Squeaky Toys: the review

A Duckland book review :
Michel Foucat – “Squeaky Toys and Submission”
with Daffy Duck and Ibn Battuta

soundtrack

DD : Ibn, I know you have some qualms about the methodology and some of the conclusions, but wouldn’t you agree that this is, nonetheless, a great philosophical work?

IB : When I first dove into Squeaky Toys, I was a bit blinded by the fact that this is Michel Foucat, with all that it entails. I enjoyed reading it, but kind of slept through it. But after reading it a second and then a third time, I was more able to see some of the possible flaws in his research.

DD : Such as?

IB : Well Daffy, in the second chapter, Foucat quips that “When you gaze into the dog too long, the dog gazes back into you.” And he then goes on to explain how the enslaving of dogs had a way of normalizing slavery in general, especially what he calls squeaky toy-enhanced slavery. He posits that humans were more able to accept their own social slavery by enslaving a smaller animal than themselves.

DD : And do you disagree with this?

IB : I don’t want to say whether I agree or not. I’m hardly qualified to describe the relationships between humans and dogs. But my issue is – neither is Foucat. Humans have been extinct for over a century, so most of what he has deduced about the interspecies relationships between them is based on second-hand research, often written by dogs or cats. I mean, if we ducks ever go extinct, will wolves write our stories for us? I certainly hope not.

DD : But isn’t this normal methodology when you’re writing about historical periods and extinct species? Don’t we have to enter into historical data and records that we can’t really support with personal experience?

IB : Of course. But one has to be careful about making pat statements about other species’ historical relationships when you have never actually witnessed their interaction yourself. There are limits to what can be constructed on hearsay, even if the hearsay is complex and vast. Everything that the author describes, aghast, about the meek sycophancy of dog pets, is written from a cat-centric point of view, based on dog-written texts. In the author’s conclusions, the biases are likely to be more of a factor than the actual details of the research.

DD : On the other hand, all books tell the story from their author’s point of view, no?

IB : Yes, but Michel Foucat isn’t just any author. He’s a cat, and cats have had a personal experience with human submission, as well as a complicated relationship with the dog world for many centuries. So he’s not only relying too much on indirect research, but he’s also part of a community that is not neutral in the matters of which he writes. For ducks like us, this species bias is important to recognize because of our own mitigated relationship with the feline species.

DD : Are there any other examples of possible research-contaminating bias in the book?

IB : One other springs to mind. In the chapter entitled Spoiled! he contrasts the plush and colorful toys that dogs are given as tokens of affection – with the control of their bathroom breaks, torture-based training, solitary confinement, and other enslavement conditions. He concludes that these toys are primarily to make the wicked human master feel less guilty about robbing the dog of all his dignity and freedom.

DD : Yes, he goes on to say that, in many ways, dogs were themselves a squeaky toy for humans – along with pickup trucks and diamond rings – and that dogs were aware of this. But back to your point, Ibn – in what way is this contaminated with bias?

IB : Well, Daffy, contaminated might not be the best word here. But once again…I…um… some of the conclusions that Foucat comes to – like that squeaky toys were mainly a tool of human guilt-management – is made without a real grasp or description of human psychology. We duck readers are just supposed to assume that humans would feel guilty about enslaving another species, and that a squeaky toy would help.

This may be the author projecting duck and cat levels of empathy onto a long-gone human species. Not surprisingly, Foucat has been accused by many academics of being “Felinist” in the way he selects historical data to paint a very specific portrait of his own species.

DD : Wow! Thank you, Ibn.

We’ll be back with more of this review of Michel Foucat’s “Squeaky Toys and Submission” after these words from our sponsors.

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Michel Foucat interviews Wile E. Coyote

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“The wolf is represented as a despicable creature so that its lifestyle can be destroyed with impunity by fable-brainwashed humans.”
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MF: Welcome to the show, Mr. Coyote. Now, a lot of the dog breeds we know seem to resemble the wolf. I’m thinking of the Husky and German Shepherd, for example. Have wolves historically been tempted to try a life of domesticated doghood? Perhaps on a temporary basis at first, perhaps guarding some kind of human outpost temporarily for an isolated human pioneer type?

WC: Not on your life. On the surface, it probably looked tempting to many naive wolves because of the reputed longer lifespan of the house dog. But what exactly did this long, long life entail? Sitting on a Disney-themed cushion all day in a human house that smells like antiseptic cleaning products and overly-prepared food? The final response was always an overwhelming no thanks. Prison is prison, and a longer life in one is just a longer sentence.

MF: Well, as a feline that comes from a long line of alley cats, I can relate to what you’re saying.

*smiles and sips a glass of water*

But what about all the human texts about what a dangerous and possibly lethal brute your species was to humans when they existed? I realize human stories about all other animals were always exaggerated and self-serving to their nature-loathing elites. But why was the wolf feared in a particularly strong way by that propaganda-addicted species for so long?

WC: It was mostly about being scapegoated for human enslavement to their own elites and their artifice. Humans always felt vaguely scared and unsatisfied, and their elites were afraid they would end up blaming them. So they got them to blame other species instead. One of their most powerful tools was their texts, of course. And there were a lot of really incendiary human texts written about wolves.

MF: You’re talking about Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs, for example?

WC: Yeah. Particularly Riding Hood. Her “cookies for grandma” persona and hot-button “red coat” made her a portrait of the totally innocent victim of evil. And of course, the wolf plays that evil role so that both her and her grandmother look angelic by comparison. Pure evil versus pure goodness, featuring a red coat. The product placement ought to be a tell-tale sign of where this story is going.

MF: You were saying during the commercial break that wolves rarely killed or even approached humans if it was avoidable.

WC: Uh-huh. The only two scenarios that would have lead to a wolf attacking a human were either 1. a female would find her cubs in danger and would lash out to protect them – perfectly normal for all species. Or, 2. A human would attempt to steal the prey of a pack of hungry wolves before they had finished eating it. Humans called this prey “surplus labor” when they stole it from other humans.

MF: Yes, and how is this “surplus labor” concept related to the fables you mentioned?

WC: The wolf is represented as a despicable creature so that its lifestyle can be destroyed with impunity by fable-brainwashed humans. This allowed humans to cut down our forests to build strip malls and suburban bungalows with no other purpose other than to destroy our habitats and, ultimately, our existence.

MF: Yes, a very twisted wordview indeed. To end on a positive note, would you like to tell us about the altered versions of Red Riding Hood that your fifth grade students proposed as better and more accurate moral tales?

WC: Well, I’ll just share the winning one with the audience. Clarence Cano submitted that the story would end with the wolf warning Red Riding Hood that her grandmother had type A diabetes, and that the high-fat, high-sugar cookies were a potential threat to her health. Riding Hood then hits him over the head with her iron basket, and runs off to poison her grandmother with the cookies. Later, when the police arrive to perform an autopsy, it’s revealed that Riding Hood was the old lady’s only heir.

MF: Well Mr. Wile E. Coyote, thanks for coming in to talk to us here at Das Qaturday.

WC: It was my pleasure. I’m a huge fan, Michel.

*audience applauds*

>”<

Feline Cuteness Hegemony

Unpacking the Qaturday narrative

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soundtrack

…

Michel Foucat

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What others are saying about
Feline Cuteness Hegemony

The intentional spelling mistakes.

And then we are all its slavez.

– Walt Whitman, I Download the Kitty Electric

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Beware the lulz of Caturday.

– Anonymous_27

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L’arnaque (The Swindle)

“I not cheezburger!” cries the Caturday star, as he is projected into the limelight, a feline endtime sacrifice with added anaesthesia/cuteness.

He is not cheezburger, nor does he really want a cheezburger. It is viewers who long for the cheezburger, the cuteness, and the lulz. It is viewers who are being swindled (arnaqué(e)s) by hegemony-encoded cat macros that hijack natural altruistic instincts. The swirl of multiple meanings and vulnerability of the featured cat enslave the viewer through a juxtaposed power-seeking guilt discourse.

– Jean Baudrillard, The Impossible Furball

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What Qatzel Ok is saying about
Feline Cuteness Hegemony

The Caturday Dialectic

The Caturday Dialectic has us “frozen in the headlights.”

The Post Caturday Condition (Qatzel Ok, March 2009) explained – in gay postmodern layman’s terms – how this process works. It is totalitarian and irresistible. You don’t need to own a cat to understand Caturday, after all!

Most of my ancestors were holocausted by superpowers. I am the progeny of many survivors. Under every leaf of my family tree, there is a gas chamber and a smiling Nazi patriot. And yet, where are the Caturdays that empower me? Where is my propaganda industry?

Feline Cuteness Hegemony freezes you in its headlights. The audience waits to be hit by the genocidal eighteen-wheeler of hegemony. Relax, and take it easy, for there is nothing that we can’t do (Caturday thinks itself invincible).

Where is that magical entitlement that can put me behind the wheel of that large vehicle?

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Blinded by Feline Cuteness Hegemony

We are unable to react rationally or to respond naturally to FCH. We have been enslaved by a hegemonic Caturday industry that offers us memes that short-circuit our (normally) altruistic instincts. These instincts are triggered by symbols that have been whored by commerce for many years to help them concentrate their kitty power. Just look at these cute and helpless abominations in your mediascape – the ones that you build your “reality” around. Aren’t they adorable? Aren’t you adoring them?

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Cuteness and “the Beast”

The Caturday aesthetic is a situated product of a hegemonic Western Elite culture and upper middle-class commercial values.

“Zaniness,” “fluffy,” “cute,” and “frivolous” are the operative topoi that create the consumer narrative structure. These situated coping strategies (in a boring, commerce-run society) give Feline Cuteness the legs it needs to kick the common good with.

It is in addressing these images of feline cuteness that the Western consumer beholds the “beauty” to which he must then play “the beast.” Western aggression is a necessary condition for maintaining both cultural and military supremacy over other cultures that do not maintain the same manufactured social prompts. Likewise, the Western Elite depends on these hijacked instinctive responses to build an army to protect their privilege with.

In conclusion, the “beast” that the consumer evolves into while witnessing the pussycat narrative is essential for maintaining Western Elite hegemony all over the world. So, post more cute little kitties!

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From the Feline Cuteness Hegemony Mail Room

Here’s an email I received from a recent inductee into the FCH Resistance Movement:

.

I am momentarily returning to the Internet to thank Qatz for making postmodern thought accessible to “the little guy” like myself.

Prior to his paradigm-shattering essay “The Post-Caturday Condition,” I was far too close to the Caturday text. But now, thanks to the vocabulary tools that the Qatz text has given me, I am able to deconstruct this product of Western Hegemony.

I no longer respond to this kitty’s semiotic blackmail. I am finally free.

– Big Evil

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Why thank you, Big Evil. It’s always nice to hear that these difficult-to-pigeonhole Caturday essays are making a difference in somebody else’s life.

Meow.

>”<

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http://www.resistfch.org