The aesthetics, or maybe lack of aesthetics which render something as cute caught my interest right away. The idea that we are attracted to "the grotesque, the malformed" seems rather peculiar and bizarre (Harris, 3). But, in light of Harris' examples, especially of the dolls this started to make more sense. I decided to do a Google image search for one of these dolls, "So Shy Sherri," and she is everything Harris promises. Bizarre features and a dis-proportioned body make Sherri a tad bit creepy in my opinion.This idea sparked me think of what I perceive as cute and I thought of a particular breed of dog which I've always found adorable, the Welsh Corgi. Its a tiny dog with a a huge snout, ears as big as its face and stubby legs.
Grotesque? I'd say yes. I found this animal to be cute because its physical appearance is a little bit odd and endearing. Harris states that we find this qualities cute because we have sympathy or pity for them, which is definitely true in this case. I think that Harris best sums up the concepts of "cute" and "anti-cute" when he says that "Cuteness thus coexists in a dynamic relation with the perverse." He gives the example of the movie Child's Play as a manifestation of the anti-cute, but give "So Shy Sherri" a butcher knife and how different is she from Chuckie? The fact that the something perceived as cute can quickly become frightening sheds light on the relativity of these terms. We construct images which are viewed as cute and adorable although there is nothing inherently attractive about them. In the very last paragraph Harris describes the character of Gizmo from Gremlins as a "stylized representation of youth and innocence," which seems to raise the question of whether of adoration of the cute is a yearning back a simpler time. Do we project stereotypical images of cuteness on children because we want to preserve "cute" for as long as we can? God forbid we cross over into the realm of "anti-cute," just don't feed your Mogwai after midnight...
