The Cunning and the Clever: Rada Atanasova’s Story

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing AUBG sophomore Rada Atanasova. Rada is a Math major who doesn’t lack imagination and creativity. She has a wide variety of interests and ever-evolving hobbies that include discovering new music and an appreciation for art and poetry.

Rada shared that during her childhood the limited number of TV programs didn’t give her a wide range of characters to choose from, but I personally find her choices an interesting combination of funny and meaningful.

Bugs Bunny

Her favourite male hero was Bugs Bunny. She unknowingly made a little rhyme for this popular Looney Tunes character: “That was Bugs Bunny. ‘Cause he was so funny!”  He impressed her with his ability to get out of tough situations and win arguments with trickery.  Two characters would be stuck in the classic, back-and-forth Yes-No-Yes-No type of fight. “And at some point Bugs Bunny would change his position, and he would go like ‘No!’ And the other guy, he just didn’t notice and went the opposite way, went like ‘Yes!’ And then, then of course at the end Bugs Bunny got what he wanted, he was like, ‘Oh… OK, Doc!’”  Although Bugs Bunny is often seen as cunning and manipulative, Rada loved him for being smart – and don’t we all!

Danielle/Cinderella

Her female character was Cinderella. But before you go ‘awww’ and think Rada’s heroine was cute and girly, I must tell you she didn’t look up to a typical and generic Cinderella. Her role model was Danielle, Drew Barrymore’s take on Cinderella in Ever After: A Cinderella Story. Rada liked her because “she wasn’t like the other Cinderella-s, she took action.”  Not to mention her brains and beauty! Rada’s favorite scene from the movie was the one when Danielle and her prince were captured by a gang of thieves. Danielle demanded to be set free, and the gang jokingly told her she could leave with all she could carry. At which point “she just took the prince on her back” and started walking. This made the gang laugh, but also won their admiration, so they agreed to escort them.

When I asked Rada if her idols changed her, she said that since it was her mother who got her the tapes with moves to watch, it was “a bit difficult to separate (…) what [she] would have learned from [her] parents and these characters.” Although hard to discern the source, the influence was still present. We didn’t go looking for deeper meaning to Bugs Bunny. But Rada confessed that she “definitely” wanted to be like Danielle.

Click below to hear Rada tell her story:

Despite the fact that one is a live-action human, and the other – a rabbit cartoon, I couldn’t help noticing some similarities between Rada’s heroes. They are both witty and clever, good at conversation, and have a certain innate aptitude for getting out of tough situations.

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