Литература двух Америк (Dec 2016)
What Is Harvey, The Rabbit? Pretexts and Contexts of the Comedy by Mary Chase
Abstract
The article discusses a variety of American folklore, literary and cinematic sources underlying the image of the invisible oversized anthropomorphic rabbit, the protagonist of the famous comedy Harvey (1943) by Mary Chase. These are: Manabozo, Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit, and Bugs Bunny. Chase’s Harvey, who is either a ghostly double or a supernatural trickster (phooka), influences virtually every character of this American philosophical comedy. It is Harvey’s ambiguous ontological status that ensures the reader’ and the viewer’s reception of the comedy’s multilayered meaning, in particular its ‘anti-psychiatric’ message. The final section of the paper focuses not only on the Hollywood screen version, Henry Kostner’s comedy Harvey (1950), but also on the imagery of fantastic rabbits in such American movies as Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1995), Donnie Darko (2001), and Inland Empire (2006).
