Cat People: Boxes and Cages

In this film, I saw that the storyline played into the easy molds of male dominance and western masculinities, and female submissiveness and eastern feminizations. This movie really showed the challenges that many immigrants encounter when coming to America. Irena struggled with assimilation which was demonstrated through boxes and cages, with the only true freedom from human nature and societal roles being death. In this paper I will talk about how Irena’s female and immigrant status played into her alienation, fetishization, and dismissal by those around her.  

In the beginning of the film when we were first introduced to Irena, she was a cute lady littering her drawings in the zoo by the panther’s cage. She gave off the aura of a strong, independent, and definitely exotic woman. When Oliver got her a kitten, it hated her and she repeated put it into a box before going to exchange it for a bird. This is like how she restricted herself to American society and put herself into a box, containing who she really is. If she knew that kissing a man would make her transform into a cat and make her kill him, and then she really should not have engaged in a relationship with Oliver, much less marry him. She chose to confine herself into a life akin to a cage because she loved him. Her desire to fit in, assimilate to American culture, and love someone who did not and would not understand her was her downfall.

When Irena’s bird died, she put it in a box. This was similar to how she finally gave up and realized that she is doomed to be an outsider. There is the notion of “one of us” from freaks that is very applicable here: Irena is one of the freaks, one of the outcasts, she cannot fit in no matter what she looks like, it’s simply who she is, and is engrained into her being. She is a Serbian, which is an eastern European country. She is sexualized, superstitious, mysterious, and an exotic foreigner. The ways in which Irena and Alice are very different—Oliver treats Alice as his equal, whereas he treats Irena as a sensitive woman. Alice is shown as a more masculine, strong, independent individual and especially as bold when she tells Oliver that she loves him. She is shown working, smoking, and going around town by herself. Alice is an American, she doesn’t have time to be coy and dainty, compared to Irena who we see struggling to fit in, struggling to keep her husband, and struggling to get over her past.

As the film progresses, she becomes more fragile and seemingly cat-like. It seemed like when everyone was dismissing her, she started to spiral out of control. Oliver dismissed her concerns and recommended a doctor to help her sort out her issues. The therapist idea was a good one, but Dr. Judd was probably not the best doctor for her to go to. He was more interested in sexually conquering her rather than helping her sort out her issues. Oliver disrespected Irena when he told Alice about Irena going to see a therapist. This is a common trend in Cat People, where people dismiss and brush off Irena. When Oliver tells Irena that he feels like although they are intimate, he hardly knows her and that he felt like they were strangers, he was really highlighting the fact that she different. She may look the like her American counterparts, but she is constantly reminded that she is a foreigner, and that she is different, odd, weird.

In the end, when Irena is dying, she goes to release the panther from its cage. This is a symbolic release for her as well. The kitten from the beginning was put into a box, and then moved to a cage in the pet shop. The bird that died was moved from the cage to a box, and freed when fed to the panther. The panther was freed from the cage when Irena released it, but was only truly free from constraints when it was hit by a car and killed. Irena was born into her folklore cage, and put herself in a box when she chose to be with Oliver. Her decision to give in a kiss Dr. Judd was like a key, where she freed herself from both her past and her current situation, and when she died, she freed herself from her box.