This is a depressing artifact of an advertisement silent film. Produced by the confectionery company Cadbury to sell their chocolates, not content with having already displaced Jesus with the Easter Bunny and, more precisely, with the Cadbury bunny, they set their sights here on the White Rabbit of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." As this commercial would have it, a girl is wasting her precious time as a consumer reading the aforementioned book, whereupon, like Alice, she falls asleep and begins to dream of following after a rabbit. This time, however, it's a brown bunny, who belongs to Bournville - "where the chocolates come from!" The Wonderland here, then, is a chocolate factory full of worker drones and areas where they may exercise as segregated by sex. Looks like a dreadful job. Nevertheless, the Alice here insists that the brown bunny is "even wonderfuller than the white rabbit - although you're brown!" And, when she awakens, she leaves that pesky book aside and opens up a box of Cadbury chocolates. What a good consumer, and, sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if more people now are more familiar with Cadbury than they are with Carroll.
"Elsie and the Brown Bunny" wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so effective. As evidenced here, corporations have long been in the business of co-opting popular media to advertise their brands. Here, they employ narrative cinema and display a general competence in regards to classical continuity, although the editing around the rabbit's hops is conspicuous. It's obvious that it's effective, too, or else we wouldn't continue to be bombarded by commercials and ads throughout our use of media, whether by paper, TV, on the web or through product placement in the movies and shows we watch, to this day. Moreover, I've seen a great many old silent films, and mostly the companies that made them have long since passed or are only a remnant of their former selves now. Not Cadbury, though. They're still going and going... oh, wait, that's the Energizer Bunny. Anyways, my recommendation is to put the candy away and go read the Alice books.
"Elsie and the Brown Bunny" wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so effective. As evidenced here, corporations have long been in the business of co-opting popular media to advertise their brands. Here, they employ narrative cinema and display a general competence in regards to classical continuity, although the editing around the rabbit's hops is conspicuous. It's obvious that it's effective, too, or else we wouldn't continue to be bombarded by commercials and ads throughout our use of media, whether by paper, TV, on the web or through product placement in the movies and shows we watch, to this day. Moreover, I've seen a great many old silent films, and mostly the companies that made them have long since passed or are only a remnant of their former selves now. Not Cadbury, though. They're still going and going... oh, wait, that's the Energizer Bunny. Anyways, my recommendation is to put the candy away and go read the Alice books.
