Cats is Racist. Here’s why.

A republished article from my blog Confessions of a Chinese Canadian Drama Queen from July 2020.

Over the past couple months I have been doing this thing called Summer HIPP, taking after a course in my post-secondary music theatre program called HIPP (Historically Informed Performance Practice). It’s basically a music theatre history and discussion class. So for my peers I made up a 10 week syllabus/outline with the intention of furthering our musical theatre conversation, taking it from classroom to online summer Zoom hang outs. Especially in this kind of socio-political climate, we’ve been having some big important conversations about the future of theatre, casting, and the history of theatre and what we have traditionally given value.

This week’s most recent topic that I curated was bluntly entitled “Cats is Racist”. This topic came about when I was watching the stage pro-shot/movie of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats over Zoom with one of my best friends. I guess I’ll start by saying, I do not like Cats. Not only for the Anti-Asian racism I discovered, but because I’m not a big fan of literal cats (I’m allergic) or this musical. I don’t get it, I don’t like it, it’s not for me. But I will research it.

A little breakdown of Cats goes as follows:

• It is a sung through musical, and a concept musical. (It’s basically just about cats and doesn’t really have a plot.)
• Composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics pulled verbatim from T.S. Eliot’s 1939 poetry collection: “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”. Note: T.S. Eliot is also said to be anti-semitic, but this will focus on the blatant anti-Asian racism employed in Cats.
• It premiered on Broadway in 1982, and has since had revivals and tours around the world. (And that Hollywood movie, but we don’t talk about it.)

Racism #1: “The Awefull Battle of the Pekes and Pollicles”

This is a song about how the cats hate dogs. But oh no, not just dogs in general. There’s an extra racial layer to their hatred of dogs, specific racialized dogs, with one of the lyrics being: “Now the Peke, although people may say what they please, is no British dog, but a Heathen Chinese.” Another line in the song is: “And together they started to grumble and wheeze, in their huffery-snuffery Heathen Chinese.”

There are some YouTube videos from different productions that have this in it, as well as thee clip of this particular song from the official stage pro-shot movie from 1998. That video is on the Cats YouTube Channel. The phrase “Heathen Chinese” has been changed for some tours, and I’m not sure if they kept it in the 2016 Broadway revival or the most recent tour of Cats. They probably changed it, but who knows. On the Cats The Musical Wiki Page (I know not super reliable because it’s a fandom site but super useful because they have some audio clips), there is audio of the 2009 Australasia Tour which changed “Heathen Chinese” to “Winsome Chinese”, (“winsome” meaning “attractive or appealing in appearance”) which changes a lot. This was an Australian English language production that also toured Asia. There is also audio of the 2018 International Tour that changed “Heathen Chinese” to “Foreign Chinese”. (This might be the most recent tour? Potentially the one that went to Toronto.)

Then to look at the phrase “Heathen Chinese” and some of the history behind that. There is a poem from 1870 written by American writer Bret Harte called “Plain Language from Truthful James”, but it is better known as “The Heathen Chinee”. This poem was meant to show racial equality as the Chinese man and the American man are both cheating at cards. But instead, it was taken and used to foster Anti-Chinese sentiment in America.

Racism #2: “Growltiger’s Last Stand”

This 12 minute segment is a show within the show itself. It is a flashback to one of the cats’ time as an actor. This song is no longer in Cats, it was removed entirely in 2016 and has been said to be “one of the most notable changes in the new production and shows how much attitudes have changed since it first opened [in London] in 1981.”

A section of the lyrics in this song is about explaining how this cat lost his ear, which goes:

“But most to cats of foreign race his hatred had been vowed. To cats of foreign name and race no quarter was allowed. The Persian and the Siamese regarded him with fear. Because it was a Siamese had mauled his missing ear.”

Within “Growltiger’s Last Stand” there is an Italian Aria type section as well as a section entitled “The Siamese Attack”. In the “Siamese Attack” section we get lyrics like:

“Then Genghis gave the signal to his fierce Mongolian horde, With a frightful burst of fireworks, the Chinks they swarmed aboard.”

Yep. They continued to have the word “chink” in their show in the 80s through to… whenever. It was changed in some productions along the way, before the entire removal of the section in 2016. The revised lyrics were: “Then Genghis gave the signal to his fierce Mongolian horde, with a frightful burst of fireworks, the Siamese swarmed aboard.” But it still surprises me that those original lines were acceptable and even embraced in the 1980s. On YouTube there was a video from the Broadway run in 1983/84 (so a year or so after it opened), and you can hear the reactions from the audience. This video is now private and unavailable for viewing but luckily, being the big nerd that I am, I took notes when I had watched it originally. In these notes I wrote: “Siamese cat reference and appearance at 4:40, you can hear people laughing. Genghis cat appearance 8:23 = laughter. ‘The Chinks they swarmed aboard’ = laughter.” Which really says a lot about audiences and the times.

Within this segment as well, we see Asians as a monolith. “Siamese” being in reference to Siam/Thailand, “Genghis” referencing Genghis Khan, the Emperor of the Mongol Empire, therefore Mongolian, and then “Chinks” which typically is in reference to Chinese people. BUT China ≠ Thailand ≠ Mongolia. But these terms seem to be used interchangeably just to reference “Asian” or “foreign” or “other”.

Final Thoughts

It’s always interesting to have these kinds of conversations, and really any conversations about musical theatre and theatre in general. I think lots of people don’t notice these phrases and terms in this musical and they also don’t realize what they actually mean. Like “Heathen Chinese” can definitely get lost in the shuffle, but for me, as a Chinese Canadian, if I hear anything with the word “Chinese” my ears perk up and I pay extra attention to see what they’re saying about us. Especially in the times we’re in and my various life experiences etc, these are things I have become acutely aware of, for better or for worse. I’m not saying you can’t still enjoy Cats and T.S. Eliot, but we should recognize the faults and shortcomings of shows and writers we often accept as icons and geniuses.