Let’s get one thing straight; when we say ambitious, we don’t just mean in terms of ensemble size, makeup and production value, or prestige of the source material. No, we also — and primarily so — mean ambitious in the sense that this film is perhaps the single largest instance of a collective creative process that was hellbent on making the absolute worst decision at every possible turn.
We speak, of course, of 2019’s Cats, whose timeliness has rocketed to new heights after Taylor Swift‘s politics-specific Instagram signoff the other night; timeliness that you — yes, you at home — can take advantage of, as it happens to be streaming on Netflix in the United States right now.
Cats, of course, features Swift amongst its girthy ensemble consisting of her, James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Ian McKellen, Jennifer Hudson, Rebel Wilson, and Francesca Hayward. Indeed, Swift was owning her status as a “childless cat lady” long before she revealed who she’d be voting for in the upcoming election.
For further context, Swift’s aforementioned sign-off in the aforementioned Instagram post was directly in reference to comments made by one JD Vance (Donald Trump‘s running mate) back in 2021, in which he attempted to lacerate both Swift and then-vice president, now-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by calling them “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,” and have “no direct stake” in America.
Let’s unpack this a teensy bit; how might one even decree that another is “miserable at their own life”? Might it be best measured by the emotions and sentiments that someone chooses to put out into the world? Would an overreliance on expressing anger, venom, and apathy not indicate someone who carries the very damaging weight of said emotions, and therefore needs to spew them towards others? You know what they say; haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
And sure, Taylor Swift certainly isn’t without her vices (she was in Cats, after all), and there’s plenty of criticism worth pointing at the Democratic Party. But at the end of the day, when you look at people like Swift and Harris alongside people like Trump and Vance, there is a gulf of difference in the manners with which the world is engaged. The former, behind-the-scenes shortcomings and all, are constantly bringing love and joy to the table. The latter, behind-the-scenes shortcomings and all, insist upon anger and vitriol.
And indeed, if love and joy are indicative of having no direct stake in America, is America truly worth having a direct stake in? I mean, hell, Cats was released to theaters when Trump was still president.