Source: Global Times
【Global Times Special Correspondent Wang Haiying, Ren Hanfei, Wang Xiaoyan】Editor's note: Send away the Year of the Tiger, usher in the Year of the Rabbit, and the topic of rabbits is hot. In Eastern and Western cultures, rabbits are mostly cute, well-behaved, weak or cute. However, in some countries' cultures, the image of the rabbit is both good and evil, some represent treachery and cunning, some symbolize evil and lust, and some are described as gods who guide human beings.
United States: The scheming hero rabbit
Since ancient times, rabbits have been considered divine in many cultures. For example, in Egyptian mythology, gods such as Isis and Osiris, are closely associated with rabbits. Some Native Americans also worship the "rabbit god," who believe that the sacred rabbit rebuilt world order after a major flood. In some modern literature, rabbits often appear as guides that lead people into unknown territory. For example, in the famous British literary work "Alice in Wonderland", Alice fell into the rabbit hole in the process of chasing rabbits, thus entering the fantasy kingdom. In Finnish writer Ato-Palinsina's novel The Year I Met the Hare, the middle-aged protagonist also embarks on an adventure with the injured hare. Similarly, in the novel "Hare", the Argentine writer César Ayla also used the rabbit to play a similar role as a tour guide, guiding people to discover the charm of Latin American civilization.
The attitude towards rabbits in ancient Chinese culture is contradictory. On the one hand, the rabbit is described as a deity in the Moon Palace, and on the other hand, the "three caves of the rabbit" are used to describe treacherous and cunning. In ancient Greek myths and legends about Hermes, the rabbit was also an image of both good and evil. In the folklore of the African Bushmen, the hare is tricky and demagogic. According to records, rabbits were also used by the Celts for divination during the ancient Roman period. Cassius Dio mentions in the History of Rome that the Celts released a hare before the expedition and divined the murderer by observing the direction of its escape.
In modern American culture, the Bühler Rabbit is a widely circulated figure of a scheming hero rabbit. In the late 19th century, the book "Uncle Remus and the Bühler Rabbit" was compiled and published by Harris, which is considered to be the culmination of the Bühler rabbit image. In fact, the image of the Bühler Rabbit has appeared in many works before, and it is recorded that Robert Roosevelt, the uncle of US President Theodore Roosevelt, also participated in the creation of this image. The story of the Buller rabbit is said to be partly derived from African folklore, but also has quite a bit of plot from some rabbit myths that are widely spread among the Cherokee tribe, a Native American Indian.
European hunters knew that it was very difficult to hunt rabbits that destroyed fields. Experienced hunters will set traps in the farmland where there may be an exit from a rabbit hole, and then release trained ferrets into the rabbit hole so that they can "catch a whole litter" of rabbits. But in Australia, where rabbits are rampant, it is not so easy to hunt because there are so many rabbits. In order to eliminate the rabbit, the headache of the "invasive creature", the Australians did everything they could, even using bombers and biological weapons, and failed to completely eliminate the rabbit.
France: Romantic and sexy "hot bunny"
Rabbits have a strong reproductive ability and can be seen everywhere in Western myths and legends. Because of their amazing reproductive ability, rabbits are worried, but they are too late, and they are also killed. The rabbit epidemic in Australia was foreshadowed in ancient Greek mythology. According to legend, a resident of the Greek island of Lalo brought pregnant rabbits to the island, and the local area was soon overwhelmed with rabbits, causing huge losses to agriculture. Fortunately, the island is relatively small, and the angry inhabitants banded together to wipe out the rabbit once and for all. Subsequently, people prayed to the gods to release a rabbit in the sky as a wake-up call for the afterlife. Thus, there is a constellation named the constellation Rabbit. As early as the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy listed the constellation Rabbit as one of the 48 constellations in his Astronomical Summa. The constellation Rabbit is located in the sky just below Orion, within the "hunting" range of the two "hounds" of the constellation Canis Major and Canis Minor.
In addition, in medieval Europe, asceticism was widely promoted, and the rabbit was regarded as a symbol of lust because of its strong reproductive ability, and thus became one of the symbols of the seven deadly sins of Christianity. This is reflected in Renaissance paintings, such as Titian's painting Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit, known as the "father of Western oil painting", where the Virgin can be seen clutching a white rabbit in her hand, which is interpreted as expressing a desire to restrain himself. In William Strong's painting Temptation, the rabbit also appears as an image of lust, lying quietly at the feet of Adam and Eve, who steal the forbidden fruit.
Rabbits have such a strong reproductive ability that the ancients believed that rabbits could reproduce asexually or even resurrect. Easter is one of the most important holidays in Europe and the United States, and the rabbit is the iconic animal of Easter. According to legend, the Easter Bunny was probably first seen in Germany in the 14th century, and in the following centuries, German and Dutch immigrants gradually brought Easter rabbit-related customs to the United States.
The moon god in Anglo-Saxon mythology symbolizes the moon and pregnancy. The rabbit in ancient Greek mythology is both the embodiment of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and one of the incarnations of Artemis, the goddess of hunting, which partly explains why the image of the rabbit is often feminine and wild in the West.
Rabbits and love are also closely related. Romantic French people use "hot bunnies" to describe sexy, romantic, attractive men. Hugo also once said, "Capturing women's hearts is like catching rabbits, first capturing their ears (with sweet words)." ”
Rabbits also have the meaning of luck in the UK. Because rabbits rely on their feet to escape quickly, the English word "rabbit's foot" means "lucky charm." In some parts of the UK, people touch newborns with rabbit feet to wish them a happy life. People also give necklaces or keychains in the shape of rabbit's feet to friends who are about to travel far away to wish them a safe journey. In some places, people also like to wake up on the first day of the month and shout "rabbit" three times in anticipation of good luck throughout the month.
UK: Hide-headed and out-of-the-tailed mysterious rabbit
In Europe, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, there are legends that rabbits are transformed by evil witches, and they turn into rabbits to make people relax their guard and do bad things. Some Western scholars believe that this negative image of the rabbit may have a lot to do with its hidden head and tail and good at digging holes. The rabbit's burrow is deep underground and accessible in all directions, and people in ancient times could not explore the whole cave. Ordinary people, out of fear of the unknown, naturally also have some bad associations with rabbits. Some people even think that the rabbit's cave can connect to hell, and the rabbit itself is a messenger connecting the yin and yang world. These horror legends about rabbits have caused people to fear weak rabbits.
Rabbits are generally weak figures, but in some Western legends, rabbits do the opposite, brutally torturing or killing humans. The 13th-century French folk tale poem "The Story of the Lena Fox" describes a little hare named "Cowardly" fighting back against a hunter. In the illustrations of some European medieval books, there are also stories of rabbits torturing and even killing hunters. Such books have been found in both Britain and Germany, in which rabbits capture and interrogate humans and even brutally execute them. According to analysis, the reason why Europeans demonize rabbits is related to the fact that rabbits have a pair of blood-red eyes. In Western legends, the eyes of horror images such as demons, vampires, and werewolves are red, so red-eyed rabbits are also considered to have evil attributes, at least as servants or eyeliner of demons.
At the beginning of the last century, in the town of Clifton, Virginia, USA, there was also a legend of rabbit murderers. This rabbit-headed human monster is known as the "Clifton Rabbit Man". Over time, a bridge at the legendary "murder scene" in Clifton Town has attracted many tourists who come to hunt, especially on Halloween and other festivals related to the supernatural atmosphere. Later, the United States also shot a number of related horror movies, such as the "Rabbit Killer" series, "Death Illusion", "Rotten End", etc., and also derived related story books and picture books, horror rabbit dolls and other peripheral products are also all the rage. Nowadays, in masquerade balls or Halloween costumes in European and American countries, rabbit hoods or rabbit masks are often not used to dress up cute, but to represent a terrifying image.
In some games, rabbits are also set as horror characters. For example, the rabbit in "Teddy Bear's Five Nights Harem" creates a sufficient horror atmosphere for this adventure escape game, and the blue rabbit face with multiple teeth and always suddenly appears on the screen has become a nightmare existence in the player's heart. In the game "Silent Hill 3", the blood-stained puppet rabbit that appears from time to time "contributes" a lot to the horror atmosphere.