Here’s Why People Are Extremely Angry At The New ‘Peter Rabbit’ Film
People are also not happy that the rabbit twerks.
The new Peter Rabbit film has been in cinemas for less than a week, and it’s already facing a furious boycott over a scene where a group of rabbits pelt a man with blackberries.
Parents of kids with food allergies are calling the scene “allergy bullying”, because the rabbits deliberately target said man’s blackberry allergy, causing him to have an allergic reaction and use his epi-pen. There’s apparently also a scene where the rabbits make light of allergies, and hoo boy, parents are mad.
In an open letter to the makers of the film, allergy advocacy group Kids With Food Allergies expresses concern that the implication of the blackberry-pelting scene is “that the rabbits wanted to kill or harm McGregor”, and slams the filmmakers for encouraging the public to not take allergies seriously.
Meanwhile, a petition calling for an apology from the filmmakers has reached 8,000 signatures in two days, and shows no signs of slowing. The hashtag #boycottpeterrabbit is also picking up steam.
As a mother of a toddler allergic to several foods, I am disgusted that Sony would make a joke out of flicking an allergen at a food allergic individual. Doing so is felony aggravated assault! What kind of message does that scene send to kids?! #boycottpeterrabbit
— hydrogirl71 (@hydrogirl71) February 10, 2018
@SonyPictures What a disgrace – teaching children it's okay to bully and harass others with food allergies. You obviously have no staff with children who could DIE from food allergies. #attemptedmurder #foodallergies #boycottpeterrabbit
— Allison Wells (@OrangeAlli) February 10, 2018
Not cool @SonyPictures! Food allergies are not a joke. I’m guessing your writers have not had a personal life and death experience with them, and did not think of how children who have been through it would feel to see this. https://t.co/bHWHqh6qLt #PeterRabbitMovie
— Mandy Oliver (@mandy_m07) 10 February 2018
As funny as a boycott over throwing blackberries can sound, though, the mums have a point. The comments of a Facebook post by Kids With Food Allergies warning parents about the scene are flooded with stories from people who have severe anxiety or even PTSD triggered by their experiences with anaphylaxis, and the open letter to Sony cites a number of recent instances of kids dying after being bullied or pranked with their allergens at school.
Peter Rabbit was already controversial well before the allergy thing, too. When the trailer came out last year, reviewers were horrified to see the CGI rabbit twerking, trashing an empty house with veggies, and “grabbing a pile of lettuce leaves and making it rain like a banker in a stripclub”. “At least based on its trailer, the Peter Rabbit film appears to have been aggressively engineered to make people sad,” was one guy’s take.
Another recent review also takes issue with the fact that the animated rabbits steal vegetables in the film. “I guess Peter has to get his thrills somewhere,” is the reviewer’s disapproving conclusion, despite Peter stealing vegetables being the plot of the Beatrix Potter original story.
This is the last straw. The loathsome rabbit whom wears a shirt must be jailed https://t.co/7svgc0snS5
— j.r. hennessy (@jrhennessy) 11 February 2018
Anyway, we’d tell you to go see it and make up your own mind, but Peter Rabbit won’t hit Australian cinemas until late March, despite the fact it was produced by Animal Logic, an Australian production company, and received funding from Screen NSW and Screen Australia.