Cat Costume Contest & Cat Kissing Film & More!
News & Mews
Join us for some Howleween fun with our Cat Costume Contest for your kitties or yourself as a kitty in costume or Photoshopped. There will be real prizes! Post your pics to our Facebook page or email them to [email protected].
We have a winner for our giveaway of fab catnip and honeysuckle toys from Plain Brown Tabby. Congratulations Janet Nichols! Look for an email from Layla.
Merlin and the rest of the Cat Wisdom 101 crew is getting into the holiday spirit. Autumn is very late this year and no one is complaining about the extended sunbathing season. More walks. More hunting and sniffing…
and tree climbing…with hands (this week’s blog meme) at Facebook’s Saturday Photo Hunt
We pride ourselves on finding and creating unique content and found something we haven’t seen at any other blog. We’d probably have thousands more “likes” and fans if we went the cute, funny or user generated photo route but it feels like selling out to us. Don’t get us wrong. We like cute. We’re reviewing a new cute, best-selling cat book tomorrow (yes, there’s a giveaway) but…
Can we ever get enough cute cat videos? I say yes, and with my art history background, I was curious: why we’re having a cultural kitty cuteness moment? As an antidote to all the cute kitten videos, at the nexus of crazy cat lady and art, is the film Infinity Kisses by avant garde conceptual artist Carolee Schneemann’s ritual kissing with her cat, Vesper. Filmed over eight years, her film explores taboo issues of physical contact, hierarchy between human and animal, and the aesthetics of erotic pleasure.
For Schneemann, cats are sacred and she references this passage from Robert Darton’s The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (Basic Books, 1984). “The torture of animals, especially cats, was a popular amusement throughout early modern Europe… To protect yourself from sorcery by cats there was one, classic remedy: maim it. Cut its tail, clip its ears, smash one of its legs, tear or burn its fur, and you would break its malevolent power.”
The malevolent pussy power also applied to women during this dark time of witch hunts. Might the opposite of cat torture be love and maybe kissing? An infinity of cat kisses, yielding daily cat-kissy-faced photos, maybe tongues, noses touching? Our pets often lick us. Why can’t we lick them? And maybe the terminal cuteness today is a backlash to assuage guilt from centuries of cats being persecuted like the devil.
I’d love to know what you think of the film. It’s 9 minutes long. Warning: this is not a cute kitten video. And maybe the artist is more cat lady than crazy after all. Meanwhile, Cat Wisdom 101 is in no danger of turning into I Can Has Cheezeburger (with apologies to my accountant). If you like us, “Like” us, share… you know the drill and thank-you for loving cats!
21 Comments
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Leah
So I just have to share this resource with those of you above seeking out funny cat videos http://www.real.com/resources/youtube-funny-cat-videos I love “everything cats!”.. especially how they continue to intrigue me and make me laugh.. there was an internet cat film festival a few months back and I was able to view some 80+ of the funniest that way. Hope you all enjoy as I did ! By the way.. I do always enjoy your site! Thank you.
BJ Bangs
Dark, but appropriate for October and Halloween. This certainly pushes the envelope. Great info and awesome pictures.
Chris Davis
Definitely thought-provoking, but too dark for me. I adore snuggling with my kitties. When I lay on the floor with Molly she wraps her paws around my hand and looks into my eyes, and we see into each other’s soul. For me, that is true connection with another being. I applaud you for posting this, Layla – sometimes it’s good to push that envelope!
catfromhell
OK, Mommy has always had cats. Never lived without one since she was borned and has loved us all, but never like that. Not even when she went to Art school and “experimented”
too weird. but interesting and not something wes would watch again.
Kisses
Nellie
boomermuse
B, thanks for an artist’s perspective. Art is subjective of course and I appreciate your input. As an artist myself, I like to try new things and go out on a limb. Sadly this experiment didn’t pan out as I’d hoped. My readers come first so there will be no more videos quite like this again.
Bernadette
I don’t find this creepy or disturbing in itself; some of the photos seem a little odd but taken individually they’re really not out of the ordinary. I’ve had cats try to paw my mouth open because that’s where I put the food, and I’ve also had ones who incessantly licked me or chewed on me, including my face and even my mouth when I was sleeping. I’ve never licked my cats but I do know people who insist it’s the best way to bond with them. I kiss my cats all the time though it’s not on the lips, and I have always heavily nuzzled and held my neo-natal fosters’ torsos against my face because I’ve felt they need that warm-breath contact. However, there are instances where it might look a little compromising taken out of context; many of her photos look like this.
What does make this seem highly sexualized and therefore distasteful to me is the background sound. I love the purrs, but don’t really get the meaning behind the chains, it carries too many connotations of submission, bondage, slavery and so on. Consider, instead, if she had “cute” music or just neutral sounds–would it be as disturbing? I don’t know her intent and if showing a bond of intimacy between her and her cat was the idea, but if it was, I really don’t care for it, however, if it’s her artistic statement, I don’t judge the validity of a person’s vision.
If what people take away from this is in any way harmful to cats or to a class of people, or people or animals in general, I wouldn’t support it. I’m on the fence about that, and it’s that background music that is pushing me toward a darker opinion.
I certainly post my share of cute cat images and I adore looking at them all and watching cute cat videos, but I don’t like to limit my appreciation to that, I appreciate seeing others’ interpretations of a subject I obviously hold dear. I also see more harm in other videos, and recently rather sternly upbraided someone who posted a compilation of video clips about cats that are supposed to be humorous but included scenes where cats were clearly in danger and being harmed, and I really had to argue my point until eventually enough people in the group also spoke up. These odd photos pale in comparison.
Sorry for the long answer! I still love aesthetic discussion and criticism and couldn’t manage to distill this into a simple statement.
boomermuse
B, My reply went to the top. Thanks very much!
Glogirly and Katie
Sorry…but I find it creepy too. Not so much the idea of kissing my kitty…although this took kitty kissing to a WHOLE new level for me…but the combination of very unsettling music and purring with blurred, jarring and even disturbing imagery. All pretty much unchanged for nine whole minutes.
I love art, design, film…serious and silly. This didn’t resonate with me. But I’m just me. Who am I to tell an artist what is or isn’t art? I’ve seen things in the Guggenheim that didn’t seem much like art to ME.
Interesting and thought provoking. But cute and silly is more my cup of catnip.
; )
Glogirly
Cherry City Kitties
Ok, self admitted cat kisser.Sometimes I get kissed. Sometimes on the lips. For us, it’s not art, it’s love, yeah I’d go as far as intimacy. But I don’t think anyone would ever see it as anything but “cute” or “sweet” (or maybe “eeewww”), but not provacative, sensual or erotic. I admit, the “art” of this film escapes me. Maybe I am not deep enough to hear the artists message. It’s interesting, and may be artful, but I didn’t find any beauty or true emotion in it. But then again, your talking to someone who thinks 3 year olds can put out a better painting than Jackson Pollock. Thanks for giving us a look.
Ingrid King
The video is creepy and disturbing. If the “artist” is trying to push the envelope, she’s achieved her mission. Definitely not my cup of tea. I’ll stick with cute cat pictures and videos. There’s enough darkness in the world.
I miss your old Cat Saturday posts!
boomermuse
Ingrid, thanks for the feedback. Carolee Schneemann is a respected feminist artist. I’m exploring different things to see what works creatively and what my audience wants. My old all original Caturday posts were very time consuming without mega traffic.It’s so much easier to do what you and many others do with news from other sources. It seems like more and blogs are covering the same stories whether light or dark.
Cheysuli
And here we thought we were the realm of not Cheezburger but that film has definitely beaten us to the punch. As always, interesting and thoughtful.
Skeeter and Izzy
Interesting. Thought provoking in that the way something is presented can lead you in a direction of thought or perception. Some could view this as a deep and loving bond,some as merely erotic and some as a form of beastiality that could cross the line into something illegal and cruel. It appears to me to be a form of the “nursing” ritual that you discussed in a previous blog post that has been allowed and encouraged to involve this woman’s lips and mouth.
Thank you Layla for taking the path less traveled .It provokes thought! Sometimes that can be quite scary and uncomfortable for some people. Luvs and Kittie kisses of a simpler kind Skeeter and Izzy and Mom (Kat)
Ps we did not get this post alert either. We did get the one for the Think Pink Give Away.
boomermuse
Thanks, the path less traveled can be a lonely one judging from the lack of comments ;-0. Still tweaking subscriber plugin.
Skeeter and Izzy
Again the lack of comments seems to go hand in hand with the plugin issue or server issue that you seem to be having. I did not receive the one for the new book give away for Today 10/7/12. On your Oct list of posts it is below this one and listed as Oct6 which makes me think that you may need to look into the date/time on your server,computer email etc. I always come directly to the site if I don’t receive an alert but some people forget to do that if they don’t get an alert. We just can’t miss out on a post! Luvs Skeeter ,Izzy and Mom (Kat)
Zee and Zoey - Deb Barnes
Sorry, could not get the video to upload!! Loved the picture of Merlin – so peaceful and the Halloween contest sounds like fun!
Sparkle
I agree – creepy video! I don’t like kissing my human anyway – I will give her a headbutt as long as she promises to keep her lips to herself!
boomermuse
Sparkle, I’m not surprised by your revealing viewpoint 🙂
Anne from TheCatSite.com
I admit, I find the video clip disturbing. Can we get back to Cute Cats 😉 It’s probably effective as art, in the sense that it makes you think, but I don’t like the eroticism implied.
The costume contest sounds like fun! We’re about to have a Halloween-themed photo contest on TCS this month.
boomermuse
Anne, the point of art is to make one think and re-think in new ways. Artists are always pushing the envelope and the artist deliberately made it to provoke.