New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Sexuality and lust is shown to be dangerous and deadly, but Cat People specifically focuses on female desire as something that transforms women into monsters, and depicts men as victims of these literal femme fatales. There are stereotypes regarding sexuality that relates specifically to one gender or the other, and it is more common that men are seen as unable to control their urges, and women are depicted as prudish, or even frigid. But women are also often shown as being unable to control their emotions or to resist temptation, as capricious and prone to outbursts of passion. That is the idea that Cat People uses to show Irena's monstrous side.

When Irena is put under hypnosis by Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), a psychologist, she admits all of her fears. She describes her ancestors as “Women who in jealousy or anger or out of their own corrupt passions can change into great cats, like panthers.” Women in fiction are often shown as being driven by jealousy and losing control of themselves when they are overcome by anger or lust. Irena fears that if she were so much as kissed by a man that “she would be driven by her own evil to kill him.” Later Irena tells Oliver that as long as she is happy she can control herself, but anger and rage, and the panther, are bubbling beneath the surface.

There is certainly an aspect of xenophobia that plays into the film, and I doubt it is a coincidence that the Cat Woman unable to control her sexuality is Serbian. This heavily plays into both jingoistic fears that foreign women are out to steal our men, and Puritan prejudice concerning European women, all of whom are suspected of being hedonistic harlots. As a contrast to Irena's dangerous seduction we are shown Alice (Jane Randolph), a traditional American girl who works in Oliver's office and admits that she is in love with him. We are meant to view her as the moral, chaste woman whom Oliver should marry.

When Oliver asks Alice how she defines love, she has a quaint, Capra-esque speech prepared: “It's understanding... It's the two of us living our lives together happily and proudly. No self-torture, no doubt. It's enduring and it's everlasting. Nothing can change it.” Oliver admits that he doesn't feel that way about Irena, but that he finds her irresistible in a very different way. “I'm drawn to her. There's a warmth from her that pulls at me. I have to watch her when she's in the room. I have to touch her when she's near. But I don't really know her. In many ways we're strangers.” It is obvious that what Oliver is describing is not love, but lust, that dangerous passion that turns us into savage animals, sometimes literally.

But while Oliver constantly assures Irena that her fears are unfounded and hyperbolic, her warnings turn out to be prescient. As tension develops in his relationship with Irena, Oliver begins spending more time with the comforting Alice, although of course they do nothing prurient or improper. But when Irena sees the two of them having a perfectly innocuous conversation she gives in to her anger and jealousy. Irena finally becomes the Cat Woman that has been lurking inside of her and attacks Alice in a swimming pool. Fortunately for Alice, her screams attract attention and she is saved from being mauled to death.

Continued:       1       2       3       4