Puss in Boots: Boots are a form of dignity
The cat in the Shrek series, which sometimes transforms into a nimble swordsman and sometimes puts on an extremely cute expression, is a very attractive character. If Shrek can be the main character because of his creative contrast between his ugly appearance and his good heart, then the cat can be promoted from a supporting role to a leading role because of his super popularity. His cute act is almost the most classic setting in Shrek movies, even one of the most classic settings in DreamWorks movies.
Puss in Boots revolves around this cat, telling a story that could be almost entirely independent of the Shrek series. It has two key words: one is a friend, the other is dignity, and the core of the film is to describe what happens when these two conflicts.
Cat and Balls were friends, and they dreamed of getting magic beans, going to the sky Giant’s castle to find the goose that laid the golden eggs, and getting wealth for a lifetime. But by an accident, the cat saves a man in the town, and he becomes the hero of the town. People gave him hats and boots and, above all, the dignity of being respected. So the cat becomes part of the system of people’s rules, he no longer agrees with the balls of the kind of thieving life. However, smart balls use the cat to steal the town bank. The enlightened cat feels cheated and is afraid of losing his hard-won dignity in an instant. When balls fell into the water, the cat didn’t reach out to save him.
After that, neither cat nor balls could survive in the town. The cat is considered a thief, has lost his dignity, become a homeless, and Balls is obsessed with revenge against the cat. After many years, the cat has become a swordsman stray meets Egg again, Egg finally waiting for the chance to revenge. On the surface, the cat is annoyed with Egg for ruining his quiet life and, most importantly, his dignified life within the system, but on the inside, he still identifies with the life he once had with Egg as a friend. When the friend let oneself lose dignity contradiction, how to deal with, how to choose, and the plot of the film gradually into the climax
The stray cat carries the heartache of losing his dignity, but also the guilt of abandoning his friend, making his wandering a solitary ordeal. He still wore the boots of dignity that the townspeople had given him, but that was a self-deluded consolation. He was looking for a chance to regain his dignity and make up for the loss of his friend.
With this ambivalence, he agrees to work with Balls again, even though it’s obvious to the audience that Balls is using him to get the goose that laid the golden eggs and then framing him for revenge. And it’s not even just the cat that Egg is after. He’s also inviting Mother Goose to destroy an entire town that treats him unfairly and doesn’t give him the dignity he gives his friend, the cat. In fact, the initial separation between cat and balls comes from the fact that when the cat gets dignity, the balls don’t get it. He is resentful, frustrated and insecure. That’s why he wants to bring the cat back to him, even to deceive the cat, even to engineer the cat to lose its heroic, dignified status.
The ending, of course, is a happy one. After a heavyweight speech by the cat, the balls return to kindness. It can be said that the prodigal son returns to gold, and only by being himself can he win the possibility of dignity. Once deprived of his boots by the town’s soldiers, the cat realized what he was looking for when he wandered. Having friends and a heart willing to give to others was a dignified thing in itself.
In this realization, he saves the village again, although the town soldiers do not know this, and he is still wanted, but by this times the boots cat, has changed from a vagrant to a lone ranger. Although he is no longer in the system, but he also has a sense of dignity, this dignity can be said to be detached. Unlike the sense of dignity he felt when he first put on his boots, the former was a kind of dignity that he needed to preserve through his pretense, while the latter was the inner dignity of being him.
Boots are one of the most important props in Puss in Boots. On the one hand, it represents the face and dignity bestowed by others, and on the other hand, it sublimates into an inner dignity when the cat understands that wearing it is about being who you really are and not what others want to see you as. Dignity can be taken away as easily as a black cat can steal the cat’s boots, but inner dignity cannot be taken away.