The creative team over at the Denver Public Library's central branch has occasionally released peculiar videos starring some nameless but game staffer trapped in a giant white kitty suit to promote upcoming events and programs. But the latest entry in this bizarre oeuvre de cinema, a shameless but mildly subversive plug for the October 18 Booklovers' Ball (click here for the details) deserves special mention.
This time the cat, evidently a working-class feline consigned by a ruthless caste system to endless shelving duties, appears to suffer a head injury, leading to a psychotic break and subsequent hallucinations that evoke the acute tensions of repressed sexuality found in Victorian fantasy literature. There's some fairy dust, a visit from characters out of Peter Pan, a prim yet sinister dance number — and a crashing return to the authoritarian modern state, embodied in a library security guard. In this nightmare world, books are blunt weapons and well-dressed hedonists party the night away. Not since the Bunuel-Dali collaboration that generated Un Chien Andalou has the Dadaist instinct violated bourgeois imagery with such gusto.
In other words, it's plain goofy. Two words for the auteurs at DPL: more, please. See the video below. -- Alan Prendergast
Night at the Library: When the Books Come Alive from The Denver Public Library on Vimeo.
