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cats don't buy the cat food
Oct. 8th, 2010 10:33 amAndrew O'Hehir wrote an interesting review of the unspoken cultural assumptions and context behind the new film Secretariat. (I haven't seen it myself, and am not racing to the theatre. The previous big film about a racehorse, Seabiscuit, I thought dull and badly written, and several reviewers have compared it favorably to Secretariat.)
Roger Ebert, in an unusually massive display of Not Getting It, tried to critique O'Hehir. His take is that none of the stuff that bothered O'Hehir matters. In a response in the comment section, Ebert says, "I don't believe the filmmakers had ulterior motives. I think they wanted to make a good movie about a race horse."
I've heard that line before, for instance from SF writers with patently obvious political agendas who claimed that they just wanted to write a good story that would woo the readers' beer money. I'm sure they did. But that motive covers a lot of possible ground. It evades the question: What kind of story did they choose to write to do that with?
O'Hehir, of course, had already responded to this argument before it was made. He said, "Horses don't go to the movies, and this movie is about human beings." The horse in this film, he says, is "symbolic window dressing" for the story.
The basic point about horses not going to the movies has been in my mind lately as I've examined Pandora's cat food. In our continuing effort to find canned food that she will eat, we've been trying the offerings of Merrick's Pet Foods. What gets me is the names they give to their flavors. "Cowboy Cookout." "Grammy's Pot Pie." "Southern Delight." "Thanksgiving Day Dinner." Pandora seems to like the Cowboy Cookout but turns up her nose at Southern Delight, but what gets me is the implicit assumption that any of these names, or even the flavors they bear, could possibly have any cultural associations to a cat. The average housecat has never been to a cookout, or know what a cowboy is (or even what a cow is), nor is aware of the cultural connotations of Thanksgiving dinner, beyond being perhaps lucky enough to have a few scraps of turkey. These names are purely designed to tickle humans' fancy and to play upon the known tendency of cat-people to anthropomorphize their cats.
I find these cans a little embarrassing. But if the P-girl will eat them, I don't care what they're called.
Roger Ebert, in an unusually massive display of Not Getting It, tried to critique O'Hehir. His take is that none of the stuff that bothered O'Hehir matters. In a response in the comment section, Ebert says, "I don't believe the filmmakers had ulterior motives. I think they wanted to make a good movie about a race horse."
I've heard that line before, for instance from SF writers with patently obvious political agendas who claimed that they just wanted to write a good story that would woo the readers' beer money. I'm sure they did. But that motive covers a lot of possible ground. It evades the question: What kind of story did they choose to write to do that with?
O'Hehir, of course, had already responded to this argument before it was made. He said, "Horses don't go to the movies, and this movie is about human beings." The horse in this film, he says, is "symbolic window dressing" for the story.
The basic point about horses not going to the movies has been in my mind lately as I've examined Pandora's cat food. In our continuing effort to find canned food that she will eat, we've been trying the offerings of Merrick's Pet Foods. What gets me is the names they give to their flavors. "Cowboy Cookout." "Grammy's Pot Pie." "Southern Delight." "Thanksgiving Day Dinner." Pandora seems to like the Cowboy Cookout but turns up her nose at Southern Delight, but what gets me is the implicit assumption that any of these names, or even the flavors they bear, could possibly have any cultural associations to a cat. The average housecat has never been to a cookout, or know what a cowboy is (or even what a cow is), nor is aware of the cultural connotations of Thanksgiving dinner, beyond being perhaps lucky enough to have a few scraps of turkey. These names are purely designed to tickle humans' fancy and to play upon the known tendency of cat-people to anthropomorphize their cats.
I find these cans a little embarrassing. But if the P-girl will eat them, I don't care what they're called.
