Anne Billson: Why does Hollywood have it in for cats? | Film | The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jul/29/cats-in-hollywood

So you think women and ethnic minorities get a raw deal in the movies? That's nothing compared to the way cinema discriminates against cats. Dogs are waggy-tailed brown-nosers who save tots from drowning; cats are stuck-up, psychotic and about as trustworthy as a 1940s film noir femme fatale. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore is only the latest example of Hollywood's insidious anti-feline agenda. It's a slight advance on the first Cats & Dogs film in that, this time, not all the cats are wicked. But the villain who wants to take over the world is a cat, and the psycho in Hannibal Lecter restraints is a cat. Film-makers love dogs, we all know that. But what have they got against cats?

It's true there's a sprinkling of films in which cats play heroic roles, but you have to forage for them. Courageous cats confront The Mummy, save Drew Barrymore from a troll in Cat's Eye, and stake out succubus Alice Krige in Sleepwalkers. They act cute and canny in That Darn Cat and The Aristocats, but Disney undercuts its pro-puss stance with those mean Siamese in Lady and the Tramp and Lucifer in Cinderella, one of countless kiddy films in which rodents are depicted as preferable to cats. It's perfectly natural, not to mention hygienic, in a household with a child in it that Snowbell should want to eat Stuart Little, but does he get any thanks for it?

Elsewhere, cats are press-ganged into service as antisocial signifiers: one kitten is cute, but a whole bunch of them means mad: think Michel Simon in L'Atalante or Ron Perlman in Hellboy. Lone computer nerd Sandra Bullock has just a cat for company in The Net, rogue bomber Sylvester Stallone identifies with his stray tom in The Specialist, while in The Long Goodbye, Elliot Gould's cat summarily abandons him when he fails to produce the right moggy nosh.

But more often than not, cats are squarely on the side of the bad guys. Who on earth decreed that fluffy white cats should be the ultimate incarnation of evil?( Read more... )

while in Alien, you might almost suspect Jonesy of being in cahoots with the monster, the way crew members go wandering off to find him and end up impaled or cocooned. If it had been a dog on the Nostromo, you can be sure it would have barked at the alien and saved everyone's lives.

When cats aren't being evil, they're victims. All around the world, and in independent sectors beyond the reach of the American Humane Society, felines are routinely subjected to the sort of horrible abuse no one would dream of dishing out to dogs: crushed by Donald Sutherland's head in 1900, wrapped in clingfilm in Bad Boy Bubby, drowned in Gummo, hanged in A Short Film About Killing, shot in Before the Rain, stabbed with pruning shears in Dogtooth.

And don't get me started on the mad scientists. In The Fly (1958) a cat gets put through the teleportation machine and ends up as a disembodied miaow, while in Re-Animator, Jeffrey Combs revives one with the snarky remark: "Don't expect it to tango, it has a broken back." In this context, I sympathise with The Incredible Shrinking Man's cat when it tries to eat him,

I suspect cats, like women and ethnic minorities, pose a threat to the complacency of the dog-loving white-male status quo that makes up the greater part of the film-making community. So they have to be put in their place. We can't have them being uppity, because then – according to Cats & Dogs – they'd try to rule the world. Which just goes to show how little film-makers know. Because cats rule the world already, and without even trying.

Anne Billson: Why does Hollywood have it in for cats? | Film | The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jul/29/cats-in-hollywood

So you think women and ethnic minorities get a raw deal in the movies? That's nothing compared to the way cinema discriminates against cats. Dogs are waggy-tailed brown-nosers who save tots from drowning; cats are stuck-up, psychotic and about as trustworthy as a 1940s film noir femme fatale. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore is only the latest example of Hollywood's insidious anti-feline agenda. It's a slight advance on the first Cats & Dogs film in that, this time, not all the cats are wicked. But the villain who wants to take over the world is a cat, and the psycho in Hannibal Lecter restraints is a cat. Film-makers love dogs, we all know that. But what have they got against cats?

It's true there's a sprinkling of films in which cats play heroic roles, but you have to forage for them. Courageous cats confront The Mummy, save Drew Barrymore from a troll in Cat's Eye, and stake out succubus Alice Krige in Sleepwalkers. They act cute and canny in That Darn Cat and The Aristocats, but Disney undercuts its pro-puss stance with those mean Siamese in Lady and the Tramp and Lucifer in Cinderella, one of countless kiddy films in which rodents are depicted as preferable to cats. It's perfectly natural, not to mention hygienic, in a household with a child in it that Snowbell should want to eat Stuart Little, but does he get any thanks for it?

Elsewhere, cats are press-ganged into service as antisocial signifiers: one kitten is cute, but a whole bunch of them means mad: think Michel Simon in L'Atalante or Ron Perlman in Hellboy. Lone computer nerd Sandra Bullock has just a cat for company in The Net, rogue bomber Sylvester Stallone identifies with his stray tom in The Specialist, while in The Long Goodbye, Elliot Gould's cat summarily abandons him when he fails to produce the right moggy nosh.

But more often than not, cats are squarely on the side of the bad guys. Who on earth decreed that fluffy white cats should be the ultimate incarnation of evil?( Read more... )

while in Alien, you might almost suspect Jonesy of being in cahoots with the monster, the way crew members go wandering off to find him and end up impaled or cocooned. If it had been a dog on the Nostromo, you can be sure it would have barked at the alien and saved everyone's lives.

When cats aren't being evil, they're victims. All around the world, and in independent sectors beyond the reach of the American Humane Society, felines are routinely subjected to the sort of horrible abuse no one would dream of dishing out to dogs: crushed by Donald Sutherland's head in 1900, wrapped in clingfilm in Bad Boy Bubby, drowned in Gummo, hanged in A Short Film About Killing, shot in Before the Rain, stabbed with pruning shears in Dogtooth.

And don't get me started on the mad scientists. In The Fly (1958) a cat gets put through the teleportation machine and ends up as a disembodied miaow, while in Re-Animator, Jeffrey Combs revives one with the snarky remark: "Don't expect it to tango, it has a broken back." In this context, I sympathise with The Incredible Shrinking Man's cat when it tries to eat him,

I suspect cats, like women and ethnic minorities, pose a threat to the complacency of the dog-loving white-male status quo that makes up the greater part of the film-making community. So they have to be put in their place. We can't have them being uppity, because then – according to Cats & Dogs – they'd try to rule the world. Which just goes to show how little film-makers know. Because cats rule the world already, and without even trying.

Anne Billson: Why does Hollywood have it in for cats? | Film | The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jul/29/cats-in-hollywood

So you think women and ethnic minorities get a raw deal in the movies? That's nothing compared to the way cinema discriminates against cats. Dogs are waggy-tailed brown-nosers who save tots from drowning; cats are stuck-up, psychotic and about as trustworthy as a 1940s film noir femme fatale. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore is only the latest example of Hollywood's insidious anti-feline agenda. It's a slight advance on the first Cats & Dogs film in that, this time, not all the cats are wicked. But the villain who wants to take over the world is a cat, and the psycho in Hannibal Lecter restraints is a cat. Film-makers love dogs, we all know that. But what have they got against cats?

It's true there's a sprinkling of films in which cats play heroic roles, but you have to forage for them. Courageous cats confront The Mummy, save Drew Barrymore from a troll in Cat's Eye, and stake out succubus Alice Krige in Sleepwalkers. They act cute and canny in That Darn Cat and The Aristocats, but Disney undercuts its pro-puss stance with those mean Siamese in Lady and the Tramp and Lucifer in Cinderella, one of countless kiddy films in which rodents are depicted as preferable to cats. It's perfectly natural, not to mention hygienic, in a household with a child in it that Snowbell should want to eat Stuart Little, but does he get any thanks for it?

Elsewhere, cats are press-ganged into service as antisocial signifiers: one kitten is cute, but a whole bunch of them means mad: think Michel Simon in L'Atalante or Ron Perlman in Hellboy. Lone computer nerd Sandra Bullock has just a cat for company in The Net, rogue bomber Sylvester Stallone identifies with his stray tom in The Specialist, while in The Long Goodbye, Elliot Gould's cat summarily abandons him when he fails to produce the right moggy nosh.

But more often than not, cats are squarely on the side of the bad guys. Who on earth decreed that fluffy white cats should be the ultimate incarnation of evil?( Read more... )

while in Alien, you might almost suspect Jonesy of being in cahoots with the monster, the way crew members go wandering off to find him and end up impaled or cocooned. If it had been a dog on the Nostromo, you can be sure it would have barked at the alien and saved everyone's lives.

When cats aren't being evil, they're victims. All around the world, and in independent sectors beyond the reach of the American Humane Society, felines are routinely subjected to the sort of horrible abuse no one would dream of dishing out to dogs: crushed by Donald Sutherland's head in 1900, wrapped in clingfilm in Bad Boy Bubby, drowned in Gummo, hanged in A Short Film About Killing, shot in Before the Rain, stabbed with pruning shears in Dogtooth.

And don't get me started on the mad scientists. In The Fly (1958) a cat gets put through the teleportation machine and ends up as a disembodied miaow, while in Re-Animator, Jeffrey Combs revives one with the snarky remark: "Don't expect it to tango, it has a broken back." In this context, I sympathise with The Incredible Shrinking Man's cat when it tries to eat him,

I suspect cats, like women and ethnic minorities, pose a threat to the complacency of the dog-loving white-male status quo that makes up the greater part of the film-making community. So they have to be put in their place. We can't have them being uppity, because then – according to Cats & Dogs – they'd try to rule the world. Which just goes to show how little film-makers know. Because cats rule the world already, and without even trying.

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