EPISODE 603: I ALSO AM NOT A CAT
I wonder if Kafka would view memes like Zod trapped and pounding against the glass as the Phantom Zone spins off into space.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
So this happened last week.
You probably already know that, as it seems like it was pretty much everywhere.
Stumbling onto it again and again over the course of the week was like finding out that a fantastic species of hummingbird that had long been thought extinct was discovered in forest preserve outside Chicago. Or like after years of the bleakest drought in Australian history rainstorms had created a massive lake in the outback and all kinds of animal life had appeared out of nowhere, too (which is a thing that actually happens).
Part of what makes the video so funny is the sincerity of the Guy trapped as a Cat. Who among us in that situation would feel the need to make sure the judge understands that indeed, despite current appearances to the contrary, “I’m not a cat”? And the kitten filter itself, with its big sad eyes, adds to that feeling of an ordinary good-hearted person who is trapped in a world he does not understand but somehow also feels responsible for.
I’ve watched the video many times at this point. I’ve wondered about the details of the court case being adjudicated. Turns out it was some kind of civil forfeiture case—that’s when then police is able to seize private property. Not Cat Man is actually 69-year-old Texas attorney Rod Ponton, and the case as a public hearing was being streamed live on YouTube, which is how it blew up as fast as it did. (He was getting calls from journalists an hour after the hearing ended.)
I love watching Jerry L. Philips, the man in the upper right-hand corner, who spends the video completely uninterested in what’s happening—even after he sees the kitten filter happening he goes right back to his phone (clearly a dog person) -- until Mr. Ponton issues his famous line, at which point he immediately looks up in an punctuation mark on the joke that you could not write better if you spent a week trying. Meanwhile the man to the left seems like he is watching from an episode of a 1980s movie of the week, the soft focus of his camera preparing us for either a soon-to-happen murder or a whole lot of lovin’.
There’s also something vaguely Kafkaesque about the whole thing, though, isn’t there? In a world where everything is happening online, if you’re trapped looking like a kitten, in what way are you not? Maybe Ponton’s comment isn’t so much absurd as it is a very legitimate and absolutely impossible attempt to push back against the bonds of our reality. Yes, it may seem crazy, sir, but in 2021 you are in fact a cat (broadly understood). That is now what you will have to deal with.
(Suddenly imagining a future justice system where your convictions affect your filter—bullies have to look like Mickey Mouse or Peppa Pig; thieves have elements of their face randomly stolen from them. It’s like the nine planes of Hell, social media style.)
It all sounds pretty darn funny. Then I watched the new New York Times-produced documentary on Britney Spears, “Framing Britney Spears”, which is now airing on Hulu.
Coming in at just over an hour, which it turns out is way too short for the story they have to tell, “Framing” tries to get us to consider the artificial roles in which our society has framed Spears over the years—sweet kid, bad influence, slut, unfit mom. In some ways her story ends up paralleling that of Monica Lewinski, who was be objectified and demonized in very similar ways at about the same time. It’s actually sickening to watch journalists like Diane Sawyer or noted monster Matt Lauer try to make Spears explain her marriage, or why she had her baby in her lap at a drive-through, lecture her about her sexuality or in more than one case ask her about her breasts.
In some ways Spears’ story also seems ripped from the 19th century, when women who insisted on being independent or sexual were deemed hysterical or demonic and institutionalized. For over 12 years now she has not been allowed to have control over her image, her assets or her life.
But wait, you say, didn’t she have a massively successful Vegas show not that long ago? Yes, in fact, she did. And she’s put out albums, and done a hundred other pretty successful things. But still her father and others insist she’s not fit to run her own life.
You can see in her eyes at times that she can’t believe people are treating her the way they are. Paparazzi pounding on her cars, journalists scolding her or being disgusting. But she just nods and tries to be polite. She never says anything. You wish she could. She’s not a !%!%*# cat.
Aside: I’m not a big believer in Hell, but I do believe there must be a place where paparazzi, ambulance chaser journalists and their editors, and the staff of Us Weekly, TMZ and People Magazine will have to go for a while. And if I’m being honest I hope that it is not very nice.
Last year one of my favorite online How Can We Deal With Now devices was WindowSwap, where you can watch the feed from a window somewhere else in the world.
My new favorite is Drive and Listen, in which you drive through different places around the world while listening to live feeds of their radio stations. I drove through downtown Melbourne on a rainy afternoon commute home today and it was wonderful. And there above is a view of beautiful Budapest.
I also absolutely love the idea of “I Miss My Bar”, in which you put together a bunch of different element to create the soundscape of a bar—the bartender mixing drinks, the indoor chatter or outdoor noises. You can have music playing or just that sounds. It’s fantastic. I can’t say that I’ve spent that much time in bars, but man do I miss just being in a public space, letting the sounds of the world wash over me.
“It’s not a good time to be a flight attendant”, is a statement that always seems applicable, at least for some. The Verge did a fantastic piece recently talking to flight staff about the nightmare of working now--“At least one passenger on every flight has a mask issue”, ugh---and also the ever-changing experiences of being a flight attendant.
The stories are actually not always terrible—at a time when other professions would not hire them, gay men found in the airlines a means of liberation and meaningful employment.
But there are a lot of terrible stories, too. Like finding out the whole notion of the stewardess as sexpot came from a tell-all book supposedly written by two stewardesses, which was actually written by a male American Airlines exec.
Say it with me…
The next time you read or watch something that ends up feeling flat, test it against this. I think she’s dead on.
In researching the Kitten Zoom Affair – which believe it or not was also the title of the Nancy Drew knock-off series I wrote in grade school—
—it was about a kitten that got stolen from the set of Zoom—
—(the Electric Company did it)—
—(but Snuffalapagus figures in the deep background as the series’ Big Bad; in KZA we only see his trunk in the deep shadows at the very end, but in the stories that followed he has Big Bird take out King Friday and ended up choking out Bozo the Clown)—
—I also came upon another amazing Zoom thing that is happening now, and you need it.
I had some things to say this week about WandaVision, which is either Marvel’s first TV show on Disney+ or its longest teaser for Stage Whatever (4? 37? Does it matter anymore?) of the Marvel cinematic universe.
Tl;dr, I actually like the show quite a bit, but I do worry that it’s not really a series as much as it is a series of clever stunts leading to something else that is the actual “real” thing. Which would be ironic, as it’s already a show about a woman whose life is being used by unseen forces to create the possibility of something else by way of encouraging her to imagine herself in a television show, without in fact also perpetrating the same.
At this point it looks like we won’t know one way or another whether this is a story or a mid-credits teaser until we get to the series finale, which is definitely a bold move, but also leaves me kind of dead inside.
A show that has at its heart a woman brutally grieving the death of her husband doesn’t need to leave me crying every week, but when the main online reaction is always “Oh man, I wonder if this show is going to open the door to FILL IN THE BLANK,” I don’t know, I think there may be a problem.
Have a good week. You’re not a cat, and don’t be afraid to say so.