Ever since the trailer for Tom Hooper’s big-screen adaptation of Cats dropped last week, one of the big questions surrounding the film has been just who, exactly, it’s for. We already know the general public’s reactions have ranged from disturbed to—at best—perplexed. Actual cats don’t seem to like it any more than us humans, either. One common musing among observers, however, has been, “Say, maybe this is some kind of furry thing?”
Thanks to some yeoman’s work from both BuzzFeed News and The Cut, it appears the answer there is also nah, not really.
Furries, we will explain to you as if you are not already well aware, are people with a penchant for anthropomorphized depictions of animals. That interest in cartoon animals often manifests itself in the form of adopting “fursonas” and wearing mascot-like “fursuits.” It is by no means always a sex thing, but sometimes, yeah, it’s a sex thing.
So, what did the furries interviewed by these publications think of the slick, bizarrely proportioned CG-enhanced people-cats of Cats? For the most part, they hate them as much as everyone else. It seems that, generally speaking, furries are partial to a particular style of cartoon-like animal depiction, and the uncanny valley disaster that Hooper calls “digital fur technology” is something else entirely.
Speaking with The Cut, a Shiba Inu furry named AtlasInu said the Cats asthetic was, “not quite furry to me personally, more like humans with cat makeup and features added.” Another furry named Jib Kodi explained, “Many assume the fandom would be all about this. Okay, it’s got cat’s ears and tails. But look at it this way: I like Spider-Man, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I like spiders.” While we are not entirely sure if that analogy tracks, it does at least demonstrate that these furries aren’t buying what Cats is selling.
Other furries online indicated they wished that the cats involved had more cat features and looked a little less like pixies. Fair enough.
BuzzFeed, unafraid to ask the tough questions, just out and out asked their anthropomorphic sources, “Hey, are you guys cranking it to this shit or what?” Eolis, a lemur-man from Canada, told BuzzFeed that he wishes he could get horny to Cats, but it just ain’t happening. “Furries want something they can fuck/fap to and the Cats movie is not that,” he said.
Of course, this is a small sample size and lots of different people with different opinions count themselves as furries. Just as with any large, loosely knit group, surely there are those among its ranks who are turned on by a smoothly hirsute James Corden.
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53 Comments
Once you’ve lost the furries, you’ve lost America.
We’re big in Europe, South-East Asia ad Oceania, too. Latin America remains largely unconquered, but check out the furry convention map: Brazil’s a lock-in. 😼
Somebody stole my article idea from the Cats trailer post.
Huh the tweet from Stellar would actually be a bit of an improvement. In my nonfurry opinion.
It really does tilt back from horrifying and into endearing.
Yeah but would we be talking about it this much if it didn’t look horrifying?
Definitely looks better to me.
I’m a cat person, and I’d like to be left out of this mess, thank you very much.
You’re a cat person?
See, back before “enjoying watersports” meant that you liked getting peed on, being “a cat person” meant…
… you liked getting peed on by cats?
What film is that from?
Sleepwalkers it’s awful.
It sure looks it! Thanks.
It does a great job defining why the design looks so creepy. They’re neither cat enough nor human enough.
Which is, ironically, actually reminiscent of the original stage makeup and costuming.
I really feel like CATS may be the first movie musical to actual give film viewers the exact experience that theater viewers had ….. minus the actors occasionally rubbing up against your leg (actual choreography). You just kind of have to embrace the “huh, wtf, people as cats, huh, dancers, huh, they sing ….” absurdity of this. CATS, now and forever, is a weird little modern dance piece with repurposed poetry for music, and it will never really make sense. You just have to go with it.
What do you get for “going with it,” though? If I “go with” David Lynch’s work, for example, a whole world of deeply-felt emotion and terrifying power hides beneath the weirdness. Here, there’s just no reason to.
I really don’t see how this is supposed to be in any way reminiscent of the original stage looks. Those were cute, not creepy.
Agreed! For me it changes everything, I would totally see it.The current half human half silky seal aesthetic? The hardest of passes, thanks.
One of the side effects of being on the autism spectrum is that it takes . . . a lot to trigger my uncanny valley response (to date, the only reason I even know what the uncanny valley response feels like is a movie called White Chicks).So that was actually very helpful for me as well. It . . . helped me get why people are reacting to that, but wouldn’t react to say, a Khajit from Skyrim.
The less human it is the less it falls into the uncanny valley. So. yeah, that probably would have worked better.
So next on the list to ask is PETA, then the SPCA, then Jackson Galaxy. Eventually we’ll get to the Octomom and the inventor of the Slanket.
I was kinda wondering what Casey Anthony thinks about this development…
“I wish I could throw this movie in a river!”
What about that Shamwow/Slapchop guy? I must know what his opinion is!
The Jack Chop guy thinks it’s fackin’ weird, kid!
I want to know what voice actor Tress MacNeille thinks about it, but only if she does it in character as the Crazy Cat Lady.
I would also except a profane rant from her in the voice of Mom.
I really don’t have any Furry tendencies, but that white cat is kinda hot.
Look at it this way: I like jerking off to people dressed up as animals. That doesn’t mean I like jerking off to people kinda dressed up as animals.
That reminds me of the Paul F. Tompkins joke about the sexy bee costume:http://www.cc.com/video-clips/3n2kdq/john-oliver-s-new-york-stand-up-show-sexy-bee
So… Are people who jerk it to Thundercats Furries or into Hentia? Asking for a friend
“So, can you fap to this? We asked the lemur-man on the street…”
I wonder if having visible nipples and sphincter would’ve yield a different outcome.
Never not a welcome improvement.
Can you milk the nipples?Asking for a friend.
Depends;Bombalurina’s or Bustopher Jones’?
visible nipples
six of them, for anatomical correctness.
“Furries want something they can fuck/fap to and the Cats movie is not that,” he said.”So say we all!
The Cats trailer wasn’t as terrifying as I was promised. Why does the scale keep changing? Why don’t they have proper kitty noses? Taylor Swift’s cinematic debut as Bombalurina resembles Catwoman from that polarizing BTAS episode. How will WW2’s Cheetah possibly compete? Why was this still the best movie trailer out of SDCC?
Let’s face it, AV Club needs to make a regular feature of asking furries to weigh in on various topics.
Sure, sure, that’s fine for the furries, but has anybody checked in with the catfuckers?
They’re furr-ious!
Remember that brief period where Buzzfeed tried to become a real news website.
I’m starting to realize that literally no one who is criticizing this trailer has actually seen the musical. People. In. Lycra. With. Painted. Cat. Faces. It’s all there already on YouTube. My only quarrels are Jason Derulo (ew) and they didn’t put the tufts on the sides of Victoria’s face.
“We then found out who was jerking it to the ‘Cats’ trailer, and immediately regretted it.”
As someone who’s actually been part of the fandom since ‘98, I sincerely guarantee you that furries are far more likely to find James Corden attractive than the CG abominations in the Cats movie.
As a furry that runs the Bay Area Furries Discord server, Cats is disgusting. Everybody hates it.It’s worse than the whole Sonic thing.
as the world’s oldest furry, i would rather cut off a digit with side cutting pliers than even see Andrew Lard Rubber’s disgusting display of talentless rube spunk
Wat kinda furry would say that shit? The wrong one. They look terrifying. Enough said.
Human noses and fingernails don’t work on anything that isn’t human.