The Monstrosity/Cuteness Spectrum

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
dot com. Hey you welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, Robert,
have you seen all these cute Jason Vorhees dolls and

(00:23):
cartoons and fan art all over the Internet. Of course
you have. I've at least seen some of it. But
I know you shared with me an image of Jason
plush doll, and I had not encountered that specific cute
horror before. So he's got the machete and there's blood
on the machete. But he's adorable, but he has blood
on it, like you know, murder weapons. I mean, even

(00:45):
if we didn't know who he is, the context here
is that this is a killer. Yeah. He's got a
huge head, huge low set eyes. He just looks so sweet,
little stumpy limbs. He's like a little cute baby Jason.
And there are cute Freddy Krueger's in the same way,
cute Freddy Kruger cartoons, dolls, toys, uh things all over
the Internet. And you've seen the cute vampires, the cute werewolves,

(01:08):
cute versions of the girl from the Ring. I looked
it up that exists cute predators from the movie Predator.
I saw that that's that's kind of easy, because the
predator already has a sort of baby shaped head. You
just make the eyes bigger. They're cute xeno morphs. You'd
think that'd be difficult to do, but they're all over
the internet. What is with this epidemic of monsters originally

(01:31):
imagined to be horrifying, threatening to haunt our dreams, to
chase us through our nightmares, to murder us and our friends,
and instead we're making all these versions of them that
are adorable, with infantile characteristics that you just want to
hug and snuggle. It seems inevitable, doesn't it, even even
in weird cases like, for instance, the Babba Duke, which

(01:53):
is like a child murdering monster, right, And then the
same with penny Wise the clown. Like you would think
that Pennywise, this thing that appears as a clown in
order to, you know, drain the essence out of children
and pull them into horrify them and pull them into sewers.
You would think that would be beyond our ability to
make cute. And yet just the other day I was

(02:13):
looking at a cute pins of Pennywise, I'll cute it up. Yeah. Well,
if you want to go in the cosmic direction, how
about all the cute Illifid montheror the cute you know,
uh cathuloom with those stuff. Yeah, when cute cute plush case.
When my son came into my life, but I was,
one of the first things we gave him was a
plush Cathulu, which he loves. And it's an adorable looking creature.

(02:35):
But yeah, he doesn't even know that it is essentially
supposed to be a scary monster. I guess it's not
funny to children in the same way it is funny
to adults. No, that he just sees it as a cool,
pretend little creature. It's like if you encountered snuff alophagus
and then somebody said, oh, yes, stuff alophagus is actually
a patterned after this hideous monster, right, this thing that
snorts you up as a liquid through its trunk. Though,

(02:58):
I do want to say, before this epidemic of cute
cartoon versions and cute dolls and stuff like that of
say Freddy Krueger, there is a precedent for this within
the horror media itself. Because you've seen the Freddy Krueger movies,
right the Nightmare on Elm Street. I've seen the first one,
and I've seen the remake, and I like both of those,

(03:19):
and the rest it's just mostly clips and just the
pop cultural absorption of this ever ridiculous Freddy Krueger that
that you know, that that has all these catchphrases and
and ingenious kills. That's that all the compilers together for me. Well,
there there's definitely an arc throughout the series where, over

(03:39):
time the Freddy Krueger of the first movie and the
first night Nightmare on Elm Street, I think Wes Craven
went out of his way to make him not just
a threatening monster, the standard kind of monster that will
hurt you and chases you, but to make him repulsive
and really just nasty. I mean, Freddy Krueger in the
first movie is a character who's supposed to be a

(04:01):
child murderer, and there are these suggestions of perversity and
this this kind of gross creepiness, not just threatening monstrosity,
and so from that point, I think it's really amazing
that over the arc of the series Freddie becomes sort
of almost something like an anti hero, Like he's never
actually a good guy, but he stops becoming this gross

(04:25):
creep that you don't even want to look at, and
becomes this jokester who dances and mugs for the camera
and has one liners, makes jokes, and he becomes the
star of the films. He becomes the reason people watch it,
and it's because he's fun and he's comic. He becomes
the crypt keeper, he becomes Hull Cogan. Uh. And then

(04:45):
it's certainly by Jason versus Freddie you're probably rooting for
one or the other. He is, like, there's kind of
a fifty split there that that you may be backing
this character in the brawl. Yeah, and maybe you could
chalk that up in the Fredd movies just to the
actor who played him, Robert England, being a great and
likable actor, despite the fact that he settled with this

(05:06):
incredibly repulsive role. Uh, maybe Robert England just bleeds through
so much that you want to make him more and
more likable. Well. It it even got to the point
when they when the remake of Nightmare Him Street came out. Um,
a lot of people didn't like it. I actually really
enjoyed it. I thought it was. I thought it was
a fine hard film. I didn't like it, he didn't
like I. I I enjoyed it. But then again, I'm less

(05:28):
attached to the series. But but one of the criticisms
that I saw level at it was how could you
make Freddie a pedophile? How could you make this his avert,
make this creepiness in his character so avert, as if
that like ruined a hero and not just made a
grotesque monster a little creepier. I think it was always
kind of implicitly suggested back in the first movie. Look,

(05:51):
I mean, they never said that outright that I recall,
but it's always there in the fact that, like we
were saying, he's not just a threat, he's a creep
he's perverse. Yeah, So it's it's interesting to see how
people responded to kind of a doubling down on on
on the grotesque monstrosity of the character in a way
from the ridiculous pop culture version of the character. Right, Yeah,

(06:14):
the version in the remake is not going to be
doing I don't know, Domino's pizza commercials or whatever Freddie
was doing in the eighties. But of course Freddy Krueger
and the Nutmaar on elm Street series is not the
only series where we see a monstrous, horrifying character transformed
over time into something that's more approachable, more likable, more identifiable,
maybe even kind of snugly. This happens a lot in

(06:37):
horror literature and even in horror folklore. Yeah. Yeah, we're
definitely going to get into some examples from from folklore
and legend, particularly some examples from Japanese folklore, because as
we're talking, we inevitably talk about both monsters and the
world of cute. Like you have to go to Japan,
because Japan is h is the home not only of

(06:58):
some pretty hideous folkloreic monsters, but also kauaii. This this
notion of of of like overt just overpowered cuteness, the
hello Kitty level of cuteness that has not only taken
Japan by storm, but has has spread its cuttly tentacles
into just about every portion of the earth. Yeah, it's

(07:18):
like overclocking the adorability process almost to the point of insanity.
And I should also point out that this also goes
the other way. Of course, just as monsters often become cute,
there are also plenty of examples of people taking something
cute and making it monstrous. Um I kind of did
it just a few minutes ago talking about snuffle Up,
I guess. But you you inevitably see people who say,

(07:41):
do a love crafty and take on totoro or and
then there's a whole area of Kauai known as Kauai
and noir, which is like dark cute where they have
something that pretty much intentionally has a lag or maybe
a tentacle in both the cute and the monstrous content bucket.
I feel like this is something that very often happens
in comedy animation. I think you know, shows like South

(08:03):
Park and Futurama and Simpsons and stuff like that always
have a scene at some point where a very cute
animal turns out to be a horrifying killer. So in
today's episode, we're gonna explore this. We're gonna explore what
is the relationship between the monstrous and the cute, why
is there there this interesting interplay? And in doing that,
we're going to, of course discuss a little bit about

(08:25):
what a monster is. So I think we've hit that
harder in previous episodes. Here stuff to blow your mind.
We're gonna talk about what it is to be cute.
What's going on when something cute hijacks our brain? And
then at the end of the episode, we're going to
look to really three specific examples of Japanese monsters that
may or may not be transformed into something cute. We'll
be discussing the Only, the Kappa, and the Tango. All right, Robert,

(08:48):
what is a monster? Oh? Well, you know it's it's
it's like cute. It's like pornography. We know it when
we see it, right, But if you if you really
have to, you know, if you really force somebody to
to define it, what you tend to think about something
that is awesome inform or size. It's novel and it's
chimerical combination of natural forms, you know, like it's got

(09:09):
the head of a sea horse in the body of
a cow. That's a monster um or you know, you
know where it's just a giant sea horse. A sea
horse the size of the school bus would also be
a monster. I subscribe to the Metallica theory of monster dum,
which is that a monster is the thing that should
not be. It's a thing that you behold and realize

(09:30):
that it is not only not something you recognize from nature,
but it's something that you do not wish nature had. Now,
obviously we violate those norms all the time because we
get into monsters. We we find ourselves at home thinking
about monsters, and we kind of do wish there was
a giant mummy crocodile with laser eyes. Right, But at
least in theory, the thing a monster is is it

(09:52):
violates natural categories in some way and it horrifies you,
makes you afraid, makes you not want it to be there.
And as we discussed in our episode The First Monster,
which which came out previously for for this year's Halloween, um,
there's often a message there, if if not a message
that is tied up in the monster's form, then tied
up in the monsters presence or in the stories about it,

(10:15):
Like this monster is a danger to you because of why,
because you went somewhere, or you did something, or you're
engaged in a culture that went somewhere did something. Yeah.
Rarely do monsters appear in folklore without some kind of
warning or social message. Right. Okay, so that's monsters in
a nutshell. But but how about cute cute? Uh is

(10:38):
in a way easier to nail down, but also just
as ambiguous as monstrosity. Well, it's one of those things
that everybody can identify it by sight, you know, you
can tell, well, that's cute, that's not, that's cute, that's not.
But when you're asked to give a set of criteria
for how you're making the decision, you'd you'd often come
up at a loss for words. Right, what's certainly the

(10:59):
eyes of the whole there, But we can tease it
apart to a certain extent. We can say, look at
almost a universal images of of the cute and see
what's connecting with us there, and then figure out why
it's connecting with us. So, for instance, kittens, babies, or
of course Hello Kitty, which is essentially a kitten combined

(11:21):
with a baby or a small child with psychedelic color schemes.
Psychedelic color schemes. And then of course many cute creatures
of either real ones or fanciful ones. What do they have?
They have big adorable eyes or perhaps big jowls, baby
like cheeks. They're kind of Winston Churchill's yeah no no,

(11:41):
so yeah, there do appear to be some biological roots
to our recognition of cuteness. It does seem to go
into our mammalian brains and not just into cultural categories.
So culture may very well inform a lot of what
we find cute downstream of these biological cues. So, in
his eighteen seventy two book The Freshion of the Emotions

(12:01):
in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin suggested that natural selection
is probably gonna favor creatures which, in infancy possess features
that cause the adults of that species to protect them
and take care of their needs. Right, if you are
a species that has a genome that says we usually
give birth to babies we find repulsive and don't want

(12:22):
anything to do with, that species, isn't gonna do very well, right,
or at least you're gonna have a situation like the
Komodo dragon, where the young of the Komodo dragon they
pretty much they're on their own right and they have
to protect themselves from such threats as adult komodo dragons exactly.
So this would be in species that need to spend
a lot of time protecting and caring for their young.

(12:45):
This is something we see in mammals right, and other species,
but especially in mammals. So a lot of Darwin's book
deals with things like the screams of infants and how
the scream of an infant elicits parental attention. But you really,
if an object is screaming at you, you don't you
just you know, don't you just find it annoying? Like

(13:05):
you want to get away from it. Like if there's
just us an orb in a room screaming at you,
I wouldn't want to care for it. I would run away. Correct. Yeah,
If if a human on a train is screaming, um,
either may be you want to find out what's happening.
You might even want to help. But there's there's at
least that question mark phase of the screaming. Right, what

(13:25):
is going on here? Let me find out so that
I can act accordingly. Yeah, it's attention getting, But the
demands of an infant have to be more than simply
attention getting to be adaptive. They have to be sharpened
to appeal to specific vulnerabilities in the adult caregiver's brain,
like vulnerabilities that soften anger responses and encourage protectiveness, and

(13:46):
encourage generosity and sharing of resources and so forth. So
something about the infant version of an animal has to
convince the adult version of that animal to feel an
attachment and to make sacrifices on behalf of this little creature.
Now we'll talk about this more in a second. But
in some species these appeals for parenting could be straightforwardly chemical, right,

(14:08):
Pheromones and scent would be examples. But couldn't these biological
appeals also be visual? It makes sense, right, that's and
one of the most immediate ways to interact with with
an object or being is you see them and then
you respond. Right. So, in the middle of the twentieth century,
the Austrian ethologist Conrad Lorenz, who I guess we should

(14:29):
maybe acknowledged it's always weird, like should you bring this
up or not? He was also a Nazi. After World
War Two repudiated his views. I'm not aware that his
ideology played any role in coming up with this schema
we're about to talk about, but I guess it's worth acknowledging.
Oh yeah, I mean, I think it's always worth noting
when a scientist has that in their background, because in
some cases you you definitely have science that it was

(14:52):
skewed or compromised by its association with the Third Reich. Uh,
so you have you have to at least acknowledge that
it was there in order to determine if it was
a factor. Yeah, I mean, like you had people doing
science that was ideologically determined, not very objective. But I
don't think that's necessarily the case in this case. So
Larens plunged into this field by observing animal species and

(15:16):
coming up with what's known as the Kinschen Schemma or
the baby schema. It's a list of features that he
believed were sculpted in order to trigger or release caregiving
behaviors in adult animals. And he gave about seven criteria.
So let me know what you think about these. Robert
A large head Okay, Yeah, babies have big heads. Predominance

(15:39):
of the brain capsule. So that's going to mean not
just a large head, but sort of the large forehead,
like the swelling of the upper part of the head,
large and low lying eyes, a bulging cheek region. There's
the Churchill jowls. We're talking about, short and thick extremities,

(15:59):
a springy or elastic consistency. Yeah, they when you when
you poke them in a soft body, there's your plush doll.
And finally, clumsy movements, Yes, the toddling of the toddler right,
and subsequent studies have found evidence to partially support Lorenz's schema.
So this is one reason to think that, you know,

(16:20):
even if he's got some kind of crazy ideology, there
might be something to this because subsequent studies seem to
find some of the same stuff is true. So I'll
mention one study from two thousand nine published in Ethology
by Melanie Glocker at All, and this is called baby
schema in Infant Faces induces cuteness, perception and motivation for
caretaking in adults. And what they did in this study

(16:42):
was they used real photos of infants digitally manipulated to
accentuate or to downplay some of the features that are
in line with Lorenz's criteria. And so among a group
of undergraduates, the study found that the faces manipulated towards
the criteria as a meaning they manipulated them to have
larger eyes or a rounder face or a higher forehead,

(17:06):
were judged to be cuter and elicited greater motivation for caregiving.
People said they were more likely to give care to these, uh,
these more baby scheme of faces than the ones where
they really downplayed those criteria, giving them smaller eyes, smaller
foreheads and narrower face and stuff like that. Now I've
got a picture here, Yeah, I'm I'm looking at this

(17:28):
right now. So, um, basically we have an array of
six images, three per row. So we have this grid
of baby heads here that we're looking at and um
and in the idea that there's a change in uh
like cuteness from left to right. Yeah, So you've got
like normal baby heads in the middle, and then on

(17:50):
the right you've got ultra babified baby faces with like
these gigantic eyes, really round faces, really sort of low
faces with large foreheads, big brain capsules. And then on
the right you've got unbabified baby faces that look sort
of more like the kid in the omen or they
look more adult. Basically, they look more like old men,

(18:12):
you know. They're they're kind of in that category of
like the older baby babies that when you look at
them and maybe you you cringe a little bit before
you tell the parents that it's a beautiful baby. Yeah,
And they tend to have like smaller eyes, a smaller forehead,
a narrower head, and a less rounding of the skull

(18:32):
that they look they look like weird adults rather than babies,
you know. And it's interesting to to look at this
and think of it in in light of our basically
our evolved reaction to these faces. I was looking at
a study that said the scientists have used magneto and
cephalography to observe a seventh of a second response time

(18:52):
in adults to unfamiliar infant faces, but of course not
adult faces. And that's going to that's uh, that difference
is gonna be manifest in this array of faces as well.
Like the cute or the baby, the more immediate your
response to it, I imagine. So, like you see this
cute baby face with the highly babified features, and you're like,
whoa that I need to pay attention to that. Yeah,

(19:13):
I've got to look at that, and if it needs something,
I guess I will go buy it some milk or
some pudding or whatever it is. Baby's eat, right. Put
zip ties on all my cabinets, those horrible plastic things
and all my wall plugs. I know, I'm still trying
to work through all the baby proofing on my house. Really, yeah,
there's still some annoying baby proofing that I haven't quite
like broken by forcing a grower open. But so one

(19:36):
of the interesting things about the recognition of cuteness and
it's biological function is that it appears to work not
just within species. Now, I can't see any real reason
that you would evolve to have a caregiving preference for
animals other than your own species. So it might be
one of those things that's just a byproduct of something

(19:56):
that's highly adaptable. Yeah, I mean, we're all we're related
to all the the other mammalion creatures, and and they're
all they all have the basically basically the same survival
um techniques in place in terms of parental care for
the infant. Yeah, and it's kind of obvious from our
experiences with kittens and puppies and so forth. But experiments
do confirm that our appreciation for cuteness goes beyond the

(20:19):
infant Homo sapiens. One example is a study found by
Anthony Little from two thousand and twelve published again in
Ethology called Manipulation of Infant Like Traits Effects Perceived cuteness
of infante, adults and cat faces. So it found that
among images of three types of faces, babies, adults, and cats,

(20:41):
first of all, people found the babies and the cats
cuter than adults. But then also when the faces from
all three categories were manipulated to have baby scheme of characteristics,
for example decreasing the jaws, eyes, and increasing the forehead height,
people found them cuter. And this worked for adult faces,
for human baby face is and for cat faces. Okay,

(21:01):
so getting into kind of the Betty boot area there
of like the weird like infantile but but arguably attractive
adult female. Yeah, it's it's just seeming to imply that
we have the same kind of caregiving response or cuteness
response to faces of all different types of creatures, no

(21:23):
matter what age and no matter what species. Even if
there's a face and you make these certain types of
changes to the face, we think it's cute usually and
we respond with all you know, zip tide, the chemical cabinet.
You know, it's interesting to think of it in terms
of survival adaptations for non human animals when you think
of of domesticated animals, cats and dogs, because certainly, I

(21:47):
think that I've certainly read some studies that argue for
the the the cat's ability to essentially hijack us by
making us think it's a baby on some level, you know,
and and and I think dogs do that too to
a large extent, as it's sorta with puppies. So I
could see it as a situation where uh, an infant
dog or or cat that is either found or s

(22:08):
obtained when the parents are killed like suddenly, those are
less likely to be then killed and eaten or skinned
or left for dead by the humans who have found
it if it hits those same triggers you know. Now,
another study I came across, the two thousand twelve Japanese
study publishing p OS one, and they tested the effect
of viewing kauai images or cute images on attentiveness, and

(22:32):
they found that individuals who viewed infinite animal images performed
tasks better than those who viewed adult animals. Yeah, seems
like so just if you had to have a calendar
at your desk, have the baby animals calendar as opposed
to the grown up animals calendar. Huh. I don't know.
I feel I feel unfairly skeptical of that result. Has

(22:54):
that been replicated? Well, love, Well, let's let's let's see.
So it's not just a matter according to this study
of cute things making us happier or amusing us. They
also allegedly improve performance in quote tasks that require behavioral carefulness. Oh,
I can see that. Yeah, so it's not it's not
so much. There's not a magical effect going on here.

(23:15):
This is the idea that the cute visible stimuli may
actually narrow the breath of attentional focus. I can see that. No,
like that seeing a baby face would put the mind
into a don't drop the baby gear exactly, and then
you take that gear and you apply it to working
in your spreadsheet. I can see that. Yeah, okay, I
understand the mechanism. Now. Now, different studies have also looked

(23:38):
at the effects of cute marketing on consumer restraint of course, uh,
and and also on whether it has a to what
extent it affects indulgent behavior because the whole don't drop
the baby mentality. Do you want your consumer using that
that kind of mentality when they're potentially behind your product, right,
you want to encourage them to drop the wallet? Yeah.

(24:00):
They found that, uh that for some people, cute images
with big eyes or baby cheeks seem to induce more
careful or strained behavior. But uh, but again not every case.
But it's an interesting additional study related to this whole
idea of intensified attentiveness. Now, it's also worth noting that

(24:20):
when we're talking about cute, we're inevitably talking about visual
stimulant a lot here, because that's going to be the
thing that's bound up in either a you know, a
plushed all of of a horror monster or Halloween cost
him that's derived from it. Now, they're obviously also cute sounds, right, yeah, yeah,
the cute baby sound, but even the cute baby smell.
I hadn't really thought about this, but you know, obviously,

(24:43):
if you've ever smelled a baby, it's fabulous and it's
hard to really put a put put a finger on
what's happening there, Like, why is this an attractive smell
to smell a baby's head? I'm sorry, I have no
idea what you're talking about. Really, well, the next time
you're around a baby, do yourself a favor, uh smell it.
It's creepy unless it's your baby. Well, no, you can.

(25:03):
You can ask you and say, hey, I've been I've
been reading some studies and in uh, you know, in
the name of science, would you allow me to smell
your baby's head. Yeah, have you seen that product on
the market that is like a bottled cathead smell? No,
like an actual cat's head or a cathead biscuit? I think, Oh,

(25:24):
I don't know what's what does a cat head biscuit?
It's just a big old biscuit that's roughly the size
of a cat's head. I'm not sure which what region
uh that that is found in. I guess somewhere in
the south here. I think it's actually supposed to be
a cat's head. It's like a perfume you can buy
that's supposed to smell like a cat head. But cats
don't really smell like anything if if it's unless it's

(25:47):
a dirty cat like they tend to have. Like maybe
they smell like pennies, a little bit like batteries, but
that's about the extent of it. Uh, don't usually smell
like sulfur. We're not the ones I'm handstone. All right, Well,
so on that note, let's take a quick break and
we come back. We will get more into this conflict,
this battle between cute and monstrosity. All right, So we're back.

(26:14):
So we've talked about cute, We've talked about monsters. We've
talked about them mostly is distant islands, you know, entirely
separate from each other. So on one hand, you have
the Isle of misfit Toys and then you have Monster
Island on the other. I suppose waiter the misfit toys
not also monsters. Well, yeah, I guess they're kind of monstrous.
What would be the what would be the cute island? Oh,
it's that island in Japan that's got all the cats

(26:36):
on it. Cat have an Island. There you go, that'll work.
So it's the difference between Cat Haven, Cat Have An
Island and uh and Monster Island. But we have to
have to wonder are these two states all that different?
Are they really two separate things or are they different
points on a spectrum? Well, I ran across a really

(26:56):
thought provoking paper titled Monstrous slash Cute Notes on the
ambivalent ambivalent nature of cuteness, and this is by social
scientists Maja Rozozoska Brancenska. I hope I pronounced that at
least halfway right. But I will try and link to
this paper in the landing page for this episode Stuff
to your Mind dot com so you can see it
for yourself. Um, Maja bb As, I will refer to her.

(27:20):
She dives into all of this, noting that there's a
certain ambiguity and hybridity to both monsters and cute entities.
So they're cuties, if you will, cute, so they're not
just different things, but there's something lying along the same scale.
Maybe yeah, that you can think of them as both
both of them as exaggerated states. And she also points

(27:42):
out that cute images boast safe aesthetics that indicate harmless ethics.
So I think it's perplexing because infants, I think we
can all agree, are our home holly blameless creatures. Um,
I'm not saying you can't look at one in in
horror or fear, but that horror or fear is generally
tied to the ethical nature of the creature itself. You mean,

(28:04):
not tied right, Yeah, I'm sorry. It's generally not tied
to the ethical nature of the creature itself. It's tied
to you know, your maybe it's tiped feelings of commitment
or h you know, uncertainty about the state of the world,
or I guess the closest you could come to having
an absolute, authentic horror to the creature of the infant
is to just be appalled at what it does in

(28:25):
its diaper, you know. But well, you could also have
some kind of doctrine, I don't know, some original sin
type thing. Well, yes, but that's that's you're really you're
you're cheating at that point. I think you're creating a
narrative that actually shames an infant, and so shame on
you for doing it. And of course you might have
some sort of response to just sort of the chaotic
nature of infants. But if infants are chaotic, and they

(28:48):
certainly can be, they're definitely chaotic neutral. If not chaotic, good,
They're they're not chaotic evil. Okay, you've convinced me infants are, okay, Robert.
Now Likewise, the monster is traditionally a thing as rotten
on the inside as it is on the outside. The
monster with a heart of gold is an exception, granted up,
a pretty widespread exception at this point, but it's an

(29:09):
exception that proves the rule. Well, it's kind of like
those uh the exception that proves the rule on the
other side would be those evil baby movies. Exactly like
a possessed demon invent or something. Yeah, but generally, like
a monster is as evil it is as it is ugly,
and a cute baby or cartoon character is as sweet
as it is visually cute. Now I like this, uh

(29:32):
this idea of cuteness being not just a thing that
we respond to as caregivers and that makes us want
to give up our protection and resources for it, but
it's also something that signals harmlessness because it makes me
think about the human domestication of animals. Uh. Like, For example,
if you look at dogs, the domestic dog that we
have today evolved both through natural but mostly artificial selection

(29:55):
from some type of wolf like candid species within the
history of anatomically modern humans. Now, because humans were selecting
which features to breed into their dogs, I think we
often assume that cute dog breeds where the adult of
the dog is very cute. We're bred for cuteness simply
for esthetic reasons, right, we wanted them to look cute

(30:18):
because we like it. But it's also worth thinking about
the possibility of a correlation between cuteness and the domesticated
affect itself. Like domestic dogs seem to have been selected
to retain juvenile characteristics into adulthood, and these would include
things like a wider face, shorter snouts, floppy ears, a

(30:40):
curly tail, but also positive responses to humans. This is
something you would probably see in like wolf cubs or
fox cubs, but not in adult wolves or adult foxes.
They're the juvenile characteristics of the wild ancestor or the
wild cousin that are retained into adulthood and the asticated version.

(31:01):
And so cuteness might not only be something that releases
caregiving behaviors and adults, but it's literally correlated with the
biological transformation of a wild, unruly animal that cannot be
contained and is somewhat dangerous into this friendly, pliable, non threatening,
domestic companion. Like the cuteness shows that it has made

(31:22):
a biological transformation into something that won't bite you and
in fact might want to snuggle with you. I mean
that explains that the form of the pug right down
to a t, the pug is essentially a dog that
we have bread to look as much like a human
infant as possible. Oh yeah, it is a human baby
with four legs in a tail that can obviously by you.

(31:44):
Though if um, do pugs have teeth? Really yes, I mean,
how much more awful would it be if we've managed
to breathe the teeth out of the dog. I mean,
we've metaphorically bred the teeth out of out of the dog,
but but not literally. Yeah. Alright, So that Maja baby
paper that I was discussing earlier, she also uh points

(32:07):
a lot of this out about Japanese kauai that the
term itself the again, this is the Japanese cuteness or hypercuteness.
Kauai derives from the word uh kawa yushi, which principally
means shy and embarrassed, as well as vulnerable, small, and darling,
and it's applied to both babies and old people, perhaps
denoting a certain helplessness. And I'm also seen where there's

(32:31):
a variation on kauai uh like a variant word that
is uh that that is used as a put down
that has a negative connotation as meaning pet, pathetic, poor,
or pitiable and in a generally negative way. Oh. So
it's like on the playground when a bully says the
other kid is like all little baby. Yeah. I mean,

(32:51):
it's interesting to bring that up because my my son
is in kindergarten and he's still at the age where
that is the ultimate put down, Like if you're gonna
insult somebody, you you call them a baby, and it's
the worst thing in the world, to the point where
our cat, if our cat misbehaves, yeah, are then my
son will say, oh, baby mochi or even it doesn't

(33:14):
even have to be a person or a thing. It
can just be a general idea, or it can be
an object. But and you just put baby in front
of it, and that's like the ultimate belittling of it.
Like the toaster won't work. It's a baby, Yes, baby toaster.
Like instead of saying stupid toaster or or some or
some other more adult um word, you just say baby toaster. Uh.

(33:36):
But that's funny because I think the literature reflects that
children do respond well to these infantile features as well, right,
Like children like the baby schema, Children like cuteness a lot. Yeah.
I mean you just have to look at their stuffed
animals and and there's the proof. So the idea here
is perhaps the monsters and the cute are the same

(33:56):
energy applied in opposite directions. In fact, manage be the
rights of cuteness as a pendulum. It quote works inevitably
as a sort of pendulum, swinging to and fro and
thus being able to play its role only up to
a certain point where the sweetness becomes a mock and
a pitiful or ironic alter ego of itself. And I
would wonder if the same holds true of monsters as well,

(34:19):
because if if monstrousness and cuteness, if these are essentially
one slider, and you know, think of it as like
photoshopry of a slider between dark and light or something,
or you know, or it's a slider for shade or
tenant or something. Could you push the sliders so far
in not only the cute direction, but the monster direction,
so that the monstrous thing becomes ridiculous. Now, obviously all

(34:44):
this in this in the eye of the beholder, But
I instantly thought of rat thinks. I thought of some
of the monsters from the Spawn comics, and I thought
of the monsters from the wonderful movie Freaked, which are
very much modeled after I think rat thinks. So rat
thinks the are like these monsters for em bulging eyes, um,
you know, grotesque smiles and teeth that are that would

(35:06):
that were shown illustrated to ride a hot rod around
and they're not scary. They're not I wouldn't say they're
necessarily cute, but it's like the monstrous elements of the
character design are pushed to such a degree that it's
almost impossible to find it frightful anymore. Right, It's like
you almost intuitively detect excess. Yeah, and and it becomes

(35:30):
funny yeah and and with cute I can think of.
I mean, it's one of those you know what when
you see it examples, But we've all encountered sickeningly sweet,
sickening lee cute, where something has been just designed so
cute that it is almost repulsive. Uh. And then the
only example I can think about hand is that I
feel like the character Gur in Invader Zim this is

(35:52):
the Yonn Basquez comic and uh in TV series. The
character of Gur is intentionally just so cute looking that
you're it causes revulsion. Well, a lot of times the
revulsion comes in, I think in the addition of text
or speech. Like I think of the memes where you've
got a kitten, and the kitten might just be adorable

(36:15):
on its own, but like if you add some meme
text to it, it becomes gross, where the kitten says, like,
you know, I made you a cookie, but I eat
it it. Yes, that is that's like linguistically signally cute. Yeah,
why is that? Why does that feel over the edge?
It's like so cute it's unpleasant. I don't know why.

(36:35):
I guess it's it kind of falls into the same
way like children are when they use grammar incorrectly. It
can be cute um to to an almost destructive degree,
like trying to remember there's something that my son would
say and I actually hesitated to correct him because it
was so adorable, and then I found it's like, I

(36:56):
just can't do that. It's selfish of me. I need
to teach the boys to speak properly, even if it
means destroying these cute moments. Was he calling like a
broken toy, a baby or something? No? What was it?
He said? It was it'll come to me later. So
Mansha b b does not shouldn't push this slighter idea specifically,

(37:17):
but I think I think she would agree with it
because she says, quote, it's possible to position both cute
and monstrous in one dimension. The space that Michelle Fhuco
called heterotopia the place outside the norm, the site of
revolutionary potential, to change, to pose an alternate order where
the coherence between words and reality is no more possible,

(37:39):
and the paradox is the structuring rule. So it's so cute,
it's insane, or it's so monstrous. Ye yeah, I mean
it's it's like that left craft Ian vibe, like the
monster is so terrifying that you just lose your entire mind.
And likewise, something could be that cute that you just
you just you can't, you just have to it. It

(38:00):
kind of gets into the whole theory about the biting
of babies, like the desire to pinch a baby because
it's so cute. I know you've talked about this before,
but I don't know much about it. What's the deal here?
We have an older episode. There's what I did with
Julie on this this topic. But it's it's been studied.
Like basically, you see something so cute and you just
want to you want to bite it, you want to
pinch it. You know, it could be a kitten or

(38:23):
or a puppy or a child, and it's it's really
that the cute has become overpowering, that it has to
be counterbalanced with something awful. Huh. Yeah, so you need
to hand the cute puppy a blood spattered machete like
Jason Doll. It's interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but
in a way that that blood splattered machete is the pinch.

(38:44):
It's the counterbalance here. And I wonder if there are
other examples we could look to and and cute iconography.
Where we have we have added a little you know,
some sort of an adult elements, some you know, violence
or terror to something, and it does serve to to
balance it out and making and prevent us from going
completely insane. All right, Well, we've already looked at a

(39:06):
bunch of monsters from you know, modern fiction and modern
horror and stuff like that. I think we should turn
our attention to traditional folkloric monsters and see if they
make this same transition in our popular culture and and
become cute over time. So let's let's do the case
studies next from Japanese folklore after we come back from

(39:27):
this break. Than alright, we're back. So obviously the Japanese
have many spirits, many demons, many monsters, just a rich
assortment of yokai to choose from. But we're going to
focus on what you can think of as the Big three,
the Kappa, the Only, and the Tingu. Okay, so let's

(39:51):
let's start with the cap Are you're you're familiar with
the Capa. Yeah, we both read this great paper from
Asian Folklore Studies from by the scholar Michael Dill and
Foster called the Metamorphosis of the Kappa Transformation of folklore
to folklorism in Japan. And this has is just replete
with all these great old Cappa legends. This is a

(40:12):
fun monster, just despite the fact that in its original
incarnation it was not cute. It was a nasty, creepy, gross,
horrific little demon. Yeah. It it's hard to really come
up with a creepier, grosser, just more nefarious monster than this.
Like in a way, it rivals what we were talking
about with Freddie, the original Freddy Krueger, like something that's

(40:35):
just like a weak, evil thing that has to in
Freddie's case, prey on children in their dreams while they're sleeping.
And likewise, the Kappa is essentially a drowning monster. It's
a it's a monster that is that serves as a
as a warning and a signifier of the risks of
swimming or swimming alone. Uh you know, you know a

(40:56):
pond or a river, or even walking by a river,
the inherent danger of water or using a toilet. I mean,
it'll get you anywhere that's wet. Oh, it will get
you too. So the kappa also known as Kawako or
the child of the river. Um. Yeah, it's essentially a
Japanese manifestation of drowning fierce, particularly young children. And it's

(41:16):
signature hybridity because you're gonna find this hybrid nature in
any monster pretty much, and certainly in the three we're
looking at here. Is that it's essentially a tortoise with
a monkey's head, or it's like a monkey that has
scales on it as well, maybe webbed fingers. And some
accounts also go in an otter direction by making it hairy. Oh,
but that will make it cute, right, well, depends on

(41:39):
the otter. Otters are they're not as cute as I think,
depends on the otter. Like the giant otter. If you've
ever seen like a giant I think it's an Amazonian
river otter, they look rather hellish. And if you actually
study like the mating behavior of otters, Like they're all
pretty gross, Like there's a lot of violence and they're
mating horrible face chewing. That's sort of thing. Yeah, But

(42:02):
in the case of the of the Kappa here, it's
other most notable feature is a small depression in the
top of its skull called a sara, which contains a
fluid that serves as its life force. And we'll get
we'll get back to the implications of that in a second.
So if this were like a low budget horror movie,
it would be a cuphead, I guess. Yeah. So the

(42:25):
capa draws people and animals into water, where they devour
their prey and or drink their blood or their life essence.
They're also big sumo fans, so they might yes, they
love sumo wrestling, and they might try and wrestle you.
And there are there at least eight regional variations on
the Kappa, and most of what we know of them
comes from early twenty century folklorus and or amateur collectors.

(42:48):
But if you want to avoid the Kappa, there are
three ways. One, don't go where there are cappas. That's
there's a big one, you know. Don't go near the water.
At all, or you can befriend them by bringing a
cute cumber. And stories vary because they like cucumbers, but
stories vary on whether eating a cucumber prior to swimming
will attract or repel the monster. Now, they like cucumbers,

(43:10):
but they don't like gourds. That's right, gourd's will repel them.
And there's there's some interesting material in the in the
paper here that gets into exactly like what that means,
the symbolic meaning of like the fallic cucumber and an
arguably yawnick gourd. So it's it gets heavy. It's a
great paper. Uh. And then finally you can make a

(43:30):
low bow to the kappa, especially if it's challenging you
to assume a wrestling match. Uh. And this will re
force it to respond in kind, so it'll dump its
own life force out onto the ground. Cupet is tricked. Yeah,
I think this is fascinating because this may be the
only monster they can be slain through adiquette alone. It's
proper Japanese adiquette, and you will defeat it. Yeah, And

(43:53):
this does seem to make it not quite as you know,
absolutely horrific as some other monsters now they're horrific qualities
to it. But the fact that you can so easily
trick it, and uh in the fact that it seems
bound by some standards of politeness does sort of undercut
its original horror. Maybe yeah, yeah, a little bit. But

(44:15):
then again, you also have to look at this in
any monster and realize that it's it's it's not occurring
in one place at one time. It's their various traditions,
various versions of it. So you can easily see some
somebody comes along like, this monster sounds horrible. This monster
needs rules to keep it in place. And these are
the cultural rules that will keep the monster at bay um. Now,

(44:39):
if you're thinking to yourself with the cop that competence
sound that monstrous? So it you know, so it drowns
or drains a few children, Well wait for this because uh,
Foster in his paper points out quote not only does
the Kappa have a penchant for pulling both children and
adults into the water, but it often does this in
order to steal the liver, a feat it achieves by
reaching its arm up through the victim's anus to snatch

(45:02):
the desired organ. Yes, you heard that right, folks. It
will steal your liver through your anus. And to do
that it gets worse. Uh. In order to steal the liver,
it has to essentially uncork the human anus by removing
the non existent organ known as a sharik o dama
quote a ball once thought to be the mouth of

(45:23):
the anus. This is maybe something we should do an
entire episode on someday. Is all of the non existent
human organs people used to believe existed. That would be
That would be good. Let's let's let's remember that one
for later. Uh. Now you're probably wondering, well, why why
would they make this up? Point is there? There has
to be a reason to make up this organ. And

(45:44):
like clearly you can you can inspect yourself and realize
that there's no cork uh organ in your anus. But
the grim reality here is that you have a drowning victim.
A drowning victim is found and they may have a
quote open an is due to the unclenched sphincter muscles
and this this falls in line, of course with the

(46:05):
Coppas role as a monster of drowning. So you find
this this body and here it is, there's something peculiar
about it. It's anus does not look like a living
person's anus. But wouldn't this be the case with any
dead person, not just somebody who drowned. Yeah, and that's
something that that Foster brings up. However, my read on it, though,
is that if you're dealing with people who have drowned,

(46:28):
I feel like there's a higher possibility that that body
is found nude or mostly nude, since it was swimming,
whereas bodies in other situations may be covered with clothing
and then therefore less susceptible to susceptible to this kind
of folkloric exploration of what is happening. Okay, but it's
not just going to pull you into the river or

(46:50):
the lake or whatever. The Kappa also haunts toilets, that's right.
It may wait until you are vulnerable while pooping or ping,
perhaps near the water, and it is it is ready
to attack the buttocks and hips, according to Foster, um
So it's it's not only a murderous creature, it's a
creature of profound sexual violence as well. Like it is.

(47:14):
It's it's part of its design, this kPa. That's just
how monstrous it is. It's it's very much like the
Fredy Krueger, like the Kappa and Freddie are essentially cut
from the same mold, not just threatening but really gross.
So how do we get from from this to cute?
You're probably wondering well as us. As Foster explores in
his paper, by by the nineteen sixties, fulk belief in

(47:35):
the creature had all but vanished, and it become a
quote clean cute creature, used as a symbol of tourism,
of commerce, of clean water, and even as a symbol
of village and national identity. Huh. And he says that
this falls in line with Hans Moser's two notion of folkloreism,
in which an existing folklore is taken out of context
and altered or invented for a specific purpose. And of

(47:59):
course medium commers play a heavy role in this. Now
I thought this was interesting because I wondered about this
concept of folkloreism, and the idea is that someone would
take existing folklore and change it, or invent new folklore,
or or manipulated take it out of context for some
kind of intentional, conscious purpose. But it makes me wonder, um,

(48:22):
how is that different from the way in which bits
of folklore are are originally created? Like why It's almost
as if assuming that folklore um is arises unconsciously out
of the spirit of the people, and that when people
consciously manipulate folklore, that's a different kind of thing. I mean,

(48:45):
I I sort of wonder to what extent the things
we think of as folklore the original stories are consciously created,
are they not? Well, I mean, it comes back to
the whole rules thing I said earlier, like imagining someone
or multiple people coming wrong and tweeting an existing legend
or folklore in order to convey a point or to
convey a slightly different point um and then and then likewise,

(49:08):
I mean, yeah, there's a there's one example that Foster
points out, and this is from the Edo periods. This
was sixteen o three to eighteen sixty eight Japanese history.
And in this case, apparently you had a doctor who
used a story about a kappa as a way to
promote his business. The idea being that this is the
case with a lot of these monsters. They have some

(49:30):
sort of hidden knowledge or hidden powers that a crafty
individual can trick them out of. And so this doctor
learned some I think a bone setting uh technique from
the Kappa, and he basically put that on his calling card.
If you're gonna go to the doctor, then go to
the go to you know, go to doctor Kappa touched,
and he will he will use his mystical abilities to

(49:52):
heal you, which is essentially a marketing ploy. So keep
all that in mind. But basically what happens is, Yeah,
after a while, people have forgotten about the Kappa, like
there's there's not a lot of there's no longer any
belief in it. People are not reporting sightings of the
Kappa and uh. And then but you end up going
with through several waves of sort of you know, the

(50:12):
Kappa renaissance, where people rediscover it and they start using
it in new ways, um and uh and and and
this is inevitably going to involve outsiders crafting it. That's
the argument here, is that the Kappa is is a
creature of rural areas. It is a creature of the
people of the rural people. It's essentially kind of a

(50:33):
peasant monster. But then you're gonna have people that are
cut off from all of that. Essentially, you're gonna city
fall come along, take the Kappa myth, reinvent it, reutilize it,
and then after a while, like, no one's connected to
it back in the rural areas anymore. So they take
it back. They take this in, this re reformed version
of the Kappa, and then what do they do with it, Well,

(50:55):
they sort of turned it into a cultural mascot. It
makes me think of it. Have you ever seen the
tourism materials that are sent out by the Iceland Tourism
Board or whatever it is that promote the fact that
people in Iceland believe in the fairies, the hidden folk,
you know, the secret other world, the hidden folk that

(51:15):
live or believe in elves and stuff like that. I
don't know to what extent it's true that that many
people in Iceland literally believe the fairies are there. I
know some people probably do, but I doubt it is
true in a literal sense to the extent to which
it's promoted. But it does seem to be a thing
that is Uh, it's a rumor that's spread to bring

(51:39):
people to Iceland for tourism, because isn't that cute people
there believe in elves or believe in hidden folk. Yeah.
Forgetting of of course, the fact that belief in hidden
forces often in many cases can have pretty horrifying real
world results. But it is this, it is a sanitized
version on it and uh and Foster points out that
what what you have here is that you have a

(51:59):
sanitized monster that was you that ends up being used
to promote a sanitized notion of rural life in Japan.
And he says that the craziest thing is that quote,
had the Kappa not been snatched up by the mechanism
of folkloreism, it most likely would have died or survived
only as a museum relicant collections of folklore. Folkloreism change,

(52:20):
in other words, kept the monster alive. So this conscious
manipulation of the folklore is the only reason the folklore
really stays prominent. Yeah, well, like with Freddie, we can
go back to Freddie and say, yeah, you can bemoan
the fact that this, this, this horrifying thing from the
first film was kind of killed by this subsequent incarnation.

(52:41):
But if Freddie know how many people but I see
what you're saying. But but certainly like that's how it survived.
It grew into the shape and the size that was
sustained by the culture. Freddie became the Freddie that uh,
that that that we needed, that that that was essential
apparently too modern western living, right, or maybe not the

(53:05):
freddy we need, but the freddy we deserve. Okay, So
how about another monster from Japanese folklore, the One? Oh yeah,
so we read another paper about this called the Transformation
of the One from the frightening and diabolical to the
cute and sexy, and this is by a Japanese scholar
named Nariko T. Rider, also in the journal Asian Folklore Studies,

(53:27):
and this is from two thousand three. So writer's paper
is really interesting. It charts a very very similar arc
to what we talked about with the Kappa, this folklore
monster transforming into something that's different in modern twentieth century
pop culture. The One appear in Japanese literature and folklore
going back to ancient times, and the only are generally

(53:47):
these large, disgusting, shape shifting monsters with one or more
horns on the head. They wear tiger skinned garments, and
they like to eat human flesh. Other common powers in
include flight and the ability to shoot lightning. And they're
they're sort of different breeds of ony, right, Yeah, they're
they're basically two varieties. There's like the terrestrial one in

(54:11):
the infernal o E and the infernal only is there
to drag you to how at the moment of your
death if you were in fact deserving of one of
the hell's. Yeah. So, first, let's look at the old
vision of the only before they were, before they were
tamed or domesticated like the Let's look at their wolf
like Canada ancestor so. The scholar Ishibashi Gaha argues that

(54:32):
the Japanese only concept evolved from a previous type of
spirit or monster, the yomotsushi kome, which is literally fearful
creatures of the Netherland, and these appear as early as
the Japanese creation myth known as the Kojiki. So in
the first known Japanese language dictionary, compiled sometime around the

(54:52):
year nine thirty c e only is defined as quote
hiding behind things, not wishing to appear. It is a
spirit or soul of the dead. So in this earlier vision,
it's more of a spirit, I mean. And there are
these different categories of of Japanese folkloric beings. They're you know,
more like the comi you know, the deities, and then

(55:15):
there are the yokai, which are more like the monsters. Uh,
and it was during the medieval period in Japan that
the Only became a major part of popular folklore. In
this classical monster form that we first introduced, common only
features in the medieval folklore are going to include some
of what we've already described, things like one or more
horns on the head, skin colors like red or blue

(55:38):
or black or yellow, a third eye in the forehead,
carrying an iron mace as a weapon, wearing a tiger
skin loincloth, and the fact that they're usually male, but
not always and only were these horrific demon monsters that
people believe to exist in the world, kidnapping people, especially

(55:58):
young women, drinking blood, eating their flesh, but they also
seemed to be this useful cultural concept. In the words
of a scholar named Kumatsu, that the writers sites in
her paper many only were quote people who had different
customs or lived beyond the reach of the emperor's control.
And you can see this in the way that Only

(56:18):
were deployed in Japanese imperial propaganda during World War Two,
which was depicting enemies of the States such as Winston
Churchill or f DR or the Chinese leader Chang Kai
check as on e and it's common, of course during
war to motivate your populace against the enemy by characterizing
them as devils of some sort. Yeah. We see plenty

(56:39):
of examples of that in in western countries as well
during the same time period. Absolutely. Yeah. But apparently this
this cultural inclusion and exclusion tactic follows the one monster
specifically deep into history. So a few stories about the
only One story appears in the tenth century CE narrative
Tales of the Essay, and it goes like the US.

(57:00):
You got a man and he falls in love with
a woman of high social status, and he kidnaps her
and they're fleeing in the night, and there's a thunderstorm.
So the man decides they should take shelter at a
ruined building near the Akuta River, and the woman goes
inside the building for shelter, and the man stands guard
at the door all night. But when the woman is

(57:21):
alone inside and one appears and it eats her in
a single bite. That's gonna be a big owning, right,
She screams when the one is they're eating her, but
the man standing guard doesn't hear her because of the thunder,
And this portrays this sort of alliance between the one,
and these powerful elemental forces like lightning storms owning are

(57:42):
sometimes said to be able to shoot lightning. Now. Another
story is contained in a ninth century collection called the
Nihone Ryuiki, and the story translates to on a woman
devoured by an ony. So at the time the Emperor
Shomu reigned, a rich family in Yamato events had this
beautiful daughter and lots of men wanted to marry her,

(58:03):
but she was like nah, not interested, until a suitor
shows up with unbelievably extravagant gifts to win her over,
including three carriages full of silk, so she accepts his
marriage proposal, and on the wedding night, the newlyweds stay
in the house of the bride's parents. The woman's parents
hear her crying out in pain during the night, but

(58:25):
they don't do anything about it, and when her mother
enters the bride in the groom's bedroom in the morning,
all that's left is her daughter's head and a single finger,
and the rest has been eaten by a shape shifting
one which apparently appeared in the form of a handsome
young man. And this is evidence early on that they
only have this power of shape shifting. One of the

(58:45):
most common things, like very often in other stories, Only
would appear as beautiful women in order to seduce men,
and then they would turn into owny and try to
devour them or kill them or something. Someone should do
a version of the werewolf game with one. They're perfect,
you know, that would be perfect on a Yeah, there
are only among us? Okay, So how did the only

(59:08):
become cute? Yeah? Because it's like with the Cappa, this
sounds pretty monstrous and horrific. It's like a standard like, um,
you know, woman eating ogre here, how does it become
a cute thing? Well? Writer Sites several examples of how
only have become cute and modern Japan on a very
similar time scale to what we talked about with the Kappa,
you know, the Kappa especially having these cute incarnations in

(59:29):
the second half of the twentieth century, especially around the
nineteen seventies. One example of cute Only that Rider sites
is The Loom Invader. So in nineteen seventy eight, the
Japanese manga artist Rumiko Takahashi created this incredibly popular series
called urus say Yatsura, which translates literally into something like

(59:52):
those obnoxious aliens, and beginning of the nineteen eighties it
was adapted into a TV series, films, and a bunch
of other spinoff media. Uh and the premise is that
there's a group of one from outer space that arrive
on Earth, sort of blending one folklore with these alien
invasion stories that started to become popular in the middle
of the twentieth century. And one of these invaders is

(01:00:14):
an one called Loom, who at first is part of
this invasion force, but somehow she ends up becoming the
the loving and devoted wife of a lecherous teenage boy
on Earth. Unlike the one from medieval folklore, Lum is
not overtly monstrous. Instead, she's represented primarily as cute and
through overtly eroticized characteristics. In short, she's depicted as as

(01:00:37):
she's supposed to be sexy, and Loom has these subtle
signs pointing toward the traditional one. For example, owny usually
have horns, Loom has these couple of diminutive horns on
top of her head. She sometimes seems to have fangs
and other indications of a cannibalistic nature. She seems to
have the power to shoot lightning, which is associated with

(01:00:58):
some ony legend you can fly like the one and
only are often depicted I mentioned earlier as males wearing
a tiger skin loincloth, loam wears a tiger skin bikini.
I was talking with our coworker, Lauren Vogelbaum, one of
the hosts of food Stuff, another podcast in the house
Stuff Works network you should check out if you enjoy

(01:01:19):
food and all things edible and imbibable. But I was
talking to her about this because I know she is
an insightful consumer of manga, and she pointed out that
there are actually plenty of other anime and manga characters
that display this trend of taking a traditional monster and
making a cute or making it sexy or both. And
one example she mentioned was a manga series known as Sayuki,

(01:01:42):
in which the main characters are the monkey King character
and his demon companions, but they are rendered as cute boys.
These like attractive young men, sort of like an you know,
manga boy band um, but a demonic one, and they
are essentially a male parallel to the cute and sexualized
one we see in Loom. But as with the Kappa,

(01:02:04):
all of this with the one comes down to like
the revitalization of of rural areas. Right. Oh, well, that's
another aspect of it too. Yeah, so you've got this
stuff in mass media. But then you've also got like
we saw with the Kappa being used as some kind
of a rural mascot for a town or a village.
You know. The town revitalization movement is another thing that
Writer points out is a place that the only re

(01:02:25):
entered the modern consciousness and kind of metamorphosed into something
much sweeter. So there's this movement, the town revitalization movement
in Japanese. I think it's maki okashi and uh so,
in the same way that the Kappa was embraced as
a local mascot, it seems to only have been as well.
And Writer sites these examples the Oemachi in Kyoto, which

(01:02:45):
is located near Mount o A. This is the traditional
setting of a story called The Shooting Doji, which is
about this band of ony that live in the mountains
and they're doing their owny thing, you know. They're kidnapping
and eating locals, especially local maidens, and the eat their
flesh and drink their blood until some warriors in filtrate
the only hideout and kill all the only and writer

(01:03:07):
writes that at the time of this paper, this town
with the original setting near the shooting Doji, the town
is facing a depopulation crisis, with the population essentially growing
old and younger people not replacing them, and one way
the residents apparently sought to revitalize the town was to
embrace the only legend and the imagery in order to

(01:03:27):
attract interest and tourists. So they developed these only related
legends and sites. They got an one museum. So a
creature that would have once caused unspeakable terror is now
this fun attraction to draw people and money. It's kind
of like the small town kid, uh, you know, makes good,
he leaves the small town, makes it big, and then
it's just invited back in and becomes a hero, even

(01:03:49):
though they kind of treated him like dart to begin with. Yeah. Well,
it also sort of reminds me of what you might
see and say, Salem, Massachusetts, where originally you had the
fear of witchcraft, which was a genuine panic that terrified
people and led to deaths, and now it's more to
it's embraced in this kitchy way, like witches have become
a cute part of Salem's identity as a town. So

(01:04:11):
they love which museums and which souvenirs and stuff like that,
despite the horrifying reality of the essential like human monstrosity
of the whole situation exactly. So what can we take
away from this example? Well, writer has got some ideas.
So we've got these two different things. I mentioned the cute,
non threatening and eroticized one that appear in Japanese cartoons
and the embracing of one folklore as an economic and

(01:04:31):
tourism draw. And writer writes that much of the art
and entertainment in Japan still views the one as evil
and terrifying beings, like it's not all cute. Only now
she gives the example of the film Dreams by Kasa,
and one of the stories in this movie apparently tells
the story of humans who were turned into one by

(01:04:53):
a nuclear blast. Oh man, I vaguely remember that. I
mainly remember the space section of it. Yeah, that's so
much the only optic back and watch it. It's a
horrifying idea. But now we also have these only with
inherent aspects of harmlessness, cuteness, the the eroticized aspects. They
are the ones that are simply fun and familiar like
the witches now, and she seems to think that this

(01:05:15):
is an outgrowth of Japan's postwar economic transformation. In other words,
horrifying folk beliefs and monsters don't really make you the
big box, but apparently cute, harmless, fun and familiar monsters
can bring massive economic dividends. Capitalistic folklorism in the sense
that we explored in that previous paper, folkloreism the manipulation

(01:05:35):
of folklore seems to be directly at work in writer's
point of view, but it also sort of makes me
wonder why monsters in the first place, Like, if it's
simply that cute, harmless or sexy characters and imagery command
more economic power, why why isn't it just that we're
seeing new characters of this type created, Like why are

(01:05:58):
traditionally horrified and disgusting monsters being transformed into these cute
or sexy or otherwise harmless versions. Well, I wonder if
part of it is that there is, perhaps even subconsciously,
it's an interaction with a monstrous figure that had power
over us and maybe still has power over us. And
by making it cute, you are you're you're making it harmless.

(01:06:20):
You're taking the punch out of this monstrous creature. You're
it's it's like laughing in the face of horror. Well,
it almost makes me wonder if this transformation is an
outgrowth of the of the skepticism and secularization of the
twentieth century. Like, as people tend to believe less literally
in demons, monsters, and devils, would we tend to take

(01:06:43):
them less seriously as genuine threats? I mean, obviously we would.
And if we think that there's no genuine monster danger
to warn against, what prevents us from stripping the fear
inducing elements out of the monster folklore? Uh? Is it
a thing we do simply because we can? Does that
make sense? Like if in the past people didn't make
the monsters harmless because they believed that you genuinely had

(01:07:07):
to understand that these monsters were dangerous. As soon as
we stopped taking monster legends literally, then we had the
power to render them to defang them. Yeah, I think
I would buy that. It sounds like a good read
hunt it. Yeah, But there's another thing that I wonder
about is like, could it represent an actual direct rebuke
of the past kind of a you know, a middle

(01:07:27):
finger to the superstition that produced belief in monsters throughout
you know, every culture in the history of humanity. Yeah.
I mean it's because we've touched on this a number
of times when we've talked about older ideas, mythologies, religion,
even where it's it's easy to take a modern approach
and say, oh, well, those people were stupid. Look at
the things they believed in. Monsters in the woods eating you, um,

(01:07:49):
you know, some sort of strange turtle creature reaching up
your anus after your liver um. But when you do,
when you begin to dissect these ideas and you put
them in the context of the time, it's not so
simple as to just say, oh, well, these these people
were dumb. No, they weren't stupid. They knew less, and
that's not the same thing, right, I mean, in a way,
they perhaps knew more because they knew to take a

(01:08:11):
like say, a dangerous area or a dangerous uh, you know,
cultural area and it and assign a monster to it
to toward people away from it, to to keep the
curious from getting too close. And children don't go, don't
go near the water's edge because there's a monster there. Yeah,
And even if you you're not up on the reasons
to stay away from the water, like the realistic reasons.
The monster still resonates. And we've actually touched on this

(01:08:33):
on the podcast in regard to creating potentially creating new monsters,
new mythologies to guards, say, places where radioactive waste or deposited. Right,
so you've got high level waste, you know, the really
dangerous stuff stored at a place somewhere on earth, and
that's going to be dangerous for literally thousands of years,
much longer than any kind of sign you would probably

(01:08:56):
put up would be there, or I mean if you
maybe even made a really erobal sign, but yeah, it's
going to outlast almost any measures you put in place
to keep people away. So it's almost like you wish
you could come up with a lasting cultural belief that
this place is cursed and there's a monster that dwells
there and there's nothing of value, and you should just
a sticky image that will drive people away for hundreds

(01:09:19):
of generations. And that, Yeah, that's exactly what a monster
is that of. You know, nations fall, empires, fall laws, fade,
signs of warning fall into the dust, but the monster
persevere and yeah, and so coming back to how we
make the monsters cute, I'm wondering if it's this secular rebuke,
like is turning a monster cute an attempt to say

(01:09:41):
even unconsciously, Maybe not like people do this on purpose,
But are they at some level saying there are no demons,
devils or monsters and I'll show you. And they do
it by making the image cute. Is it like sort
of the equivalent of blasphemy, but instead of against the gods,
it's against the monster belief. Yeah, And of course it's

(01:10:01):
dangerous to rebuke the monster because no matter how silly
you think it is, no matter how two dimensional the
monster might seem, Uh, there's probably a lot more going
on there than meets the eyes. Totally, you know, I
was thinking one other way to clarify what might be
happening here. I don't know, Maybe maybe this won't be
any additional clarity. But are there any monsters we can
think of that have not undergone this process where there

(01:10:23):
are no cute versions of them? Were almost no cute
versions of them. There's not any pervasive attempt in the
culture to make a toothless version of the creature. Well,
if we're looking at Japanese demons, I would say that
the tingo is probably an interesting case of this. Now
that's not to say they are no cute tingu. You
can certainly find them. I found them just doing image

(01:10:45):
searches for them for the English word tingu. But you
think they're less prevalent. I'm getting the you know, somebody
with more experience with Japanese culture and pop culture can
maybe chime in on this, but it seems like there's
less of it. You do see tingu showing up in
video games and manga and all other forms of media,
but they tend to retain a certain seriousness that is

(01:11:08):
lacking from you know, again, the Kappa. You don't see
Kappa snatching livers out of anuses as much anymore. But
in these cases, the tingoo still tends to retain a
certain regal character and a and a certain dangerous element
as well. So I should probably talk about what the
tingoo is though for anyone who who's not familiar. Alright,

(01:11:29):
So the Tingo. They are a warrior class of monsters
who reside in the mountain forest of Mount to Karama,
north of Kyoto, and their hybridity is that of a
bird and a man. Usually they're described as having a
humanoid body but with glowing eyes and a long red beak,
and sometimes that beak is more depicted as a long nose.
So I imagine if you've ever played a video game

(01:11:51):
and there's a character that seems to have a mask
with a long red nose, that's essentially a Tingo. So
they have feathered wings, and they're warlike, they're skilled in
martial arts. Humans sometimes seek them out to learn their arts,
but frequently go mad upon encountering them. And then of
course they also have this mischievous side. So if you're
if you're in the mountain woods and you hear something
like laughter, well that might be the laughter of Tingo.

(01:12:13):
If a tree falls, it might have been taken down
by a Tingu wind. And these examples are from the
book by Hruku Wakabashi, the Seven Tingoo Scrolls. So the
thing about the Tingoo is that they were you know,
they varied in form, purpose, and even alignment. Uh. There
were in some cases good Tingou, but for the most

(01:12:34):
part they were portrayed as uh, especially in medieval Japan,
as being evil, vengeful, chaotic spirits. They were enemies of Buddhism.
In some cases they were falling priests who failed to
achieve nirvana, and they were the embodiment of Ma or
Mara or obstacles to Buddhist enlightenment. Now it's worth knowing
that they were different from moral evil in this regard

(01:12:55):
or or Aku and this the tingou were they were.
You can essentially think of them as obstructionists. Uh, you
know they were. They were there to just um to
try and prevent you from achieving enlightenment, and you had
to battle them in your life to get past them.
So they were kind of serious business, you know, and
very high minded monstrous symbols. And I think that's key

(01:13:16):
to whereas these other examples were rural monsters, these were
kind of the peasants monsters. The Tingu was the thinking
man's monster, and that thinks that plays into its survival. Yeah,
So I wonder if something about the level to which
a creature is incorporated into formalized religion rather than just

(01:13:38):
being a part of informal folk creature or deity belief.
That's that's true because there are shrines even uh with
Tingu imagery. So they were more divine in many respects.
And again more more regal, more a property of the
ruling class and the priestly class as well. Um. They
were also tied up with explanations for a lot of

(01:13:59):
serious stuff that was going on in the medieval period,
a lot of the chronic social disorder and instability. They were.
They were symbols of chaos to explain the rise of
the warrior class war and this the political disunity, uh
in what some saw is the final age of Buddha's
teachings at the time. So again, you it's not that

(01:14:19):
you won't find cute tingu out there or just you know,
very pop culturally uh distilled images of the tingu, but
I feel like you see far less of it. The
tingoo still retains a lot of its original potency. Now
that's got me wondering about other monsters in other traditions
around the world and whether the level to which they're

(01:14:41):
incorporated into the formalized version of the local religion determines
how likely they are to be to be euthanized with cuteness. Yeah,
because you look at Christianity and you you don't see this, Uh,
this is not the case with the devil. You see
plenty of cute devils out there. Um, but well, yeah
you do. I guess that's right. I mean I was

(01:15:03):
gonna say, you don't see as many cute demons as
you see like cute vampires and cute werewolves. Yeah, maybe
you have a point there. Maybe there are they are
far more cute vampires and wolves, and there are cute
demons or or some of the more potentially problematic characters.
I guess, like the the Angel of God. How many
how many cute angels wrestling humans are there? And I

(01:15:26):
guess you also have to ask the question like how
how many trolls are there in the culture, Like how
many how many people were willing to take even you know,
sacred cows and make them cute just for the sheer,
you know, just for the giggles of doing it. Well
then again, I mean, so I think there might be
something to that sort of blasphemy equivalent. It's not blasphemy
against the gods, but blasphemy against the monster is a

(01:15:47):
sort of intentional rebuke and the desire to undercut their
perceived power. There might be something to that, But I
don't know if I really feel that. When I like,
if I were to draw a cute vampire fire. I
don't know if i'd feel spiteful in doing that. Well,
I might just feel kind of like, oh, that's funny.
You can't imagine someone going get away from me, baby Satan.

(01:16:11):
You have no power over me. Here, get me behind me,
baby Satan. So another thing I was talking to Lauren
Vogelbaum about was was about this question of what contributes
to the transformation of terrifying monsters into these cute versions
of themselves. And she made a point that I thought
was really interesting. She said, in the context of Japanese
depictions of cute monsters in manga and anime um, what

(01:16:35):
if it's the creeping sense of delayed adulthood and the
extension of childhood that we see in a lot of
cultures in the twentieth century and especially the second half
of the twentieth century and in the twenty first century.
I mean, maybe there are some cultural critics who would
come back and say this is not really a thing,
this is one of those you know, bs trend pieces.

(01:16:56):
But there are a lot of people who would argue
that there is a sort of creeping infantilism among adults
in the in the Western world especially. I mean I
know you've heard that argument, right, Robert, Yeah, yeah, I mean,
and certainly you we it does seem like we remain
many of us remain children longer we we don't, you know,
give up all of our childish things as we as

(01:17:19):
we become adults, right, we tend to stay in school longer,
we get married later. All of these things that are
traditionally in cultures thought of as sort of rites of
passage to adulthood get like delayed later and later into life.
And so it could be possible to think about the
idea of of the cuteness of monster imagery, uh well,

(01:17:39):
being related to the fact that children tend to like
cute imagery. So could the transformation into cuteness represent an
increasingly in fantalize adult cultures attempt to make monster folklore
more palatable, more cuddly for those of us who don't
want to hack scariness. Yeah, I think it could very
well be the case. And of course it comes back
to the idea too, of cute cuteness and monstrosity being

(01:18:02):
upon the same spectrum, being within the same dimension, And
so there's this They're interconnected already anyway, so it's all
the more easier to begin tweaking these images and skewing
their meaning. Now, I want to be clear that I'm
not necessarily endorsing the idea that adults are more infantile
than they used to be. I just know that that
is a theory out there. I'm not sure if I

(01:18:23):
buy it. I remain agnostic. You know. One more thing
that this makes me think about is back to our
episode on euphemisms. Robert, you remember the concept of the
euphemism treadmill and the dysphemism treadmill. I do, yes, So
the euphemism treadmill is this concept. I can't remember who
came up with it. Was it Stephen Pinker? I believe,
So that sounds right if I'm gonna say it's Stephen Pinker,

(01:18:45):
and I can be the one that's wrong. Essentially, the
idea is that you have a euphemism, which is a
term you introduce to be a polite sort of illusion
word indicate a concept that somehow problematic or offensive or
causes people, you know, like, uh, it's the nice new
word that you say. But eventually that word itself tends
to become perceived in the culture as not nice. So,

(01:19:08):
for example, uh, crippled was supposed to be the nice
word for people with disabilities, and then it came to
become a word that you would never want to call
somebody um. And so there's this process like that. But
then the same thing happens the other way with dysphemisms,
with words that we want to use with negative connotations.
So for example, how the word sucks, you know, to say,

(01:19:32):
like that movie really sucked. That used to be an
incredibly vulgar and offensive, just nasty thing to say, and
now little kids say it. I mean, it's everywhere. It's
lost its power to shock and offend. So you have
to keep inventing new words. And so you're saying, essentially,
we have to keep inventing new monsters as well, because
the old ones lose their power. I mean, I think
that could to some extent be true. Like uh that

(01:19:54):
we are we may be seeing some kind of equivalent
of the dysphamism treadmill with the monsters of old. Over time,
they're just going to lose their power to shock and offend,
and they become like the little kids saying sucks, the
little kids running around with cute vampire dolls. And it
really It's super hard nowadays with the Internet, because you
have like a probably a lag time of just hours

(01:20:16):
after a film comes out, before someone has made a
cute button or a cute T shirt or just a
meme based on that monster. Yeah, it happens immediately when
when there's a new movie, it happens. Uh. And I
think it creates a great challenge for say, horror movie
creators to make a traditional monster scary. Again, think about
how many recent vampire movies you can think of that

(01:20:38):
have really scary vampires. They've sort of lost their power,
haven't they. Yeah, it's if you you just can't trot
off the same vampire over and over again because nobody's
buying it anymore. Right. I mean, when Bella Legostie first
showed up on screens, he had people screaming in the
aisles of theaters. Now you watch it and bell Leghostie
is great, but he's not scary. Yeah. We often forget
just how how terrifying that performance actually was, and he

(01:20:59):
is if you if you look at it with new eyes. Yeah,
especially if you knew that he would end up in
Edward movies. That's that's true. All right. Well, there you
have it. We have explored the monstrous, we've explored the cute,
and we have explored the bridge between. I want to
know from you out there, what do you think is
going on psychologically culturally? What is happening when we take

(01:21:22):
these horrifying images and creatures and make them into cute
plush dolls to cuddle with? Why do we keep doing it?
And what effect does it have on the culture? Yeah,
what are your favorite examples of this process? And what monsters,
if any, have not gone cute? Uh? And for how
long will they remain that way? As always, you can
find us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,

(01:21:44):
and Instagram. And hey, on Facebook, we have this wonderful
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host themselves. And uh hey also Stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. That's the mother ship. That's we'll find
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And if you want to get in touch with us
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(01:22:06):
can always email us at blow the Mind at how
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