Why Mike Myer’s portrayal of the character of Cat in The Hat in the 2004 film “The Cat in the Hat” (dir. Bo Welch) is Chaotic Evil

With a rating of 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, “The Cat in the Hat” was released in 2004, based on the book of the same title by Dr Seuss. The original storyline is that a six-foot-tall anthropomorphic cat visits eight-year-old Sally and her brother during a period of wet-day boredom, and in the process of entertaining them completely wrecks their house. The siblings are dismayed, but everything is fixed once the Cat produces a machine that can magically clean everything up; and when the children’s mother returns home, the cat vanishes. The book also features characters like the rule-abiding pet fish, who repeatedly tells the children not to engage with the Cat, and the short-statured identical beings of Thing 1 and Thing 2. While the plot of the film is very similar to this for the most part, one critic described it as “a sort of soullessly cheerful cynicism that is about as far from Seuss as one can imagine”, another one saying “The Cat in The Hat is a piece of dog doo”. While there were many contributing factors to the immensely poor response to this film, one of them was Myer’s portrayal of “Cat” as immensely anarchistic and disorderly – or “chaotic evil”. In this essay I will define the term “chaotic evil” and explain why it aligns so perfectly with the character of the Cat.

The term “chaotic evil” originates from the game “Dungeons and Dragons”. It is one of the nine types of person a character can be – the other eight being combinations of "lawful", "neutral", "chaotic", "good" and "evil".

The term “chaotic evil” describes a character who does anything they want without the constraint of law and morality. They are motivated by pleasure and self-gain, and take enjoyment in corrupting those who are naïve and innocent. To a chaotic evil character, the lives and wellbeing of other people are worthless, and they do not respect the concepts of honor and self-discipline. While an argument could be made the Cat’s motivation throughout the film is to help Sally and her brother Conrad, there is overwhelming evidence he is a much more corrupt and complex character than is presented and explored in this PG-rated movie. 

The duration of the film is eighty two minutes long, with roughly five percent of this time taken up by adult humor or overly aggressive jokes that wouldn’t usually be found in a film for that particular target audience (children aged around eight to eleven); the majority of these lines are said by the character of the Cat. An example of one of these jokes is thirty minutes into the film when the Cat and the children are members of a live audience for an infomercial, advertising a machine that will make a cupcake out of anything. Both the actors in the infomercial are played by the Cat with different wigs, costumes and accents, and they end up in an argument with one threatening the other repeatedly, and  accidentally chopping off his own tail.  The discourse begins with the cat on the left with the British accent stating the the product (“the Amazing Kupkake-inator”) will make cupcakes out of anything, and the blonde Cat using the transactional phrase “anything?” repeatedly until British Cat changes the atmosphere of the scene from friendly discourse to serious and tense by threatening “I'll get you, and it'll look like a bloody accident”. The adjective “bloody” will be seen as extreme by the young audience, showing the severity of the remark. The euphemistic phrase “I’ll get you” could be interpreted in different ways, giving it an ominous tone as the audience is being forced to read the implications. Later, the British Cat threatens the blonde Cat further, with the expressive and face threatening phrases “You're not just wrong, you're stupid... And you're ugly, just like your mum… Shut up! I mean it! I will end you!”. Here the threats have escalated in severity and certainty, from just an ordinary and general potential death threat to personal attacks and insults to people they care about – the verb phrase “I mean it!” showing his seriousness in being willing to commit a homicide. The rule of three is used in insults directed at the blonde Cat, “wrong”, “stupid”, “ugly”, until it is twisted on the fourth insult in order to broaden the receiving party from not just the blonde Cat but also his “mum”. The use of the rule of three emphasizes the attack upon the blonde Cat, showing British Cat’s intentions to harm him for a reason that is at no point explained. The fact the Cat manages to be in three places at once in this part (Blonde Cat, British Cat and an audience member) supports his chaotic placement in the alignment chart – he is not only without the constraints of the laws of society, but also without the laws of reality. His lack of reason to insult Blonde Cat demonstrates evidence of his evil placement (and sociopathic tendencies), as he clearly is not concerned with the wellbeing of the Cat to the point of actively wanting to harm him.

Shortly after this scene, British Cat cuts his own tail off in a fit of rage, saying “son of a b-“ with a censoring beep cutting him off. It then cuts to a shot of the Cat and the children surrounded by lawyers, with the Cat stating “look, I’m not saying we’re going to sue, I’m just saying we have a case” – he then notices the camera, says “we’ll talk later” and ushers away the lawyers. By acknowledging the camera, the Cat breaks the fourth wall. This jeopardizes his reliability as a narrator, as the audience have now been made aware he knows he is being observed, and so could be filtering his words in order to appear more likeable or less antagonistic. Cat is the only character to break the fourth wall, bringing to question why it is that he is aware of the cameras but no one else is. It is possible Cat is an omniscient entity or god who can transcend the dimensions of reality, something the other characters can’t do – this would explain how he was able to be in three places at once in the previous scene also. If he were a small deity, this would give further proof that his chaotic placement is accurate, as with this there is no law in creation he would be forced to abide by, since he would have the power to overrule it. His use of the (censored) phrase “son of a b-“ supports his evil placement, because if his state of omnipotence means he is aware of the fact there are children watching him, he doesn’t care enough to use appropriate language. It should also be acknowledged that in this scene the Cat is implying he may sue two children – one of which is twelve and the other who’s eight. The children know nothing about law and are without lawyers, putting them into a position of power subordinate to the Cat and his team. Cat’s clear lack of concern for the inequalities in power demonstrates how little empathy he feels towards them – exhibiting his evil placement.

Another example of Cat using language not appropriate for the young target audience (which his god-like omniscience would make him aware of) is his interaction with a garden hoe that appears while they are hunting for the family dog Nevins. Cat says to the inanimate object “Dirty hoe. (3) I'm sorry, baby. I love you. Hmm.” While this joke may go over the head of a younger audience member, it’s sexual nature hints at a side of Cat that thankfully isn’t explored within the film, but may be in many a wattpad fanfic. It is unclear if the hoe has a level of sentience that isn’t revealed to the audience or if he is monologuing to an object, but either way the language “dirty hoe” feels out of place in a PG rated film. Cat’s lack of censorship around children and obliviousness to the stakes of the situation (they are trying to find Nevins the dog because he has a lock on his collar that is needed to shut a box that would create an alternate dimension within their living room) shows how he is not bound by the orthodox norms and values of society, and doesn't care about the effect he has on the children present; this clearly demonstrates his chaotic evil tendencies.

A comparison can be drawn between the character of Cat to the presentation of Lucifer in Christianity. The complete power he holds throughout most of the film could be equated to that of an angel, and the way in which he supposedly loses his powers is in a moment of arrogance and complacency (by sliding down a fireman’s pole into a nightclub and having his hat knocked off his head while trying to seduce Paris Hilton), similarly to Lucifer. The fireman’s pole Cat slides down may potentially be a metaphor for Lucifer descending into hell. If the metaphor were actually a reality within the Dr Seuss universe and the Cat was Lucifer, it would give an explanation as to why he repeatedly tried to make Conrad and Sally break their mother’s rules or “sin”, and why he was able to break the fourth wall. If the Cat were Lucifer, Thing 1 and Thing 2 would be his demons or tools of destruction, helping him spread anarchy and sin – which they do very effectively near the beginning of the film when they wreck the siblings’ house.  As Lucifer is seen as the original chaotic evil personality, if Cat were Lucifer his chaotic evil tendencies would be explained.

To conclude, there was a reason one critic (me) described “The Cat In The Hat” film as a “fever dream that takes you through all nine circles of hell then right back to where you began”, and that is the many layers and complexes behind the character of Cat – all of which define him as definitively chaotic evil.

 

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