Cat Is Art Spelled Wrong

July 27, 2015
Cat videos on the Internet are a cultural phenomenon, and this collection of essays takes the postmodern mediated feline more or less seriously. Most of the 16 essays are about cat videos or cats and art; the weakest ones are extended musings that address cats more generally. Carl Wilson’s contribution “East of Intention: Cat, Camera, Music” unearths the little-known history of cats on film. Sasha Archibald considers the aesthetics of cute in “Feline Darlings and the Anti-Cute.” Especially inspired is Elena Passarello’s “Jeoffrey,” an antiphonal collection of lines that interlock with “My Cat Jeoffry,” the best-known portion of a lengthy poem by 18th-century poet Jubilate Agno. Sarah Schultz, organizer of the first Internet Cat Video Festival, staged by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, offers a curatorial view of the event in “There Was a Cat Video Festival in Minneapolis, and It Was Glorious.” The reader may wonder about the sanity of a few of the writers, but that is part of the wryness of it all. This clever collection is highly recommended for people who watch cat videos, which is apparently nearly everyone.

August 1, 2015
A collection of essays centered on the ubiquitous viral cat videos on the Internet. The product of a three-year collaboration with the Minneapolis-based Walker Art Center, this entertaining assemblage of musings, observations, and appreciations of everything feline-related on film spotlights 14 writers and cat aficionados. Editing trio Casey, Fischbach, and Schultz's jovial and addictive anthology makes grand statements about the seriousness and the devotion involved in creating and posting pratfall videos of cats doing everything from riding an oscillating iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner to playing a keyboard or inexplicably attacking its ceramic likeness. Then there's Internet darling Grumpy Cat, whose owner, cited in author and poet Ander Monson's informative piece, has "monetized and merchandized" her distinctive pet's fandom while considering "taxidermy as an option when she dies." With lyrical turns of phrase, cultural critic Maria Bustillos fawns over the ability of felines to transcend human traits like "beauty and panic, laziness, and the potential for real idiocy." Others-e.g., Jillian Steinhauer and editor Schultz-offer exuberant dispatches from the front lines of the Internet Cat Video Festival, where ritualistic feline worship brings about a unique social solidarity for thousands of viewers. Collectively, the essays have an eclectic and joyful appeal. Some authors, like music critic Carl Wilson, delve deeper and more studiously into the musicality and the "Zen of the cat video," just as others offer poetic interpretations and analyses of their pop-culture relevance and historic symbolism. Seattle native Will Braden, creator of the cheeky "Henri, le Chat Noir" Web short film series, writes the most knowledgeably on the obsessive allure of the cat video and why so many explode with popularity. Cat lovers will adore these creative reflections on the frivolity and the necessity of pets and the Web videos many believe to be "the ice cream of moving imagery."

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.