This is a discussion of feminism in film, specifically in the two version of the horror movie "The Cat People."
Most horror films work out metaphorically the adolescent years and then play them out to end either safely or to end in a way that is cathartic for its fear-weary audience. Most of these films, however, maintain certain gender-specific roles within the framework of the film—the monster is generally male, and a good, would-be father must save another good would-be mother from the male “other” monster. This set-up puts all the power in the hands of the men--either the monster or the heroic boyfriend--and places the women, almost always, in the role of victim (Hollinger, 297). This makes Jacques Tourneur’s “The Cat People” (1942) particularly interesting for the time period in which it was made. It is one of the few horror films where the figure to be feared is female.
Some films with female monsters, such as James Whale’s “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), create a female monster and then suppress any fear she might have evoked by reanimating the male monster, and making him the center of attention (Hollinger, 299). In other words, she becomes merely a gimmick for justifying the sequel. Such is not the case for the original “The Cat People,” where female sexuality run amuck is the central idea for horror in the film. By contrast, the 1982 version by Paul Schrader lessens the power of the female figure who made the original frightening; instead, a Svengali-like brother is introduced who usurps the power role.
Robin Wood points out that “The Cat People” (1942) “is centered on the repression of female sexuality in a period where the monster is almost invariably male and phallic” (183). The focus of “The Cat People” is on the fear of a sexually aggressive female, in the guise of a cat, unrepressed and on the prowl. It is a film that is almost progressive in its treatment of women.
If Tourneur’s version of “The Cat People” is a step in the right direction in at least recognizing female sexuality and the power it evokes over men, Shrader’s later version goes a huge step back. While it is ostensibly about female sexuality, it, like “The Bride of Frankenstein,” makes innocuous the threatening nature of the female monster. The opening scene positions the female as a ritual, sexual sacrifice to the lust of the male panther (Hollinger, 304). Although the two films share the same name, a few of the same characters, and some of the same plot, they are two very different films with very different messages.
Walter Evans, in his essay “Monster Movies: A Sexual Theory,” suggests that what creates fear in many horror movies is produced “at the border which separates those who take up their proper gender roles from those who do not, or the border is between normal and abnormal sexual desire” (41). Irena, from Tourneur’s version of “The Cat People,” fits both of these fears. She has not taken up her proper gender role because as a wife she withholds sex from her husband. She does this because she is afraid she will turn into a panther and, as she puts it, be driven a desire to kill. But it still positions her as the power figure in the relationship because she is in control of what happens in the bedroom. Irena is also borders between normal and abnormal sexual desire, not only because she seems to exude sexuality, but also because she seems to desire sex, unlike Alice, who waits patiently, and asexually, for Oliver to notice. Irena, on the other hand, flirts, smiles, and seems to want. This behavior has a powerful effect on the men in the movie. And Dr. Judd, the other male influence in the movie, although he never confesses his attraction to Irena, reveals it through several sexual advances he makes toward her.
By Evans’ definition of horror, Irena, from the 1982 film, won’t even make you blink if she talks loud. She satisfies the expectations of her gender by maintaining her virginity well into adulthood, and when she does become sexually active, her partner has all control, making her sexual desire normal in a patriarchal culture, especially because it doesn’t admit much desire.
Within the context of the 1942 film, there are two males who try to exert their patriarchal control over Irena. The first is Oliver Reed, the non-threatening male who tries to contain Irena’s sexuality in two ways. First, he transforms her into a fetishistic figure, “placing her in the cult of the beautiful and sexually provocative, but unknowable and untouchable woman” (Hollinger, 301). Oliver confesses this while admitting his attraction to her. He also tries to control her budding sexuality by marrying her. Marriage would put Irena in a male-controlled environment with him as husband and controller. This attempt backfires, however, when Irena claims she cannot have intercourse with him. The power structure is therefore changed, and Irena is in control. Oliver is left to the boring and asexual union with his co-worker and friend Alice (302).
In contrast to Oliver’s somewhat passive and ineffectual attempts to control Irena is Dr. Judd, the psychiatrist who plans to fix what Oliver believes is Irena’s mental problem: that she believes she will turn into a cat if she has intercourse. Dr. Judd “sets out to actively counter Irena’s dangerous sexuality with the force of his phallic presence” (301). This presence is symbolized by his walking stick, which encases a sword—a sword that suggests a strong connection to the statue of King John of Serbia—in Irena’s apartment, which depicts him plunging a sword through a panther. Irena reveals to Dr. Judd, partially under hypnosis, that King John, coming to rid the village of evil, drove a matriarchal band of witches and devil worshipers (the cat people) into the mountains. Irena believes herself to be a descendant of these people and herself a cat woman. Dr. Judd’s mission then becomes to prove to Irena she is not a cat person and that it is only a superstition. Irena, believing herself to be a cat woman, and Dr. Judd, attempting to “cure” her of this belief, represent a secondary power struggle. This struggle comes to a head toward the end of the film when Dr. Judd once again makes sexual advances toward Irena. The two kiss, Irena consenting in what is almost a defeat of will, and she turns into a panther. They fight in the shadows and Irena, as a panther, defeats him. Dr. Judd’s attempts to control Irena through both therapy and sex result in his death and Irena’s triumph: a triumph of belief, mystery, female sexuality, and power.
One interesting aspect of the 1942 film is that it does briefly assuage the audience’s fear of female sexuality. Although Irena’s death is not brought about by a male figure, at the film’s conclusion Irena’s sexuality and power is extinguished. That her death is a suicide is important to the issue of gender, as Karen Hollinger eloquently points out: This self-induced punishment does not diminish the power of her sexual difference, and Tourneur’s film remains a strong statement of female power in difference, which is controlled only by the woman’s internalization of patriarchal standards. (303)
While some would argue that her choice is still only a dead end, as many have argued about the much more recent film “Thelma and Louise,” Irena is still somewhat empowered because she chooses her own fate. It is of course a choice that meant more in 1942 than it would today.
Because 1940s America could still feel secure in its patriarchy, Tourneur’s version of “The Cat People” seems to buck the status quo of a male-empowered society. It recognizes a fear of women’s sexuality, but it also symbolically reassures its audience, by Irena’s self-destruction, that women have internalized patriarchal standards. What makes Paul Shrader’s 1982 version a disappointment is that it reverses this success, four decades later, and in many ways falls short of the status quo, especially given the progress of equal rights fostered in the early seventies. It is made during an era when America was not secure in its patriarchy. Shrader suppresses the fear of female sexuality by making another male monster to guide, elicit, and control the female monster and her unsafe sexuality. That he makes this monster her brother only serves to shift the emphasis from the female monster to the taboo of incest—a fear that everyone shares—and in so doing, Shrader undermines the wonderful ambiguity of the female monster that can serve to heighten any fear.
The sexually aggressive Dr. Judd from the 1942 film has been transformed in the 1982 film into Paul (304), Irena’s brother who was separated from her in early childhood. Paul is also a cat person and is responsible for an outbreak of brutal murders. He believes that only an incestuous relationship with Irena can prevent him from turning into a panther, which he becomes after sex with a woman. Of course, Paul must convince Irena that incest is in her best interest, so from the beginning the original fear, Irena’s sexuality is immediately controlled by the phallic presence of Paul. Thus, as Hollinger states, “Irena is introduced in this film not as a powerful sexual threat, but as a potential victim to Paul’s threatening sexuality” (304).
The cat people’s legend as offered by the two movies is quite different. The 1942 film tells the story mentioned earlier of King John driving out the matriarchal band of cat people. The later film’s version reveals the tale through the film’s first scene: a male panther preparing to have intercourse with a bound young girl. Irena is visually connected with this victim by the fade in of her face over the young girl’s. Tourneur’s film creates a strong female threat whereas Shrader’s version introduces another female victim.
Paul is clearly the scarier of the two cat people, brutally murdering innocent people in order to metamorphose back into a human once he falls prey to his sexual urges. Once Irena transforms into a panther after sex with the zoo-keeper/panther-tamer Oliver, she merely kills a rabbit to change back. The only person in the movie she kills is a harmless old man who, when we find him dead, looks less like he has been attacked than scared to death (305). Irena’s threat, even as a panther/monster, is pretty mild. The strong willed Irena of 1942 brings about her own self-destruction by opening the panther cage and letting the cat attack her. It is a startling change to the “modern” Irena who begs Oliver to kill her. Instead of killing her, he decides (in a second image of female bondage) to tie Irena to the bed, have intercourse with her so she will transform into a panther, and place her in a cage at the zoo under his control. First, Irena is under Paul’s mental control, then Oliver literally cages her. She seems to have no real will of her own, only what the male dominated world dictates for her.
Another way in which the film underplays its fear of female sexuality is in the actual sex scenes. As mentioned earlier, the film begins with the image of a young woman tied to a tree awaiting sexual sacrifice to a panther. Later in the film, Irena is also tied to the bed, to prevent the panther she will turn into from being let out. In both scenes, the female is literally bound from partaking in the sex. The bondage is a fetish that maintains the patriarchal hierarchy. Walter Evans reiterates this point:
Female fetishism is clearly represented within many horror texts…as instances of patriarchal signifying practices—but only in relation to male fears and anxieties about women and the question, What do women want? (61)
The fear about what women want is still an issue in the film, conveniently resolved by tying up the women and acting as if what the male wants is what the female wants. The film’s end finds Irena caged as a panther. She growls at her cager/lover Oliver but ultimately must submit to his control. We are led to imagine that she is content here. It is a scene that controls the threat of female sexuality by wrapping it in an almost domestic package—the cage is like the home. It is a scene that comforts a male need for control ant that undermines all the fear of the original.
Paul Shrader’s remake of “The Cat People” does exactly what Wright says the genre film should do for the status quo:
These films came into being and were financially successful because they temporarily relieve the fears aroused by a recognition of social and political conflicts; they help to discourage any action that might otherwise follow upon the pressure generated by living with these conflicts. (41)
Shrader’s film relieves the patriarchy’s fear of women, who were continuing to make social and political advances during the early 1980s, by reversing the female threat and replacing it with a male one. While Shrader’s film fits the genre-film category by toppling the horror of the original, we might suggest that the Tourneur actually transcends this category by playing on a fear we haven’t resolved, a fear that arouses social conflict more than it relieves it.
In conclusion, although Shrader’s film is the more contemporary of the two films, Tourneur’s film four decades earlier is much more progressive in its treatment of women and more socially unsettling. The patriarchal status quo is still intact in the earlier film but with a much more empowered woman than in the later version, a woman who is only just beginning to move toward the discovery of this empowerment. The 1982 version of the film seems to be an excuse for fetishism, another opportunity to undress Nastassja Kinski and reassert the male inclination to control women sexually, mentally, and physically. With none of the nudity and no explicit violence, the original can still horrify half of the world.
Works Cited
Evans, Walter. “Monster Movies: A Sexual Theory.” Horror and the Monstrous
Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection. Ed. Grant, Berry Keith. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986. 41, 61.
Hollinger, Karen. “The Monster as Woman: Two Generations of Cat People.” Horror
And the Monstrous Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection. Ed. Grant, Berry Keith. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986. 296-307.
Wood, Robin. “An Introduction to the American Horror Film.” Planks of Reason. Ed.
Grant, Berry Keith. Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 1984. 183.
Wright, Judith Hess. “Genre Films and the Status Quo.” Film Genre Reader. Ed. Grant,
Berry Keith. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. 41.
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