Fiction
See also: RatSamantha Martin, a professional animal trainer for films, commercials, and music videos, has claimed that rats are one of the easiest animals to train due to their adaptability, intelligence, and focus. Rather than portraying pet brown rats as thoroughly domesticated, they are often cast as a wild brown rat which a character tames.
The short novel Ratman's Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert was the basis for the films Willard, Ben, and a 2003 remake of the first film. Here, the protagonist befriends the rats found in his home and builds up a close relationship, only to have it end tragically. While these movies generally emphasize the popular perception of malevolence—they kill people, cats, and ransack grocery stores—other wild rats who become pets are portrayed in more neutral to positive ways; the television show, House, shortly featured "Steve McQueen", the pet rat of the titular character, and the 2007 film, Ratatouille, is about a rat described by Roger Ebert as "earnest... lovable, determined, gifted" who lives with a Parisian garbage boy.
In many versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, the master and adoptive father of the turtles is Splinter, who was once the pet rat of ninja Hamato Yoshi and learned his martial arts skills by imitating his owner.
Read more about this topic: Fancy Rat
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“Although the primitive in art may be both interesting and impressive, as portrayed in American fiction it is conspicuous for dullness alone. Drab persons living drab lives, observed by drab minds and reported in drab writing ...”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“The obvious parallels between Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz have frequently been noted: in both there is the orphan hero who is raised on a farm by an aunt and uncle and yearns to escape to adventure. Obi-wan Kenobi resembles the Wizard; the loyal, plucky little robot R2D2 is Toto; C3PO is the Tin Man; and Chewbacca is the Cowardly Lion. Darth Vader replaces the Wicked Witch: this is a patriarchy rather than a matriarchy.”
—Andrew Gordon, U.S. educator, critic. “The Inescapable Family in American Science Fiction and Fantasy Films,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (Summer 1992)
“The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)