A Brief Look at Rats In Popular Culture

Image from Parlour Magazine

Yes, that's a picture of Remy from the 2007 Disney/Pixar film, Ratatouille. Why? Because it's one of the few major motion pictures to portray rats in a positive light. I mean, yes, Remy's ratty kin are not the cleanest of animals, but the fact that there's a lovable rat protagonist is still a step in the right direction.

Mice have been getting positive attention ever since Mickey took to the screen in the late 1920s, but rats have always seemed to be trapped in a negative light. I've made up a short list of the many times rats have had a villainous or negative role.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin features a plague of rats that overtakes a town, destroying food and driving people out of their homes. It's the people's desperation to rid themselves of the rats that attracts the piper.

The main antagonist in the Disney film The Great Mouse Detective is a massive rat, Professor Rattigan, who seeks to seize control of the British monarchy. While he's later revealed to be a mouse, it's his status as a rat throughout the film that establishes him as a villain.

In the film The Tale of Despereaux, rats play the greedy villains who kidnap the small kingdom's princess.

The beloved children's story Charlotte's Web features Templeton, a rat who is portrayed as greedy, gluttonous, and lazy. While he does help Wilbur quite a bit, it would be nice if he didn't have to be bribed into doing all of his good deeds.

The horror films Willard and Ben (Willard's sequel) feature hyper-intelligent rats with a penchant for attacking and occasionally killing people.

I'll leave you with that, but I think you get my point. Apart from Remy, the only rats I can immediately think of that are portrayed positively in pop culture are those in The Secret of NIMH (to a degree; they're still kind of scary) and Rat-In-A-Hat from the Australian children's show Bananas In Pyjamas.

I'll talk more about the reasoning behind these portrayals in a later post, so for now, tell me your favourite (or least favourite) movie, show, game, or book that features rats. I'm sure there are tonnes more than the ones I've mentioned.

Rats and Chinese Food Safety

Photo from stock.xchng

If you don’t like to think about rats in any form of distress, I suggest skipping this one.

I’m sure many of you have already heard about the Chinese rat meat scandal, but, if you haven’t, here’s a quick rundown. Similar to the way some cultures see dogs as just another meal, it recently came to light that many people in China also consume rats. It’s uncomfortable to think of your favourite furry friends on someone’s dinner plate. Unfortunately, most of the people eating rat meat were just as uncomfortable with the discovery, given that they thought it was lamb. Long story short, at the beginning of last month, a huge crime ring was uncovered in which people were catching rats and refashioning them to resemble lamb meat. Not only were consumers being duped for who knows how long, but they also have no way to know where or what conditions the unfortunate rats came from. Obviously, this mess has caused a huge uproar over food and other regulations in China. You can read more about this event and some of the country’s past food safe issues in this article. It’s things like this that make me glad I live in a country with relatively strict food-related regulations.

The Rise of British Super Rats

Photo from Flickr

While I usually like to stick to more upbeat stories and stories about domestic rats, I do still like to keep up with general rat knowledge and information, too. For instance, I recently read this 2009 article about British “super rats.” It seems that poison is the typical means of extermination within the country, but just like with overusing antibiotics, overusing specific poisons has allowed for the development of resistance in the overall rat populace. Basically, some of the rats had a genetic predisposition against the effects of poison and, since they’re the only ones to survive said poisons, they’ve begun to breed and spread their resistant traits. So now most of the feral rat population is almost unaffected by traditional rat poisons.

I love rats, but I can definitely see why this is such a huge issue. In the country, large rat populations can affect crops, while in cities, they can infest homes and damage buildings. If there’s no longer an effective way to control their population, they could easily overrun everything. According to the article, most people have since turned to slightly less elegant forms of extermination – everything from traps to guns and dogs. While it does come across as fairly brutal, I imagine a trap general means a much quicker and less painful way to die than certain poisons. Not that any of it is very nice, of course.

I attempted to find an update on the issue, but I can’t seem to find any articles regarding UK super rats past 2009. Whether that means that a solution’s been discovered or that people have just learned to deal with it remains a mystery to me.