Fictional Rodents Magazine (Volume 1) by Sandor Ligetfalvy

FICTIONAL RODENTS VOL. 1 M

BANKSYâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S RATS What do they say about the human condition? MOUSE UTOPIA How overpopulation research of John B. Calhoun at N.I.M.H influenced a generation of doomsayers GENDER ROLES IN JAPAN Shockingly funny Ebichu the Housekeeping Hamster is not safe for work. Is it a valid social commentary or an absurd joke? PLUS Comics, games, books and films

rat rhetoric

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FICTIONAL RODENTS

W Fictional Rodents is a free digital publication produced by Sandor Ligetfalvy

hy Fictional Rodents? a friend recently asked me when reviewing the Tumblr blog I’ve been publishing. He asked, “Does it go deep?” and then referenced a previous conversation we had about the Pied Piper, I suppose implying he understood it does. All I could say is that I became interested in researching this niche field because of my own rodent-super-hero concept. I began searching for every character, franchise, image, video, and reference to fictional rodents. I engaged in this project because I asked myself the very same question my friend had posed to me. Why, as an artist or creator or whatever, have I graviated towards anthropromorphised rodents? For me, this isn’t new. When I was 12 years old I created a monthly newsletter called The Hamster Times which featured fictional and satirical stories home-published in ClarisWorks. My friends contributed stories. I had a custom baseball cap I wore. I sold copies at my mom’s church for 50 cents each. This went on for over a year. My first GeoCities and Angelfire website, complete self-made unnecessary animated gifs, was produced to bring this publication into the digital world. As a hobby, I would make icon-sized pixel-art of a population of rodents. A few years earlier I invented “Super Hamster” when I read there was a contest in Disney Adventures to create a character. For years I would doodle variations of this character. In middle school I incorporated my friends as characters in to the farcial storylines with references to Smashing Pumpkins and Lloyd Robertson.

As years went on I would revisit the character art and as I have struggled to actually produce art that satisfies me, I have developed an overcomplex mythos. I have a realm of rodents I go to in my head and think about. I currently call this project The Justice Rodents. This is the primary answer to my friend’s question. I want to know the field because I have a project which ventures into it. But deeper than that, I want to know why the hell am I programmed this way? Stories of rodents in human society occur again and again in mythology, literature, comic, film, and games. Why does this same idea emerge from artists and authors around the world -- for generations? Why is employing a rodent a useful mode to telling a story about people? The cover story in this edition of Fictional Rodents, Appreciating Banksy’s Rats (Page 14), contributes an informative answer. While the essay Gendered Misadventures in Ebichu (page 20) provides a fascenating example. The feature in this edition was originally published in Cabinet magazine “The Behavioral Sink” however I have selected one of the most interesting lines from the piece: “Hell is other mice.” In this piece author Will Wiles looks at research of John B. Calhoun and its culture influence. This magazine is primarly an endeavour in page layout and as such I am publishing articles on this digital magazine platform which I have not secured authorization to use. I do so on good faith everyone recognizes the purpose of this project is artistic curation and not for profit.

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Films and TV Shows that started as books

Games and Comics

Collectors’ Selections

Ebichu

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VOLUME 1

Gendered Misadventures in Japanese Animation By Brent Allison

Banksy’s Rats Written by Amanda Erlanson

hell is other mice

the behavioral sink of john b. calhoun’s mouse utopia

Written by Will Wiles

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Films That Started as Books

MRS. FRISBY AND THE RATS OF NIMH (Robert C. O’Brien) Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a 1971 children’s book by Robert C. O’Brien. Illustrated by Zena Bernstein, it won the 1972 Newbery Medal. A film adaptation, The Secret of NIMH, was released in 1982. The novel relates the plight of a widowed field mouse, Mrs. Frisby, who seeks the aid of a group of former laboratory rats in rescuing her home from destruction by a farmer’s plow, and of the history of the rats’ escape from the laboratory and development of a literate and technological society. The work was inspired by the research of Dr. John B. Calhoun on mice and rat population dynamics at the National Institute of Mental Health. (See more on Calhoun on page 24)

STUART LITTLE (E.B. White) Stuart Little is a 1945 children’s novel by E. B. White, his first book for children, and is widely recognized as a classic in children’s literature. Stuart Little was illustrated by the subsequently award-winning artist Garth Williams, also his first work for children. It is a realistic fantasy about a talking mouse, Stuart Little, born to human parents in New York.

Stuart Little

TALE OF DESPERAUX (Kate DiCamillo) a 2004 Newbery Medal winning fantasy book written by Kate DiCamillo. The main plot follows the adventures of a mouse named Despereaux Tilling, who sets out on his quest to rescue a beautiful human princess. The novel is divided into four books and a coda. Each book tells the story from the perspective of a different character: Despereaux, Roscuro,

Tale of Desperaux

Miggery Sow, and all together. The book was adapted into an animated film in 2008

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BERNARD THE BRAVE (Margery Sharp) Bernard the Brave is a novel written by British novelist Margery Sharp. It is the eighth novel in a series of nine known collectively as The Rescuers which tells the story of two little mice, Bernard and Miss Bianca, and their adventures as members of the Mouse Prisoner’s Aid Society, a mouse organization dedicated to cheering up and rescuing prisoners around the world.

TV Series from Books REDWALL (Brian Jacques) Redwall, by Brian Jacques, is a series of children’s fantasy novels. It is the title of the first book of the series, published in 1986, as well as the name of the Abbey featured in the book and the name of an animated TV series based on three of the novels (Redwall, Mattimeo, and Martin the Warrior),

Redwall

which first aired in 1999. There have been twenty-two novels and two picture books published. The twenty-second and final novel was The Rogue Crew.

HAMTARO (Ritsuko Kawai) Hamtaro is a Japanese anime series. The main character is a hamster named Hamtaro who has a variety of adventures with other hamsters, called “Ham-Hams” (“Ham-chans” in the Japanese version). The show is based on a manga series by Ritsuko Kawai, Hamtaro Gets Lost and Other

Hamtaro

Stories and Jealous Hamtaro and Other Stories. VIZ Media published the storybooks in English.

EBICHU (Risa Itō) A noticeable send-up of the animated series Hamtaro, an exceedingly popular children’s show in Japan featuring a loveable protagonist hamster of the same name, Ebichu herself looks almost exactly the same as Hamtaro, but the similarities end there. A program that is certainly not for children, Ebichu earns the dubious distinction of censorship

Ebichu

on even Japanese late-night television... Go to page 8 to read Gendered Misadventures in Ebichu

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Games

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MOUSE TRAP Mouse Trap is a board game first published by Ideal in 1963 for two or more players. Players at first cooperate to build a working Rube Goldberg-like mouse trap. Once the mouse trap has been built, players turn against each

MOUSE GUARD RPG

REDWALL ADVENTURE

other, attempting to trap opponents’ mouse-

An all ages role playing game which uses a

Redwall: The Adventure Game is an official

modified version of game designer Luke Crane’s

Redwall video game scheduled for release on

Burning Wheel rule system. This book contains

Mac, PC, iPad and various other mobiles in Fall

everything fans of the Mouse Guard books will

2012. An epic adventure game where you control

need to know about the world of the Guard and

the actions of a Redwall outsider on his quest to

roleplay their own adventures. Features artwork

find the Warrior’s Star, an ancient relic believed

and extensive background material from series

to be recovered by Martin the Warrior long ago.

shaped game pieces.

creator David Petersen.

YO! FRANKIE!

CONKER’S BAD FUR DAY

Yo! Frankie! Is the result of the Blender Institute’s

The game follows the story of Conker the Squir-

open source game development. The title char-

rel, an alcoholic red squirrel, who is attempting

acter, a squirrel named Frankie, comes from the

to return home to his girlfriend Berri after a night

Skaven are a race of man-sized rat-creatures

short film “Big Buck Bunny” also created by the

of binge drinking with his friends.[1] Meanwhile,

in Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy

Blender Institute. The game is free to download

the Panther King, ruler of the land that Conker

setting. They were officially introduced as a

and works cross platform game (Linux, Win-

is lost in, finds that his throne’s side table is

new Chaos race in 1986 by Jes Goodwin.

dows, OS X).

missing one of its legs and orders his servant,

SKAVEN (WARHAMMER)

FICTIONAL RODENTS f i c t i o n a l r o d e n t s . t u m b l r. c o m

A daily Tumblr, both nostalgic and contemporary, about films, cartoons, comics, and literature, of both famous and obscure fictional rodent characters.

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Vintage Comic Supermouse No. 45, Fall 1958

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Housekeeping Ebichu: Gendered Misadventures in Japanese Animation

Written by Brent Allison (lothar@uga.edu) h ttp ://www.co r n e r e d a n g el .com/amw ess/papers/housekeepi ng_ebi chu.html

ven for Japan, whose animation industry is widely renown for its wide variety of genres that cater to almost any market demographic or taste, few animated series such as Oruchuban Ebichu, or Ebichu the Housekeeping Hamster exist. A noticeable send-up of the animated series Hamtaro, an exceedingly popular children’s show in Japan featuring a loveable protagonist hamster of the same name, Ebichu herself looks almost exactly the same as Hamtaro, but the similarities end there. A program that is certainly not for children, Ebichu earns the dubious distinction of censorship on even Japanese late-night television, a much less restrictive time slot by U.S. television decency standards, through overt sexual and toilet humor, profanity, hints at bestiality, and violence done to the diminutive title character. One must look both at and beyond this often disturbing content, however, to gain an appreciable understanding of what Ebichu has to say about the construction of gender in both animated media and larger Japanese society. The program focuses on the ways in which Ebichu and other characters use their gendered identities to both understand themselves and interact with others while causing the very conflict that scholars interpret to find the power relations that are central to their analyses. That Ebichu is disturbing is entirely the point. The characters use the extremes of constructed norms of gender to create a universe that is entirely unbalanced, dysfunctional, and serves no greater purpose than temporary pleasure and long-term meaninglessness. An analytical look at the individual characters, their relations to other characters, and their symbolic referencing to

gender norms normally acceptable to Japanese society but polarized into comedic yet ultimately tragic hopelessness is worth taking. Ebichu Familiar with media portrayals of Asian women that tend to polarize them into sensual vamps or obedient servants of the men they love (Hagedorn 1997), most people in the U.S. are unfamiliar with another stereotype of Japanese women that exists within their own culture, that of kawaii, or “cuteness” (Napier 2001). Like Hello Kitty, Ebichu is kawaii symbolized in a small furry mammal – diminutive, sugary, child-like, innocent and energetic. These traits are in many ways ideals of Japanese femininity, albeit largely constructed by men in Japanese society since the postwar era through the institutionalization of Japanese popular culture by large media and retail conglomerates. This phenomenon, borne out of growing contradictions between traditional gender roles ideal-

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ized by men and realized gains in gender equity by women, is largely echoed in the rest of the postindustrialized world (Dines 1995; Wood 2001). Rather than be safely subsumed to the dictates of the kawaii mold, however, it is precisely Ebichu’s extreme adherence to them that allows her to ironically violate these norms. She lives for nothing more than to cheerfully serve her human female master. Closely related to the kawaii model in Japan is the ideal of feminine yasashii, or that which embodies innocence, kindness, and uncomplicated sincerity (Drazen 2003). It is in the means by which Ebichu attempts to meet these ideals that the violation of the kawaii and yasashii models and ensuing hilarity occur. She reads romance novels to her master and the master’s boyfriend while they have sex to “spice things up” a little. When an obscene caller phones in a request for Ebichu to tell him what she is wearing, she innocently responds, “I’m naked with only an apron on.” The caller, unaware that Ebichu is a hamster, anxiously asks her how much (pubic) hair she has, and Ebichu responds, “I have hair all over,” which excites the caller even further. She also cannot keep her mouth shut to total strangers and other obscene callers about her master’s proclivities for revealing lingerie, autoerotic stimulation, or a packa-day cigarette habit while at the end naively exclaiming, “But I’ll never tell anyone about these things, ever!” Ebichu kisses her master when the master complains that she hasn’t “gotten any” from her boyfriend lately, which Ebichu takes to mean, “gotten any kisses”. In order to be kind to her master, Ebichu also imitates a cat’s cuteness by licking her face while she is waking up, which prompts the master to punch Ebichu for doing something transgressive to the masterservant relationship, particularly between those of the same gender, human or not. After each of these and other similar instances, Ebichu is sanctioned in some way, usually by a bloody beating by her master who represents another, oppositional side to Japanese femininity that will be discussed later. The sanctions, however, rarely stop Ebichu from subverting the kawaii and yasashii models that she herself tries to hold onto at the expense of her master’s and other’s sensibilities. Ebichu does not only violate the yasashii and kawaii ideals by her fierce adherence to them, but also everyone’s conceptions of her as an anthropomorphized hamster. Her innocence prevents her from conceptualizing herself as anything but a hamster, whereas the humans

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themselves vary in their perceptions of Ebichu as animal or human depending on the context. Ebichu is considered an equal partner to her master in a Mah-Jong game when the master seeks revenge against her opponent boyfriend for a previous erotic flirtation with another woman, but then calls Ebichu a “filthy sewer rat” for winning more money than the ten dollars that she was bought with. Ma-kun, a human with a crush on Ebichu, doesn’t see her as a hamster at all, whereas the master’s boyfriend frequently calls her a “rat” when she chastises him for making her master upset with his philandering. As the embodiment of feminized yasashii and kawaii traits, Ebichu’s status as a person or an animal is as precarious as these same gendered models, depending on the advantages or disadvantages of these models to others who are in power to determine Ebichu’s (and by extension, women’s) status.

Rather than be safely subsumed to the dictates of the kawaii mold, however, it is precisely Ebichu’s extreme adherence to them that allows her to ironically violate these norms. Office Lady Unlike Ebichu, whose misadventures garner sympathy from the audience, Ebichu’s master, Office Lady (a common, generic term for young women who do clerical tasks in Japanese offices), rarely enjoys such benefits since her personality contradicts perceived positive aspects of femininity. She

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constantly punishes Ebichu, often violently, yet exhibits a two-faced personality by being kind and agreeable in public. Evidence of her boyfriend’s infidelity is numerous, yet she manages to be gullible or complacent enough for her boyfriend to soothe her with his false explanations of his innocence; or she eventually forgets his unbelievable explanations, even if she herself finds them insulting to her intelligence – much to the dismay of Ebichu. However much these negatively-perceived traits of Office Lady abridge the sympathy she might get from Japanese viewers, she is nonetheless relatable as an everywoman. She is aged 25, the last year that Japanese society traditionally considers women “marriage material”, so she responds to the pressure many women feel through her acquiescence to her boyfriend’s misbehavior in the hopes that he will propose to her. Office Lady may be a hypocrite when it comes to her alternating agreeable and vicious personalities, but the audience may in fact alternately chastise and see much of themselves in her at the same time. East Asians in general, and Japanese in particular are well-known for valuing the art of “saving face” highly, even at the expense of their own personal dignity. This goes doubly so for women who, as Office Lady’s boyfriend points out, should be “presentable at all times”, but who also might secretly lash out at others they envy for not conforming to such pressures, such as Ebichu. In this respect, Office Lady conforms to the other extreme of Japanese femininity in opposition to Ebichu’s “natural” girlish honesty and naïve cuteness – that of the self-aware, face-saving gentlewoman who does everything possible to meet social expectations of female behavior; especially in assuming the penultimate female roles of wife and mother (Drazen 2003). Like Ebichu, whose extreme cuteness and honesty brings her beatings and unwanted attention, Office Lady’s adherence to social expectations of outward feminine patience and gentleness ironically dashes her hopes for a fulfilling relationship with her boyfriend and an agreeable coexistence with Ebichu. Kaishounashi As Office Lady’s name is generic and widely applicable, Kaishounashi’s name, translated as “worthless bum” may apply to much of the Japanese male population for some of the female audience. A portion of the lyrics to Ebichu’s theme song, sung by Ebichu’s squeaky, high-pitched voice of innocence, points out how men such as Kaishounashi are perceived: Wondering I’m home alone again today Housekeeping When suddenly, I think of you I cannot for the life of me Figure out you men You do whatever you want, whenever you want If you had to grow up La la la Wha-Whatever would you do? Note how the phrase “you men” characterizes all males, perhaps unfairly, as undecipherable, indulgent and immature. Kaishounashi and Ma-kun, who will be discussed later, are the only two male char-

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acters with prominent roles in the series, and who both exhibit these masculine traits in markedly different ways. Kaishounashi, Office Lady’s boyfriend, is every bit the stereotype of the lecherous philanderer. Rarely concerned with Office Lady’s feelings, he constantly cheats on her and covers up his own misdeeds that go so low as seducing multiple women, including high school students, while house-sitting Office Lady’s apartment. Kaishounashi uses Office Lady’s desperation for a potential husband as his best tool for maintaining sexual access to her while keeping his own emotions inaccessible to both her and the audience. While as cruel to Ebichu as Office Lady is, his abuse of Ebichu is impersonal in nature – he only beats her up when she is being an inconvenience rather than for doing things that upset his gendered identity, as Office Lady does. Unlike broader Japanese feminine characteristics such as sugary kawaii or publicly forced kindness, which can ambiguously lead to tranquility or tragedy, Japanese masculine characteristics tend to be more one-dimensionally negative or positive. Kaishounashi is an unabashedly negative representation of Japanese masculinity – his extreme infidelity and perpetual lying gratuitously emphasize the impact of his both his bad conduct and lack of character it stems from. Similar to U.S. media representations of masculine sexuality as an empowering and often positive extension of masculine power (LeFrance 1995), Kaishounashi’s unrestrained sexuality and the ways in which he satisfies it bear no lasting negative consequences for him. It is in fact an added bonus for him to use it as both the means and end of his relationship with Office Lady while she receives it as an inadequate replacement for genuine love. Ma-kun Ma-kun, a friend of Office Lady and Kaishounashi, represents an oppositional masculinity to Kaishounashi’s emotionless sexual conquest. Rather than exude the stoic aggressive heroism that U.S. culture associates with masculinity (LeFrance 1995), Ma-kun conforms to a decidedly Japanese masculinity that embodies humility, kindness, determination, and personal sacrifice. In many instances he bursts uncontrollably with emotion, making him seem more genuine and sincere to a culture that idealizes heartfelt expressions of emotions from both genders (Drazen 2003). However, since Ma-kun is the embodiment of positive masculinity, he must adhere to his cardinal traits in extreme ways to match the dysfunctionalism of the series. This is tightly expressed in his attraction to Ebichu. He is the perfect gentleman to the hamster; he buys her expensive items, responds to her emotions, and defends her from Kaishounashi’s cruelty. However, that he is showering his attention on a hamster demonstrates that he is expressing his masculine desires towards an ideal of kawaii, rather than realizing that any meaningful relationship with Ebichu herself is impossible. He tries to ignore Ebichu’s very simple tastes and desires appropriate for a hamster, and lavishes her with

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Since Ma-kun is the embodiment of positive masculinity, he must adhere to his cardinal traits in extreme ways to match the dysfunctionalism of the series. ornate human-pleasing items such as an emerald ring when she really wants ramen noodles. Ebichu appreciates his kindness, but her own innocence prevents her from realizing that Ma-kun is also sexually attracted to her cuteness. He releases his desires for Ebichu during sex with his human girlfriend, who loudly wonders why Ma-kun is so good in bed. Were Ebichu a human being, Ma-kun’s dysfunctionalism would go unnoticed; a man such as himself and a woman who acts like cute and innocent Ebichu without her hazardous extremes are heterosexual ideals of Japanese society. However, not only is Ma-kun trying to woo Ebichu for embodying the kawaii ideal, but he is also trying to achieve a positive masculine identity by doing so. However, he conveniently forgets that he lusts over a hamster while having sex with a girlfriend who, by those same masculine standards, he should lavish his attention on instead. Nevertheless, like Kaishounashi, his negative traits are rewarded rather than punished. He earns Ebichu’s friendly affection and enhances his sexual performance with his girlfriend who has no idea what his intentions really are. Watanabe-san Watanabe-san appears in one episode of Ebichu, but her relation to Office Lady has ambiguous but notable things to say about Ebichu’s positioning of sexual minorities. In this episode, Office Lady is physically ill beyond Ebichu’s already limited capacities to take care of her. So Office Lady phones in her friend Watanabe-san for assistance, a kind, soft-spoken young women who is helpful around the house, but who

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appears to be surrounded by a surrealist pink aura with floating flowers and children laughing in the distance. Ebichu’s sincerity demands that she openly call her “Hanabatake-san” (literally, “Ms. Flower Garden”) despite Office Lady’s demands not to. However, Office Lady demands this not because Watanabe-san doesn’t appear to have flowers floating around her, but because she considers it impolite for Ebichu to point it out. Watanabe-san arrives, politely greets the residents and gets right to work: cooking food, cleaning up around the house, and serving Office Lady meals and medicine. When Office Lady is conscious enough to take note of her surroundings, she is astonished that Watanabe-san has even done her laundry for her – including her underwear. When Watanabe-san says that she washed them by hand, this sends Office Lady into a panicked fit. “You’re a woman, after all. You can’t help but get them dirty,” Watanabe-san calmly says with an open smile and a hand over her mouth. Ebichu then innocently brings in Office Lady’s dildo and says that Watanabe-san cleaned it as well. This puts Office Lady into hysterics – as well as into a 104-degree fever and an extra week in bed. In Japanese culture, indirect contact – such as a man sharing a glass with a woman – is considered the same as direct contact, such as a kiss (Napier, 2001). That Watanabe-san not only touched Office Lady’s underwear and dildo – but voluntarily had a lot of contact with them via cleaning them is not-so-subtly coded as Watanabe-san actually stimulating Office Lady’s genitals. In this sense, Watanabe-san is a lesbian foil to Office Lady’s offended heterosexuality, and like media in the U.S., confirms her status as a character rightfully marginalized by her homosexuality (Fejes 1993). She is both so polar-

ized towards femininity (doing domestic chores well is coded as feminine moreso in Japan than in the U.S.) and so eerily feminine that her sexuality gravitates towards other women. In this sense, Ebichu reinforces homosexuality as deviant and as incompatible with a harmonious friendship with other women, further adding to Japanese homosexuals’ own sense of alienation from mainstream society (Gross 1991). Or does it? Larry Gross’ analysis of camp as a tool for subverting mainstream ideology (1991) can lead one to assume that the target in Ebichu is Japanese femininity rather than homosexuality through blowing away the assumption that domestically-inclined women are necessarily heterosexual. In this sense, it is Office Lady, forced out of her dignified persona to become the comedic figure rather than the homosexuality of Watanabe-san that is the joke itself (Fejes 1993). Watanabe-san’s apparently deviant homosexuality in Ebichu is not necessarily portrayed as an act of unseemly perversion as it might traditionally be in U.S. media. That she is gay poses problems for Office Lady, but it is Office Lady’s conformity to heterosexuality that problematizes her friendship with Watanabe-san and keeps her in a loveless relationship with Kaishounashi. Far from celebrating homosexuality or even dignifying it on par with more normalized Japanese heterosexual relationships, the Watanabe-san episode in Ebichu reinforces the idea that Ebichu derives its tragicomic substance from the characters’ steadfast adherence to gender norms. In the case of Watanabe-san, her extreme femininity ironically results in her deviant lesbianism while Office Lady’s own refusal to step out from behind her heterosexual lens of the world causes her more grief.

One could take the character-driven

Ebichu series as a

critical examination of gender norms in

Japanese society and an

ultimate rebuke of their hegemonic character

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Conclusion One could take the character-driven Ebichu series as a critical examination of gender norms in Japanese society and an ultimate rebuke of their hegemonic character that causes the characters to behave abnormally (including Watanabe-san’s lesbianism portrayed as abnormal without question). However, the rest of the world in Ebichu, from office workers to store clerks to delivery boys live normal day-to-day lives within their own gendered identities. The message of Ebichu is that the problems the characters face are psychological rather than sociological in nature. As long as Office Lady wouldn’t feel so pressured to marry, or Kaishounashi and Ma-kun wouldn’t be so extraordinarily bad or good as men, respectively, or Ebichu and Watanabesan wouldn’t be so feminine in their own ways would their lives be normal. The gender standards they are trying to conform to aren’t the subject of ridicule, but rather the ways by which they try to conform to the standards of gender are the grist of Ebichu’s comedy. The shortcomings are not with society’s expectations of their behavior, but rather are with the characters themselves. The consequences of the characters’ faults fall hardest on the females’ rather than the male characters’ shoulders. Kaishounashi only faces inconveniences from his insensitivity and womanizing, but still manages to gain sexual and emotional access from Office Lady. Ma-kun stays in his relationship to his girlfriend, and his sex life is enhanced, not diminished, by his fantasizing about Ebichu. Watanabe-san suffers no consequences (her appearance in Ebichu was too short for her to), but Ebichu and Office Lady are trapped in a mutually-abusive relationship with few alternatives presented for their escape. Seen from a perspective not taking gendered representations for granted, Ebichu provides a fascinating commentary on gender norms in Japanese society, but its implicit recommendations like much pop culture in the postindustrialized world leave these norms intact rather than substantially challenged.

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“I began to spray some small rats in the streets of Paris because rats are the only wild animals living in cities, and only rats will survive when the human race disappears and dies out” - Blek le Rat.

banksy By Amanda Erlanson

’ve been meaning to write about the recurring use of rats in Banksy’s work – the fly-by-night instances of art-for-art’s sake (and subversive social critiques) that mysteriously appear on exterior surfaces all over England, to the joy of many and the consternation of a few (of the more humorless and uptight variety). I can’t help considering how many characteristics these nocturnal residents of the underworld share with another night prowler – the graffiti artist. Both rats and graf writers are tough, clever, unloved and impossible-

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y’s rats to-eliminate denizens of the abandoned, trash-littered noman’s-lands between our everyday reality and the mechanisms that make its clean, well-lit surfaces possible. The first street artist who painted rats was probably Blek le Rat, a Parisian who witnessed the beginnings of the graffiti movement on a visit to NYC in 1971 and brought it home. By 1981, he was hitting the streets of Paris with some of the first stencil graffiti. “I began to spray some small rats in the streets of Paris because rats are the only wild animals living in cities, and only rats will survive when the human race dis-

appears and dies out,” he said. “I wanted to do a rat invasion. I put thousands all over Paris.” Two decades later, following in Blek le Rat’s footsteps, Banksy would revive the symbol of the rat with a new element of playful humor and social commentary. On the off chance that you haven’t heard of Banksy before, he is a mysterious British “guerilla artist” who (among other pursuits) stencils subversive social and political messages on the façades of buildings all over England (and, increasingly, the world). “The art to it is not getting picked up for it, and

h t t p : / / w w w. e r r a t i c p h e n o m e n a . c o m / 2 0 0 8 / 0 2 / b a n k s y s - r a t - a p p r e c i a t i o n . h t m l

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banksy’s rats

that’s the biggest buzz at the end of the day,” according to Banksy. Despite (or perhaps because of) his anonymity, Banksy’s popularity among art collectors has grown to the point where a painting he stenciled on the side of a building on Portobello Road recently sold for £208,100 on eBay. (Banksy once claimed that it takes him an average of 35 seconds to paint one of his pieces.) Of course, none of that money goes to Banksy – the owner of the wall lays claim to whatever is painted on it, as well. As a result, Banksy gives away most of his art, and many consider the appearance of one of his pieces in a neighborhood as an act of public service. Others consider it vandalism. In Banksy’s view, “Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don’t need an education to understand it, and there’s no admission fee.” Let us consider Banky’s favorite subject, the rat. Robert Sullivan, rat expert and author of Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants, had this to say about the battle between homo sapiens and rattus norvegicus: “Rat-control programs are like

diets, in that cities are always trying a new one. In the city, rats and men live in conflict, one side scurrying from the other or destroying the other’s habitat – an unending and brutish war. Rat stories are war stories, and they are told in conversation and on the news, in dispatches from the front that is all around us – though mostly underneath.” Sounds a bit like the never-ending struggle between graf writers and city governments, doesn’t it? Far from being worthless, the muchmaligned rat is in fact a prodigy among animals. Its combination of intelligence, tenacity and survival instinct is arguably unparalleled in nature. A city rat, given enough time, can chew through a concrete wall to get where it needs to go – and in many cities contractors have started adding crushed glass to poured concrete to stop their inevitable tunneling. In the same sense, those who aspire to greatness in the graffiti world must have superhuman drive, cleverness, stubbornness and skill to create art in the face of the dangers and chal-

City governments have long ignored the fact that poisoning rat populations actually makes them stronger. The surviving rats have more food, so they get bigger, and at the same time their litter sizes increase dramatically, so that the next generation more than replaces the lost members of the previous generation, and within a few months, the population explodes. Experts say the best way to control rats is to eliminate their food source, as rat populations naturally regulate themselves according to the amount of food available. Similarly, urban law enforcement finds itself in a no-win situation when it cracks down on tagging. Though graffiti may decline for a period, writers will find a way to get their writing on the wall, as it’s impossible to control every surface of a city. Though NYC has, on occasion, managed to slow down graffiti, it always came back stronger and more determined for the hiatus, with those who withstood the heat elevated to heroic status. Better to attack the problem at the source, by giving urban youth other outlets and options, rather than considering them worthless and unredeemable. As Banksy suggested, “A lot of people never use their initiative because nobody told them to.” Yet even that unlikely-tobe-implemented solution wouldn’t eliminate the problem entirely, because graffiti culture has transcended its roots, and even rich white boys crave respect. As The Village Voice put it, “The war on graffiti raises the same issues as the war on drugs does. It’s not about helping people manage their compulsions, it’s about controlling a large population of young men. And as long as politicians are rewarded for their diligence at this unacknowledged

Far from being worthless, the muchmaligned rat is in fact a prodigy among animals. Its combination of intelligence, tenacity and survival instinct is arguably unparalleled in nature. A city rat, given enough time, can chew through a concrete wall to get where it needs to go.

lenges involved in working in a forbidden medium. Throwing up barriers to painting seems only to encourage some graf writers. As Banksy himself noted, “If you are going to damage someone’s property, it’s good to show some dedication.”

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task, graffiti will never play the part it can in beautifying schoolyards, abandoned buildings, and other markers of “the pale landscape of the poor.” There’s a wellspring of talent in these aerosol warriors, but the city is sending them to Rikers to learn about thug life.” In Banksy’s philosophy, “If you feel dirty, insignificant or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex 50 times a day.” Rat enthusiast Robert Sullivan noted that naturalists treat wild rats as anath-

ema, refusing to believe that they deserve any consideration. “It is the very ostracism of the rat, its exclusion from the pantheon of natural wonders, that makes it appealing to me, because it begs the question: who are we to decide what is natural and what is not?” And who are we to decide what is art and what is not? Rat lovers might tell you that the rat is us, and we are the rat. We live side by side – rats throng to areas where humans live, and avoid the same areas we avoid. Rats giggle when they’re tickled (albeit ultrasonically), they are curious

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and playful, they love to be touched, they dream much as we do, can be subject to the same addictions (alchohol, nicotine, cocaine), have personality disorders linked to their upbringing, and cooperate with others when they think it will benefit them. A study recently suggested that rats may be the only species outside the primate world that is capable of metacognition, or “thinking about thinking.” Perhaps their most relevant similarity to us is that they consume every resource in their environment unto famine, at which point they are forced to fight, wander or die. Rat

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In The Rat, mankind has finally succeeded in destroying itself, and rats have inherited the devastation left behind. The rat narrator, acknowledging her kind’s penchant for fleeing sinking ships, laments, “When Earth became the ship, there was no other planet to move to... Where man had been, in every place he left, garbage remained. “

The rat is us, and we are the rat.

expert Robert Sullivan writes, “I think of rats as our mirror species, reversed but similar, thriving or suffering in the very cities where we do the same.” Of course, it’s entirely possible that Banksy never intended the rat to symbolize graffiti artists in particular. After all, he once admitted, “I’d been painting rats for three years before someone said, ‘That’s clever, it’s an anagram of art,’ and I had to pretend I’d known that all along.” Perhaps Banksy’s choice of the rat as metaphor wasn’t entirely conscious – but rather a more a visceral, instinctual association. Like many graffiti artists, Banksy prefers the life of the shadows, the ratlike scuttle along dark, cluttered alleys, over rooftops and through abandoned lots. “I have no interest in ever coming out,” he once said. “I figure there are

enough self-opinionated assholes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is. You ask a lot of kids today what they want to be when they grow up, and they say, ‘I want to be famous.’ You ask them, ‘For what reason?’ and they don’t know or care. I think Andy Warhol got it wrong – in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes.” All of this talk of rats has brought to mind Gunter Grass’ novel The Rat, which I haven’t read in about 20 years. In The Rat, mankind has finally succeeded in destroying itself, and rats have inherited the devastation left behind. The rat narrator, acknowledging her kind’s penchant for fleeing sinking ships, laments, “When Earth became the ship, there was no other planet to

move to... Where man had been, in every place he left, garbage remained. Even in his pursuit of the ultimate truth and quest for his God, he produced garbage. By his garbage, which lay stratum upon stratum, he could always be known, for more long-lived than man is his refuse. Garbage alone lives after him.” Ever philosophical, Banksy had this to say about the commercial detritus of the modern world: “Twisted little people go out every day and deface this great city. Leaving their idiotic little scribblings, invading communities and making people feel dirty and used. They just take, take, take and they don’t put anything back. They’re mean and selfish and they make the world an ugly place to be. We call them advertising agencies and town planners.”

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Rat expert Robert Sullivan writes, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think of rats as our mirror species, reversed but similar, thriving or suffering in the very cities where we do the same.â&#x20AC;? 19

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The Secret of N.I.M.H.

Jenner or Ratigan

Jenner is a suave, manipulative rat who is thirsty for power and willing to kill to achieve it. He plays along with an effort to help Mrs. Brisby only so that he can exploit the situation for his coup. He is of the opinion that the rats should not move, but this proves foolhardy as N.I.M.H is immenitly going to bulldoze the rosebush the colony lives under. His coup is small and short -sighted and he is defeated by the betrayal by one of his co-conspirators. While his misdeeds cause significant tragedy in the story, he has no control over is weild of power and his villiany is merely a flash in the pan.

Great Mouse Detective

Ratigan’s coup against the Mouse Queen of England is far more ambitious. He holds hostage a toymaker with the assignment to make a robot replicant of the queen. This “manchurian candidate” scheme would have the puppet politician replace the Queen so Ratigan can sieze the entire mouse empire. Despite the complexity of his machinations, he is stark raving mad, lusts for gold and jewels, and has such grevious authority that he can summon a cat at the shake of a tinkerbell and direct the beast to kill any mouse he chooses. Ratigan has a profound command over, and love of, his evilness. He is untouchable to his minions, who would never turn on him, and he can only be defeated by the ingenuity and valour of his arch-nemesis Basil of Baker St.

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Hell is mice. Written by Will Wiles

Mouse utopia/dystopia, as designed by John B. Calhoun. Images from Animal Populations: Nature’s Checks and Balances, 1983.

This story was first published in Cabinet Magazine

How do you design a utopia? In 1972, John B. Calhoun detailed the specifications of his Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice: a practical utopia built in the laboratory. Every aspect of Universe 25—as this particular model was called—was pitched to cater for the well-being of its rodent residents and increase their lifespan. The Universe took the form of a tank, 101 inches square, enclosed by walls 54 inches high. The first 37 inches of wall was structured so the mice could climb up, but they were prevented from escaping by 17 inches of bare wall above. Each wall had sixteen vertical mesh tunnels—call them stairwells—soldered to it. Four horizontal corridors opened off each stairwell, each leading to four nesting boxes. That means 256 boxes in total, each capable of housing fifteen mice. There was abundant clean food, water, and nesting material. The Universe was cleaned every four to eight weeks. There were no predators, the temperature was kept at a steady 68°F, and the mice were a disease-free elite selected from the National Institutes of Health’s breeding colony. Heaven. Four breeding pairs of mice were moved in on day one. After 104 days of upheaval as they familiarized themselves with their new world, they started to reproduce. In their fully catered paradise, the population increased exponentially, doubling every fifty-five days. Those were the good times, as the mice feasted on the fruited plain. To its members, the mouse civilization of Universe 25 must have seemed prosperous indeed. But its downfall was already certain—not just stagnation, but total and inevitable destruction. Calhoun’s concern was the problem of abundance: over-

h t t p : / / w w w. e r r a t i c p h e n o m e n a . c o m / 2 0 0 8 / 0 2 / b a n k s y s - r a t - a p p r e c i a t i o n . h t m l

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s other Calhoun Mouse Utopia

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population. As the name Universe 25 suggests, it was not But Calhoun’s work was different. Vogt, Ehrlich, and the first time Calhoun had built a world for rodents. He had the others were neo-Malthusians, arguing that population been building utopian environments for rats and mice since growth would cause our demise by exhausting our natural the 1940s, with thoroughly consistent results. Heaven always resources, leading to starvation and conflict. But there was turned into hell. They were a warning, made in a postwar no scarcity of food and water in Calhoun’s universe. The only society already rife with alarm over the soaring population thing that was in short supply was space. This was, after all, of the United States and the world. Pioneering ecologists “heaven”—a title Calhoun deliberately used with pitch-black irony. The point was that crowdsuch as William Vogt ing itself could destroy a society and Fairfield Osborn before famine even got a chance. were cautioning that The population reached the growing population In Calhoun’s heaven, hell was other mice. was putting pressure on eighty before succumbing So what exactly happened food and other natuto explosive violence, in Universe 25? Past day 315, ral resources as early population growth slowed. More as 1948, and both pubhypersexual activity than six hundred mice now lived lished bestsellers on the subject. The issue made followed by asexuality, in Universe 25, constantly rubthe cover of Time magbing shoulders on their way up and self-destruction. and down the stairwells to eat, azine in January 1960. drink, and sleep. Mice found In 1968, Paul Ehrlich themselves born into a world that published The Population Bomb, an alarmist work suggesting that the overcrowd- was more crowded every day, and there were far more mice ed world was about to be swept by famine and resource wars. than meaningful social roles. With more and more peers to After Ehrlich appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny defend against, males found it difficult and stressful to deCarson in 1970, his book became a phenomenal success. By fend their territory, so they abandoned the activity. Normal 1972, the issue reached its mainstream peak with the report social discourse within the mouse community broke down, of the Rockefeller Commission on US Population, which and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds. The failrecommended that population growth be slowed or even re- ures and dropouts congregated in large groups in the middle of the enclosure, their listless withdrawal occasionally interversed.

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rupted by spasms and waves of pointless violence. The vic- decline and fall of Universe 25 in 1972, he even laid out its tims of these random attacks became attackers. Left on their fate in equation form: own in nests subject to invasion, nursing females attacked their own young. Procreation slumped, infant abandonment Mortality, bodily death = the second death and mortality soared. Lone females retreated to isolated Drastic reduction of mortality = death of the second death nesting boxes on penthouse levels. Other males, a group = death squared Calhoun termed “the beautiful ones,” never sought sex and = (death)2 never fought—they just ate, slept, and groomed, wrapped in (Death)2 leads to dissolution of social organization narcissistic introspection. Elsewhere, cannibalism, pansexu- = death of the establishment alism, and violence became endemic. Mouse society had col- Death of the establishment leads to spiritual death = loss of capacity to engage in behaviors essential to lapsed. species survival On day 560, a little more than eighteen months into the = the first death experiment, the population peaked at 2,200 mice and its Therefore: growth ceased. A few mice survived past weaning until day (Death)2 = the first death six hundred, after which there were few pregnancies and no surviving young. As the population had ceased to regenerate itself, its path to extinction was clear. There would be no This formula might apply to rats and mice—but could the recovery, not even after numbers had dwindled back to those same happen to humankind? For Calhoun, there was little of the heady early days of the Universe. The mice had lost question about it. No matter how sophisticated we considthe capacity to rebuild their numbers—many of the mice that ered ourselves to be, once the number of individuals capable could still conceive, such as the “beautiful ones” and their of filling roles greatly exceeded the number of roles, secluded singleton female counterparts, had lost the social only violence and disruption of social organization can folability to do so. In a way, the creatures had ceased to be mice low. ... Individuals born under these circumstances will be so long before their death—a “first death,” as Calhoun put it, ru- out of touch with reality as to be incapable even of alienation. ining their spirit and their society as thoroughly as the later Their most complex behaviors will become fragmented. Acquisition, creation and uti“second death” of the lization of ideas appropriate physical body. for life in a post-industrial Calhoun had built overpopulation meant cultural-conceptual-techhis career on this basocial collapse followed nological society will have sic experiment and its been blocked. consistent results ever by extinction If its growth continued since erecting his first unchecked, human society “rat city” on a quarterwould succumb to nihilism acre of land adjacent to his home in Towson, Maryland, in 1947. The population and collapse, meaning the death of the species. Calhoun’s of that first pen had peaked at 200 and stabilized at 150, death-squared formula was for social pessimists what the when Calhoun had estimated that it could rise to as many laws of thermodynamics are for physicists. It was a sandas 5,000—something was evidently amiss. In 1954, Calhoun wich board with “The End Is Nigh” written on one side, and was employed by the National Institute of Mental Health in “QED” on the other. Indeed, the plight of Calhoun’s rats and Rockville, Maryland, where he would remain for three de- mice is one we easily identify with—we put ourselves in the cades. He built a ten-by-fourteen-foot “universe” for a small place of the mice, mentally inhabit the mouse universe, and population of rats, divided by electrified barriers into four cannot help but see ways in which it is like our own crowding rooms connected by narrow ramps. Food and water were world. plentiful, but space was tight, capable of supporting a maxi- This is precisely what Calhoun intended, in the design of mum of forty-eight rats. The population reached eighty be- his experiments and the language he used to describe them. fore succumbing to the same catastrophes that would afflict Universe 25 resembles the utopian, modernist urban fantaUniverse 25: explosive violence, hypersexual activity fol- sies of architects such as Ludwig Hilberseimer. Calhoun referred to the dwelling places within his Universes as “tower lowed by asexuality, and self-destruction. In 1962, Calhoun published a paper called “Population blocks” and “walk-up apartments.” As well as the preening Density and Social Pathology” in Scientific American, laying “beautiful ones,” he refers to “juvenile delinquents” and out his conclusion: overpopulation meant social collapse fol- “dropouts.” This handy use of anthropomorphism is unusual lowed by extinction. The more he repeated the experiment, in a scientist—we are being invited to draw parallels with huthe more the outcome came to seem inevitable, fixed with the man society. rigor of a scientific equation. By the time he wrote about the And that lesson found a ready audience. “Population

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Density and Social Pathology” was, for an academic paper, Calhoun’s research remains a touchstone for a particular a smash hit, being cited up to 150 times a year. Particularly kind of pessimistic worldview. And, in the way that writers effective was Calhoun’s name for the point past which the like Wolfe and the historian Lewis Mumford deployed refslide into breakdown becomes irretrievable: the “behavioral erence to it, it can be seen as bleakly reactionary, a warnsink.” “The unhealthy connotations of the term are not ac- ing against cosmopolitanism or welfare dependence, which cidental,” Calhoun noted drily. The “sink,” a para-pathology might sap the spirit and put us on the skids to the behavioral of shared hopelessness, drew in pathological behavior and sink. As such, it found fans among conservative Christians; exacerbated its effects. Once the event horizon of the behav- Calhoun even met the pope in 1974. But in fact the full span ioral sink was passed, the end was certain. Pathological be- of Calhoun’s research had a more positive slant. The misery havior would escalate beyond any possibility of control. The of the rodent universes was not uniform—it had contours, writer Tom Wolfe alighted on the phrase and deployed it in and some did better than others. Calhoun consistently found his lament for the declining New York City, “O Rotten Go- that those animals better able to handle high numbers of sotham! Sliding Down into the Behavioral Sink,” anthologized cial interactions fared comparatively well. “High social velocin The Pump House Gang in 1968. “It got to be easy to look ity” mice were the winners in hell. As for the losers, Calhoun at New Yorkers as animals,” Wolfe wrote, “especially looking found they sometimes became more creative, exhibiting an down from some place like un-mouse-like drive a balcony at Grand Cento innovate. They were tral at the rush hour Friday forced to, in order to afternoon. The floor was survive. filled with the poor white Later in his caCalhoun argued Man was humans, running around, reer, Calhoun worked dodging, blinking their to build universes that a positive animal and eyes, making a sound like a maximized this kind pen full of starlings or rats of creativity and minicreativity and design or something.” The behavmized the ill effects of ioral sink meshed neatly overcrowding. He discould solve our problems with Wolfe’s pessimism agreed with Ehrlich and about the modern city, and Vogt that restrictions on his grim view of modernist reproduction were the housing projects as breedonly possible response ing grounds for degenerato overpopulation. Man, tion and atavism. he argued, was a posi Wolfe wasn’t alone. tive animal, and creThe warnings inherent in Calhoun’s research fell on fer- ativity and design could solve our problems. He advocated tile ground in the 1960s, with social policy grappling help- overcoming the limitations of the planet, and as part of a lessly with the problems of the inner cities: violence, rape, multidisciplinary group called the Space Cadets promoted drugs, family breakdown. A rich literature of overpopulation the colonization of space. It was a source of lasting dismay emerged from the stew, and when we look at Calhoun’s ro- to Calhoun that his research primarily served as encouragedent universes today, we can see in them aspects of that lit- ment to pessimists and reactionaries, rather than stimulating erature. In the 1973 film Soylent Green, based on Harry Har- the kind of hopeful approach to mankind’s problems that he rison’s 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room!, the population preferred. More cheerfully, however, the one work of fiction of a grotesquely crowded New York is mired in passivity and that stems directly from Calhoun’s work, rather than the stew dependent on food handouts which, it emerges, are derived of gloom that it was stirred into, is optimistic, and expands from human corpses. In Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner’s imaginatively on his attempts to spur creative thought in 1972 novel of a hyperactive, overpopulated world, society rodents. This is Robert C. O’Brien’s book for children, Mrs. is plagued by “muckers,” individuals who suddenly and for Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, about a colony of super-intellino obvious reason run amok, killing and wounding others. gent and self-reliant rats that have escaped from the National When we hear of the death throes of Universe 25—the can- Institute of Mental Health. nibalism, withdrawal, and random violence—these are the works that come to mind. The ultraviolence-dispensing, Will Wiles is a London-based author and journalist. He is depgang-raping, purposeless “droogs” of Antony Burgess’s novel uty editor of Icon, a monthly architecture and design magaA Clockwork Orange, which appeared in the same year as zine. His debut novel, Care of Wooden Floors, was published Calhoun’s Scientific American paper, are the very image of by HarperPress in February 2012. This story was first published by Cabinet Magazine. some of the uglier products of mouse utopia.

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Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse is a children’s cartoon television show that was produced by Trans-Artists Productions and syndicated by Tele Features Inc. in 1960. The characters were created by Bob Kane as a parody of his earlier works Batman and Robin and in many ways predict the more campy aspects of the later live action series.

This Mouse Chronicles set contains 2-discs and runs 133 minutes long, includes an allnew featurette (Of Mice and Pen) and audio commentary by several historians and animators. While some of these have already been released on previous collections, most of this material is new to video – and beautiful restored.

The Rescuers & Rescuers Down Under 35th Anniversary Edition Three Disc Set Two mice of the Rescue Aid Society search for a little girl kidnapped by unscrupulous treasure hunters. In the sequel, Miss Bianca and Bernard, race to Australia to save a boy and a rare golden eagle from a murderous poacher.

Redwall - The Adventure Begins includes the first six episodes from the first season of the Redwall TV Series. The happy haven of Redwall Abbey sudden finds itself under the attack of the rat Cluny the Scourge and his cruel minions. Only one small mouse, Matthias, will take up the challenge of defending his home.

Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 3: High Noon at Inferno Gulch Mo other “modest mouse” has seen more two-fisted action or outrageous comedy! And now our bigeared hero is back with more edge-of-yourseat adventures. Duking it out with villains like Dr. Vulter, Pegleg Pete, and malicious miser Eli Squinch!

Mouse Guard is an Eisner Awardwinning bi-monthly comic book series published by Archaia Studios Press. The comic stands out on shelves due to its distinctive form factor -– a square (8" × 8") as opposed to the standard comic size (6½" × 10"). Mouse Guard is written and illustrated by David Petersen. Series one is collected in a single volume titled Mouse Guard: Fall 1152. Two further volumes have been published since 2007.

Mr. Nutz an Anthropomorphic red squirrel wearing shoes, gloves and a cap through six themed levels. The end goal is to stop Mr. Blizzard, a yeti, who is the final boss and is trying to take over the world by using his magic powers to turn it into a mass of ice.

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AmyLyn Bihrle Dwarf Halloween Hamster Candy Corn Witch Hat - 5x7 Print

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