cats don't buy the cat food

[calimac]

Andrew 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.

Comments

[jpmassar.livejournal.com]

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 implicit assumption is that the names have cultural associations to the cat's owner, not the cat.

(I suppose there could be some implicit assumption that because of the name, the owner will believe the cat will like the flavor, but as for the cat, nada)

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that the same logic you applied to the cat food flavor names applies to the names we give our cats...

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You will note that two sentences later, I said exactly that.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It does, and the equivalent point at the end of Little Fuzzy - that though the fuzzies are proved to be sapient, even the humans who've held that belief all along give the fuzzies house-pet names, is what damns the book for me. You don't give house-pet names to creatures you really consider sapient.

Same applies to horse names. Seabiscuit was so-named because his sire was named Hard Tack. Good grief. I believe that Secretariat was named by his owner's secretary. Gooder griefer.

[jpmassar.livejournal.com]

You did! I missed it. Touche.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Yes, race horses are often named with some association with their parents' names. Man o'War > War Admiral. Uh, Man O'War > Hard Tack > Seabiscuit, ISTR.

The film Seabiscuit aside, the book is a great piece of reporting, well worth reading.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I was ready for someone to comment that the reason I didn't like the film Seabiscuit is that I'm not actually interested in horse racing.

As indeed I am not, but the reason I saw the film in the first place is that I really liked that book it was based on. Interested in horse racing or not, it was indeed an excellent book.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Haha, your posting was clear that it wasn't the subject matter you specifically disliked about the film.

She does a great job of writing about the horses and racing and the people. Really loved how she followed the jockeys' lives and sometimes deaths.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

Regarding the movie reviews --- O'Hehir's take on the film made me think he'd stepped inside a Kinkade painting (which although I don't find them creepy, I am bugged by them). But I think his response to the apparent sunny, optimistic take of the film as being creepy and sinister to be overblown.

I'd agree that contrasting the optimism with which the horse's owner tackled things with the darker streams in American life at the time might make for a stronger story. But I somehow don't see what there is to be morally outraged about a true story that happened to take place in the ranks of the wealthy, just because so many now couldn't even come near to that. What? He's never heard about dreams and wishes? Stories of high society were very popular entertainment during the Great Depression, if he wants an historical model for the appearance of this story at this time.

So, although I see the points O'Hehir is making, I do sort of have to agree with Ebert that O'Hehir may be making way too much out of them. But then, I haven't seen the movie (yet). So I don't know whose reaction to the film is more thoughtful and balanced. But I have to point out that O'Hehir is totally wrong on the choice of Big Red's official name -- the owner's secretary? No, Secretariat was bred from a line of horses with names of rulers (Bold Ruler being his sire): ruler, princes, and such? Part of a name trend.

Anyway, as for the names of pet food? Totally agree with you! Heck, I'd say the same about people food: there have been some "attractively named" foods that were ... awful.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I might believe you about O'Hehir's response as being overblown if you'd seen the film yourself. But Ebert's claim that O'Hehir ought to be just as upset over any other film set in that time period that doesn't deal with the darker side of life is just part of Ebert not getting the point.

O'Hehir says clearly in his review that the problem isn't that the movie doesn't mention the crises of the 1970s. It's that it explicitly diminishes and trivializes those crises by the way it does mention them. O'Hehir in his response to Ebert says, "In my view, the most effective propaganda movies are not the ones about dudes with guns that espouse militarism, or the Soviet boy-meets-tractor films, or the Nazi cartoons about Jews. Those are too obvious. The most effective kind of propaganda depicts normal life, or rather an idealized vision of normal life, one that (as one of my readers put it) 'makes a particular worldview seem natural, right and appealing.'"

It wasn't O'Hehir who mentioned how Secretariat got his name. If you don't believe that he was named by or for the secretary for her job, you've got a lot of independent websites to disagree with. And the film itself. Not proof, but I'd call it an uphill battle.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

Ah! I see now the distinction you were pointing at. And yeah, I'd have to see the film in order to gage how much O'Hehir's contention that the "darker side" of the period is trivialized.

Aside from that evaluation, I would agree with him on the general observation though, that it's the subtle presentations that often sink in, the small things the audience agrees to without questioning. Whether that is actually what is in the film, I don't know. I may be able to get to the movie sometime next week.

As for naming: my bad. It's been a while since I really delved into Secretariat trivia. I guess it's more a case of happy confluence of the secretary naming the horse for her job with the naming trend of his linage. I've always been more conscious of the trend aspect, and never really wondered about the specifics of how a particular off-spring got named. So, I stand corrected.

I'll admit to being a dork about the details in this case. I just love the horse - he was such a wonder to watch run!