Choosing Grizabella: The Importance of Telling Stories about Older Women

Universal Pictures’ movie version of Cats will soon be released in theaters. I’m a long-time fan of Cats, so you’d think I’d be eagerly awaiting its arrival. However, I find myself anxious instead, wondering how this first true Hollywood adaption will handle my favorite character, Grizabella. Trying to write a critique of a film based on the trailer is as unlikely to succeed as trying to stop a future based on a prophecy, so I’ll hold my review until I’ve seen the film. But while I wait for my chance, I want to share my thoughts on Grizabella, and why I think her role is so important.

A quick note: Theater performances are by nature always changing, not easily spoken of as a whole. Also, tickets can be expensive, so they are not accessible for everyone. I have not yet seen Cats performed on stage, so most of my observations on it are based on the 1998 movie, which was more of a filmed production compared to the new movie. If you have seen a stage production or have other thoughts about the musical, I’d love to hear them in comments!

Waiting to see Cats in Japan, 2012. Attribution whity [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Who is Grizabella?

Trying to explain Cats is difficult. Working from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, Andrew Lloyd Webber first tried setting the poems to music in 1980. By 1982, he had worked with Trevor Nunn and Gillian Lynne to create a full-fledged musical and brought it to Broadway.¹ Despite often mixed reviews, Cats can now boast about being “[o]ne of the longest-running shows” on Broadway and currently has International, North American, and Japanese tours in progress.² Cats is often described as having “no plot,” a view Playbill recently reiterated looking back on its 1982 review of the musical.³ However, it is centered on the Jellicle Ball, an annual event where Jellicle cats watch their leader choose “the cat who can now be reborn, and come back to a different Jellicle life.”⁴ “Jellicle” was apparently Eliot’s contraction of “dear little cats,”⁵ which the musical treats as the name of the starring cat band.

The Jellicle Ball is the stage for Cats and Grizabella is its heart. Her story is the closest to a fully realized arc, with hints of her past as the Glamour Cat contrasted to her present rejection by Jellicle society until her song “Memory” causes the Jellicle leader to notice her. She isn’t the character with the most stage time, although she’s the only cat with two songs and reprises. The lyrics of “Grizabella the Glamour Cat” and “Memory” don’t specifically state how old she is, just that the postman thinks “You’d really have thought she’d ought to be dead.”⁶ Without giving too much away, let’s just say she follows the quintessential underdog story which leads from social dismissal to acceptance.

Considering how central Grizabella’s story is to Cats, you might be surprised to learn she nearly didn’t exist at all. Neither of her songs developed from poems in Practical Cats. Grizabella’s story began as eight unpublished lines, handed over by Valerie Eliot, who reported her husband had abandoned the poem because it was “too sad” for a child’s poem.⁷ Additional material may have come from Eliot’s more dreary adult poem “Rhapsody On a Windy Night,” which is also the inspiration for “Memory.”⁸ Other elements key to her story are creations of the musical as well, such as the Heavyside Layer, now often labeled a cat heaven but originating from humorous lines about cats and dogs taking a hot air balloon ride.⁹ So Grizabella’s journey from page to stage is also one of moving from rejection to the starring role.

Grizabella “LEA SALONGA AS GRIZABELLA” by mauwee88 is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0 ,

The Role of Grizabella

Exactly why Grizabella is so vehemently rejected by the cats isn’t clear. Her character is often likened to a prostitute based on references in her songs, and some like Kathryn Lowerre point to that as the reason for her shunning.  Lowerre compares Grizabella to the Victorian trope of a “fallen woman,”¹⁰ whose sinful past “can be spectacularly forgiven if they only regret” it enough.¹¹ Valerie does mention her husband abandoning Grizabella in part because he saw her developing along the lines of “Villon’s ‘La Belle Heaulmière.’”¹² However, whatever Eliot’s views on his poems, transformations like the Heavyside Layer show how Cats has developed beyond them. The “fallen woman” trope only makes sense if the Jellicles still had Victorian prudishness, which is hard to see given this scene with Victoria the kitten. Finally, Grizabella doesn’t seem to regret her supposedly sinful past. The Belle Heaulmière Eliot worried she resembled, thinking of her past, bemoans, “I think of those times, with tears,”¹³ while Grizabella says, “I can smile at the old days.”¹⁴ In the 1998 movie, Elaine Paige, the original Grizabella, underscores this by literally smiling when her past travels are described.¹⁵

So why do the Jellicles reject her, if not because of her past? Well, the key I see is the end of that line from “Memory,” the reason she smiles at the past: “I was beautiful then.”¹⁶ That simple phrase tells a story all too relatable in Hollywood today, the once glamourous actress discarded as age fades her physical beauty. Nicole Kidman celebrated in her acceptance speech for a 2018 SAG Award “how wonderful it is that our careers now can go beyond 40 years old,”¹⁷ so some progress has been made. However, it’s still generally accepted that women have a tougher time continuing to land roles as they age compared to men. Women in Hollywood notes that of the 100 top grossing films for 2018, only 11 featured women 45 or older in a starring or co-starring role, and that’s nearly double 2017’s number!¹⁸ Likewise, actresses continue to share experiences like that of the late Carrie Fisher. Reacting to judgmental comments on her return as Leia in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, she shot back, “Please stop debating about whether or not I aged well.” ¹⁹ Cats, with its demanding aerobatic dances and skin-tight costumes, has an even more obvious bias toward young, lithe bodies, so the fact that it centers on a character who has left these traits behind is pretty amazing.

Jellicle cats. “Le prossime data a Broadway per il musical Cats” by ViaggioRoutard is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Considering the casting challenges older women still face in Hollywood makes me appreciate the existence of Grizabella even more. Not that her role is always filled by women over 40. Comparing the actresses with birth data listed on the fan wiki for the musical, I found their first casting ages ranged from 20 to 60, with the average about 33 from 1981 to 2009. Past 2010, fewer actresses have birth data listed. Also from 2010 on, more women of color were cast, another demographic with experience being rejected by the dominant culture on the basis of looks. There are even a few women of color 40 or over, such as Beverly Knight and Paula Lima. However, Kim In-Soon of South Korea was the only one over 45,which is disappointing since only 4 of those 11 leading women over 45 were women of color.²⁰

I’m not saying that young white women can’t play Grizabella. That would be as shallow as saying women over 45 aren’t compelling leads. However, since there are so few openings for these demographics, I think casting directors should make an effort when possible to let them fill the role. Especially when it’s a Hollywood movie, which will last longer than viewers’ memory and which does not require a long touring schedule. This is why I was anxious about Grizabella’s casting in the upcoming movie. Jennifer Hudson, the new Grizabella, is not 45, but she is also one year older than Maggie Gyllenhaal was when she was rejected as the love interest of a 55-year-old man because she was “too old.”²¹ So her casting doesn’t make the boldest statement possible, but it pushes enough envelopes I’ll wait to see her performance before judging it.

Why do You Care?

You may be wondering, “Why do you care about Grizabella so much?” It’s true I’m a fairly young woman still, and I’m not an actress staring down the barrel of future age-exclusion. Why should it matter to me if older women are represented in media? Well, it matters because one day, barring tragic accidents, I will be an old woman. One day I will be looking at the stories told around me, hoping for a face that reflects mine. Like many young women today, I am surrounded by cultural messages encouraging me to see youthful beauty as vital to my value, to prevent as long as possible the process of aging. But I refuse to be afraid of age. I refuse to dread my future just because it holds less skin elasticity. And when that future is my now, I hope that I can look to stage and screen and smile to see other roles like Grizabella, that inspiring and triumphant crone.

Photo by Alexavier Rylee Cimafranca on Pexels.com

Crones New and Old

Yes, I said “crone.” A number of modern groups are reclaiming the term and imbuing it with new dignity. Women for Living in Community, for instance, celebrates it as “the third stage” of life after Maiden and Mother,²² terminology connected to the triple goddess archetype. It’s generally agreed that the modern version of the triple goddess—a feminine deity manifesting in each of these life stages—originated in a 1948 book by Robert Graves rather than ancient traditions.²³ However, there were goddesses (and gods!) ²⁴ said to manifest in triple forms, especially in Celtic mythologies. Many did have crone aspects. Some, like the war goddess Morrigan, shifted between maiden and crone, while the mountain-building and shape-shifting Cailleach is mainly imagined as a crone. ²⁵ Well, “hag” is also used, but no one’s reclaiming that.

At first glance, Grizabella has little in common with these powerful crone goddesses. She does have an extra face, though. The Cats fan wiki notes that actresses playing Grizabella often make an early appearance in the chorus ensemble dressed as a youthful version affectionately known as “Baby Griz,” possibly showing her before her travels or after her return from the Heavyside Layer.²⁶ However, unlike the crone goddesses, Grizabella’s only power is telling her story, because she is a modern crone. The crone goddesses are thought to reflect a possibly “matriarchal” ancient culture,²⁷ which hopefully included an established and respected place in society for older women. Grizabella instead takes the older woman figure often dismissed in modern times and makes her the hero, giving her struggles and doubts that make her ultimate triumph all the more uplifting. Hers is a kind of Cinderella tale, but with no fairy godmother to make her magically fit society’s ideals. She has only her song to win her happy ending.

Alaska glacier. Photo by JEREMYHANN on Pexels.com

Old Women Together

Complex older heroines do occasionally appear in mythology across the world. One of favorites hails from the Athabascan people of Alaska. Velma Wallis, an Athabascan author, learned the tale from her mother, later translating and expanding it into the book Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival. The story begins when a nomadic band of The People decide to leave their two oldest women behind during a lean winter. Rather than dying, the women survive and even thrive, creating their own camp and stocking it so well over the next summer that the trackers sent to find them next winter discover them in better shape than the rest of the band. Wallis’ retelling gives their names as Sa’ and Ch’idzigyaak, ages 75 and 80 respectively.²⁸ There’s no way to know what parts of the story might have been fleshed out by the “creative imagination” Wallis admits to applying, but she also insists the meat of the story and its “point” remain unchanged,²⁹ so I’ll take her version without further qualification.

One of my favorite things about Two Old Women is that it features an elder duo rather than an isolated heroine like Grizabella. An idea that still haunts modern media is that “women can’t be friends,” which results in them being portrayed in conflict, especially over men.³⁰ Recently, that trend is improving, but it’s still exciting to see a story from before the European colonization of the Americas showing two older women meeting a crisis together and triumphing. It also means more than one type of strong old woman can be shown. Sa’ is very much the kind of strong woman who has become a new trope in action movies, taking down a squirrel with a single hatchet toss³¹ and rallying  her friend with the cry of, “let us die trying, not sitting.”³² Ch’idzigyaak is more emotional and unsure, but she is the one who thinks of the perfect site for their camp.³³ She also feels stung that her daughter and grandson did not speak against abandoning the elders, yet the women could never have survived without the secret gifts of moose hide strips and a hatchet left by her family.

Another aspect I appreciate about this legend is that, like Cats, it doesn’t get mired down in blame. The chief who chooses to leave the women behind acts not out of hatred but because he fears the “cruelty and brutality” that hunger will bring out in his people.³⁴ His deep guilt leads him to send searchers led by the elder tracker Daagoo to find the women. Rather than being threatened by the women’s success, Daagoo is inspired and respectful,³⁵ leading the women to make him their sole contact with their band until trust is regained.³⁶ The rest of the people are also shown not as evil for casting the women out, but as having misjudged them and acting on what they believed was best for their people. Likewise, the Jellicles who reject Grizabella aren’t villainized. Though they act according to their prejudices at first, not one stubbornly opposes her once she sings “Memory” to all and is chosen by Old Deuteronomy. Instead, they listen and they choose to change their attitude toward her.

Photo by Rita Tipunina on Pexels.com

Grizabella is not the only role that creates a space for older women to play complex leads, and she won’t be the last. However, the fact that she is a role in a long-running musical that has been filmed twice lets her act as a recurring reminder of why those roles matter. So when these types of characters and stories are come around what will we choose? Will we push them aside, go on with the usual fare? Or will we listen?

Sources

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