Remember? It was December 2017, and my first post on the subject was: "I was drawn in by the creepy close-up and started reading before 'Cat Person' became an internet phenomenon." Ha ha. I didn't want you to think I'd just follow a trend. I said:
I'm not going to read any more of the internet chatter, at least not right now. But I'll just say, based on my own reading of the story, that it makes a good jumping off point for discussing the problem of bad sex. Bad sex is something you need to distinguish from a criminal assault and take responsibility for avoiding. And reading the story is a good vicarious experience that might help women (and men) get better at ending an evening at an appropriately early point. The sex in that story is very graphic — graphic in a completely nontitillating way. In fact, the sex in that story is such that it would make excellent reading for an abstinence-only class.The next day, I had: "When has this happened in the last 50 years? Everyone's talking about the same short story!"
It's one thing to read an artful presentation of the inside of the head of a woman going along with bad sex, but watching it from the outside is another matter.
From the Variety review of the movie: "The script invents a fascinating device, giving Margot an out-of-body double. 'Do we want to do this?' her conscience/subconscious asks." It was a fresh device 50 years ago in "Annie Hall."
From IndieWire: We're told the film is padded: "Some of it is more funny than necessary (like that Taylor runs a feminist subreddit called 'The Vagenda'), while some is oddly undercooked (Margot’s work alongside a beloved professor, played by Isabella Rossellini, feels like a limp attempt at adding an anthropological element to the whole thing)."
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I cannot believe they found a producer to back this. Just who do they think their target market is? Or, let me rephrase that: How large do they think their target market is outside of Manhattan and Brooklyn? They'll be lucky to make enough back to by a bagel.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The baddest sex you will ever have - as a man - is with a Japanese woman. Japanese women are bad at sex. It just sucks. I do not know if sex with Japanese men - if you're a woman - is just as bad, but I'll bet most ladies can put on their thinkin caps and come up with an effective probability model...a model that says 'all signs point to yes'.
I have given this subject a tremendous amount of thought, about how such intensely kawaii (cute) girls could be so bad at sex, but they just are.
Bad sex in Japan. All of it.
"Bad sex is something you need to distinguish from a criminal assault and take responsibility for avoiding."
"You need to," yes, and the culture would be better for recognizing it, but when convenient, you could just claim criminal assault and avoid responsibility.
In the age of #MeToo, bad sex is a matter of calculation after the fact.
Apologies for going OT on the substance of the original post rather than focusing on the new movie.
But I wonder, or do I?, if the movie has anything like the Althousian message.
Can’t believe that got made into a movie.
”People’s relations to the stories of others. People’s desire to be special, to have things be about them.”
The video I’m linking to is about how a Nabokov book “Pale Fire” is linked to the Blade Runner 2049 story. I know it sounds cliché but stories repeat over and over again and the catch is to repeat them in unexpected ways. For more see interpretations for the novel “In The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco, later made into a major motion picture starting Sean Connery.
Interlinked.
I just read the story. Was the sex really that bad? It just seemed awkward and self conscious. The way she imagined him a romantic figure, she imagined him a purveyor of bad sex. At the very end of the story, he says something flagrantly wrong. Perhaps that was the whole point of her seduction. At last her inchoate and contradictory desires had found fulfillment. She had been wronged by a man and was now a true feminist.
Nothing I suppose to do with Cat People (1942) or Cat People (1982) or Cat People (2021).
There does seem to be a strange cycle there, though.
Maybe Cat People only become cats once every forty years or so.
I liked the '82 version: Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard, and Annette O'Toole.
David Bowie sings the theme song.
He's something like the Malcom McDowell of music or McDowell is the Bowie of film.
"Was the sex really that bad?"
What's the standard for how bad the sex needs to be before you say it's not better than nothing?
You know I think better than nothing is a high standard. So the sex doesn't need to be that bad before I would say you are better off reserving yourself for something better.
Just noticed Rolling Stone in my news feed calling the sex scene "cringeworthy" ... Not just cringey, but cringeworthy.
Speaking of "Cat" movies. A year, or so, ago I started watching a film wherein a cat wakes up as a human. Only 20 minutes into it something came up and "paused". Some days later returned and it was no longer available. Can't even remember the title but, while interesting was also a little boring, dialogue was lacking in early scenes (as one would expect from a feline).
I read the story when you blogged about it. I think the writing is quite good; to the extent that I taught it in a creative writing class last semester, with some trepidation (you never know what’ll set students off). They loved it and were fascinated with how it was crafted. I can’t imagine it would make a good movie—stories that are mostly interior rarely do—but I’m going to email the students to let them know. I’ll be interested to hear their feedback.
What they ought to have is a Golden Retriever interrupt the bad love-making and knock the man to the ground and stand on top of him while she runs for help and/or better sexual partners.
Hero Dog Saves Cat Lover!
I actually might watch that movie.
Yesterday I spent two hours watching Rob Lowe and his Millennial son hiking up and down the Appalachian trail trying to find their lost dog. Those damn dog movies get me every time.
I haven't rated the movie yet. I'm going to make damn sure I have it higher than that alien cat movie, The Cat From Outer Space.
I remember when Walt Disney loved Dalmatians and hated cats. In fact the Disney cat hatred was so obvious, the company went a little racist mocking them.
If you can't put a dog in your cat movie, at least put Catwoman in there, whipping the shit out of all the whiners and other masochists. I might pay for that, too!
Cat People (1942 film)
Cat People (1982 film)
Person? Individualism is diversitist.
A pussy hat, a pussy cat, or a gender-complete construct? Perhaps a puss in boots.
“You know I think better than nothing is a high standard. So the sex doesn't need to be that bad before I would say you are better off reserving yourself for something better.”
What are these words you are saying, they make no sense to me at all.
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