What is Cute?

[imomus]

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.'

Comments

something i can relate to?

[tropigalia.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: something i can relate to?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

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)

Re: something i can relate to?

[tropigalia.livejournal.com]

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!

Re: something i can relate to?

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

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?

Re: something i can relate to?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

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