National Pet Week: “Si” and “Am” from Lady and the Tramp

Monday, May 4, 2020 at 12:00PM

Team Experience will be celebrating pets at the movies this week. Here's Lynn Lee...

My cats!

Last fall, my husband and I adopted a pair of Siamese kittens from a local rescue organization.  It was my husband’s idea – I was hesitant at first, despite the extreme cuteness of their pictures and videos.  Not because I don’t like cats; to the contrary, my husband had already converted me into a cat lover with our previous, gone but still-missed pair.  No, the real if silly reason, as I explained sheepishly, was that every time I thought of Siamese cats – especially in twos – all I could think of was the devilish duo from Lady and the Tramp (1955). While I hadn’t seen the movie in years, I vividly remembered two blue-eyed hellions who teamed up to torment poor innocent Lady and frame her as the “bad dog” she assuredly was not.  I also remembered a sibilant signature song that I was pretty sure had not aged well after a half century, even if the movie itself remained one of my Disney favorites...

My irrational fears remained unrealized, as our new housemates have proven an absolute joy and delight, standard kittenish mischief-making notwithstanding.  Yet when we told family and friends we’d adopted Siamese cats who were brothers, it was remarkable how many of them would immediately call up the same memory I had – some even mock-singing, “Weeeee are Si-ahh-meeeese, if you pleeeee-ase” before pausing to reflect that the song might be considered offensive today.  Naturally I couldn’t resist rewatching the scene that had made me so anxious and indignant (on Lady’s behalf) as a child. 

This time I had an entirely different and weirdly bipolar reaction:

(1) This is so racist.

(2) This is hilariously spot-on about cats.

I stand by both responses, though the first may eclipse the second for many.  From the cats’ names (did you even know they’re called “Si” and “Am”?) to their slanty eyes and slight buck teeth to their whispery lisp and pidgin English, they’re about as close to a walking stereotype of Asianness as felines can get.  Not to mention the orientalist timbre of the song itself, punctuated by that cringe-inducing gong, or the fact that it was written and sung by the very white Peggy Lee.  (Interestingly, Lee, who also voiced “Darling” and the memorably jaded “Peg” and by all accounts had an exemplary musical career outside of this little exercise in exoticism, sued Disney for the rights to the music of Lady and the Tramp and won a hefty payout.)  

I’m not inclined to flog Lee too harshly for the Siamese cat song, which was very much a product of its times.  Still, it should surprise no one that in Disney’s live-action remake of Lady and the Tramp – which I haven’t seen but was released straight-to-streaming last November on Disney+ – the cats are no longer Siamese and their song was reworked into a blues number co-written by Janelle Monáe.

But the original scene is also funny and even brilliant because it’s so true – true to cat nature, that is.  These cats are what they are, if you please or if you don’t please.  Your house is their domicile, and “if we like, we stay for maybe quite a while.”  They will purr and rub enticingly against you one minute even as they’re casing the joint for what they can get into the next.  And heaven forbid you leave a bird or a fish or a vase of flowers or anything that can be shredded within their reach, because it will be history in short order.  As for their perfect synchrony of movement, I originally attributed that to artistic or comic license, but having now lived over six months with a bonded pair of Siamese, I can attest that they are capable of moving in uncannily parallel formation, although rarely with malicious intent.  Si and Am may be more evil than most, but I still crack up at the last shot of them grinning wickedly at each other as they shake hands tails.

The other striking aspect of this scene is how impactful it is for being so brief.  Si and Am aren’t on screen for more than a few minutes, and they don’t return for the rest of the movie, not even when a fearful rat (the true villain of the story) makes its fateful appearance.  Yet not only does everyone remember them – making them scene-stealers in the truest sense of the word – but their one encounter with Lady sets in motion almost everything that happens to her after that, including her relationship with the Tramp.  In a way, she has them to thank for bringing her and the Tramp together. 

And for that, we can all raise a toast to their memory.  But no gong, please.