall. It lulls them into a false sense of security; even the appearance of the rabbits has been altered. They are now smoothed, sanitised Disney versions of the rough, grainy originals. This is misrepresentation, as to associate Disney titles with a movie like this is like telling a child that they’re going on the teacup ride and then throwing them into a ghost train on their own. I’m not one of these people who hate Disney, let’s not make that mistake. I think they make amazing movies and have done so for years, that is why they are the massive company that they are.
This is an entirely different animal however; Watership Down has a bigger body count than all of the Disney movies put together. You knew were you stood with the rabbit in a snare. Even the text on the back cover is an elusive side stepping of the actual story; they make it out to be Homeward Bound. There is no mention of the actual content of the movie, it’s all words like ‘enchanting’, ‘courageous’, honourable’ and other such nonsense. It also tries to set Kehaar up as comedy relief by referring to him as their ‘Loony’ friend. He wasn’t ‘loony’; he was psychologically distraught, starving and injured.
It’s incomprehensible that it is deemed necessary to dumb down everything that is targeted at a young audience for fear of upsetting anyone. The sad truth is, in today’s world, Watership Down would never get made.
Whatever chance Watership Down had, follow up The Plague Dogs would have none whatsoever.
‘Subject to harrowing scientific experiments, two dogs make a flight for freedom from the animal research laboratory in which they are imprisoned. In making their confused way through the lab, and panicked by the cries of monkeys, rabbits and mice, they break a glass container used by bubonic plague researchers. Beyond the fences, hungry and terrified, Snitter, a gentle little fox terrier and Rowf an older more cynical Labrador soon discover that the outside world is not the haven they hoped to find.’
So basically, it starts badly and gets progressively grimmer as it goes on. It is however, a must see. Despite being completely heartbreaking, its brutal honesty and unflinching approach make such a change to the unrealistic expectations of life that so many animated films portray.
Things don’t always work out like we want them to, sometimes the good guys don’t make it and it’s almost always us, man, people, that are the true villains of the piece. When it all comes crumbling down and we finally drag ourselves into oblivion, we can’t say we weren’t forewarned. We have Richard Adams to thank for his honesty, his insight and his impact on literature and film, let us not forget that.
