Fox Bunny Funny: Fiction or Non-fiction?

I think it’s very interesting that Fox Bunny Funny was selected as the first reading for our Graphic Non-fiction class. By mere virtue of course title, I found myself considering the question, what makes a piece of work non-fiction? Since graphic or comic images do not bear photographic resemblance or fidelity to actual reality, what other features could make it qualify as non-fiction? Is it a particular sequence of events that happened in a specific order, a cast of characters that correspond to real people, or does the author/artist have the license to refer to perhaps an inner state of truth through allegory? Could Fox Bunny Funny be considered a work of non-fiction in so much as it refers or approaches a representation of some kind of “ecstatic,” universal truth? Or is that the very definition and domain of fiction? To what degree and in which regards does a piece of work need to correspond to the factual, historical world in order to be considered non-fiction?

I’m excited by this question because it is a budding line of inquiry in my own work in documentary film. We know how fiction can use documentary conventions to be reflexive about problems inherent to the act of presenting something as indisputable truth—we see that in the genre of mock-documentaries. But how can documentary film play like fiction? More specifically, how can creative non-fiction employ the conventions of fictional storytelling to express itself?

Fox Bunny Funny clearly works as a piece of fiction—a surreal world where “foxes oppress and devour, bunnies suffer and die,” an allegorical tale in which contains a scathing critique of societal pressure to conform and up until the very end, the fox’s identity is something at the mercy of/imposed on him by violent, external forces. Could it work as a piece of non-fiction? What if the sequence of events running through all three acts did in fact correspond to reality, albeit in a stylized way? Playing dress-up and Halloween costumes, rehabilitation camp for troubled teenagers, confrontations of a home invader, transgender surgery and cosmetic surgery are situations that are suggested in Fox Bunny Funny and which could very well be of a factual or autobiographical nature. Perhaps the power of non-fiction storytelling lies in the ability to harness painfully ordinary, mundane, factual events and situations to serve as a metaphor for the complexity of human nature or another kind of truth that we cannot see.