CUTE, MIGNON, KAWAII: FURTIVE PAWPRINTS OF CUDDLY VITALISMS

Cultures of cuteness constitute richly textured (text-tured) and aestheticized sites for the analysis of material culture and consumption in contemporary societies. In my presentation, I engage with the existing literature on the cute-kitsch: its multilayered formations, its intersections with a multitude of other sociocultural discourses, as well as its complex ideological effects on subjectivity and the production of a specific modern sensual and aesthetic condition of sociality. By treating 'cuteness' as a simultaneously empty and over-determined signifier, and as a carrier of potentially contradictory social meanings, I demonstrate that various cultures of cuteness - including (but not limited to) popular manifestations of consumerist complexes such as 'Hello Kitty', 'The Powerpuff Girls', and the yellow 'Minions' in the movie 'Despicable Me' - can be understood as amalgamations and/or networks of meaning (indexical/representational orders) that are both subject to and reliant upon semiotic processes of mediation. To this extent, I explain how the concepts of 'sensational form' (Birgit Meyer), 'semiotic ideology' (Webb Keane), 'commodity register' (Asif Agha), 'metaculture' (Greg Urban), and the 'politics of immediation' (William Mazzarella) can elucidate and clarify 'cuteness' as a constellation/sedimentation of sociocultural meaning. I conclude by means of thinking about cultures of cuteness as polyphonic or dialogic discourses constituted by a multitude of social voices (Mikhail Bakhtin) and its implications for the analysis of forms of cuteness.

2020

This thesis approaches cuteness as an aesthetic and affective genre which inspires intense feelings of softness and kindness, as well as aggression and possessiveness. It investigates the affective properties and uses of cuteness, the embodied experiences of interacting with cute animals and objects, along with the feelings of performing cuteness. Contrary to earlier research, which tends to discard cuteness as meaningless, demeaning and manipulative, this research shows how it can also function as radical, empowering tool for political activists and artists. Of particular interest is the political and resistive uses of cuteness, analyzed in three case studies. The ethnographic materials are collected on site in Sweden and in the UK, through a "mobile ethnography". This consists of shorter fieldworks centered on specific events; the Internet Cat Video Festival; Cuteness Overload-a feminist performance art project; and two cute-themed night clubs held at a leftist culture centre. The fieldwork emphasized multisensorial experiences of cuteness, focussed on participant observations along with interviews, focus groups and limited textual analysis. Drawing on affect theory, it understands cuteness as a relational category, emerging between subjects and/or objects. Of specific interest is the queering properties of cuteness functioning on several levels. It inspires radically lateral relationships between oppressed subjects; helps create safe utopian spaces; and lastly, it opens up new ways to experience and relate to one's own body. However, cuteness, like all aesthetic genres, is subject to the politics of taste. Not all cuteness production or consumption is given the same recognition. There exits then, a hierarchy of cuteness wherein some producers/consumers, and some expressions of cuteness, are more well-regarded than others. Ultimately, the thesis concludes, cuteness has the potential for radical transformation, but as it exists on an uneven playing field, this potential cannot be readily unlocked by everyone, at least not to the same degree.

Madhya Bharati, 2022

Cuteness is a powerful dichotomy and an affective register that sets a tirade of responses ranging from awe to awww. The importance accorded to it in popular culture contradicts with the notion that it is not a 'serious' area of reception. The worldwide phenomenon of `cuteness' is judged hastily by the kind of responses it often evokes, but given the range of and sheer growth of 'cute cultures' across the world, the social proliferation since the turn of the millennium has been particularly striking. Cute animal videos have been flooding Instagram and YouTube post pandemic lockdown. Sara Ahmed's concept of "happy objects" questions the spreading of certain forms of affect happiness and she says that such transmission can be attributed to objectifying cute animals as 'social goods'. Changes in culture surrounding 'companion species' by Donna Haraway talk about how increase in emotional precarity leads to an increase in neoliberal logics of consumption. This article addresses the question as to whether or not cuteness is a function of subjective judgement or if it is a quality inherent to the objects one perceives as cute. Keywords-Cute Studies, Affect theory, Companion Species, Anthropomorphism Concept Note The notion of cuteness is constantly evolving and undergoing notable migration into hitherto unseen forays and institutions that are considered to be the land marks of high culture. Public spaces like museums, galleries, subways are all being increasingly materialized with cute rhetorics and images. This constitutes a performative aesthetic culture and a form of communication for the consumeristic society that seeks to enact, represent or rephrase cuteness (be it positive or negative). This is controlled by factors of self-representation, affiliations with fan culture and other collective modes of representation. The power vested in these sources navigate between the subject affected by 'cuteness' and a visibly powerless 'cute' object. This has serious implications when it is expressed through variables like gender, race, class and species. The word 'cute' dates back to the 1850s in American and British English where the term was associated with children, women, domesticity and referred to a particular form of "feminine spectacle". This paved way for the rapid rise of 'cute culture' in the twenty-first century which

East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 2016

Approaching the cute object as a metaphor for the lovable, this article provides a survey of the different approaches to the study of cuteness and uses their intersections to map out a three-domain approach that incorporates the dimensions of affect, language and design. When considered in isolation, these domains highlight specific facets of cuteness, but their intersection underscores an important etymological tension that continuously transforms the metaphors of cuteness. These changes do not compromise the primary meaning of cuteness, but lead to a reinvention of the lovable, whereby the cute object continues to represent an abstraction of a particularly affectionate connection to the other. Therefore, the arguments presented will demonstrate that the notion of cuteness emerges through a particular etymological tension embedded in the idea of 'cuteness' that reifies aesthetic concepts through the relationship between the individual's affective experience and the operation of language through culture.

Cosmetic, Aesthetic, Prophetic: Beyond the Boundaries of Beauty

Is cute beautiful? How is beauty inscribed or translated into cuteness, particularly in the context of contemporary consumer culture? In this paper, I question beauty within the aesthetic of cuteness by way of the emotional experience or affect shared between humans and the objects they consume. These include but are not restricted to digital pets, virtual partners and animated characters. The relationship between beauty and cuteness is not a given, but is rendered ambiguous in this inquiry. On one hand, to claim an object is 'cute' is to perceive it as lovable, a positive quality that fosters the 'nurturing consumer', according to product developers. On the other hand, cuteness is also an anthropomorphic project that humanises not by faithfully replicating a human form, but by selectively augmenting it. Cuteness is an aesthetic primarily concerned with smallness, which differs from glamour, majesty or other pompous figurations of beauty but, at the same time, simulates a deformity subjected to consumer preferences. By examining beauty through the technology of cuteness, I propose a playful aesthetics, or a dysfunctional beauty, that affects and compels one to act, to represent beauty and make it tangible, personable and claim it for oneself. In other words, cuteness speaks for beauty as transformation: a movement between forms and singularities, as opposed to a passive appreciation of a universal aesthetic in stasis.

This essay investigates a number of Jeff Koons’ most recognizable works through the lens of cuteness. While not all of Koons work fits the classic Lorenzian schema of cuteness or indeed subsequent theoretical work on the topic, he significantly adapts criteria of the cute to powerful and persistent effect. Especially his Balloon Dog (1994-2000), manufactured in a series of five different jewel-like colors on stainless steel (Blue, Magenta, Yellow, Orange, and Red), is a test case for the ways the cute marks its territory in the domain of high art.

The paper focuses on the ambivalent power of cuteness and offers a preliminarily sketched map indicating some of the possible intersections of cuteness and monstrosity. The main idea is that these two -seemingly distant and contradicted -realms can be read/understood one through the other. The basis for such an assumption is to be found both in cuteness' ambivalent aesthetics and multidimensional ethics. With respect to aesthetics, cuteness can be found both in the anatomy of a child and a freak (cuteness involves a certain malformation and exaggeration of infantile aesthetic diagram). As for ethics, cuteness can be thought of as a "sweet coating" that makes it easier to swallow bitter pill; it is in other words able to change meanings of ambivalent and simply negative issues, like violence or sexuality. Question that arises in the light of the abovementioned inconsistencies of cuteness is: Can we define the nature of cuteness as transformative -shifting the monstrosity not even to the realm of beauty (for a cruel beauty is something within the spectrum of monstrous emanations), but to the very space that is thought of as absolutely pure and sweet? According to common-sense definitional coordinates, cute and monstrous seem to inhabit distant and mutually exclusive realms. The Alien is by no means sweet and loveable, and you possibly couldn't call Winnie the Pooh shockingly cruel. We can tell a monster when we see it.

In discussions of online culture, nobody has yet given sufficient consideration to the importance of cute animal pictures. While there are perhaps obvious reasons for this aspect of online culture being and remaining understudied, from an objective stance we should consider it both surprising and noteworthy that, once given the means of mass communications and internationally accessible publication, a primary activity that people are interested in and committed to is the sharing of cute and funny pictures, especially of cats. This presumably unforeseeable outcome is made stranger yet by the relative lack of commercial motivation for a communications category that approaches the ubiquity of spam and pornography. This chapter investigates three possible explanations of aspects of these phenomena.

Editorial, "Cute Studies", a special edition of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture.