Award Winning Animator Steve Cutts is always amazing me with his works. This time he has outdone himself, BIG TIME!
This newly released short film will take your breath away. It begins with a Rat Race that depicts these rodents as humans to show just how much like lab rats we are to those in control of us, or at least this is how I take the short film. My analysis of this short film may not be the analysis you come up with once you have taken the time to watch, because everything is open to interpretation.
Throughout the video, you will notice all of the products are merely named ‘Happiness.’ This seems to highlight the world of marketing in current times. People are constantly buying new things in the hopes of finding happiness only to never truly achieve it as you will see with the rat in this short film. He goes above and beyond only to end up with nothing.
We all buy things that we think we need or want that never truly bring us any real sense of happiness. My favorite part of this short film is where the rats are partaking in the recently passed ‘holiday’ known as Black Friday. I don’t know about where you are but, for my area, the way Cutts portrayed Black Friday was beyond accurate. Now the more you watch this short film the more you will pick up on small things.
One of those small things is how there are advertisements for something known as ‘Soma’ throughout. For those who do not know, in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, Soma is a drug that was used by the ruling class as a pacifier for the public. While these rats and the main rat, in general, are all searching for happiness, it is nowhere I sight.
This is life for all of us whether we realize it or not. Happiness cannot be found in money, drugs, alcohol, technology, or anything else of the sort. Happiness is something that we can only find within. Being aware of this is the first step to getting yourself out of the Rat Race, at least as best you can.
While this ass-backward society is not going to completely let go of us we can prevent it from ruling over us. Educate yourself and don’t fall for the tricks of those who do their best to pull the wool over our eyes. You can do great things if you truly want to. The system we live in is designed to keep us as rats in an experiment and I could not have found a better representation of that.
After watching this short film six times I could still watch it again. What do you take away from this short film?
