[Meeting…] Binky

Everyone knows Matt Groening for the simpsons. And perhaps that's why I found it interesting to talk about another Groening creation, which dates back many years before Homer and his family appeared on the scene: Binky the rabbit.

This character and many others come from the stories Life is Hell (Life in hell) where Groening is shown to be much more scathing and transgressive than in his other works (something curious, since The Simpsons were considered in their day, too transgressive to be cartoons).

Binky we are all

In the 70s, Matt Groening decided to use his particular sense of humor to create and publish fanzines that he sold to friends and acquaintances. Those rudimentary and limited publications were the direct origin of Binky the rabbit and everything we see in Life in Hell, that little by little were updated and expanded until they were compiled and published in the form of everything.

From the beginning, you can see how the rabbit character is used as a “person” and by that I mean that the situations parodied and exaggerated by this character did not actually depend on him, but on the scene to be represented, something that continued in the following decades with the current Binky.

In that sense We could consider that Binky is a generic character, used simply as a representation of any person, thus being able to show completely opposite aptitudes and tastes depending on the moment of daily life to be parodied.

We could say that Binky is something similar to what Goofy was for Disney (before they turned him into a clumsy and clumsy jester), because for those who don't remember, Goofy was a generic design that was used to represent the adult and starred in now unthinkable Disney stories, like the one that showed him trying to quit smoking. Goofy was many characters, but they all represented problems in adult life, just like Binky.

Binky's personal life

Despite its generic use, There are some nuances that make Binky have some personality stable, for example that he is always represented as the strange one in public situations (at work, at a party...) and the one who makes mistakes in private terms (once again, so that the reader can identify himself and be able to make the joke).

Despite having a partner (Sheba) and a son with only one ear (Bongo) Binky is not the best example in family and love matters, since the main asset of one of his stories Love is Hell is to demonstrate the strange situations that happen within these relationships and where Binky, in most cases, will be the one who loses or the one who causes disaster.

It is true that on many occasions The design of this character is used as a generic model to talk about a related topic, such as different types of couples (all with different attitudes, but all with Binky's appearance) but that doesn't stop them from still, Binky's concept is linked to the dysfunctional in terms of family, work and love life.

Bongo, Binky's son, will replace his father in this task when discussing issues related to childhood such as problems at school or uncertainty about a professional and personal future. We could say that Bongo is too smart (sometimes) for his age and that's why he gets into trouble at school, other times he's just a normal kid who has done something that will cause Binky to spank him.

Conclusion and recommendations

Pese a ser usado como personaje genérico para representar a cualquier adulto en situaciones no deseadas, Binky también hace gala de personalidad en muchos momentos, lamentablemente para él, ésta es más bien tirando a poco común y algo disfuncional. Si alguien piensa diferente en el trabajo, ese es Binky, si alguien olvida el aniversario de su pareja, será Binky, si a alguien se le ocurren ideas poco comunes y eso provoca su marginación o burla, será Binky (o quizás Bongo). Todo vale con tal de hacer reír al lector viendo situaciones que (en mayor o menor grado) habrá vivido en sus propias carnes y ese es el encanto de esta serie y del conejo Binky.

Las recomendaciones de Binky estan ligadas a todo lo relacionado con Life is Hell (La vida es el infierno) y sus variantes (el trabajo es el infierno, la infancia es un infierno…) todos ellos publicados en español por Astiberri.

Si sois atentos y curiosos, también encontrareis pequeñas apariciones de Binky y Bongo en The Simpsons and Futurama, aunque normalmente sea a modo de merchandising o pequeño cameo sin importancia alguna para la historia principal. Estas apariciones ganan en importancia si tenemos en cuenta que cuando le encargaron a Matt Groening hacer unos cortos de animación, la primero opción eran Binky y sus compañeros, pero finalmente fueron sustituidos por personajes nuevos que resultaron ser Los Simpson.

Como curiosidad añadida, me gustaría decir que cuando se crearon The Simpsons habían planes de hacer que Marge tuviese orejas de conejo bajo su pelo, como homenaje a Binky, algo que no se llevó a cabo, pero que si se puede comprobar en el videojuego Simpsons: The Arcade Game.