Let's kick off 2021 with some in-depth discussion around my all-time favourite movie quote: "Beware the bad cat bearing a grudge." This line originated from the 1995 film Babe, and is spoken by the narrator (Roscoe Lee Browne, whom you might also recognise as the voice of Francis the bulldog from Oliver & Company) in reference to the unsavoury intentions of Duchess the cat toward its titular character, an unprejudiced pig voiced by Christine Cavanaugh. We are informed by the narrator that this is an old adage that one would do well to heed. Why it strikes such a chord with me, I don't know. It's certainly not because I have any particularly strong antipathy toward cats. Rather, I think it has something to do with the delectable ominousness with which Browne delivers the line. He makes the (fairly ridiculous) statement sound so convincingly baleful that I was somewhat disappointed, later in life, to have to conclude that, alas, no such adage actually existed (although I suspect it may be a comical variation on the adage "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts"). Which is perhaps felicitous where cat-kind is concerned. The narrator is at pains to stipulate that most cats are nice and that Duchess is an unusually bad apple, although his feline apologism is arguably undermined by the very existence (in-universe, anyway) of an adage such as "Beware the bad cat bearing a grudge", implying that when cats are malevolent, they're particularly so.
One of Babe's notable features is its lack of any truly obvious villain. To an extent, I think it's a film that's just too warm and open-hearted to want to designate any one particular character to the role of bad guy. There are several minor antagonists, like the feral dogs who kill Maa (Miriam Flynn) and the sheep rustlers who make off with a portion of the Hoggett flock, but none of these characters are involved in the story for long enough to qualify as anything more than plot devices. Rex the male sheepdog (Hugo Weaving), is the character who stands in most direct opposition to Babe throughout, in attempting to keep the pig from upending the established order of life on the Hoggett farm, and he is introduced as a fairly ominous figure - by the end, though, he's demonstrated that he's really not that bad, and seems to have come around to Babe and the radicalism he embodies. Esme Hoggett (Magda Szubanski) spends most of the movie ruminating on Babe's potential as dinner table fodder, yet she's actually quite a likeable character in spite of it - largely because Szubanski gives such a charmingly effervescent performance (also the reason, I suspect, why she was given such an upgraded role in the 1998 sequel). She does, however, bear one of the great iconic signifiers of cinematic villainy in the right-hand cat she dotes on. Duchess is the pampered pet of Esme, and alone among the farmyard fauna in recognising Esme, and not Arthur Hoggett (James Cromwell), as "The Boss". She tells Babe that her designated role is "to be beautiful and affectionate" to Esme, but this is clearly not the full story, for Duchess serves a very different function, both around the farm and for the purposes of the story. And if any character deserves to be singled out as the villain of Babe, it's Duchess. It's easy enough to conclude otherwise, because the true extent of her villainy does not become apparent until fairly late on in the picture, when she attempts to sabotage Babe's confidence on the night before his entry into the sheepdog trials, for no reason other than sheer vindictiveness. This is the only point in the picture where Duchess showcases any out-and-out villainy, so she, like the feral dogs, could be dismissed as another minor bump on Babe's long road to victory. Unlike the feral dogs, however, Duchess has a presence that's maintained all throughout the picture, and it's not an especially warm or endearing one. When she does finally approach Babe and take her shameless little stab at breaking his spirit, it feels as though we're seeing a seething malevolence that's been coming to a brew this entire time. I would posit that Duchess is our villain, though, not so much because she has an underlying disdain for Babe that only fully rears its head in the film's third act, but because she's the personification of the more abstract threat Babe is up against, and to which the naive and trusting pig remains happily oblivious until it walks right up to him and makes itself known.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to suppose that Duchess is the cold spectre of death hanging over the Hoggett Farm - watch carefully, and you'll see that she puts in eerie appearances during both portions of the story where a member of the farmyard community dies. She signifies not the general inevitability of death, but a very specific, omnipresent kind of threat - namely, the threat of death arising from the Hoggetts themselves. One of the paradoxes of the story is that the greatest danger on Hoggett Farm lies at the centre, with the animals' benefactors; the very forces that sustain them could just as easily choose to slaughter them for their own sustenance. Arthur and Esme are warm and charismatic people, yet the ominous little demon that lies nestled within their living room is an uneasy reminder of that darker side of their nature, and of the harsh reality of life on the farm that most of its residents feel they have little choice but to live with. Babe, technically, is in the clear early on - we sense that Arthur feels too great an affinity for the pig to dish out such a fate, even before he gets wise to his potential as a sheep-herder, hence why he is so resistant to Esme's ambitions of broiling him for Christmas lunch. Nevertheless, the very qualities that make Babe endearing - his guilelessness, and his open-hearted desire to see only the best in man and beast - are also slightly troubling, in that it never occurs to Babe that the people in whom he's invested such deep and unwavering trust would have readily devoured him, under slightly different circumstances, and Duchess gives an intrusive voice to that alternate future he narrowly evaded. Her role on the Hoggett Farm is not to dispense beauty or affection, but to enforce the ugly, cold notion that nobody escapes their fate. This is why Babe's entry into the house constitutes more than just a threat to Duchess's cozy spot beside the fireside, for it undermines her entire raison d'etre. When she tells Babe that Arthur is simply having fun with him and that "sooner or later, every pig gets eaten; that's the way the world works", she is obviously twisting the truth to suit her own vindictive ends, but it's also a reassertion of her own being, and everything that she personally stands for.
Duchess is Esme's cat, and as such it's tempting to interpret her as an avatar specifically for Esme's carnivorous intentions toward Babe. This much is certainly implicit by Duchess's first appearance, when we see her wrapped around her boss's shoulders as Esme confides in her the long list of culinary dishes she anticipates preparing from Babe's assorted body parts. The cat seems harmless enough at this point, yet Esme's words, "What would we do with a pig, eh, Duchess?", make her complicit in the hypothetical butchering. In practice, though, it is Arthur upon whom the dispatching duties fall, and as much as he clearly detests the cat, it is he with whom she has the greater symbolic tie. His duality as both nurturer and executioner is emphasised during a sequence where Arthur comes dangerously close to shooting Babe (albeit not for his meat), and Babe goes willfully toward the shotgun because of a vague memory from his early life in a factory farm where long shiny tubes produced food - although, in his morbid naivety, he lands on the truth when he deduces that some great surprise will surely come out of the end.
Babe was adapted from the 1983 novel The Sheep-Pig by British author Dick King-Smith (in the US it was published under the title Babe The Gallant Pig). In terms of its basic narrative trajectory, it's a very faithful adaptation, with most of the key events (the rustlers, the feral dogs and the climax at the sheep dog trials) deriving directly from the book. The film does, however, expand upon the world of the novel considerably, in adding several supporting characters with their own narrative arcs and niches. Duchess was one of these new additions, along with Rex, Ferdinand and the mouse trio. The film, more so than the book, puts emphasis on the idea that the various animals at Hoggett Farm are expected to know and accept their place, whether the outcome is favourable to them or not, and most of the new additions feed into this theme in some way. Like Rex, Duchess is concerned with upholding the status quo of the farm and shares his hostility toward animals of lower status (in her words, animals without "purpose"). The two of them seem to come at it from somewhat different angles, however. Although Rex does not, at first, particularly care for Babe, I don't get the impression that he actively looks forward to what he assumes will be the pig's fate, more that he accepts it as part of an established order that he has neither the right nor the inclination to question (I also don't get the impression that Rex and Fly (Miriam Margoyles) are a particularly close couple, and suspect that they produce an annual litter out of that same obligation, but that's a discussion for another time). Duchess, on the other hand, seems to regard the standard outcome for those animals without purpose with an almost sadistic relish. She was voiced by the late Russi Taylor (better known as the voice of Minnie Mouse and Martin Prince)*, although she's silent for most of the film and only speaks during the one scene where she talks to Babe, which plays into her generally sinister aura. Prior to that, the only indication we get that Duchess converses with the other animals at all comes from the horse's mouth - he informs his company that he's heard from the cat that this bizarre human ritual is called "Christmas". Which itself links her to death, for Ferdinand the duck (Danny Mann) recognises "Christmas" as another term for "carnage".
Just like a cat, Duchess has a lethality that gradually creeps up on you throughout the course of the picture. Her first major role in the story occurs early on, when Ferdinand talks Babe into breaking one of the fundamental rules of the Hoggett Farm - that only dogs and cats are allowed inside the house. As noted, Ferdinand is another film-exclusive character, his main narrative function being to emphasise to Babe the rigidity of the existing order on the Hoggett Farm, and provide a cautionary example of the folly of violating that order. Ferdinand is a duck who attempts to perform the morning duties of a rooster in the misguided hope that it will spare him from the abattoir - an approach that makes him, at best, a ludicrous curiosity to the other animals and, at worst, a trouble-maker. When the Hoggetts invest in an alarm clock, or "mechanical rooster", Ferdinand sees this as unwelcome competition and concocts a scheme to sneak into the house while the humans are out and remove it. The greatest challenge comes in getting past the dormant Duchess, and Ferdinand manages to coax the impressionable Babe into undertaking this challenge for him, on the basis that he's allergic to cats. I would have assumed that this was a whopper designed to cover for the fact that Ferdinand is too cowardly to do the dirty deed himself (the narrator seems to imply this, when he describes Babe as "gullible"), except that he does actually sneeze as he gets close to Duchess. Could be psychosomatic, I suppose. Duchess is clearly our antagonist throughout this sequence, but her antagonism is played chiefly for comic suspense, culminating in a Tom and Jerry-esque visual punchline where the cat winds up drenched in paint.
After this, it takes a while for Duchess to come up as a major plot point again, although she does make a couple of lower-key appearances in between which emphasise the more unsettling nature of her presence around the farm. The first of these is following the death of Rosanna the duck, who is slaughtered for the Hoggetts' Christmas dinner when Arthur is able to convince Esme that Babe is off the menu (the sequence is something of a fake-out, as we are taunted with the possibility that the slaughtered duck might have been Ferdinand). Babe, observing the scene from his designated spot beneath the horse cart, sees Arthur emerge from the abattoir, and then sees Duchess slinking out behind him, gleefully licking a paw, from which one of Rosanna's feathers is visibly protruding. This grim sequence comes with a jarring seasonal flavour, as off-screen carollers can be heard chanting "Away in a Manager" as it happens, and I don't think it a coincidence that Duchess's appearance is juxtaposed with the lyrics, "Take us to Heaven to live with thee there." This is surely one of the film's darkest and most understated jokes. The lyrics evoke the inevitability of death, yet the promise of salvation (and the peaceful, tender barn scene described throughout the carol in question) feel disturbingly incongruous beside the carnal brutalities of the abattoir.
The second really ominous appearance from Duchess occurs during the aforementioned scene where Arthur prepares to shoot Babe, erroneously believing him to be Maa's killer. Duchess is nowhere to be seen during the sheep's death per se - after all, Maa was killed by outside forces, so her powers aren't pertinent there - but she does act as a harbinger to the pending catastrophe awaiting Babe. When Arthur first appears with the gun, Duchess is shown, seemingly at random, trotting along in front of him, and one gets the uncomfortable impression that the cat is actively leading him. This, even more so than the above Christmas scene, hammers home my perception that there is something really unpleasantly uncanny about this cat. Fly is able to get the truth from the sheep - that Maa was killed by feral dogs, and Babe defended her - and manages to momentarily distract Arthur by barking. It is, perhaps ironically, Esme who ultimately saves Babe, when she comes with news of a police alert about the feral dogs. Esme and Duchess actually end up being diametrically opposed in this sequence - whereas Duchess was willing him one direction, Esme very pointedly pulls him in the other when she asks him what on earth he's doing with the gun - reinforcing the idea that Duchess is Arthur's dark shadow and not Esme's.
See? So freaky.
Things finally come to a boil between Babe and Duchess during the third act, when Esme leaves for the weekend and Arthur takes the opportunity to play loose with some of the conventions of the farm, including allowing Babe into the house and faxing his entry to the upcoming sheepdog trials. Duchess is disgusted by the development, and expresses her objections by lacerating Babe's snout. The really juicy physical confrontation, however, is between Arthur and Duchess, for he grabs her by the scruff of the neck and turns her out into the rain. Juicy, because not only can you tell that this something he's been wanting to do to this vile cat for a long time, but he's also going to war with an aspect of his own nature. Duchess is only temporarily cast out as opposed to permanently banished, and we sense that, so long as Arthur still has use for the abattoir, and the shotgun, their partnership is not over. But he's sent out the message that she has no place within this particular equation, and that the kind of cold, set-in-stone fatalism she stands for has been overridden by greater forces still. What really seems to fuel Duchess's resentment on the matter is not being cast out into the rain while Babe enjoys the comforts of the Hoggetts' living room, but becoming the subject of mockery from Ferdinand, a character who had, up until now, lived in fear of her and everything she embodies. This is what convinces her that her power over the farm is lessening and swift action must be taken. So she goes back inside and takes great pleasure in being the one to crush Babe's long-standing innocence concerning human-pig relations. Babe is shaken enough to flee the house, while Duchess assumes her spot by the fireplace, a gesture averring, superficially, that the status quo has been upheld.
But of course, she hasn't really won. Try as she might, she couldn't break the bond between Babe and Arthur. Babe has his moment of deep personal crisis, but is reminded the following day of how much Arthur cares for him, and reaffirms his trust. He then goes onto the sheep-dog trials and wins with flying colours. Duchess, though, does not reappear following her intense verbal confrontation with Babe. Which is maybe as good a sign as any that she's been vanquished - her ominousness is given no air at all in the final, triumphant sequence.
It was not, however, the last we'd see of Duchess period, as she makes a small non-speaking cameo in the film's 1998 sequel Babe: Pig In The City, although I don't recall her having a particularly impressive or sinister aura this time around. Indication that Duchess has been metaphorically declawed by Babe's successful subversion of the established order, or one of several areas in which the sequel failed to comprehend what had made the original film so appealing? I admit that, while the original has always been one of my favourites, I've long struggled with the sequel. Dick King-Smith never wrote a direct sequel to his novel (there was a spin-off about one of Babe's descendents, but I remember next to nothing about it), but back in the 1990s it was standard procedure that when you had a successful children's film, you sequelised it, and why would Babe be any exception? Many of these sequels felt as though they were hastily conceived and put into production in order to capitalise on the momentum of the original while it lasted, and frequently settled for recycling whatever had worked the first time - hence, Kevin's stupid negligent parents lost him again, Jesse had to keep on saving Willy's hapless whale hide long after he'd set him free, etc, etc. Babe: Pig In The City makes the less common mistake of going too far in the opposite direction, ie: it manages to avoid retreading itself (although taking things to "the city" was a fairly stock response for a follow-up to a film with a smaller or more rustic scope, eg: Home Alone, Homeward Bound), but is so disconnected from the world and character of the original as to not even feel as though it belongs in the same narrative universe. Babe: Pig In The City has always struck me as a very, very misguided production - nevertheless, it's one of those pictures where I feel obligated by a sense of brand loyalty to periodically revisit it and see if I can, somehow or other, come to terms with its existence. So far...there are things I'll certainly never like about the sequel, such as the chimps in clothing (is there any more perfect metaphor for the film's complete and utter dislocation from the original?) and the near-total lack of Cromwell, but I have come around to the Peter Gabriel song and to isolated instances of its quirky humor. The last time I saw the film in its entirety may have been as far back as 2009, so I suppose in 2021 I am long overdue for another visit. If there are any further developments, you'll hear about them.
* Also Penny Tompkins from The Critic. There are actually a few Critic alumni in the cast. Babe's voice, Christine Cavanaugh, was Marty Sherman, while Doris Grau makes a rare flesh and blood appearance as one of Esme's friends. So many greats no longer with us.
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