The cat in Kanye West's 'Fade' video has a secret meaning, according to internet sleuths

Culture

After Kanye West's rather confused address at the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday, the artist debuted his music video for "Fade." In it, a very oiled and sexually charged Teyana Taylor, a singer and West's protégée, dances and ends up in the shower with her real-life lover, the Cleveland Cavaliers' Iman Shumpert

Then, something strange happens. At the end of the video, Taylor transforms into a cat woman, with a cat tail and a cat face. Oh, and there are sheep everywhere. 

What could it possibly mean? People on the Kanye subreddit had a lot of theories, mostly to do with the sexualization and objectification of women. 

"At the end, Teyana becomes a cat. She literally becomes pussy," user ChipSkyLurk[S] wrote. "This stands out a lot to me, especially after such a sexualized video."

Chris Pizzello/AP

"The impact of turning the weirdly hyper-sexualized woman into literally a pussy is jarring," redditor SirAlecFerguson also suggested. But the user goes further in their analysis: "It breaks you from the spell of being a slobbering horny animal real quick. It's like the self introspection the moment after an orgasm watching nasty porn."

"You really think about what the fuck you were doing in that sexualized trance state," SirAlecFerguson added. 

Redditor WatchingTheThronePod was startled by the sudden change in imagery. "So you spent three-ish minutes staring at a sex pot. Your brain all sexed up. Then you get a cat woman that completely throws off your equilibrium," they wrote. 

"It's like being in the middle of a hot shower and suddenly the cold water hits," WatchingTheThronePod continued. "Your brain is scrambling on the most basic levels to figure out what's going on."

Some had a more religious interpretation. 

"The 'lion and the lamb shall lay down together' is often cited a prophecy speaking of a literal utopia on earth to come — a Golden Age — referred to as 'the Millennium,'" FadeToDankness wrote in the thread, quoting pastor Andrew Corbett's blog on the bible. "It is argued that since so many of the prophecies regarding The Christ's first [appearance] were fulfilled literally, surely such prophecies of a Golden Age will also be fulfilled literally."

Others, meanwhile, were left completely baffled.

The beauty is, the cat woman can mean whatever you want it to mean. 

That's all for meow.