We Watched Cats High So You Didn’t Have To
Alice Mander
3/5 STARS
I first saw Cats the musical when I was 15. While I didn’t hate it, per se, it did leave me feeling like a part of my youth had been robbed by the theatre. So, weed or not, the movie couldn’t possibly be worse, right? I got some mates together. Some of us got stoned while some of us stayed sober (because you gotta do what feels right for you).
As the authentic journalist that I am, I made sure to get some pre-intoxication thoughts:
“How are you feeling about watching Cats?”
“I love Cats. I know all the words”
“I think it’s gonna be weirdly arousing”
“I’m just here for the weed”
The film opens with a bang. A bag is dropped into the streets of London. “Alright who's in the bag? Oh it’s Taylor Swift”. It was not Taylor Swift. The Not-Taylor-Swift-Cat was let out of the bag. She then experiences a weird initiation into the Jellicle Clan where they sing a scary song about... cat names? Despite us all falling into a silent trance during this, no one knew what was happening. Personally, I was too focused on the human hands. I also began to wonder, with increasing horror, how many erection jokes they would make with the tails.
“I literally know one piece of exposition and it’s that they’re cats”, says our friend after watching close to two hours of this film. The other half of us were planning our niche
Masters thesis. I was in this camp because I had finally got the key to Cats. I made a simple and quick note on my phone: Cats is a Marxist revolution.
The Jellicle Cats are the working class. The James-Corden-cat is our token fat cat capitalist kitty. We even have some petite bourgeois in there in the form of the Judi-Dench-cat, and the Ian-Mckellen-cat (FYI, this is pretty much where my theory lost any rhyme or reason). I’ll admit that I couldn’t quite explain the cats’ dislike for Grizabella, the Glamour-cat who our friend confidently exclaims is definitely a “prostitute” and that’s why she was outed from the Jellicle Cat society. That raised questions. Why would Marxist
kitties be so mean to this hard-working kitty? Also, if Grizabella is indeed a sex worker, and all power to her, then who are her clients? Are the only cats in town the Jellicle Cats—because it sure looks that way and, if that is true, I repeat, WHO ARE HER CLIENTS?! Wait, also, WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE HUMANS??!!
Cats had officially broken us. The proportions. Those bloody proportions. The Jellicle Cats appear to exist in a post-human world in which human artefacts remain, right? Naturally, the cats also found time to create their own human-inspired, albeit cat-sized, items like hats. BUT, why is there also furniture which is slightly too small for a human, but still too big for a cat? AND there is stuff which is clearly WAY too big for either human or cat.“The train tracks are too big !!!! What the tuck”, another note in my phone.
The most disturbing thing throughout was the inherently sexual implications of the film. For instance, if some cats wear clothes, are the other cats just naked all the time? My friend confided in me, “I close my eyes and I see naked Idris-Elba-cat” which is less enticing than you’d think.
When James-Corden-cat appeared another friend piped up, “I’m….”, a pregnant pause, “... scared?”. Cats and the weed had him questioning so many things about himself that he suddenly felt the need to confess to us that, the other night, he was lulled to sleep to the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
By the time Grizabella ascended into cat-heaven most of us had descended into chaos. From snacking on corn chips; talking about those lamps “with the tassels” that they wanted to buy for the flat; and giggling about eating plastic (???), the somewhat chilling tune of “mAgicAl mister mistOffElees” was but a distant yet concerning memory. However, I—the forever responsible journalist—at least caught one departing comment:
“I’d rewatch it”.
And that, my friends, is the power of cannabis.