Anthropomorphic Nightmares

I'm not a fan of anthropomorphic items. Frankly, they frighten me. Some people think it's cute, but why do we do it?

Why this human need to make things look human? And when we do put human faces on these non-humans, why do we do inhuman things to them? Like use their faces to wipe dishes, stick utensils & tools in their backsides, or put hot dirty spoons on their faces? That's pretty dehumanizing, isn't it? And that's just the veggies! We do even worse things to anthropomorphic animals -- or to anthropomorphize real animals -- we even put faces on food items.

So when we took the kids to see Open Season, I was horrified to find them using the rabbits as ammunition.




Sure, rabbits may be some of the most disposable animals on the planet, but sheesh, they are alive. And here, in a movie were we have talking bears, deer, porcupines, squirrels etc, banding together to save themselves from hunters, we have these animals in solidarity tossing bunnies against windows, launching them like hand grenades from deer antlers and in general, using & abusing the hell out of them. Just when the movie ends and I begin telling my husband how disgusting it was to see bunnies so battered, and they splat a rabbit on the 'screen' as the ending. ARG!

Variety says, "Rabbits, in particular, haven't been deployed this cutely and inventively since 'Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.'" And RampWay Online says, "But by far, the funniest things in the movie were the rabbits. It's not what the rabbits did; it's what was done to the rabbits. They were like an all-purpose animal! When Elliot sneaks Boog out of his garage for a sugar binge at the local store, he gets his attention by throwing rabbits at the window. After Boog gets wet, he uses about three rabbits as a towel to wipe his face. When the animals begin their assault on the hunters, they use the rabbits as gas masks for protection against the skunks' cloud of stank. The funniest part was at the end when someone yells "Rabbit fight!" and Boog literally balls up a rabbit and throws it."

Am I alone here? Am I the only one who gets this?

What's worse, at the official Open Season movie site, Sony Pictures has not one but two games in which children (and adults I suppose) can use the rabbits as weapons and otherwise abuse them: Rabbit Fight and Whack-A-Rabbit.

Man, that's just too creepy for words...