SubscribeThere is probably no such thing as an uncomplicated cute image. As the essayist Daniel Harris argued persuasively in his 2000 book, Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic, our enjoyment of adorable stuff has a hidden dark side.The author of this essay kind of angrily doddles "I AGREE" around the quotes from the book, but still, this is interesting. He goes on to mention how every character in Up is in need of care, and now like that film slightly less. Slightly.
“The process of conveying cuteness to the viewer disempowers its objects, forcing them into ridiculous situations and making them appear more ignorant and vulnerable than they really are,” Harris writes. “Adorable things are often most adorable in the middle of a pratfall or a blunder.” He mentions Winnie-the-Pooh’s getting his head stuck in a beehive as an example and goes on to argue that children themselves are not really so cute; cuteness, instead, is something we do to them. (Think of the Zach Galifianakis character in The Hangover outfitting the little baby with sunglasses.)
Like everybody else, Harris has a family member who sends him cute images via e-mail. “My sister sends me things that are practically sadistic,” he says. “What was the thing she sent me? Accidents of cats! Jumping through things and not quite making it. It was very much in keeping with my point about the sadism of cuteness.” In his view, the Internet has not changed what we find cute. “But there is a change in the availability of these images,” he says. “The medium has made us hungrier for this stuff.”
Harris’s linking of cuteness and sadism applies to the famous “Hahaha” video: the baby may be cute on his own, but the clip heightens his vulnerability by presenting him more or less trapped in a high chair and reduced to a hysterical powerlessness by his father’s sly utterances of “Bing” and “Dong.” “There is something dark about using children for the pleasure of our maternal needs,” Harris says. “We enjoy being caretakers so much that we will create situations in which they need our care.”
Harris’s linking of cuteness and sadism applies to the famous “Hahaha” video: the baby may be cute on his own, but the clip heightens his vulnerability by presenting him more or less trapped in a high chair and reduced to a hysterical powerlessness by his father’s sly utterances of “Bing” and “Dong.” “There is something dark about using children for the pleasure of our maternal needs,” Harris says. “We enjoy being caretakers so much that we will create situations in which they need our care.”That is interesting. It strikes me that the rising tide of Cute coincides with a spate of "creepy child" movies: Joshua, the Omen remake, Orphan, Birth, Godsend - horror stories about children who do not need our care and reduce us to hysterical powerlessness.
« Older "Dollhouse" is dead. Joss Whedon falls ... | Phyllis Galembo: 100 Years of ... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by fleetmouse at 3:26 PM on November 11 [1 favorite]