Where does the classic movie cliché of the villain holding and fondling a cat while doing evil things (such as ordering someone to be killed) come from? You see it in so many films; I gues, for example, that Bloberg is doing it in the early James Bond pictures. Anybody knows the origins of this topos?
MODERATOR NOTE: PLease be aware that this thread is from July 2005, until revived in Post #33 in July 2014. That’s OK, we got no prob with resurrected posts, but we want folks to be aware, so don’t worry about replying to a 9-year-old post and expecting people to respond. – CKDH
It been parodied to death, of course, including an episode of Police Squad! where a mob boss, as he’s talking, stuffs his cat into a desk drawer, then reaches into another desk drawer and pulls out a small dog. And Sledge Hammer featured a scene where a mob boss tosses his cat out the window in a moment of annoyance.
Or my memory might be faulty. I should kill an inefficient henchman to cheer myself up.
Not just any cat; a white Persian with a fabulously bejewelled collar. [Nitpick: it’s “Blofeld. Ernst Stavro Blofeld…”]
Tentatively and strictly OTTOMH, this detail represents a tendency in portraiture of the aristocracy and upper classes of Europe. How many oil paintings have there been, after all, in which the well-heeled king, queen, or lesser grand poobahs have been carefully posed alongside symbolic tokens of their wealth, power, and status? (And often their children and beloved purebred pet(s) as well.)
As for Ian Fleming, he often portrayed his villains and their henchmen as being sexually deviant (often homosexual or lesbian, but also sado-masochistic and/or voyeuristic as well), aesthetically refined, epicurean, or with penchants for other sensual, hedonistic pleasures.
More specific to Blofeld, however, the cat is an emblem of the SMERSH head’s decadence and degeneracy, insofar as it implies that suspicious Blofeld seeks certain creature comforts from a purebred, spoiled, and bejewelled cat instead of a woman’s touch. (No, not that particular thrill; just the more general sensual pleasures associated with petting and stroking a purring, furry critter.)
Referring to the canonical Bond films now for the following analysis, this unnatural displacement of sensuality and affection appears to have accelerated for Blofeld at those times in his life when he lacked for attractive female companionship. Recall, if you will, that his cat-fetish was revealed in “From Russia With Love,” when Blofeld hatched a plan involving using a KGB mole to turn a low-level KGB employee into a seductress in order to plant a rigged SPEKTOR encoding machine with MI6 and discredit and kill James Bond. Significantly, Blofeld’s mole in the KGB was the spectacularly ugly, chain-smoking, sixty-ish lesbian SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb, she of the sensible shoes. This old hag appears to have been Blofeld’s only female colleague at this time in his life. Small wonder, then, that he would reach for a fluffy Persian cat for the ritualized reassurance which obsessive petting can bring.
By contrast, the Persian cat is, IIRC, virtually absent from the dynamic, virile Blofeld of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” in which the SMERSH titan is running a biological weapons development laboratory (posing as an allergy clinic) at the top of a Swiss alp and has scant time or inclination for cat-stroking. His nefarious plan this time calls for the dissemination of the sterility-inducing microbes through atomizers used by the uncannily beautiful, nubile, 20-something clinic patients, or “angels of death,” as he called them. It’s safe to say that the Telly Savalas version of E.S. Blofeld is by far the most sexualized portrayal of this evil overlord: although he is companioned by the middle-aged, stout, ugly, and Teutonic Frau Bundt, his henchwoman and manager of the angels of death, is he also surrounded by that bevy of gullible beauties who grant him vicarious access to their bedchambers (a virtual harem, if you will), and he also kidnaps Bond’s lover, Tracy, and attempts to seduce her.
IIRC, the Persian cat was present, if not being stroked, in the opening (teaser) sequence from “Diamonds Are Forever,” when Bond tracks down Blofeld (actually Blofeld’s surgically-enhanced body-double) in a plastic-surgery clinic and spa. You may recall that as Bond buries Blofeld in a steaming mud bath (“welcome to hell, Blofeld,” he grimly intones), the cat hisses, and the camera zooms in closely on its diamond-encrusted collar, for the diamond-themed title/credits montage… Are we to infer from the cat that the double had a Persian double, or was the cat Blofeld’s devoted pet, and an indicator that the real Blofeld was actually in the vicinity?
Fast-forward to the pathetic, isolated, lair-less (and hairless!) and wheelchair-bound Blofeld from the teaser sequence of “For Your Eyes Only”. This time, the heavy petting is a key aspect of villain identification and characterization. Blofeld is literally an urban isolato now, confined to a motorized wheelchair (albeit with a remote control to fly Bond’s chartered helicopter) without any henchmen, and left with only the pampered Persian for companionship. Even the Persian cat deserts him, however, when Bond turns tables on the assassination scheme and scoops up the wheelchair on one of the chopper’s skids…
Scrivener, if dancing-around-the-issue could be choreographed, you’d be George Balanchine. The kitty is not first and foremost an allegory to aristocracy in art. (We’re talking Hollywood here, and low-to-middlebrow Hollywood at that.) The symbolism of the cat is mostly that IT’S A FREAKING CAT.
That said, you’re not too far off the mark about the connotations of cats in the popular mind. They’re cuddly, a bit decadent and even treacherous compared to all-American critters like dogs, and have from time immemorial been associated with feminine traits. As for being “spoiled and bejeweled,” kitty surely didn’t come from the litter that way. Those qualities say more about a cat’s human than about the cat. (See decadent above.) Although with some cats I’ve known, you might be tempted to qonder whether it wasn’t all their idea to begin with.
That wasn’t what I meant to suggest, if that is what you took from what I wrote. My point was that while Blofeld’s cat is a continuation of a long artistic tradition in which the purebreeds are emblematic of artistocracy and privilege, Blofeld’s cat was also used by the evil overlord as a fetishized substitute for more normal human attachments – and that all this dovetails with Fleming’s signature brand of pretentious, megalomaniacal, and yes, decadent, hedonistic, and aesthetically refined evil overlords.
But now that you mention it, and since I didn’t earlier, it’s significant that Blofeld did in fact have aristo pretensions. A key plot point in OHMSS was Blofeld’s application for validation of a hereditary title from the British Royal College of Arms (or some such institution) – a claim grounded in historical documentation and Blofeld’s having the characteristic earlobes – which paved the way for Bond’s infiltration of the clinic Piz Gloria by impersonating an English genealogy expert.
Actually, the Broccoli (canonical) Bonds are Eon Productions, in partnership with United Artists, and often filmed partly at Shepperton Studios, IIRC. Not standard Hollywood per se, but generally British productions (albeit pointedly international in terms of locations) backed with American money and distribution.
:dubious: My, how tautological of you to say so. Beware of Doug, you’re learning, but you’re not a Cecil yet.
Thank you, Peter Morris. I have a number of Bond DVDs, but don’t have a copy of “Diamonds” for reference (although I do own the soundtrack, go figure).
I’m not a big James Bond fan, so I’m staying away from that aspect of this discussion. But I thought that Dr. Evil and his cat parodied the cliche very well.
Could another part of the “bad guy” attraction to cats have to do with the Egyptian adoration and worship of the animals?
Talking of parodies, don’t forget the Powerpuff Girls episode “Cat Man Do,” in which the white kitty is actually the bad guy, controlling her human handler telepathically.
Don’t blame Fleming for that, though. The cat is solely a movie thing. Blofeld’s description in the novel Thunderball simply said he was not known to have slept with a member of either sex, suggesting he was very relaxed or very discreet. In the follow-up novels On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and You Only Live Twice, Blofeld associates with Irma Bunt, by all description a rather ugly middle-aged woman. Whether or not they shared a bed is left unstated, though she did address him as “Leiber” (“Dear”).
Actually, on reflection, few of Fleming’s literary Bond villains were sexual deviants. They either had large (hetero)sexual appetites or were rather indifferent to sex. The henchmen occasionally were described as being cruel toward women, but nothing that would get Anne Rice’s heart to skip a beat.
By way of compiling a list of Fleming novels and short stories, and the major villains within (from memory, so don’t nitpick me to death here):
Casino Royale (1953). Villain: Le Chiffre. Large heterosexual appetite, which prompted him to invest a sizable amount of France’s Communist Party’s (as well as Soviet terror agency SMERSH’s) funds in a chain of brothels. This looked reasonably profitable (as well as having the side benefit of getting Chiffre access to as many women as he wanted), but a strict anti-pimping law shut the brothels down, forcing Le Chffre to play high-stakes baccarat to try to recoup the lost funds. Le Chiffre tries to torture information out of Bond by slamming him repeatedly in the scrotum with a fireplace tool, but there’s no indication (I thought) of a homosexual angle. It simply seemed like this was the way for Le Chiffre to inflict maximum pain on bond with minimal effort.
Live and Let Die (1954). Villain: Mr. Big. Large heterosexual appetite.
Moonraker (1955). Villain: Hugo Drax. Bond speculated that Drax’s gregarious personality and striking handsome-ugly looks might make him popular with the ladies, but any actual sexual activities of Drax are unstated.
Diamonds Are Forever (1956). Villains: Jack Spang (Rufus B. Saye); Seraffimo Spang, Wint, Kidd. Nothing particularly sexual or extreme about the first two, though Leiter suspected (probably correctly) that the hitmen partners Wint and Kidd were homosexual. When they kidnap and slap around the lovely Tiffany Case, though, they do go to the trouble of stripping her down to her panties.
From Russia, With Love (1957). Villains: Rosa Klebb, Red Grant, Kronsteen, General G. Klebb was definitely sadistic and bisexual. Grant was psychopathic and completely indifferent to sex. Kronsteen had a wife and children, General G.'s appetites are unstated, presumably hetero.
Doctor No (1958). Villain: Dr. Julius No. Dr. No’s preferences are unstated. Some of his goons seem pretty cruel, but it’s mixed up with a lot of racist crap about black men lusting after white women, so best not to dwell on it.
Goldfinger (1959). Villain: Auric Goldfinger. Goldfinger likes the babes and I suppose his occasional fetish for painting them gold (in at least one case with fatal results) counts as deviant. Or just artistic. He arranged occasionally for his Korean goons to be serviced by white prostitutes, with the indication that the women were were-paid because the Koreans liked to crudely defile them.
For Your Eyes Only (1960). Short story collection:
“From a View to a Kill”. Villains: Russian spy group. No sexual aspect explored.
“For Your Eyes Only”. Villains: Von Hammerstein, Gonzales. Cruel scummy bastards, but nothing particularly kinky about them.
“Quantum of Solace”. Villain: None.
“Risico”. Villain: Kristatos. Nothing particular stated about his sexuality.
“The Hildebrand Rarity”. Villain: Milton Krest. Sadistic bastard who liked beating and playing mind-games on his wife.
Thunderball (1961). Villain: Ernst Stavro Blofeld; Emilio Largo, Count Lippe, Petacchi. Largo has large hetero appetites. Blofeld’s tastes are deliberately kept vague. Lippe is also hetero and horny. Petacchi is also, but to a lesser degree.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1962). Villains: Horror; Sluggsy. There is a vague description of them raping the female character, but nothing particularly kinky about it.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963). Villain: Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Irma Bunt. Blofeld’s tastes are still unstated, as are Bunt’s.
You Only Live Twice (1964). Villain(s): Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Irma Bunt. There’s an implication Blofeld and Bunt are friendly-borderline-romantic, but no evidence they are sexual.
The Man With the Golden Gun (1965). Villain: Pistols Scaramanga, Hendriks, assorted hoods. The Secret Service file on Scaramanga suggested he had homosexual tendencies and a fetish for his pistol, but this comes off as complete bullshit whrn Bond first meets Scaramanga in a Jamaica whorehouse. The minor villians seem straight and unremarkable.
Octopussy and the Living Daylights (1966). Short stories:
“Octopussy”. Villain: Major Dexter Smythe. Marries a woman right after the war, lives with her in an alcoholic stupor for several years until her accidental overdose. No indication of unusual or even particularly interesting sexual tates.
“The Living Daylights”. Villain: “Trigger”. Trigger is a female sniper that Bond is supposed to shoot dead, but instead relents and simply wounds her. If anyone shows sexual misdeeds in this story, it’s Bond, for letting a one-sided infatuation interfere with his mission.
“The Property of a Lady”. Villain: Unidentified resident director of KGB in London, Maria Freudenstein (misidentifed as “Freudenstadt” when referenced at the beginning of “The Man with the Golden Gun”, which takes place after this story). M suspects Freudenstein was turned into a double agent through blackmail after some unpleasant sexual misadventure and Bond pegs ehr as an ugly duckling seeking revenge on the world, but nothing perverse. The KB director’s tastes are unstated.
Referring to the canonical Bond films now for the following analysis, this unnatural displacement of sensuality and affection appears to have accelerated for Blofeld at those times in his life when he lacked for attractive female companionship. Recall, if you will, that his cat-fetish was revealed in “From Russia With Love,” when Blofeld hatched a plan involving using a KGB mole to turn a low-level KGB employee into a seductress in order to plant a rigged SPEKTOR encoding machine with MI6 and discredit and kill James Bond. Significantly, Blofeld’s mole in the KGB was the spectacularly ugly, chain-smoking, sixty-ish lesbian SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb, she of the sensible shoes. This old hag appears to have been Blofeld’s only female colleague at this time in his life. Small wonder, then, that he would reach for a fluffy Persian cat for the ritualized reassurance which obsessive petting can bring.
By contrast, the Persian cat is, IIRC, virtually absent from the dynamic, virile Blofeld of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” in which the SMERSH titan is running a biological weapons development laboratory (posing as an allergy clinic) at the top of a Swiss alp and has scant time or inclination for cat-stroking. His nefarious plan this time calls for the dissemination of the sterility-inducing microbes through atomizers used by the uncannily beautiful, nubile, 20-something clinic patients, or “angels of death,” as he called them. It’s safe to say that the Telly Savalas version of E.S. Blofeld is by far the most sexualized portrayal of this evil overlord: although he is companioned by the middle-aged, stout, ugly, and Teutonic Frau Bundt, his henchwoman and manager of the angels of death, is he also surrounded by that bevy of gullible beauties who grant him vicarious access to their bedchambers (a virtual harem, if you will), and he also kidnaps Bond’s lover, Tracy, and attempts to seduce her.
IIRC, the Persian cat was present, if not being stroked, in the opening (teaser) sequence from “Diamonds Are Forever,” when Bond tracks down Blofeld (actually Blofeld’s surgically-enhanced body-double) in a plastic-surgery clinic and spa. You may recall that as Bond buries Blofeld in a steaming mud bath (“welcome to hell, Blofeld,” he grimly intones), the cat hisses, and the camera zooms in closely on its diamond-encrusted collar, for the diamond-themed title/credits montage… Are we to infer from the cat that the double had a Persian double, or was the cat Blofeld’s devoted pet, and an indicator that the real Blofeld was actually in the vicinity?
Fast-forward to the pathetic, isolated, lair-less (and hairless!) and wheelchair-bound Blofeld from the teaser sequence of “For Your Eyes Only”. This time, the heavy petting is a key aspect of villain identification and characterization. Blofeld is literally an urban isolato now, confined to a motorized wheelchair (albeit with a remote control to fly Bond’s chartered helicopter) without any henchmen, and left with only the pampered Persian for companionship. Even the Persian cat deserts him, however, when Bond turns tables on the assassination scheme and scoops up the wheelchair on one of the chopper’s skids…
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Damn, please ignore all the unedited leftover quote from after the description of “Octopussy and the Living Daylights”. I must’ve hit “submit” by accident before deleting it.
I am certainly going to be way out of my league here, but here goes nothing.
Cats have always seemed to me to be used as a symbol of decadence, deviance and feminine traits. On the other hand, dogs are usually used as symbols of loyalty, honesty, masculinity and The American Way. It’s just this weird sort of split.