Does Nick Cave’s Death of Bunny Munro critique misogyny – or does it hate women?

Nick Cave’s controversial second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro (2009) was hailed as a wild and heartbreaking caricature of debauched masculinity. The story of a sex-obsessed middle-aged travelling salesman, it was also criticised for being pointless, tedious and repetitive.

Now a Binge show starring Matt Smith, Cave’s book has been given a new lease of life. In the hands of a skilful production crew and a talented team of actors, the dubious novel translates into a thoroughly watchable show. But Bunny’s presence on the screen revives some old questions about the author’s original handling of his celebrated antihero.

Is Bunny Munro a culturally valuable degenerate who offers insight into the damaged male condition? Or is his story just another way of asking us to find misogyny cool and funny? And how does the book’s original portrayal of flawed masculinity compare with the newer screen version?

A cross between Benny Hill and Patrick Bateman

Pitched as a hilarious, moving and filthy tale from the hand of an iconic rock'n'roll renegade, Cave’s novel is intentionally outrageous. Bunny Munro is a sleazy, sex-obsessed cosmetics rep whose serial infidelity drives his heartbroken wife Libby to hang herself, leaving him alone to care for their nine-year-old son, Bunny Junior.

Terrified of his grief and too weak to face the responsiblity of fatherhood, Munro dissociates from reality by indulging his sexually depraved appetites. His efforts to palm Bunny Junior off on Libby’s parents fail, so he takes the child on the road, making his son wait in the car while he seduces his lonely female customers and masturbates in public toilets.

Bunny Junior, despite being criminally neglected, loves his ridiculous father with heartbreaking devotion. Haunted by his beloved mother, who periodically appears to comfort him wearing the signature orange negligee she donned for both her honeymoon and her death, the child witnesses Munro’s increasingly deranged behaviour with a touching mixture of concern and devotion.

“I think it’s time we went home, Dad,” says Bunny Junior, and suddenly he feels a frightful woe in his guts. He reaches over and places his hand on his father’s shoulder as if to pull him back from some deplorable turn of events.

A visit to Munro’s own father provides a telling insight into the salesman’s broken sense of self. At 80, Bunny Munro Senior is dying from cancer, but still manages to intimidate and humiliate his son, and frighten his grandson.

Yet while the transgenerational context introduces a certain pathos for Munro, and the passages featuring Bunny Junior and Libby’s tender ghost are both poignant and significant, the novel is dominated by Munro’s misogynistic thought patterns and abusive behaviour. This means any potential for the character’s complexity is thoroughly eclipsed by his cruel exploits and puerile mindset.

Unrelenting in his endless objectification and heartless treatment of girls and women, Munro roams around the British south coast like a cross between Benny Hill and Patrick Bateman. He thinks about the women and underage girls he would like to have sex with; he propositions waitresses and cashiers; he leers at a three-year-old in a pizza restaurant; he assaults his wife’s friend; he sleeps with his best friend’s girlfriend; he drugs and rapes some of his victims; and he continually imagines disembodied vaginas to keep himself aroused.

Celebrity vaginas, in particular those belonging to singers Avril Lavigne and Kylie Minogue, hold a peculiar allure for Munro. As one male critic noted, somewhat sardonically, “you’ll struggle to think of Avril Lavigne in quite the same way again”.

To be honest, it’s all very tiresome.

‘Disappointingly unoriginal’ chauvinism

Cave, who claims that Munro is a “transgressive personality”, has talked openly about the “automatic, instinctual” sexual commentary that started up inside his head when he was 49, and the “certain thoughts” he began to have in response to women. Bunny, he said, perhaps with this midlife internal monologue in mind, “is very much part of the male character”.

But is he?

Cave has also said Munro is sad and monstrous, and “on an epic flight from love”. But while this is tragically clear in the story, there is nothing transgressive about the salesman’s decidedly stereotypical attempts to numb his emotional life.

To the contrary, as a dedicated chauvinist, Bunny Munro is a disappointingly unoriginal creation who reinforces the age-old patriarchal notion that men are driven by the unstoppable force of their sexuality, while the women around them are eternally suppliant and complicit.

Of course, the willing and grateful women in Cave’s novel are very specific types. Or should that be stereotypes? Middle-aged, bored, frustrated suburban housewives; young, naive hospitality staff; sex workers and addicts – these are the women who fall for Munro’s offensive seduction techniques. Again, it’s all rather prosaic.

Annoyingly, there’s not even much in the way of catharsis. Munro’s eventual comeuppance is minimal to the point of being meaningless. Two or three angry male partners send him on his way, but only one female customer, interestingly rendered traditionally “masculine”, with a deep voice and broad shoulders, retaliates to his predatory routine by breaking his nose.

Worse, the novel ends with an overwhelming message of forgiveness. “I just found this world a hard place to be good in,” says Munro, pathetic to the end. But like his stock-in-trade rebelliousness, his feeble apologies are simply not enough.

Given that Cave once listed radical feminist Valerie Solanas’ infamous SCUM Manifesto, as one of the influences for Bunny Munro, this is something of a surprise. Men have ruined the world, declares Solanas, and women need to fix it. But while Munro matches her critera for all that is despicable about the human male, SCUM would have had him dismembered, not absolved.

Apart from Libby’s ghost, the only character worth caring about in the novel is Bunny Junior, whose salvation lies in becoming independent from his odious father. On the cusp of adolescence, Bunny is impressionable but still innocent, meaning eventual separation from his parent represents a welcome release.

Emotionally intelligent on screen

Thanks to a cleverly revised script, striking cinematics, an evocative soundtrack (penned by Cave and Warren Ellis) and some truly excellent acting, the new series introduces an emotional intelligence the novel fails to achieve. No doubt, the female gaze of director Isabelle Eklof (Kalak, Holiday, Industry) has helped, along with producer Clerkenwell Films’ Ed Macdonald (Baby Reindeer, The End of the F** ing World) and BAFTA-winning writer Pete Jackson (Somewhere Boy).

Beautifully filmed in and around Cave’s home town of Brighton, where the story is set, the show downplays Munro’s hardcore sexism and foregrounds the experience of Bunny Junior: to stunning effect. Cave, who first wrote his novel as a screenplay for Australian director John Hillcoat before transforming it into a book while touring with the Bad Seeds, apparently approves.

His delight with the Sky production owes a lot to actor Matt Smith. According to the singer, at least four different production companies were keen to adapt his novel, but nobody was willing to play Bunny Munro before Smith.

Given Cave’s rock'n'roll kudos, and the proliferation of deeply troubling male characters in film and television these days, this is hard to believe.

It also sounds a little bit boastful, as if the author is proud of having created such a terrible role that nobody dared touch it. We’re back to the cool bad boy myth again, and Cave’s idea that Munro is “pure id”, a man who “acts on his urges”, who “don’t give a fuck about anything”.

“Most men, if they’re honest, understand Bunny on some level,” Cave told the BBC recently, saying where he differs from his character is that he is “much shyer around women”. All too revealingly perhaps, he added that he’s “quite terrified of women and their power” and has “never been that comfortable around them”.

Interestingly, Cave seems to take a perverse pleasure in Smith’s attractiveness. The actor, he says, is “handsome and sexy, and that makes the whole thing slightly more dubious […] women actually like it in the show – you can see the sort of pulling power that he has, and I find that more discomfiting in a way”.

Apart from finding this slightly distasteful, I disagree. No matter how hot he is, a man who behaves like Munro will always be inherently unappealing. Smith appears to understand this.

He plays the part with a certain panache, but the parody is evident. This makes his Munro more pathetic, desperate and sad than Cave’s original. With his exaggerated gait and cheeky chappy smile, he is more disgusting and absurd – and therefore less disturbing. Ultimately, he is much frailer, more visibly human.

But as with the book, it is Bunny Junior who literally steals the six-part series. Played with heartfelt intelligence by Rafael Mathe´, Munro’s son is thankfully afforded a larger role on TV. This, in turn, enables the emotional development of Munro’s character to a degree never attained on the page.

It’s not often that a screen adaptation manages to outdo a book to this extent – but in the case of Bunny Munro, the transformation is nothing short of merciful. If you haven’t read the novel, don’t bother. You’ll be far better rewarded by the show.

Liz Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.