Salon.com: We Have Seen The LOLCats And They Are Us

Hissyspit

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Sat Nov-15-08 03:47 AM
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Salon.com: We Have Seen The LOLCats And They Are Us

Edited on Sat Nov-15-08 04:22 AM by Hissyspit

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/11/15/pathos_lolcats/

I can has cheezburger ... and pathos?
The lolcats, the Internet's most famous felines, may be hilarious. But in their yearning, I see nothing less than the tragedy of the human condition.

By Dixit Jay

Nov. 15, 2008 | The first time I saw a lolcat -- those funny images of felines with grammatically questionable captions -- it took me a minute to understand the joke.

"What's with the misspellings?" I wrote the friend who'd IM'd me the link. "Cats are dumb and can't spell?"

- snip -

This is all funny stuff. But I submit that the true genius of lolcats lies in their tragedy.

In one classic example, one cat is crying, and another is hugging it and saying, "Don't crai. We'll get cheezburger someday." It's sweet and poignant and wistful all at the same time. Life can be hard, it says, and we don't always get what we want, but even as we long for things we may never have, we draw succor from the reassurances of those we love. Sure, it's ridiculous that what the cat is yearning for is a cheeseburger. But the cheeseburger is not really a cheeseburger -- it's a symbol.

Here's another: A brown and black calico looks out the window of his apartment only to notice a beautiful white female on the balcony across the way. His heart quickens, in the scenario I imagine, then he swallows hard and quickly looks away, unable to muster the courage to speak to her. The caption: "Evry dayz, 3 o'clockz ... Mebe one day I sez meow to her." Who among us hasn't felt that longing and regret? Who among us hasn't passed an attractive stranger in the supermarket or on the street, only to kick ourselves afterward for letting the opportunity slip between our fingers?

- snip -

"The animals aren't animals at all, they're stand-ins," explains Mankoff. "They're hybrids we use as devices to talk about the feelings we can't name in other ways."

The same is true of the sad lolcats and the lolruses. Consider LolSecretz. It's like PostSecret.com -- which publishes anonymous bathroom-wall-variety confessions ("I had gay sex at church camp," "I only love two of my children," etc.) -- except it uses images of cats. In one, a black cat says, "I just wishes I wuz white." In a third, a world-weary cat with dead eyes gazes longingly at a knife, saying, "i killed mahself 6 timez ... 3 to go."

Just as the dogs in the New Yorker cartoons don't represent actual dogs, these cats don't represent cats at all, but people. By using cats, icanhascheezburger can access themes more tragic and poignant than it could using people. You wouldn't enjoy a comic of an actual person fingering a blade and contemplating suicide -- but when it's a cat, you can accept it. You can even laugh.

And that's the real answer to the puzzle. We've gone from cats as cats, to cats as scheming rascals, to cats as human beings. The sad lolcats represent people. We have seen the lolcats and they are us.

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