oscaralbert Review of Catty Cornered

Catty Cornered (1953)

From the very beginning of this Warner Bros. animated short . . .

[7/10 · 20 December 2017]

. . . there are some blatant departures from most of the earlier offerings in the Sylvester\Tweety Bird Looney Tunes series. By the time the opening newspaper headline and radio announcer montage concludes by stating that Tweety Bird's value is "one million dollars," most long-time fans will feel themselves totally at sea. Nevertheless, since CATTY CORNERED boasts a running time of less than seven minutes, many viewers will stick it out until the bitter end. And what is this sad conclusion, you might wonder. Zapping for Tweety, as Sylvester swallows the CANARY (just review the first half dozen Tweeties, if you need more evidence for Tweety's canary status), giving in to his natural instincts just as this anonymous town's mayor is lauding Sylvester for RESISTING said urges. If one were to make a comparison to this Denoument and the conclusion of its closest parallel in live-action features, it would have to be to director Martin Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER. Sure-fire political assassin "Travis Bickle" (Robert De Niro) similarly earns plaudits for defying his "natural instincts" in gunning down Jodie Foster's professional promoter rather than the election candidate. Great for Travis, everyone cheers (at least until John Hinckley, Jr., comes along. All the same, many will ask if there's a "hidden meaning" to CATTY CORNERED, given its strange over-evaluation of Tweety's monetary worth. Gunmen aside, Sylvester's voracious appetite for canaries during CATTY CORNERED and most of his other pairings with Tweety, can be seen as parallel to those of the current DC chief, when viewed in the context of Our Day's Current Events (as Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones has said more than once the output of "Termite Terrace" must always be interpreted). Germaine to this discussion is the claim of what said potentate bragged he could do at high noon in New York City's Times Square WITHOUT losing any support among his "political base." Each to his own, some viewers of CATTY CORNERED might shrug. Does this animated short's portent for Humanity really amount to more than the proverbial "hill of beans," given the fact that our star (aka, the Sun) is due to expand and burn Earth to a cinder in a billion years or so? Maybe we shouldn't sweat the small stuff, such as CATTY CORNERED. Either that, or we should review all 15 of its themes, as outlined here, to decipher its most prominent message.