The Magic Flute Told in Cat Gifs

January 25, 2017 8:58 AM

Mozart's animated opera united with the Internet's most animated art form. Courtesy of the Seattle classical station King.org, which has always been at ease with the Internet. Perhaps this is how Mozart would have pitched Die Zauberflöte to the Freihaus-Theater in 2017.
posted by QuietDesperation (17 comments total)

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
posted by Kitteh at 9:12 AM on January 25, 2017

I regret that I can only favorite this post once.
posted by Dr Dracator at 9:15 AM on January 25, 2017

I'm going to see the Magic Flute in a few weeks, and I've been meaning to pre-read the plot. Well-timed, my friend.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:22 AM on January 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

I love this and hope they do more.
posted by mogget at 10:03 AM on January 25, 2017

#unpopularopinion I really dislike Flute (where are the cute cats for gross misogyny and racism?). But these cats make me want to love it, because I love them.
posted by fast ein Maedchen at 11:47 AM on January 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I really, really needed this.
posted by WordCannon at 12:27 PM on January 25, 2017

Yeah in many ways it's squarely in Fan Of Problematic Things territory, I don't know what the modern/progressive take on it would be.
posted by Dr Dracator at 12:35 PM on January 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

The only take I'm genuinely interested in seeing is one in which Tamino and Pamina are brainwashed by a misogynistic cult, opposed by the Queen of the Night (who gets the best music anyway!). But I'm biased. I would also see the version with cats.
posted by fast ein Maedchen at 1:11 PM on January 25, 2017

"Brainwashed by a misogynistic cult, opposed by the Queen of the Night" sounds like a perfectly accurate description of the story as I remember it, assuming there was enough misogyny in there to make it fair. My memory of it is not so clear. Maybe this will clear it up: Die Zauberflöte, Act I.
posted by sfenders at 2:24 PM on January 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I love this and hope they do more.
posted by mogget at 10:03 AM on January 25 [+] [!]

They have done at least 2 or 3 others that I remember from their Facebook page. Unfortunately they have not tagged the post with "cats" or "gifs" so they are hard to navigate to easily.
posted by matildaben at 2:27 PM on January 25, 2017

Seattle Opera recently did a pretty good job with another problematic opera, Le Comte d'Ory, by painting Count Ory as a laughable buffoon who never gets anywhere with the (smart, woke) ladies, rather than the serial sexual harasser he's written as. I hope they do as well with subverting the gender politics of The Magic Flute.

On the other hand, I don't think there's any way of redeeming Madama Butterfly into a more modern racial/gender politics.
posted by matildaben at 2:31 PM on January 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

Usually, sfenders, the misogynistic cult is the good guys and the Queen is evil, because she's a woman and you can't trust anything they say amirite? But thanks for that link, it's hilarious.
posted by fast ein Maedchen at 2:56 PM on January 25, 2017

Nominally they're the good guys, but that doesn't mean I have to like them. I'm just in it for the music anyway.

Most likely the reason I don't remember much misogynist bullshit is that the version I saw was this one, from which it has presumably been excised. I had no idea they'd cut so much.
posted by sfenders at 3:59 PM on January 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

The Met recently did an abridged version of this which really heavily emphasized the masonic images present in the work. The costumes and sets were incredibly silly and they really kept up the theme of enlightenment, the wisdom passed down from Egypt, etc. On the other hand, the singing and performance was excellent, if in English. Also Sarastro and Pamina were played by African Americans, so I totally missed the racism aspect (not sure if the last part is good or bad actually).
posted by Hactar at 8:36 AM on January 26, 2017

The racism I think really comes down to Monostatos - he's an actual scary black guy who lusts after the pretty white woman because she's white and pretty and he's black and ugly, not sure how you can rehabilitate that. In terms of plot he's mostly a generic henchman, but the libretto is pretty explicit about the race aspect.
posted by Dr Dracator at 1:20 PM on January 26, 2017

It's actually pretty easy to cut the racism out - change a few words here and there, especially if your audience is using the supertitles. The woman-hating is more endemic to the plot and harder to trim, unless you do what the Met does for the family version and really just cut the shit out of it.
posted by fast ein Maedchen at 6:18 PM on January 26, 2017

I find that if you do the whole thing in cat gifs it really does subvert the problematic aspects (of not sidestep them entirely) though it loses a bit without the music.
posted by louche mustachio at 7:54 PM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]