I Love Little Pussy

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Sun Mar 11 20:19:52 UTC 2012


Did you read the whole thing or did you stop with Josey and the Pussycats?

Here's one for you: The Porcelain Pussy (2004)
> A cross-gendered film noir, with a hardboiled female detective and an
> homme fatale.

But, yes, overall, this was to be expected... The question was if Pussy
and Pussycat have been used since... whatever the time delimiter was.
Obviously there will be more of it earlier rather than later. The
"pussycat" craze in titles appears to have peaked in the early 1970s
(which is where Josie and the Pussycats originated, well before the 2001
film).  But why can't we still look back? I love this title:

http://goo.gl/IUGWn
Mrs. Pussy Loves Animals (1911)
Madame Babylas aime les animaux (original title)

It's irrelevant if this is old or new. A lot of old "stuff" has been
appearing on DVDs and the English titles are often made up anew. Don't
know if this is the original English title or if it was re-coined
recently. But it's a nice touch. But, aside from a handful of sitcoms
(Charlie Sheen might have been involved), Austin Powers does appear to
be the latest popular mention of "Pussy" that (quite deliberately)
referred to a cat.

Besides, the Bond line ("wrong pussy") was a reference to a cat--TWO
cats, obvuously.

     VS-)


On 3/11/2012 4:00 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> Truly pathetic.
>
> These exx. are either from many years ago or entirely irrelevant (like
> Pussy Galore, who was not a feline).  And if "pussy" is always accepted as
> innocent, why wasn't it "Josie and the Pussies"?
>
> _Pussy_ 'coward; weakling' has strongly sexual/sexist overtones and always
> has, in my experience. That's not to say that some benighted souls don't
> derive it from "pussycat." But it will be a long time before you hear a
> public figure use it before a crowd, IMO.  ("Wimp," of course, is fine.)
>
> To restate the point: it is no longer customary in my experience for adults
> to refer to cats affectionately (at least within the hearing of other
> people) as "pussies" or "pussycats." The words they prefer are "kitties"
> and "kitty-cats."  Or "puddies" or  "puddy-tats."
>
> For obvious reasons.
>
> Ask a vet.
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 3:46 PM, Victor Steinbok<aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:
> ...
> As for straight "pussy" puns, aside from Are You Being Served ("It
> appears Mrs. Slocum has lost her pussy"), there is also the skit in one
> of the Austin Powers movies (perhaps even more than one)--which is a
> direct riff on Bond (and not just Pussy Galore--"Right idea, wrong
> pussy, Mr. Bond.").
>
>      VS-)

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