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Rats in the Walls Rats in the Walls Miryana Sarandeva Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien Abteilung Malerei und Animationsfilm / Judith Eisler Rats in the Walls My animation project “Rats in the Walls”, is inspired by an H.P.Lovecraft tale that carries the same name. Lovecraft is considered to be one of the most gripping fiction writers of th the 20 century. I stumbled upon his work a few years back as a result of my sheer love of horror stories. One of the most famous Lovecraft quotes is: “The oldest and strangest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” (H.P.Lovecraft,“Supernatural Horror in Literature”, 1927, page 1). His novels realize something constant and unknown that exists outside the realm of physical reality. The characters react to their fear with a combination of paralysis and motivation. In the original Lovecraft story, we are told about the events that occur when the scion of the de la Poer family moves from Massachusetts to his ancestral estate in England. Mr. de la Poer, however, is unaware that the priory hides a horrific history. After moving into the castle, he and his cats recurrently hear the scamper of rats behind the walls. Mr. de la Poer then decides to explore the land and locate the source of the rats, only to discover an underground city beneath the priory, kept in secret for centuries by his family. The city had been built to serve as a hiding place for the family. It was a place where they could keep people hostage and later practice cannibalism. Unveiling the family's appalling secret causes the protagonist to lose his mind. Upon reading this tale, it was not the horrific outcome of the journey that captured my attention. I was more interested in how the rats function as guides in helping the main character unearth his family's long forgotten past. It is the rat that brings the protagonist to the discovery of a truth. In my film, the hidden noises of the rats cause the protagonist to question his sanity. Once the source of the noise is revealed, the rats bring our narrator great relief and peace. When he sees the rats, he knows they really do exist and has confirmation that he is not going insane. In considering how I wanted to interpret “the rat” as a symbol, I had to acknowledge the negative associations that people bring to the topic of rats. A rat evokes fear of disease. It can scurry past your feet or over your face and even bite into your flesh. 1 Poster for my version of "Rats in the Walls" 2 The rat, when related to a population that is feared, is used as a tool of dehumanization. In an article featured in the Guardian, Anita O’Brien, curator director at the Cartoon Museum in London, discusses the rat as a symbolic target for portraying the inhuman. She states, “You cannot get away from the fact that, in cartoons, certain images have certain associations.” (Archie Bland, “Rats: the history of an incendiary cartoon trope”, The Guardian, Nov 2015). Some symbols will always carry their history with them. In my story, I saw the rat not as something to be feared, but as a catalyst that could bring physical shape to the narrator's nervous and possibly paranoid imagination. The plot of my story begins with the narrator enduring a regular day at home. As he attempts to go to bed, he turns the lights off and starts hearing weird sounds coming from around the room. The noises grow more and more intense, turning into screeches. As he gets up from his bed and tries to locate the source of the commotion, he then realizes the sounds are in fact coming from within his walls. The narrator identifies the cacophony as gigantic rats that are possibly hidden in between his walls. The inability to actually see what is responsible for the noise, causes the narrator to question his sanity. He feels a presence all around him, yet he cannot see or touch the source of the noise. As there is no visual proof, he is sure that no one else would believe his story. The narrator then seeks to find evidence to support his statement. He follows the squeaking sounds, but all of his attempts end in failure. By not discovering the source of the noise, he believes that he is on the same level as a madman. He clings to his story and his own version of reality, but that reality exists separately from the surrounding population. The narrator does not fear the rats themselves, but he fears that the noises he hears might only exist in his mind and not in reality. The walls begin to represent a blockage between the world of the narrator and the external world existing outside of the apartment. The narrator must find a way to distinguish reality from imagination and to know that he is not losing his senses. The apartment is a private space. With the unknown noises, the apartment can no longer serve as a sanctuary for the tenant. If he could only see what is making the noise, the narrator would win back his sight and retrieve his own sanity. Without reaching the other, the narrator will continue to be perceived as unreliable and cause suspicion in the eyes of the audience. Overwhelmed by the situation the narrator feels paranoid by the thought that he is being observed. In his search for the rats, he starts to believe that they might be hiding from him, which would make it more difficult to prove his suspicions to be true. The narrator is terrified of being mocked as he fails in every attempt to confirm the existence of the rats. He does not want to be known as the madman who kept hearing sounds that are not there. 3 Still Shot from Rats" in the Walls" Towards the end of the film, the narrator notices a shift in the direction from where the shrieks originate. He hears the noises coming from above and acknowledges the fact that he never checked out the upstairs apartment. The narrator then hurries to reach the fire escape and climbs up to see who is upstairs. As he goes up the staircase, he notices how the sounds he's been hearing this whole time are getting closer and closer. As he reaches the window of the upstairs apartment, the narrator discovers that his neighbors have human bodies but each have the head of a rat. At that moment we witness the narrator experiencing relief and joy. He exclaims: “Thank God, I knew I wasn't crazy. I always knew there were rats in the walls”. The narrator, when exposed to such surreal imagery, is not overwhelmed by the unusual sight of the morphed humans, but rejoices that he is not losing his sanity. He handles the eeriness of the reality, happy in the fact that he can once again fully trust his instincts and himself. He finds his closure. The humans with rat heads, living in the upstairs apartment, were created to bring a mythological element to the story. They are inspired by the portrayal of Egyptian Gods. Though they are not meant to be deities, the rat-headed characters of the ending 4 are meant to symbolize magic and a sort of inhuman power. In a way, they can be seen as the guardians of the narrator’s sanity. It is through visual proof of their existence that he can he return to an ordinary state of mind. The rats serve as a source of truth and insight even if they do contradict rational thinking. The end sequence can be viewed upon as reality or imagination. It is the spectator’s choice as to whether the neighbors are surreal morphed creatures or are they only existing in the narrator’s imagination? In my opinion, when it comes to matters of the uncanny, the magic of the story lives through the unexplainable. Still Shot from “Rats in the Walls" This short animation is my second attempt to bring a Lovecraft story to life. Upon reading his tales, I imagined what all of his vivid descriptions and uncanny creatures would look like. Lovecraft might be a horror fiction novelist, but to me, he is the father of subconscious fears. H.P.Lovecraft suffered from severe social anxieties and a general displeasure when it came to interacting with people. This leads me to believe that all of his stories contain bits of ''the human'' fear of the uncanny. It is fascinating to accompany the author on his journey into the unknown and to witness how much the mind can take before it snaps. In these instances, one has to rely on oneself and one’s core beliefs in the search for redemption. 5 I have chosen to use different animation techniques, drawing styles and a mixture between cut outs, video footage and sketches as a tool to emphasize the lack of boundaries between reality and imagination. The shifts in perspective echo the subconscious of the narrator. The film does not readily follow a linear narrative, but jumps in between the protagonist's memory and his fantasy. By drawing on different elements and putting them together in one film, I am able to create new entities that one would never consider to be compatible. The results, which appear in every scene I make, continue to surprise me. The outcome is always slightly, or in some cases completely different than that which I had anticipated.
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