>>105255869I think modern commercialism is a reasonable thing to discuss in regards to a modern commercial production. Like, yeah, there's a lot of talk these days about how specific races of people can only empathize with their own race, and how we have less unity than ever, and everyone is in their own isolated box. This does influence current artists, and it sometimes causes them to write REALLY stupid works that don't even begin to grasp the fundamentals of humanity. Sometimes we get so caught up in cynical nonsense we lose sight of the basic natures that connect us all.
But that's now. When Watership Down was written is a different time, and there likely weren't a lot of people giving the author shtick about representation or insisting that girls can only relate to girls. Maybe you could argue there's some Freudian, subconscious influences, but you could never prove it - it'd always be theory. Meanwhile there's probably quite a lot more provable, conscious reasons the author made the choices he did.