imomus | What is Cute?

What is Cute?

The London Review of Books leads this month with Cute: Kitty Hauser on style in Japan. It's a workmanlike article, a review of Fruits by Shoichi Aoki (which I recently commented for Index magazine) and The Image Factory: Fads and Fashions in Japan by Donald Richie. Hauser writes:

'Acting and dressing like children represents their refusal of the adult world: as Kinsella writes, cute style 'idolises the pre-social'. Cute is a kind of rebellion, then, but its retreat to the imagery of childhood indicates that there is no alternative to the adult world except a deliberate regression to this one remaining realm of freedom. Seen in this way, cute style is bleak: it allows no looking forward to a future, either for individuals or for society. In this sense it is far darker than punk, which had an energy and rage that promised action, if not social change. Cute disguises its pessimism and political inertia as winsomeness. The curious thing about the outfits paraded in Fruits is that they seem to acknowledge both the idealism of youth and its commercialisation. Punk motifs, in particular, recur again and again, but only as hollow signifiers on pre-slashed and distressed clothing bought from boutiques. Hippy styles, too, are often assembled entirely from branded items. Coupled with cute, these motifs seem like the ghosts of idealism, clinging to the bodies of teenagers capable only of shopping and acting dumb.'

Hauser thinks that 'cute may not yet have its aesthetician'. A good start has been made, though, by Frances Richard, whose Fifteen Theses on the Cute appeared in Cabinet Magazine in Autumn 2001:

'Draw a circle, and ray out from it the abject , the melancholic , the wicked , the childlike. Now in the zones between add the erotic , the ironic , the narcotic , and the kitsch . Intersperse the Romantic/Victorian , the Disney/ consumerist , and the biologically deterministic . At the center of this many-spoked wheel lies a connective empty space. Label it CUTE.'

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I was just talking with a professor of mine about japan and child culture, and she reccomended Ginsella's work to me. At one point I said, "you know there's this musician named Momus, he writes about Japan a lot. I read his weblog a lot." I log into LJ not an hour later and what do I find...how cute.

and by "ginsella" I mean "kinsella". ::blush girlishly::

Ooh! I *like* this Cabinet Magazine! Thank you! Getting introduced to a neato new journal is like...making a new friend!

(Never mind what that may or may not say about me.)

I was watching a very interesting PBS program on the subject of cuteness a while ago. Some scientists tested people from all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds to create a set of data on 'what they feel cute is'. It seems the dominating features of cuteness, at least on animals, is big eyes, large head, smaller body proportionally. Basically babies. The theory goes that this definition of 'cuteness' is mapped onto our brains and serves as a kind of 'survival tactic' for human babies. I suppose 'cuteness' helps humans to deal witht he struggles of parenthood, and aids the bonding process. This seems like a locgical theory given the fact that we often find baby animals of any kind 'cute', as well as many nocturnal animals who have evolved large eyes to help them cope with their low light environment.

BTW, always enjoy reading your posts, thanks.

Was this the same program hosted by John Cleese which explored the relationship of the golden ratio to beauty?

That's funny, I was just trying to remember the proportions of the Golden Ratio when I was re-sizing the graphics for this entry. I had a too-big photo and wanted to re-size it just with HTML (not Photoshop), and it occurred to me that the 640 x 480 dimension was close to the Golden Ratio. I wanted my photo to be 500 pixels across, and I tried to work out the side length that would produce the same ratio. I couldn't be bothered to do the math, so I just guessed, and it looks okay. But there's a nice radio programme about the Golden Ratio here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/5numbers3.shtml

Aha, the Golden Ratio is actually 1.618034... to 1!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/rams/5numbers3.ram

It's very close to the kilometers to miles conversion as well, which is how a lot of people remember it.

On the contrary, you just gave me a mnemonic for remembering the kilometers to miles conversion.

/recovering artfag

It was our selective love for cuteness that caused out pets to evolve more dainty features. Only the cutest got a home. It gets troubling, though, when you realise that the "cute -- youth -- health -- beauty" string is actually a loop. Or, "God" forbid, a twine.

This is why I find fetish inspiring. I knew a guy in high school who used to brag about having intercourse with a tomato. While this may not seem to be an immediately pragmatic survival trait, I think willful self-programming is a positive development (and perhaps one of the defining characteristics of our type of consciousness to begin with).

I've always wondered to what degree the aestheticization/(further) commodification of Western pop cultural movements in Japanese teen fashion has to do with a language barrier. That is, that since the more ideological elements of are accessible only through language as opposed to images (i.e. one would have to read about the ideals of punk vs. being able to absorb visually the look of it), when there is a language barrier in terms of getting this information, it tends to fall by the wayside and only the images of the movements are appropriated. Of course it helps that, I assume, there is no (or at least no significant) collective national/cultural memory of these movements (hippie, punk, whathaveyou) that would imbue the fashions with any sort of commonly understood meaning.

I thought that the paragraph in the review that asserts that there is indeed a code to all of the use of seemingly empty signifiers (i.e. that they are not in fact empty at all, but that they just have alternate signifieds than those with which we are familiar) was particularly interesting (despite the fact that it contradicts the rest of the article). It is too bad that there was not more elaboration on that -- sometimes I worry about our (my) exoticization of "those crazy Japanese teenagers" -- and I feel like further explanation on the personal meanings attached to fashions would help keep that in check.

I would love to read further about this.

I've always wondered to what degree the aestheticization/(further) commodification of Western pop cultural movements in Japanese teen fashion has to do with a language barrier. That is, that since the more ideological elements of are accessible only through language as opposed to images (i.e. one would have to read about the ideals of punk vs. being able to absorb visually the look of it), when there is a language barrier in terms of getting this information, it tends to fall by the wayside and only the images of the movements are appropriated. Of course it helps that, I assume, there is no (or at least no significant) collective national/cultural memory of these movements (hippie, punk, whathaveyou) that would imbue the fashions with any sort of commonly understood meaning.

But is that so different from the situation with punk in America? The ideology has been left behind in all but lip service for many people and it's more of a fashion than anything else. Same for the hippie revivals we see every few years.

Somewhere in Japan thinkers are pondering the significance of the American adoption of the Tamaguchi.

you're right -- it is absolutely the case in America as well. Though I would have to say that there is to still some correspondence between when the clothes signify to teenagers and what the "movement" signifies to the general populace. i.e. there is still a rather strightforward relationship between punk aesthetics and "rebellion" (even if kids don't really get it that buying spiked collars at Hot Topic is a very commodified idea of rebellion).

One thing that I observed and thought very peculiar during the short time I have spent in Japan was the intermingling between teenagers dressed in very different fashions. In America, it would be rare to see a girl who has a "California Surfing Barbie" look going on hanging out with a Sid Vicious-esque guy, but I found these types of combinations very common in Japan.

http://www.lip-service.com/

You raise some interesting points. Yes, the de-politicization of subcultural style by Japanese youth has something to do with the language barrier. But it's a mistake to see Japanese youth as zombies, ghosts or ciphers. It's a mistake to say 'Take the western meanings away and nothing is left'. If punk ties in, in our culture, with Protestant protest (getting back to basics, expressing political disgust, and so on), its transmuted relative on the streets of Tokyo ties in with Japanese traditions: etiquette, ceremony, dandyism, group display, even Samurai honour. Japan has always imported western goods and styles in a way which smashes their meanings and domesticates them.

'The Japanese indigenous worldview is basically sublunary and contains no transcendent values... The history of Japanese literature can be described as a history of the multiplex expression of a process of challenge by external and transcendental worldviews to this indigenous worldview, which internalises them and at the same time secularises and 'de-transcendentalises' them.'

Shuichi Kato, A History Of Japanese Literature (Kodansha)

I tend to think this 'misunderstanding' is not accidental on the part of the Japanese, but deliberate. It's not a simple 'lack', a failure to see the 'real' context of a style like punk, so much as a deliberate, though subtle, process of recontextualisation, defiance, even resistance. Japanese values are being expressed in the way the FRUiTS kids dress, and they happen to involve western styles from time to time. It would be a big mistake for western observers to think, just because they recognise fragments of their own styles in the kaleidoscope, that they know what's going on.

Sofia Coppola has the John Ribisi character in Lost In Translation say 'They're these nerdy guys, but they're trying to act like rockers. Why can't they just be themselves?' It's an incredibly naive comment, with its suggestion that there's some kind of trans-cultural authenticity just waiting for us, if we would only step outside the charade, the continuous (and often deliberate) recontextualisation of cultural appropriations and re-appropriations, snapshots of snapshots, Chinese Whispers. Perhaps it's meant to make Ribisi's character look dumb and culturally out of his depth, but I fear Coppola ma have written it 'from the heart', out of her depth herself.

Kismet (http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/kismet/kismet.html) is cute.

This is my friend Reika, photographed in Tokyo on Saturday. Now, this is a retro style and a western style, but so meticulously put together that it could only be a Japanese person, and a dandy, wearing the outfit. Reika is the protege of illustrator Miyuki Morimoto (http://www.comillus.com/index.php3?wpe=a334) who makes retro 60s fashion illustrations based on the style seen in western fashion magazines 40 years ago. Cute, elegant and formal are the keywords. There is something about Reika and Miyuki, though, which surpasses my understanding, and which I can merely recognise as 'completely Japanese'. If I had to circumscribe the sort of thing I'm talking about, I'd say 'Imagine a prize Swiss cow. Now imagine treating yourself like that.' Or I'd say 'Imagine a sex fetishist or an obsessive collector'. Or I'd say 'Imagine a priest conducting a holy rite, but with material things -- the host, the chalice -- standing only for themselves. Then imagine these physical things are clothes.' Or I'd say 'Think of a guru and disciple living a collective morality so intensely that the rest of the world is excluded.' Or 'Imagine an atheistic attention to details so extreme that God is projected into them.' Or 'Imagine a refusal of transcendence so thoroughgoing that the result strikes us as transcedent.' Or 'Think of the extreme pleasure an elderly male customer, paying hundreds of dollars for a single dinner, gets from seeing the immaculate young maiko for the first time.'

That girl is wearing the "Gothic Lolita" style. Lately there have been a lot of articles about it in both US and Japanese media. Mostly they say that it's meant to be really, really creepy and sexual and that it all stems from depression and abuse and the need to return to childhood because of that. I disagree with that, because as a follower of the style, I think I know my own motivations when wearing it. I think it's adorably outlandish and just plain cute. Of course, as I'm only fifteen and a lot of those who wear lolita style may have different ideas when wearing it.

I don't have any of these articles bookmarked but you can check the

egl community archive. Of course with the name Gothic Lolita, it's pretty much understood that people will associate the style with the Nabokovian idea of a Lolita, which makes anyone who likes the style a nymphet with deep-seated emotional issues that need to be resolved. Most people in the Gothic Lolita subculture disagree with this idea, though not everyone does. The style is gaining more recognition in the US, but most of the time it's negative or pornographic. For example, all the articles written by westerners on the subject are usually about how messed up GLs are, or certain book stores stocking the "Gothic and Lolita Bible" in the adult section.

I'm not sure how the style was named and I'm not sure if it's really true that the people who named it didn't understand the connotations of the term "Lolita". I do know that I personally don't wear the style to be sexy or creepy. I don't know why it's not ALLOWED to be just adorable. It always has to be rationalized in a way that makes the wearer look crazy and troubled. I showed the "Gothic and Lolita Bible" to my social studies teacher and he was absolutely disgusted and said something about the Japanese morality declining.

The cultural perceptions of different fashions really interest me, though. I'm sure that I perceive the style differently than the Japanese do.

Hahah I hope that wasn't too long, rambly, or irrelevant.

Most Americans would associate gothloli with the "Nabokovian" Lolita, true (I place the word in quotes because I think most people have misconceptions regarding Nabokov's book itself), but as usual the Japanese employ the term post-semantic-shift and within their own cultural context... For one, eroticisation of the pre-teen is much less of a knee-jerk moral issue to the Japanese (and never was, so it's just silly to express it in terms of a "decline"); for two, this might very well be because it's not so much eroticisation of youth/childhood as it is eroticisation of the "kawaii". That is to say, the fetish/attraction is the "cute", and associations with childhood are merely a necessary by-product of the "cute". All of which to say, I think you're perfectly right. :)

A thought: wouldn't the primary aesthetic associated with the classically Nabokovian lolita be - not the frilly Victorian childhood of lolita style (in both the "perkygoth" and darker variants), but 50s kitsch Americana?

(Amusingly this post popped up just below one of my lj-friends' Harajuku cosplay picture posts:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/aitreni/140234.html)

yeah, i read inertia's journal.

people seems to think that the character of Lolita was one that was knowingly and willingly sexual, but of course Humbert Humbert was raping her and manipulating her emotions. i don't think the style is meant to emulate a naive girl who gets taken advantage of, either.

i definitely wasn't agreeing with my teacher. ^^; i actually got pretty frustrated trying to explain it to him. maybe he was TURNED ON and feeling guilty. but i didn't check! XD

one of the main gothicloli brands, metamorphose, actually does a lot of the 50s kitsch Americana-style dresses. maybe they were some of the originaters of the term, then? i have no idea!

I was all geared up and thinking "post-semantic-shift" would be a great search term, but it yielded precisely zero hits via google. Any suggestions on further reading on this concept?

"post-semantic-shift" as in "after a semantic shift". One or both hyphens may be optional, but my grammar is fuzzy on that count.

Reading the Kitty Hauser piece, then reading this Index interview with MacDermott & MacGough may lead to some interesting insights:

http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/macdermott_macgough.shtml

On the other hand, it always strikes me that western style magazines manage to keep talking about fashion even when fashion is out of style-the other day i picked an issue of The Face from 1990 and even though england was at the moment at the peak of the rave culture thing, with the wear-what-you-want mindset and the 'peace-love-unity-respect' values, with everybody pictured in the magazine dressing sloppily and talking transcendental talk, the Face keeps the whole issue discussing who invented flares, what the hippest haircuts in manchester are and how the brands are selling the kids the fashion created by the kids(well, fisher hats and cargo pants...) and how the kids are moving on.

somebody answer to Roddick Roddick III, she just hit a nerve right there but i don't know how to go on.

http://www.freetoon.com/prestonblair/01-characterdev/pages/032.html

"The Cute Character" in western animation.

-lili

That 'Cute Character' baby has the inward-pointing toe gesture that many 'burikko' Japanese girls strike.

I was glad that Kitty Hauser said this: 'If cute means anything, it isn't going to be what it seems to mean. It isn't, for example, necessarily juvenile to dress like a child.' As a man -- and I mean sexually as well as emotionally -- I certainly respond to 'protect me' gestures, to the child-woman. Now, in the west this treads on the toes of taboo: it means you're a possible pedophile, a macho caveman who wants women to remain eternal children, and so on. Women in the west are not saying 'Protect me' in the poses they're being asked to strike, in fact most of the time they seem to be saying 'Suck my dick' (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/2004/04/04/)! Women are conditioned in the west to do that, and men are conditioned to like it. But I think we have much deeper conditioning which likes the appeal 'Protect me', and I think it's sure to win in the end.

I mean, you might want to go to a Peaches show and laugh at the groin thrusting, but is she really, as she proclaims, 'the bitch you want to get with'? Does the average man want to move in with Peaches and snuggle up to her at night? I think not. Given the choice between 'I am vulnerable' and 'I am invulnerable', I go with 'I am vulnerable' -- not because I'm so macho that I want my women to be fragile, but because I hate machismo so much that I want neither men nor women to be macho. And also, just as childish values can be embraced by adults, so feminine values can be embraced by men, and childish and feminine values are things we need very much to learn from, whatever age or gender we are.

'I am vulnerable' is the essential social gesture, the gesture which shatters the myth of the irresponsible, wilful individualist. It's a gesture I'd like to see more in films, pop videos and in life. Say it loud and say it proud, the Cute Pledge:

"Although adult, I can be vulnerable and even childlike. I am not afraid to ask for your help. I want to be co-dependent; that's an okay thing to be. I might fuck you, but I will never say 'Fuck you!'"

Would you say that the Japanese are more comfortable being "objectified," that cardinal sin of Western relations? When Peaches shouts and women say "suck my dick" they seem to be asserting that your attempt to fit them into a certain category is going to fail, and they have the power to reshape your observation (unless of course, "chicks with dicks" become a category and we can blow them off all the same). But Japanese girls in particular (and of course, my contact is mostly limited to photographs) seem more comfortable to put their energies into a fashion instead of an individual voice that has a story to tell. I don't look at a girl sporting Japanese fashions and think, what is she about, what is she thinking, as an individual, but I examine her clothes and am wowed by the presentation. this is a difference too between visual and narrative art...for instance, are blogs as popular among Japanese youth as they are Western?

I suppose this really has to do with your essay on Cute Formalism, and the value (perhaps misread in this binary) of conformity over individualism. Also form without content. I'd love to see how the Japanese view evolution, if they view it...in the West it seems charged with individuality/anomie, in Japan, likely not.

Are blogs as popular among Japanese youth as they are Western?

From my experience I'd say yes, but my experience is limited to anime/manga otakudom and music fans.

On the question of western individualism, I hope you'll forgive me for referring you to my song 'Robocowboys':

There's so many insiders on the outside
I think it's beginning to be the inside
And fire regulations have disallowed
Another lonely cowboy
From joining the lonely crowd

There's so many mavericks right off the map
We've redrawn the map to bring them all back
There's so many renegades off the beaten track
They're beating a track to my door
And I'm beating them back with a board

And breaking the rules has become the new rule
They're teaching it now at business school
They're all wild and crazy and one of a kind
Anarchists to a man
Everybody does it like no-one else can

We're way more conditioned than we realise, and it's quite possible that from a distance we all look the same, and our blogs all look the same. For instance, I just noticed that in the main entry here, while trying to say that Westerners should admit they don't really know what the apparently-western styles in Japan actually mean there, I was actually bringing a Protestant, protest-friendly, Romantic reading in by the back door when I talked about 'defiance, even resistance'. That was my way to say 'The Japanese are good, because they're nearly post-Protestants like me'. Western readings are full of these projections. Sometimes the only appropriate response is just to look. And to say 'Wow!'

Agreed. I'm reminded of your essay on transgression...it seems on the model of individualism that transgression is necessary to remain distinct, as opposed to part of a huge pool of outsiders (take nu-punks or emo kids today). Whereas, many Japanese fashions don't transgress but recontextualize, as has been said? And if we have such a hard time escaping our conditioning, is Sofia Coppola right in the end? One can try to create but the same Western tools are forced into one's hands (talk about soul! deal with angst!) Nonetheless I agree with Stanley Lieber about "willful self programming" being important. It's individualistic, but not in the Western/authentic model. And it seems the Japanese are allowed to do that...then again, not all Japanese are as hip as the ones we scrutinize.

I feel as if I'm just making excuses...

Self-programming. Perhaps ironically, I was deeply influenced by Tendai Buddhist theory in books I stumbled across at a university library as a child. I'm certain the thinking I gleaned from those books affected the entire structure of my emerging young-adult mentality. Sometimes it occurs to me that the preoccupation I've developed with the non-existence of objective reality is/was deeply informed by that early reading.

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What is Cute?

synchronicity up the ass

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something i can relate to?

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western style magazines

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