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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the Old Vault. This time we're

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Speaker 1: doing an episode from October, right, Yeah, this one is

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Speaker 1: the Monstrosity Cuteness Spectrum, and this is a lot of fun.

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Speaker 1: We get into some Japanese traditions, Japanese monsters, and especially

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Speaker 1: Japanese monsters that have been transformed, uh from from from

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Speaker 1: hideous murderous creatures into cute mascots and what that transformation means.

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Speaker 1: All right, well, let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, Robert, have you

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Speaker 1: seen all these cute Jason Vorhees dolls and cartoons fan

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Speaker 1: art all over the Internet? Of course you have. I've

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Speaker 1: at least seen some of it, but I know you

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Speaker 1: shared with me an image of Jason plush doll, and

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Speaker 1: I had not encountered that specific cute horror before. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So he's got the machete and there's blood on the machete.

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Speaker 1: But he's adorable, but he has blood on it, like

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Speaker 1: you know, murder weapons. I mean, even if we didn't

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Speaker 1: know who he is, the context here is that this

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Speaker 1: is a killer. Yeah. He's got a huge head, huge

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Speaker 1: low set eyes. He just looks so sweet, little stumpy limbs.

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Speaker 1: He's like a little cute baby Jason. And there are

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Speaker 1: cute Freddy Krueger's in the same way, Cute Freddy Krueger cartoons, dolls, toys, uh,

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Speaker 1: things all over the internet. And you've seen the cute vampires,

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Speaker 1: the cute werewolves, cute versions of the girl from the Ring.

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Speaker 1: I looked it up that exists cute predators from the

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Speaker 1: movie Predator. I saw that. That's that's kind of easy

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Speaker 1: because the predator already has a sort of baby shaped head.

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Speaker 1: You just got to make eyes bigger. They're cute xeno morphs.

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Speaker 1: You'd think that'd be difficult to do, but they're all

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Speaker 1: over the internet. What is with this epidemic of monsters

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Speaker 1: originally imagined to be horrifying, threatening to haunt our dreams,

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Speaker 1: to chase us through our nightmares, to murder us and

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Speaker 1: our friends, and instead we're making all these versions of

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Speaker 1: them that are adorable with infantile characteristics that you just

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Speaker 1: want to hug and snuggle. It seems inevitable, doesn't it,

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Speaker 1: even even in weird cases like, for instance, the Babba Duke,

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Speaker 1: which is like a child murdering monster, right, And then

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Speaker 1: the same with penny Wise, the clown. Like you would

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Speaker 1: think that penny Wise, this thing that appears as a

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Speaker 1: clown in order to you know, drain the essence out

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Speaker 1: of children and pull them into horrify them and pull

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Speaker 1: them into sewers. You would think that would be beyond

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Speaker 1: our ability to make cute. And yet just the other

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Speaker 1: day I was looking at a cute pins of penny Wise.

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Speaker 1: I'll cute it up. Yeah, Well, if you want to

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Speaker 1: go in the cosmic direction, how about all the cute

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Speaker 1: illithid monter, the you you know, uh cathuloom with those stuff. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: when cute cute plush catulus. When my son came into

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Speaker 1: my life, but I was, one of the first things

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Speaker 1: we gave him was a plush cthulhu, which he loves,

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Speaker 1: and it's an adorable looking creature. But yeah, he doesn't

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Speaker 1: even know that it is essentially supposed to be a

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Speaker 1: scary monster. I guess it's not funny to children in

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Speaker 1: the same way it is funny to adults. No, that

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Speaker 1: he just sees it as a cool, pretend, little creature.

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Speaker 1: It's like if you encountered snuffle up agus and then

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Speaker 1: somebody said, oh, yes, stuff, Lupagus is actually a patterned

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Speaker 1: after this hideous monster, right, this thing that snorts you

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Speaker 1: up as a liquid through its trunk. Though, I do

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Speaker 1: want to say, before this epidemic of cute cartoon versions

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Speaker 1: and cute dolls and stuff like that of say Freddy Krueger,

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Speaker 1: there is a precedent for this within the horror media itself.

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Speaker 1: Because you've seen the Freddy Krueger movies, right, the Nightmare

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Speaker 1: on Elm Street. Right, I've seen the first one and

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Speaker 1: I've seen the remake, and I like both of those,

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Speaker 1: and the rest it's just mostly ups and just the

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Speaker 1: pop cultural absorption of this ever ridiculous Freddy Krueger that

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Speaker 1: that you know, that that has all these catchphrases and

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Speaker 1: an ingenious kills. Yeah, that's that all just kind of

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Speaker 1: blurs together for me. Well, there there's definitely an arc

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Speaker 1: throughout the series where over time, the Freddy Krueger of

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Speaker 1: the first movie and the first night Nightmare on Elm Street.

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Speaker 1: I think Wes Craven went out of his way to

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Speaker 1: make him not just a threatening monster, the standard kind

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Speaker 1: of monster that will hurt you and chases you, but

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Speaker 1: to make him repulsive and really just nasty. I mean,

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Speaker 1: Freddy Krueger in the first movie is a character who's

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Speaker 1: supposed to be a child murderer, and there are these

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Speaker 1: suggestions of perversity and this this kind of gross creepiness,

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Speaker 1: not just threatening monstrosity, And so from that point, I

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Speaker 1: think it's really amazing that over the arc of the

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Speaker 1: series Freddie becomes sort of almost something like an anti hero,

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Speaker 1: like he's never actually a good guy, but he stops

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Speaker 1: becoming this gross creep that you don't even want to

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Speaker 1: look at, and becomes this jokester who dances and mugs

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Speaker 1: for the camera and has one liners, makes jokes, and

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Speaker 1: he becomes the star of the films. He becomes the

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Speaker 1: reason people watch it, and it's because he's fun and

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Speaker 1: he's comic. He becomes the crypt keeper, he becomes whole Cogan. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then it certainly by Jason versus Freddie, you're probably

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Speaker 1: rooting for one or the other. He is, like, there's

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Speaker 1: kind of a fifty fifty split there that that you

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Speaker 1: may be backing this character in the brawl. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: maybe you could chalk that up in the Freddie movies

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Speaker 1: just to the actor who played in Robert England being

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Speaker 1: a great and likable actor despite the fact that he's

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Speaker 1: settled with this incredibly repulsive role. Uh, maybe Robert England

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Speaker 1: just bleeds through so much that you want to make

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Speaker 1: him more and more likable. Well, it even got to

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Speaker 1: the point when they when the remake of Nightmare Name

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Speaker 1: Street came out, Um, a lot of people didn't like it.

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Speaker 1: I actually really enjoyed it. I thought it was I

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Speaker 1: thought it's a fine Hart film. I didn't like it.

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Speaker 1: You didn't like I. I enjoyed it. But then again,

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Speaker 1: I'm less attached to the series. But but one of

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Speaker 1: the criticisms that I saw level thatt it was how

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Speaker 1: could you make Freddie a pedophile? How could you make

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Speaker 1: this his avert? Make this creepiness in his character so avert,

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Speaker 1: as if that like ruined a hero and not just

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Speaker 1: made a grotesque monster a little creepier. So I think

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Speaker 1: it was always kind of implicitly suggested back in the

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Speaker 1: first movie. Look, I mean they never said that outright

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Speaker 1: that I recall, but it's always there in the fact that,

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Speaker 1: like we were saying, he's not just a threat, he's

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Speaker 1: a creep, he's perverse, right, Yeah, So it's it's interesting

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Speaker 1: to see how people responded to kind of a doubling

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Speaker 1: down on on the grotesque monstrosity of the character in

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Speaker 1: away from the ridiculous pop culture version of the character. Right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the version in the remake is not going to be

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Speaker 1: doing I don't know, Domino's pizza commercials or whatever Freddie

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Speaker 1: was doing in the eighties. But of course Freddy Krueger

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Speaker 1: and the nutmar On Elm Street series is not the

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Speaker 1: only series where we see a monstrous, horrifying character transformed

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Speaker 1: over time into something that's more approachable, more likable, more identifiable,

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Speaker 1: maybe even kind of snugly. This happens a lot in

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Speaker 1: horror literature and even in horror folklore. Yeah. Yeah, we're

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Speaker 1: definitely going to get into some examples from from folklore

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Speaker 1: and legend, particularly some examples from Japanese folklore, because as

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Speaker 1: we're talking, we inevitably talk about both monsters and the

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Speaker 1: world of cute like you have to go to Japan

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Speaker 1: because Japan is h is the home not only of

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Speaker 1: some pretty hideous folkloric monsters, but also Kauaii. This this

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Speaker 1: notion of of of like overt just overpowered cuteness, the

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Speaker 1: Hello Kitty level of cuteness that has not only taken

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Speaker 1: Japan by storm, but has has spread its cuttly tentacles

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Speaker 1: into just about every portion of the earth. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: like overclocking the adorability process almost to the point of insanity.

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Speaker 1: And I should also point out that this also goes

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Speaker 1: the other way, of course, just as monsters often become cute,

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Speaker 1: there are also plenty of examples of people taking something

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Speaker 1: cute and making it monstrous. Um, I kind of did

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Speaker 1: it just a few minutes ago talking about snuffle up,

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Speaker 1: I guess. But you inevitably see people who say, do

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Speaker 1: a love crafty and take on totoro or And then

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Speaker 1: there's a whole area of Kauai known as Kauai and noir,

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Speaker 1: which is like dark cute, where they have something that

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Speaker 1: pretty much intentionally has a lag or maybe a tentacle

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Speaker 1: in both the cute and the monstrous content bucket. I

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Speaker 1: feel like this is something that very often happens in

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Speaker 1: comedy animation. I think you know, shows like South Park

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Speaker 1: and Futurama and Simpsons and stuff like that always have

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Speaker 1: a scene at some point where a very cute animal

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Speaker 1: turns out to be a horrifying killer. Yeah, So in

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Speaker 1: today's episode, we're gonna explore this. We're gonna explore what

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Speaker 1: is the relationship between the monstrous and the cute? Why

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Speaker 1: is there there this in arresting interplay? And in doing that,

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Speaker 1: we're going to, of course discuss a little bit about

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Speaker 1: what a monster is. So I think we've hit that

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Speaker 1: harder in previous episodes. Here stuff to blow your mind.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about what it is to be cute,

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Speaker 1: what's going on when something cute hijacks our brain? And

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Speaker 1: then at the end of the episode, we're going to

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Speaker 1: look to really three specific examples of Japanese monsters that

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Speaker 1: may or may not be transformed into something cute. We'll

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Speaker 1: be discussing the Only, the Kappa, and the Tingu. All right, Robert,

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Speaker 1: what is a monster? Oh? Well, you know it's it's

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Speaker 1: it's like cute. It's like pornography. We know it when

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Speaker 1: we see it. But if you if you really have to,

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Speaker 1: you know, if you really force somebody to to define

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Speaker 1: it what you tend to think about something that is

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Speaker 1: awesome inform or size. It's novel and it's chimerical combination

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Speaker 1: of natural forms. You know, like it's got the head

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Speaker 1: of a sea horse in the body of a cow.

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Speaker 1: That's a monster um or you know, you know where

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Speaker 1: it's just a giant sea horse. A sea horse the

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Speaker 1: size of the school bus would also be a monster.

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Speaker 1: I subscribe to the Metallica theory of monster dum, which

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Speaker 1: is that a monster is the thing that should not be.

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Speaker 1: It's a thing that you behold and realized that it

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Speaker 1: is not only not something you recognize from nature, but

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Speaker 1: it's something that you do not wish nature had. Now,

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Speaker 1: obviously we violate those norms all the time because we

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Speaker 1: get into monsters. We we find ourselves at home thinking

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Speaker 1: about monsters, and we kind of do wish there was

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Speaker 1: a giant mummy crocodile with laser eyes. Right, But at

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Speaker 1: least in theory, the thing a monster is is it

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Speaker 1: violates natural categories in some way, and it horrifies you,

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Speaker 1: makes you afraid, makes you not want it to be there.

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Speaker 1: And as we discussed in our our episode, the first monster,

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Speaker 1: which which came out previously for for this year's Halloween. Um,

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Speaker 1: there's often a message there, if not a message that

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Speaker 1: is tied up in the monster's form, then tied up

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Speaker 1: in the monsters presence or in the stories about it, like,

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Speaker 1: this monster is a danger to you because of whiny,

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Speaker 1: because you went somewhere, or you did some thing, or

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Speaker 1: you're engaged in a culture that went somewhere, did something. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Rarely do monsters appear in folklore without some kind of

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Speaker 1: warning or social message. Right, Okay, so that's monsters in

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Speaker 1: a nutshell. But but how about cute? Cute uh is

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Speaker 1: in a way easier to nail down, but also just

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Speaker 1: as ambiguous as monstrosity. Well, it's one of those things

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Speaker 1: that everybody can identify it by sight. You know, you

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Speaker 1: can tell, well, that's cute, that's not, that's cute, that's not.

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Speaker 1: But when you're asked to give a set of criteria

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Speaker 1: for how you're making the decision, you'd you'd often come

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Speaker 1: up at a loss for words. Right, what's certainly the

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Speaker 1: eyes of the beholder. But we can tease it apart

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Speaker 1: to a certain extent. We can say, look at almost

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Speaker 1: a universal images of the cute and see what's connecting

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Speaker 1: with us there, and then figure out why it's connecting

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Speaker 1: with us. So, for instance, kittens, babies, or of course

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Speaker 1: Hello Kitty, which is essentially a kitten combined with a baby,

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Speaker 1: or a small child with psychedelic color schemes, psychedelic color schemes,

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Speaker 1: and of course many cute creatures of either real ones

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Speaker 1: or fanciful ones. What do they have? They have big

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Speaker 1: adorable eyes or perhaps big jowls, baby like cheeks. They're

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Speaker 1: kind of Winston Churchill's yeah no, no, so yeah. There

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Speaker 1: do appear to be some biological roots to our recognition

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Speaker 1: of cuteness. It does seem to go into our mammalian

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Speaker 1: brains and not just into cultural categories. So culture may

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Speaker 1: very well inform a lot of what we find cute

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Speaker 1: downstream of these biological cues. So, in his eighteen seventy

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Speaker 1: two book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,

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Speaker 1: Charles Darwin suggested that natural selection is probably gonna favor

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Speaker 1: creatures which, in infancy possess features that cause the adults

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Speaker 1: of that species to protect them and take care of

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Speaker 1: their needs. Right, if you are a species that has

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Speaker 1: a genome that says we usually give birth to babies

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Speaker 1: we find repulsive and don't want anything to do with that.

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Speaker 1: Species isn't going to do very well, right, or at

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Speaker 1: least you're gonna have a situation like the Komodo dragon,

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Speaker 1: where the young of the komodo dragon, they're pretty much

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Speaker 1: they're on their own right, and they have to protect

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Speaker 1: themselves from such threats as adult komodo drags exactly. So

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Speaker 1: this would be in species that need to spend a

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Speaker 1: lot of time protecting and caring for their young. This

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Speaker 1: is something we see in mammals right right, and other species,

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Speaker 1: but especially in mammals. So a lot of Darwin's book

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Speaker 1: deals with things like the screams of infants and how

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Speaker 1: the scream of an infant elicits parental attention. But usually

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Speaker 1: if an object is screaming at you, you don't you

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Speaker 1: just you know, don't you just find it annoying? Like

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Speaker 1: you want to get away from it. Like if there's

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Speaker 1: just us an orb in a room screaming at you,

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to care for it. I would run away. Correct. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: If if a human on a train is screaming, um,

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Speaker 1: either may be you want to find out what's happening.

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Speaker 1: You might even want to help. But there's there's at

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Speaker 1: least that question mark phase of the screening, Right, what

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Speaker 1: is going on here? Let me find out so that

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Speaker 1: I can act accordingly. Yeah, it's attention getting, But the

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Speaker 1: demands of an infant have to be more than simply

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Speaker 1: attention getting to be adaptive. They have to be sharpened

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Speaker 1: to appeal to specific vulnerabilities in the adult caregiver's brain,

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Speaker 1: like vulnerabilities that soften anger responses and encourage protectiveness, and

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Speaker 1: encourage generosity and sharing of resources and so forth. So

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Speaker 1: something about the infant version of an animal has to

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Speaker 1: convince the adult version of that animal to feel an

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Speaker 1: attachment and to make sacrifices on behalf of this little creature.

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Speaker 1: Then we'll talk about this more in a second. But

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Speaker 1: in some species, these appeals for parenting could be straightforwardly chemical, right,

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Speaker 1: Pheromones and scent would be examples. But couldn't these biological

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Speaker 1: appeals also be visual? It makes sense, right, that's and

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Speaker 1: one of the most immediate ways to interact with with

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Speaker 1: an object or being is you see them and then

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Speaker 1: you respond. Right. So, in the middle of the twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: the Austrian ethologist Conrad Lawrenz, who I guess we should

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Speaker 1: maybe acknowledged it's always weird, Like should you bring this

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Speaker 1: up or not? He was also a Nazi after World

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Speaker 1: War Two repudiated his views. I'm not aware that his

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Speaker 1: ideology played any role in coming up with this schema

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Speaker 1: we're about to talk about, but I guess it's worth acknowledging.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, I think it's always worth noting

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Speaker 1: when a scientist has that in their background, because in

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Speaker 1: some cases, you you definitely have science that it was

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Speaker 1: skewed or compromised by his association with the Third Reich. Uh,

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Speaker 1: So you have you have to at least acknowledge that

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Speaker 1: it was there in order to determine if it was

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Speaker 1: a factor. Yeah, I mean, like you had people doing

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Speaker 1: science that was ideologically determined, not very objective. But I

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Speaker 1: don't think that's necessarily the case in this case. So

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Speaker 1: Lawrence plunged into this field by observing animal species and

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Speaker 1: coming up with what's known as the Kinchen schema or

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Speaker 1: the baby schema. It's a list of features that he

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Speaker 1: believed were sculpted in order to trigger or release caregiving

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Speaker 1: behaviors in adult animals, and he gave about seven criteria.

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Speaker 1: So let me know what you think about these. Robert

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Speaker 1: A large head Okay, yeah, babies have big heads. Predominance

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Speaker 1: of the brain capsule. So that's going to mean not

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Speaker 1: just a large head, but sort of the large forehead,

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Speaker 1: like the swelling of the upper part of the head,

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Speaker 1: large and low lying eyes, a bulging cheek region. There's

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Speaker 1: the Churchill jowls, what we're talking about, short and thick extremities.

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Speaker 1: A springy or elastic consistency. Yeah, they when need when

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Speaker 1: you poke them. In a soft body, there's your plush stall.

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Speaker 1: And finally, clumsy movements, yes, the toddling of the toddler. Right.

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Speaker 1: And subsequent studies have found evidence to partially support Lorenz's schema.

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Speaker 1: So this is one reason to think that, you know,

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Speaker 1: even if he's some kind of crazy ideology, there might

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Speaker 1: be something to this because subsequent studies seem to find

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Speaker 1: some of the same stuff is true. So I'll mention

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Speaker 1: one study from two thousand nine published in Ethology by

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Speaker 1: Melanie Glocker at All, and this is called baby schema

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Speaker 1: in Infant Faces induces cuteness, perception and motivation for caretaking

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Speaker 1: in adults. And what they did in this study was

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Speaker 1: they used real photos of infants digitally manipulated to accentuate

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Speaker 1: or to downplay some of the features that are in

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Speaker 1: line with Lorenz's criteria, and so among a group of undergraduates,

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Speaker 1: the study found that the faces manipulated towards the criteria,

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Speaker 1: so meaning they manipulated them to have larger eyes or

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Speaker 1: a rounder face or a higher forehead, were judged to

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Speaker 1: be cuter and elicited greater motivation for caregiving. People said

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Speaker 1: they were more likely to give care to these, uh,

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Speaker 1: these more baby scheme of faces than the ones where

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Speaker 1: they really downplayed those criteria, giving them smaller eye as,

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Speaker 1: smaller foreheads and narrower face and stuff like that. Huh.

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Speaker 1: Now I've got a picture here, Yeah, I'm I'm looking

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Speaker 1: at this right now. So, um, basically we have an

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Speaker 1: array of six images, three per row, So we have

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Speaker 1: this grid of baby heads here that we're looking at.

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Speaker 1: And um and in the idea that there's a change

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Speaker 1: in uh like cuteness from left to right. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: you've got like normal baby heads in the middle, and

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Speaker 1: then on the right you've got ultra babified baby faces

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Speaker 1: with like these gigantic eyes, really round faces, really sort

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Speaker 1: of low faces with large foreheads, big brain capsules. And

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Speaker 1: then on the right you've got unbabified baby faces that

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Speaker 1: look sort of more like the kid in the omen

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Speaker 1: or they look more adult. Basically, they look more like

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Speaker 1: old men, you know. They're they're kind of in that

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Speaker 1: category of like the older baby babies that we look

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Speaker 1: at them and maybe you you cringe a little bit

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Speaker 1: before you tell the the parents that it's a beautiful baby. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And they tend to have like smaller eyes, a smaller forehead,

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Speaker 1: a narrower head, and a less rounding of the skull.

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Speaker 1: That they look they look like weird adults rather than babies,

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Speaker 1: you know. And it's interesting to to look at this

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Speaker 1: and think of it in light of our basically our

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Speaker 1: evolved reaction to these faces. I was looking at a

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Speaker 1: study that said the scientists have used magneto and cephalography

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Speaker 1: to observe a seventh of a second response time in

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Speaker 1: adults to unfamiliar infant faces, but of course not adult faces.

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Speaker 1: And that's going to that's uh, that difference is gonna

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Speaker 1: be manifest in this array of faces as well. Like

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Speaker 1: the cuter the baby, the more immediate your response to it.

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Speaker 1: I imagine. So, like, you see this cute baby face

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Speaker 1: with the highly babified features, and you're like, whoa that

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Speaker 1: I need to pay attention to that. Yeah, I've got

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Speaker 1: to look at that, and if it needs something, I

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Speaker 1: guess I will go buy it some milk or some

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Speaker 1: pudding or whatever it is. Baby's eat right. Put zip

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Speaker 1: ties on all my cabinets is horrible plastic things, and

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Speaker 1: all my wall plugs. I know. I'm I'm still trying

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Speaker 1: to work through all the baby proofing on my house. Really, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's still some annoying baby proofing that I haven't quite

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Speaker 1: like broken by forcing a grower open. But so, one

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Speaker 1: of the interesting things about the recognition of cuteness and

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Speaker 1: its biological function is that it appears to work not

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Speaker 1: just within species. Now, I can't see any real reason

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Speaker 1: that you would evolve to have a caregiving preference for

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Speaker 1: animals other than your own species. So it might be

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Speaker 1: one of those things that's just a byproduct of something

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Speaker 1: that's highly adaptable. Yeah, I mean, we're all, we're related

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Speaker 1: to all these other mammalian creatures and and they're all

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Speaker 1: they all have the basically basically the same survival um

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Speaker 1: techniques in place in terms of parental care for the infant. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's kind of obvious from our experiences with kittens

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Speaker 1: and puppies and so forth. But experiments do confirm that

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Speaker 1: our appreciation for cuteness goes beyond the infant Homo sapiens.

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Speaker 1: One example is a study I found by Anthony Little

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Speaker 1: from two thousand twelve published again in Ethology called Manipulation

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Speaker 1: of Infant like Traits Effects Perceived Cuteness of infinite adults

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Speaker 1: and cat faces. So it found that among images of

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Speaker 1: three types of faces, babies, adults, and cats, first of all,

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Speaker 1: people found the babies and the cats cuter than adults.

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Speaker 1: But then also when the faces from all three categories

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Speaker 1: were manipulated to have baby scheme of characteristics, for example,

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Speaker 1: decreasing the jaws, eyes, and increasing the forehead height, people

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Speaker 1: found them cuter. And this worked for adult faces, for

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Speaker 1: human baby faces, and for cat faces. Okay, so getting

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Speaker 1: into kind of the Betty boot area there of like

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Speaker 1: the weird like infantile but but arguably attractive adult female. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's just seeming to imply that we have the

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Speaker 1: same kind of caregiving response or cuteness response to faces

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Speaker 1: of all different types of creatures, no matter what age

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Speaker 1: and no matter what species. Even if there's a face

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Speaker 1: and you make these certain types of changes to the face,

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Speaker 1: we think it's cute usually and we respond with all

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Speaker 1: you know, zip tide, the chemical cabinet. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: interesting to think of it in terms of survival adaptations

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Speaker 1: for non human animals when you think of of of

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Speaker 1: domesticated animals, cats and dogs, because certainly I think that

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Speaker 1: I've certainly read some studies that argue for the the

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Speaker 1: the cat's ability to essentially hijack us by making us

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Speaker 1: think it's a baby on some level, you know. And

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Speaker 1: and and I think dogs do that too to a

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Speaker 1: large extent. Is it's certainly with puppies. So I could

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Speaker 1: see it as a situation where uh an infant dog

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Speaker 1: or or cat that is either found or it's obtained

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Speaker 1: when the parents are killed like suddenly, those are less

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Speaker 1: likely to be then killed and eaten or skinned or

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Speaker 1: left for dead by the humans who have found it

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Speaker 1: if it hits those same traders. You know. Now, another

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Speaker 1: study I came across, the two thousand twelve Japanese study

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Speaker 1: publishing POS one, and they tested the effect of viewing

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Speaker 1: Kauai images are cute images on attentiveness, and they found

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Speaker 1: that individuals who viewed infinite animal images performed tasks better

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Speaker 1: than those who viewed adult animals. Yeah, that seems weird. Like, so,

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Speaker 1: just if you had to have a calendar at your desk,

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Speaker 1: have the baby animals calendar as opposed to the grown

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Speaker 1: up animals calendar. Huh, I don't know. I feel I

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Speaker 1: feel unfairly skeptical of that result. Has that been replicated? Well, well,

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Speaker 1: let's let's let's see. So it's not just a matter.

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Speaker 1: According to this study of cute things making us happier

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Speaker 1: or amusing us, they also allegedly improve performance in quote

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Speaker 1: tasks that require behavioral carefulness. Oh, I can see that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so it's not it's not so much. There's not a

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Speaker 1: magical effect going on here. This is the idea that

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Speaker 1: the cute visible stimuli may actually narrow the breath of

423
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:03,560
Speaker 1: attentional focus. I can see that. No, like that seeing

424
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:06,600
Speaker 1: a baby face would put the mind into a don't

425
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:09,840
Speaker 1: drop the baby gear exactly, and then you take that

426
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:12,600
Speaker 1: gear and you apply it to working in your spreadsheet.

427
00:24:12,680 --> 00:24:15,640
Speaker 1: I can see that. Yeah, Okay, I understand the mechanism. Now, now,

428
00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:18,439
Speaker 1: different studies have also looked at the effects of cute

429
00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:23,200
Speaker 1: marketing on consumer strength of course, uh, and and also

430
00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:27,000
Speaker 1: on whether it has a to what extended effects indulgent behavior,

431
00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:30,199
Speaker 1: because the whole don't drop the baby mentality. Do you

432
00:24:30,240 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 1: want your consumer using that that kind of mentality when

433
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:36,919
Speaker 1: they're potentially behind your product, right, you want to encourage

434
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:40,000
Speaker 1: them to drop the wallet. Yeah, they found that, uh

435
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:43,159
Speaker 1: that for some people, cute images with big eyes or

436
00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:46,480
Speaker 1: baby cheeks seem to induce more careful or strained behavior.

437
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:50,320
Speaker 1: But uh, but again not every case. But it's an

438
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:58,159
Speaker 1: interesting additional study related to this whole idea of intensified attentiveness. Now,

439
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:00,600
Speaker 1: it's also worth noting that when we're talking about cute,

440
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:03,200
Speaker 1: we're inevitably talking about visual stimulant a lot here, because

441
00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:04,919
Speaker 1: that's going to be the thing that's bound up in

442
00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:08,159
Speaker 1: either a you know, a plushed all of of a

443
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:12,479
Speaker 1: horror monster or Halloween cost him that's derived from it. Yeah. Now,

444
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:15,760
Speaker 1: there are obviously also cute sounds, right yeah, yeah, the

445
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:19,480
Speaker 1: cute baby sound, but even the cute baby smell. I

446
00:25:19,520 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about this, but you know, obviously, if

447
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:25,080
Speaker 1: you've ever smelled a baby. It's fabulous and it's hard

448
00:25:25,119 --> 00:25:27,240
Speaker 1: to really put a key and put put a finger

449
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:30,480
Speaker 1: on what's happening there? Like, why is this an attractive

450
00:25:30,560 --> 00:25:33,320
Speaker 1: smell to smell a baby's head? I'm sorry, I have

451
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:35,160
Speaker 1: no idea what you're talking about. Really, well, the next

452
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:38,080
Speaker 1: time you're around a baby, do yourself a favor. Uh

453
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:41,119
Speaker 1: smell It sounds creepy unless it's your baby. Well, no,

454
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 1: you can. You can ask you and say, hey, I've

455
00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:49,240
Speaker 1: been I've been reading some studies and in uh you know,

456
00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: in the name of science, would you allow me to

457
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:54,719
Speaker 1: smell your baby's head? Yeah? Have you seen that product

458
00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:59,440
Speaker 1: on the market that is like a bottled cathead smell? No,

459
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:02,960
Speaker 1: an actual cat's head or a cathead biscuit? I think, Oh,

460
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 1: I don't know what's what is a cat head biscuit?

461
00:26:05,560 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 1: It's just a big old biscuit that's roughly the size

462
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:10,720
Speaker 1: of a cat's head. I'm not sure which what what

463
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:15,160
Speaker 1: region uh that that is found in? I guess somewhere

464
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:17,920
Speaker 1: in the south here. I think it's actually supposed to

465
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:20,800
Speaker 1: be a cat's head. It's like a perfume you can

466
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:22,760
Speaker 1: buy that's supposed to smell like a cat head. But

467
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:26,280
Speaker 1: cats don't really smell like anything if if it's unless

468
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:28,679
Speaker 1: it's a dirty cat like they tend to have. Like

469
00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 1: maybe they smell like pennies, a little bit like batteries,

470
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:34,399
Speaker 1: but that's about the extent of it. Uh, don't they

471
00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:38,760
Speaker 1: usually smell like sulfur? We're not the ones I'm hanging stone.

472
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 1: All right, Well, so on that note, let's take a

473
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 1: quick break and we come back. We will get more

474
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:50,600
Speaker 1: into this conflict, this battle between cute and monstrosity. Thank you,

475
00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:54,240
Speaker 1: thank Alright, so we're back. So we've talked about cute,

476
00:26:54,400 --> 00:26:57,520
Speaker 1: We've talked about monsters. We've talked about them mostly is

477
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:01,360
Speaker 1: distant islands, you know, entire really separate from each other.

478
00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 1: So on one hand, you have the isle of misfit

479
00:27:03,400 --> 00:27:05,600
Speaker 1: toys and then you have monster Island on the other.

480
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:08,920
Speaker 1: I suppose waiter the misfit toys not also monsters. Well, yeah,

481
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:10,600
Speaker 1: I guess they're kind of monstrous. What would be the

482
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:13,199
Speaker 1: what would be the cute island? Oh, it's that island

483
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:15,240
Speaker 1: in Japan that's got all the cats on it. Cat

484
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:17,520
Speaker 1: have an island there, you go, that'll work. So it's

485
00:27:17,520 --> 00:27:21,200
Speaker 1: the difference between cat Haven cat Haven Island and uh

486
00:27:21,200 --> 00:27:24,679
Speaker 1: and Monster Island. But we have to have to wonder

487
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:28,840
Speaker 1: are these two states all that different? Are they really

488
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:33,200
Speaker 1: two separate things or are they different points on a spectrum. Well,

489
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 1: I ran across a really thought provoking paper titled Monstrous

490
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:42,119
Speaker 1: slash Cute Notes on the abivalent ambivalent nature of cuteness,

491
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:46,560
Speaker 1: and this is by social scientist Maja Rozozowska Branchinska. I

492
00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:49,680
Speaker 1: hope I pronounced that at least halfway right, but I

493
00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 1: will try and link to this paper in the landing

494
00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 1: page for this episode stuff tob your mind dot com

495
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:57,560
Speaker 1: so you can see it for yourself. Um, Maja bebe

496
00:27:57,600 --> 00:27:59,760
Speaker 1: as I will refer to her. She dives into all

497
00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:03,960
Speaker 1: of it, noting that there's a certain ambiguity and hybridity

498
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:09,159
Speaker 1: to both monsters and cute entities. So they're cuties, if

499
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:12,000
Speaker 1: you will cut So they're not just different things, but

500
00:28:12,119 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: there's something lying along the same scale. Maybe yeah, that

501
00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:17,719
Speaker 1: you can think of them as both both of them

502
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:21,639
Speaker 1: as exaggerated states. And she also points out that cute

503
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:28,080
Speaker 1: images boast safe aesthetics that indicate harmless ethics. So I

504
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:31,159
Speaker 1: think it's perplexing because infants, I think we can all

505
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:35,480
Speaker 1: agree are holy, blameless creatures. M I'm not saying you

506
00:28:35,520 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: can't look at one in in horror or fear, but

507
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 1: that horror or fear is generally tied to the the

508
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: ethical nature of the creature itself. You mean, not tied right, Yeah,

509
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. It's generally not tied to the ethical nature

510
00:28:47,320 --> 00:28:49,800
Speaker 1: of the creature itself. It's tied to you know, your

511
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:53,520
Speaker 1: Maybe it's tied feelings of commitment or uh, you know,

512
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 1: uncertainty about the state of the world, or I guess

513
00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: the closest you could come to having an absolute, authentic

514
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:02,920
Speaker 1: are to the creature of the infant is to just

515
00:29:02,960 --> 00:29:05,719
Speaker 1: be appalled at what it does and it's diaper, you know.

516
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:08,920
Speaker 1: But well, you could also have some kind of doctrine,

517
00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 1: I don't know, some original sin type thing. Well, yes,

518
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:15,400
Speaker 1: but that's that's you're really You're you're cheating at that point.

519
00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 1: I think you're creating a narrative that actually shames an infant,

520
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:21,320
Speaker 1: and so shame on you for doing it. And of

521
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:22,840
Speaker 1: course you might have some sort of response to just

522
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:26,120
Speaker 1: sort of the chaotic nature of infants. But if infants

523
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:30,120
Speaker 1: are chaotic, and they certainly can be they're definitely chaotic neutral,

524
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 1: if not chaotic good, They're they're not chaotic evil. Okay,

525
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,920
Speaker 1: you've convinced me. Infants are, okay, Robert. Now, Likewise, the

526
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,800
Speaker 1: monster is traditionally a thing as rotten on the inside

527
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: as it is on the outside. The monster with a

528
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: heart of gold is an exception, granted of a pretty

529
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:48,960
Speaker 1: widespread exception at this point, but it's an exception that

530
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:51,160
Speaker 1: proves the rule. Well, it's kind of like those, uh

531
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: the exception that proves the rule. On the other side

532
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:56,680
Speaker 1: would be those evil baby movies exactly like a possessed

533
00:29:56,680 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 1: demon infant or something. Yeah, but generally, like a mom,

534
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,040
Speaker 1: monster is as evil it is as it is ugly,

535
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:07,160
Speaker 1: and a cute baby or cartoon character is as sweet

536
00:30:07,280 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 1: as it is visually cute. Now, I like this, uh,

537
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:13,880
Speaker 1: this idea of cuteness being not just a thing that

538
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:16,520
Speaker 1: we respond to as caregivers and that makes us want

539
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:18,920
Speaker 1: to give up our protection and resources for it, but

540
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 1: it's also something that signals harmlessness because it makes me

541
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:27,120
Speaker 1: think about the human domestication of animals. Uh. Like, for example,

542
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: if you look at dogs, the domestic dog that we

543
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: have today evolved both through natural but mostly artificial selection

544
00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:38,240
Speaker 1: from some type of wolf like candid species within the

545
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: history of anatomically modern humans. Now, because humans were selecting

546
00:30:43,440 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 1: which features to breed into their dogs, I think we

547
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:50,480
Speaker 1: often assume that cute dog breeds where the adult of

548
00:30:50,520 --> 00:30:53,640
Speaker 1: the dog is very cute. We're bred for cuteness simply

549
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:56,840
Speaker 1: for esthetic reasons, right. We wanted them to look cute

550
00:30:56,840 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 1: because we like it. But it's also worth thinking about

551
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: the post stability of a correlation between cuteness and the

552
00:31:04,280 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 1: domesticated affect itself. Like domestic dogs seem to have been

553
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: selected to retain juvenile characteristics into adulthood, and these would

554
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: include things like a wider face, shorter snouts, floppy ears,

555
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:23,959
Speaker 1: a curly tail, but also positive responses to humans. This

556
00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:26,640
Speaker 1: is something you would probably see in like wolf cubs

557
00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:31,800
Speaker 1: or fox cubs, but not in adult wolves or adult foxes.

558
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:35,000
Speaker 1: They're the juvenile characteristics of the wild ancestor or the

559
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:39,760
Speaker 1: wild cousin that are retained into adulthood and the domesticated version,

560
00:31:40,280 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 1: and so cuteness might not only be something that releases

561
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:47,200
Speaker 1: caregiving behaviors and adults, but it's literally correlated with the

562
00:31:47,200 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 1: biological transformation of a wild, unruly animal that cannot be

563
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 1: contained and is somewhat dangerous into this friendly, pliable, non

564
00:31:56,800 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 1: threatening domestic companion. Like the cuteness shows that it has

565
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 1: made a biological transformation into something that won't bite you

566
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 1: and in fact might want to snuggle with you. I mean,

567
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 1: that explains that the form of the pug right down

568
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:13,760
Speaker 1: to a t, the pug is essentially a dog that

569
00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:15,880
Speaker 1: we have bread to look as much like a human

570
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:18,880
Speaker 1: infant as possible. Oh yeah, it is a human baby

571
00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:23,160
Speaker 1: with four legs in a tail that can obviously buy you.

572
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 1: Though if if provoked, Um, do pugs have teeth? Really? Yes?

573
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:31,239
Speaker 1: I mean, how much more awful would it be if

574
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 1: we've managed to breathe the teeth out of the dog.

575
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 1: I mean, we've metaphorically bred the teeth out of out

576
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 1: of the dog, but but not literally alright, So that

577
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 1: Maja bebi paper that I was discussing earlier. She also

578
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 1: points a lot of this out about Japanese kauai, that

579
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:52,360
Speaker 1: the term itself the again, this is the Japanese cuteness

580
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:56,960
Speaker 1: or hypercuteness. Kauai derives from the word uh kawa yushi,

581
00:32:57,240 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 1: which principally means shy and embarrassed, as well as vulnerable, small,

582
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 1: and darling, and it's applied to both babies and old people,

583
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:09,560
Speaker 1: perhaps denoting a certain helplessness. And I also seen where

584
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 1: there's a variation on kauai uh, like a variant word

585
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 1: that is that that is used as a put down

586
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:20,520
Speaker 1: that has a negative connotation as meaning pet, pathetic, poor,

587
00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:23,360
Speaker 1: or pitiable in a in a generally negative way. Oh

588
00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:25,800
Speaker 1: so it's like on the playground when a bully says

589
00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:29,640
Speaker 1: the other kid is like all little baby. Yeah. I mean,

590
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:32,560
Speaker 1: it's interesting to bring that up because my my son

591
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 1: is in kindergarten and he's still at the age where

592
00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:38,920
Speaker 1: that is the ultimate put down, Like if you're gonna

593
00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: insult somebody, you you call them a baby, and it's

594
00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:44,560
Speaker 1: the worst thing in the world, to the point where

595
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:49,200
Speaker 1: our cat, if our cat misbehaves, yeah, are then my

596
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 1: son will say, oh baby, mochi or or even it

597
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:54,680
Speaker 1: doesn't even have to be a person or a thing.

598
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 1: It can just be a general idea, or it can

599
00:33:57,120 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: be an object. But and you just put baby in

600
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 1: front it, and that's like the ultimate biglittling of it,

601
00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:05,920
Speaker 1: Like the toaster won't work. It's a baby. Yes, baby toaster.

602
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:08,560
Speaker 1: Like I staid of saying stupid toaster or or some

603
00:34:08,800 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 1: or some other more adult um word, you just say

604
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:16,960
Speaker 1: baby toaster. Uh. But that's funny because I think the

605
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 1: literature reflects that children do respond well to these infantile

606
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:24,440
Speaker 1: features as well, right, Like children like the baby schema,

607
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 1: children like cuteness a lot. Yeah. I mean you just

608
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:30,040
Speaker 1: have to look at their stuffed animals and and there's

609
00:34:30,080 --> 00:34:33,520
Speaker 1: the proof. So the idea is, perhaps the monsters and

610
00:34:33,560 --> 00:34:36,880
Speaker 1: the cute are the same energy applied in opposite directions.

611
00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 1: In fact, Maga baby rights of cuteness as a pendulum,

612
00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:44,480
Speaker 1: it quote works inevitably as a sort of pendulum, swinging

613
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:46,640
Speaker 1: to and fro and thus being able to play its

614
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:49,680
Speaker 1: role only up to a certain point where the sweetness

615
00:34:49,760 --> 00:34:53,120
Speaker 1: becomes a mock and a pitiful or ironic alter ego

616
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 1: of itself. And I would wonder if the same holds

617
00:34:56,160 --> 00:35:00,680
Speaker 1: true of monsters as well, because if if monster rousness

618
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:04,759
Speaker 1: and cuteness, if these are essentially one slider, and you know,

619
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:07,600
Speaker 1: think of it as like photoshopry of a slider between

620
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:10,759
Speaker 1: dark and light or something, or you know, or it's

621
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:13,600
Speaker 1: a slider for shade or tint or something. Could you

622
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:16,760
Speaker 1: push the sliders so far in not only the cute direction,

623
00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:22,080
Speaker 1: but the monster direction, so that the monstrous thing becomes ridiculous. Now,

624
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 1: obviously all of this this is in the eye of

625
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:27,480
Speaker 1: the beholder, but I instantly thought of rat thinks. I

626
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:30,960
Speaker 1: thought of some of the monsters from the Spawn comics,

627
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 1: and I thought of the monsters from the wonderful movie Freaked,

628
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: which are very much modeled after I think rat thinks.

629
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 1: So rat thinks, these are like these monsters for em

630
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:44,040
Speaker 1: bulging eyes, um, you know, grotesque smiles and teeth that

631
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:47,719
Speaker 1: are that would that were shown illustrated to ride a

632
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 1: hot rod around. And they're not scary, They're not I

633
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:55,160
Speaker 1: wouldn't say they're necessarily cute. But it's like the monstrous

634
00:35:55,680 --> 00:35:58,719
Speaker 1: elements of the character design are pushed to such a

635
00:35:58,719 --> 00:36:03,399
Speaker 1: degree that it's almost impossible to find it frightful anymore. Right,

636
00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:08,319
Speaker 1: It's like you almost intuitively detect excess. Yeah, and it

637
00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:11,839
Speaker 1: becomes funny. Yeah, And and with cute I can think of.

638
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:14,359
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of those you know what when

639
00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:17,440
Speaker 1: you see it examples. But we've all encountered sickeningly sweet,

640
00:36:17,719 --> 00:36:22,160
Speaker 1: sickening lee cute where something has been just designed so

641
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:25,880
Speaker 1: cute that it is almost repulsive. Yeah. Uh. And then

642
00:36:25,960 --> 00:36:27,640
Speaker 1: the only example I can think of off hand is

643
00:36:27,719 --> 00:36:31,120
Speaker 1: that I feel like the character Gur in Invader Zim

644
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 1: this is the Younn Basquez comic and uh in TV series.

645
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:40,080
Speaker 1: The character of Gur is intentionally just so cute looking

646
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:43,640
Speaker 1: that you're it causes revulsion. Well, a lot of times

647
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:46,080
Speaker 1: the revulsion comes in, I think in the addition of

648
00:36:46,239 --> 00:36:50,160
Speaker 1: text or speech, Like I think of the memes where

649
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 1: you've got a kitten and the kitten might just be

650
00:36:53,320 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 1: adorable on its own, but like if you add some

651
00:36:56,080 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: meme text to it, it becomes gross, where the kitten says, like, know,

652
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:04,279
Speaker 1: I made you a cookie, but I eat it it. Yes,

653
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 1: that is that's like linguistically signaling lee cute. Yeah, why

654
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 1: is that? Why does that feel over the edge? It's

655
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 1: like so cute it's unpleasant. No, I don't know why.

656
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:17,080
Speaker 1: I guess it's it kind of falls into the same

657
00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:20,359
Speaker 1: way like a children are when they use grammar incorrectly.

658
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: It can be cute um to to an almost destructive degree,

659
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:29,320
Speaker 1: Like trying to remember there's something that my son would say,

660
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:33,239
Speaker 1: and I actually hesitated to correct him because it was

661
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: so adorable, and then I found it's like, I just

662
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 1: can't do that. It's selfish with me. I need to

663
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 1: teach the boys to speak properly, even if it means

664
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:44,000
Speaker 1: destroying these cute moments. Was he calling like a broken toy,

665
00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 1: a baby or something? No, what was it? He said?

666
00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 1: It was it'll come to me later. I'm sure. So.

667
00:37:52,239 --> 00:37:56,080
Speaker 1: Masja Bebe does not shouldn't push this slighter idea specifically,

668
00:37:56,120 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: but I think I think she would agree with it

669
00:37:57,719 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 1: because she says, quote, it's possible to position both cute

670
00:38:01,680 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: and monstrous in one dimension, the space that Michelle Fhuco

671
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:09,319
Speaker 1: called heterotopia, the place outside the norm, the site of

672
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: revolutionary potential to change, to pose an alternate order where

673
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:17,719
Speaker 1: the coherence between words and reality is no more possible,

674
00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:22,400
Speaker 1: and the paradox is the structuring rule. So it's so

675
00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:25,680
Speaker 1: cute it's insane, or it's so monstrous. Yeah, yeah, I

676
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: mean it's it's like that left craft Ian vibe, like

677
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:30,759
Speaker 1: the monster is so terrifying that you just lose your

678
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:35,279
Speaker 1: entire mind. And likewise, something could be that cute that

679
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,000
Speaker 1: you just you just you can't, you just have to

680
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 1: it kind of gets into the whole theory about the

681
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:43,560
Speaker 1: biting of babies, like the desire to pinch a baby

682
00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:45,879
Speaker 1: because it's so cute. I know you've talked about this before,

683
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:47,799
Speaker 1: but I don't know much about it. What's the deal here?

684
00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:50,239
Speaker 1: We have an older episode, there's what I did with

685
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:54,280
Speaker 1: Julia on this this topic. But it's it's been studied.

686
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:57,000
Speaker 1: Like basically, you see something so cute and you just

687
00:38:57,040 --> 00:38:58,759
Speaker 1: want to you want to bite it, you want to

688
00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:01,400
Speaker 1: pinch it. You know, it could be a kitten or

689
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:04,560
Speaker 1: or a puppy or a child, and it's it's really

690
00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:07,319
Speaker 1: that the cute has become overpowering that it has to

691
00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:11,839
Speaker 1: be counterbalanced with something awful. Huh yeah, so you need

692
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:14,759
Speaker 1: to hand the cute puppy of blood splattered machete like

693
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:18,480
Speaker 1: Jason Doll. It's interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but

694
00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 1: in a way that that blood splattered machete is the pinch.

695
00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:25,200
Speaker 1: It's the counterbalance here. And I wonder if there are

696
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 1: other examples we could look to and and cute iconography

697
00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:31,680
Speaker 1: where we have we have added a little, you know,

698
00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:34,200
Speaker 1: some sort of an adult element, some you know, violence

699
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:38,799
Speaker 1: or terror to something, and it does serve to to

700
00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 1: balance it out and making and prevent us from going

701
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:45,279
Speaker 1: completely insane. All right, well, we've already looked at a

702
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:48,800
Speaker 1: bunch of monsters from you know, modern fiction and modern

703
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:51,279
Speaker 1: horror and stuff like that. I think we should turn

704
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:55,480
Speaker 1: our attention to traditional folkloric monsters and see if they

705
00:39:55,520 --> 00:39:58,440
Speaker 1: make this same transition in our popular culture and and

706
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:02,120
Speaker 1: become cute over time. So let's let's do the case

707
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:06,319
Speaker 1: studies next from Japanese folklore after we come back from

708
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:13,640
Speaker 1: this break. Thank alright, we're back. So obviously the Japanese

709
00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:17,600
Speaker 1: have many spirits, many demons, many monsters, just a rich

710
00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:21,360
Speaker 1: assortment of yokai to choose from. But we're going to

711
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 1: focus on what you can think of is the big three,

712
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:29,879
Speaker 1: the Kappa, the Only, and the Tingu. Okay, so let's

713
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 1: let's start with the cap Are you you're familiar with

714
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,839
Speaker 1: the capa? Yeah? We both read this great paper from

715
00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:39,360
Speaker 1: Asian Folklore Studies from by the scholar Michael Dillon Foster

716
00:40:39,880 --> 00:40:43,560
Speaker 1: called the Metamorphosis of the Kappa Transformation of folklore to

717
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:47,160
Speaker 1: folklorism in Japan. And this has is just replete with

718
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:51,320
Speaker 1: all these great old Cappa legends. This is a fun

719
00:40:51,480 --> 00:40:55,360
Speaker 1: monster despite the fact that in its original incarnation it

720
00:40:55,480 --> 00:41:01,000
Speaker 1: was not cute. It was a nasty, creepy, gross, horrific

721
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:04,440
Speaker 1: little demon. Yeah, it's hard to really come up with

722
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 1: a creepier, grosser, just more nefarious monster than this. Like

723
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:11,000
Speaker 1: in a way, it rivals what we were talking about

724
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 1: with Freddie, the original Freddy Krueger, like something that's just

725
00:41:14,680 --> 00:41:18,279
Speaker 1: like a weak, evil thing that has to in Freddie's case,

726
00:41:18,320 --> 00:41:21,760
Speaker 1: prey on children in their dreams of while they're sleeping.

727
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:26,239
Speaker 1: And likewise, the Kappa is essentially a drowning monster. It's

728
00:41:26,239 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 1: a it's a monster that is that serves as a

729
00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: as a warning and a signifier of the risks of

730
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:35,279
Speaker 1: swimming or swimming alone. Uh you know, you know a

731
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:37,680
Speaker 1: pond or a river, or even walking by a river,

732
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:42,239
Speaker 1: the inherent danger of water or using a toilet. I mean,

733
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:44,680
Speaker 1: it'll get you anywhere that's wet. Oh, it will get

734
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:48,880
Speaker 1: you too. So the Kappa also known as Kawako or

735
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:51,759
Speaker 1: the child of the River. Um. Yeah, it's essentially a

736
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:55,480
Speaker 1: Japanese manifestation of drowning fierce particularly young children. And it's

737
00:41:55,520 --> 00:41:58,799
Speaker 1: signature hybridity because you're gonna find this hybrid nature in

738
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: any monster for much and certainly in the three we're

739
00:42:01,160 --> 00:42:03,920
Speaker 1: looking at here, is that it's essentially a tortoise with

740
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:07,640
Speaker 1: a monkey's head, or it's like a monkey that has

741
00:42:08,239 --> 00:42:11,880
Speaker 1: scales on it as well, maybe webbed fingers. And some

742
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:15,080
Speaker 1: accounts also go in an otter direction by making it hairy,

743
00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:17,799
Speaker 1: but that will make it cute, right, Well, depends on

744
00:42:17,840 --> 00:42:21,279
Speaker 1: the otter otters are. They're not as cute as I think.

745
00:42:21,280 --> 00:42:23,880
Speaker 1: It depends on the otter. Like the giant otter. If

746
00:42:23,880 --> 00:42:25,319
Speaker 1: you've ever seen like a giant I think it's an

747
00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:30,319
Speaker 1: Amazonian river otter. They look rather hellish. And if you

748
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:33,279
Speaker 1: actually study like the mating behavior of otters, like, they're

749
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:36,520
Speaker 1: all pretty gross, Like there's a lot of violence in

750
00:42:36,560 --> 00:42:40,440
Speaker 1: their mating, horrible face chewing, that sort of thing. Yeah,

751
00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 1: But in the case of the of the Kappa here,

752
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:47,800
Speaker 1: it's other most notable feature is a small depression in

753
00:42:47,880 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 1: the top of its skull called a sara, which contains

754
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:54,480
Speaker 1: a fluid that serves as its life force. And we'll

755
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:56,880
Speaker 1: get we'll get back to the implications of that in

756
00:42:56,880 --> 00:42:59,080
Speaker 1: a second. So if this were like a low budget

757
00:42:59,120 --> 00:43:03,520
Speaker 1: horror movie, it would be Cuphead, I guess. Yeah, So

758
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:06,440
Speaker 1: the capa draws people and animals into water, where they

759
00:43:06,480 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 1: devour their prey and or drink their blood or their

760
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:13,000
Speaker 1: life essence. They're also big sumo fans, so they might

761
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:15,200
Speaker 1: be sport of suma. Yes, they love sumo wrestling, and

762
00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:17,919
Speaker 1: they might try and wrestle you. And there are there

763
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:21,080
Speaker 1: at least eight regional variations on the capa, and most

764
00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: of what we know of them comes from early twentieth

765
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:28,520
Speaker 1: century folklorus and or amateur collectors. But if you want

766
00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:31,640
Speaker 1: to avoid the kappa, there are three ways. One don't

767
00:43:31,640 --> 00:43:33,520
Speaker 1: go where they are cappas, so there's a big one,

768
00:43:33,960 --> 00:43:36,080
Speaker 1: you know, don't go near the water at all. Or

769
00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:40,360
Speaker 1: you can befriend them by bringing a cucumber. And stories

770
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:43,799
Speaker 1: vary because they like cucumbers, but stories vary on whether

771
00:43:43,920 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 1: eating a cucumber prior to swimming will attract or repel

772
00:43:47,080 --> 00:43:49,880
Speaker 1: the monster. Now, they like cucumbers, but they don't like gourds.

773
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:53,160
Speaker 1: That's right, gourd's will repel them. And there's there's some

774
00:43:53,239 --> 00:43:57,399
Speaker 1: interesting material in the in the paper here that gets

775
00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:00,200
Speaker 1: into exactly like what that means, the symbolic meaning like

776
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:05,120
Speaker 1: the fault cucumber and an arguably yawnick gord, so it's

777
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:08,360
Speaker 1: it gets heavy. It's a great paper uh. And then finally,

778
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:12,040
Speaker 1: you can make a low bow to the Kappa, especially

779
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:14,879
Speaker 1: if it's challenging you to assume a wrestling match. Uh.

780
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 1: And this will re force it to respond in kind,

781
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:20,800
Speaker 1: so it'll dump its own life force out onto the ground.

782
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:24,160
Speaker 1: Cuphead is tricked. Yeah, I think this is fascinating because

783
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:27,000
Speaker 1: this may be the only monster they can be slain

784
00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:31,080
Speaker 1: through adequate alone. It's proper Japanese adequate and you will

785
00:44:31,080 --> 00:44:33,319
Speaker 1: defeat it. Yeah. And this does seem to make it

786
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:37,799
Speaker 1: not quite as you know, absolutely horrific as some other monsters. Now,

787
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 1: they're horrific qualities to it, but the fact that you

788
00:44:40,600 --> 00:44:44,600
Speaker 1: can so easily trick it and uh, in the fact

789
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 1: that it seems bound by some standards of politeness does

790
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:53,279
Speaker 1: sort of undercut its original horror. Maybe yeah, yeah, a

791
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:55,719
Speaker 1: little bit. But then again, you also have to look

792
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: at this in any monster and realize that it's it's

793
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:01,720
Speaker 1: a it's not occurring in one place at one time.

794
00:45:02,200 --> 00:45:05,239
Speaker 1: It's their various traditions, various versions of it. So you

795
00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 1: can easily see some somebody comes along like this monster

796
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:11,080
Speaker 1: sounds horrible. This monster needs rules to keep it in place,

797
00:45:11,760 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 1: and these are the cultural rules that will keep the

798
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:19,240
Speaker 1: monster at bay um. Now, if you're thinking to yourself

799
00:45:19,239 --> 00:45:21,440
Speaker 1: with the cop that competence sound that monstrous? So it

800
00:45:21,680 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 1: you know, so it drowns or drains a few children,

801
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:28,680
Speaker 1: Well wait for this, because Foster in his paper points

802
00:45:28,680 --> 00:45:31,000
Speaker 1: how quote not only does the Kappa have a penchant

803
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 1: for pulling both children and adults into the water, but

804
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:36,160
Speaker 1: it often does this in order to steal the liver,

805
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:39,319
Speaker 1: a feat it achieves by reaching its arm up through

806
00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 1: the victims anus to snatch the desired organ. Yes, you

807
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:45,680
Speaker 1: heard that right, folks. It will steal your liver through

808
00:45:45,719 --> 00:45:48,920
Speaker 1: your anus. And to do that it gets worse. Uh.

809
00:45:49,200 --> 00:45:51,800
Speaker 1: In order to steal the liver, it has to essentially

810
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:57,080
Speaker 1: uncork the human anus by removing the non existent organ

811
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 1: known as a sharik o dama quote a ball once

812
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:03,840
Speaker 1: thought to be the mouth of the anus. This is

813
00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:07,200
Speaker 1: maybe something we should do an entire episode on someday.

814
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:10,839
Speaker 1: Is all of the non existent human organs people used

815
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:13,359
Speaker 1: to believe existed. That would be That would be good.

816
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:17,120
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's remember that one for later. Uh. Now,

817
00:46:17,160 --> 00:46:19,359
Speaker 1: you're probably wondering, well, why why would they make this up?

818
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:21,799
Speaker 1: Point is there there has to be a reason to

819
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:25,680
Speaker 1: make up this organ and like clearly you can you

820
00:46:25,680 --> 00:46:29,399
Speaker 1: can inspect yourself and realize that there's no cork organ

821
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 1: in your anus. But the grim reality here is that

822
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:35,280
Speaker 1: you have a drowning victim. A drowning victim is found

823
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:39,360
Speaker 1: and they may have a quote open anus due to

824
00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:43,919
Speaker 1: the unclenched sphincter muscles. And this this falls in line,

825
00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 1: of course with the Coppage role as a monster of drowning.

826
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 1: So you find this this body and here it is,

827
00:46:48,840 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 1: there's something peculiar about it. It's anus does not look

828
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:54,719
Speaker 1: like a living person's anus. But wouldn't this be the

829
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:58,000
Speaker 1: case with any dead person, not just somebody who drowned. Yeah,

830
00:46:58,080 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 1: and that's something that that Foster rings up. However, my

831
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:04,839
Speaker 1: read on it though, is that if you're dealing with

832
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: people who have drowned, I feel like there's a higher

833
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:12,320
Speaker 1: possibility that that body is found nude or mostly nude

834
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:17,719
Speaker 1: since it was swimming, whereas bodies in other situations may

835
00:47:17,719 --> 00:47:21,359
Speaker 1: be covered with clothing and then therefore less susceptible to

836
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:26,280
Speaker 1: susceptible to this kind of folkloric exploration of what is happening. Okay,

837
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:28,920
Speaker 1: but it's not just going to pull you into the

838
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:32,640
Speaker 1: river or the lake or whatever. The Kappa also haunts toilets.

839
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:37,239
Speaker 1: That's right. It may wait until you are vulnerable while

840
00:47:38,040 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 1: pooping or peeing, perhaps near the water, and it is

841
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 1: it is ready to attack the buttocks and hips. According

842
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:48,600
Speaker 1: to Foster, um so it's it's not only a murderous creature,

843
00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:52,919
Speaker 1: it's a creature of profound sexual violence as well. Like it.

844
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:55,560
Speaker 1: It's it's part of its design, this Kappa. That's just

845
00:47:55,600 --> 00:47:57,600
Speaker 1: how monstrous it is. It's it's very much like the

846
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:01,640
Speaker 1: Fredy Krueger. Like the Kappa and Freddie are essentially cut

847
00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:05,360
Speaker 1: from the same mold, right, not just threatening, but really gross.

848
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 1: So how do we get from from this to cute?

849
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:11,319
Speaker 1: You're probably wondering? Well, As as as Foster explores in

850
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 1: his paper, by by the nineteen sixties, folk belief in

851
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:16,000
Speaker 1: the creature it all but vanished, and it had become

852
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:19,320
Speaker 1: a quote clean cute creature, used as a symbol of tourism,

853
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:22,120
Speaker 1: of commerce, of clean water, and even as a symbol

854
00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 1: of village and national identity. Huh. And he says that

855
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:30,200
Speaker 1: this falls in line with Hans Moser's two notion of folkloreism,

856
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:33,640
Speaker 1: in which an existing folklore is taken out of context

857
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:38,000
Speaker 1: and altered or invented for a specific purpose. And of

858
00:48:38,040 --> 00:48:40,560
Speaker 1: course media and commerce play a heavy role in this. Now,

859
00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:43,520
Speaker 1: I thought this was interesting because I wondered about this

860
00:48:43,600 --> 00:48:48,160
Speaker 1: concept of folklorism and the idea is that someone would

861
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:52,600
Speaker 1: take existing folklore and change it, or invent new folklore,

862
00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:56,319
Speaker 1: or or manipulated take it out of context for some

863
00:48:56,440 --> 00:49:01,120
Speaker 1: kind of intentional, conscious purpose. But it makes me wonder, um,

864
00:49:01,600 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 1: how is that different from the way in which bits

865
00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 1: of folklore are are originally created? Like why, It's almost

866
00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 1: as if assuming that folklore um is arises unconsciously out

867
00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:19,800
Speaker 1: of the spirit of the people, and that when people

868
00:49:19,880 --> 00:49:23,799
Speaker 1: consciously manipulate folklore, that's a different kind of thing. I mean,

869
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:26,280
Speaker 1: I I sort of wonder to what extent the things

870
00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: we think of as folklore the original stories are consciously created,

871
00:49:31,239 --> 00:49:33,320
Speaker 1: are they not? Well? I mean, it comes back to

872
00:49:33,360 --> 00:49:35,960
Speaker 1: the whole rules thing I said earlier, like imagining someone

873
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 1: or multiple people coming wrong and tweaking an existing legend

874
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:43,279
Speaker 1: or folklore in order to convey a point or to

875
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:46,840
Speaker 1: convey a slightly different point. Yeah, um, and then and

876
00:49:46,840 --> 00:49:49,560
Speaker 1: then likewise, I mean, yeah, there's there's one example that

877
00:49:49,640 --> 00:49:52,920
Speaker 1: Foster points out, and this is from the Edo periods.

878
00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 1: This was sixteen o three to eighteen sixty eight Japanese history.

879
00:49:57,480 --> 00:50:01,000
Speaker 1: And in this case, apparently you had a doctor who

880
00:50:01,280 --> 00:50:03,440
Speaker 1: used a story about a Kappa as a way to

881
00:50:03,520 --> 00:50:07,279
Speaker 1: promote his business. The idea being that this is the

882
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:08,960
Speaker 1: case with a lot of these monsters. They have some

883
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:13,240
Speaker 1: sort of hidden knowledge or hidden powers that a crafty

884
00:50:13,280 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 1: individual can trick them out of. And so this doctor

885
00:50:16,520 --> 00:50:20,200
Speaker 1: learned some i think a bone setting uh technique from

886
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:23,280
Speaker 1: the Kappa, and he basically put that on his calling card.

887
00:50:23,600 --> 00:50:25,200
Speaker 1: If you're gonna go to the doctor, then go to

888
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:28,080
Speaker 1: the go to you know, go to doctor Kappa touched

889
00:50:28,120 --> 00:50:31,319
Speaker 1: and he will he will use his mystical abilities to

890
00:50:31,360 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 1: heal you, which is essentially a marketing ploy. So keep

891
00:50:35,640 --> 00:50:38,399
Speaker 1: all that in mind. But basically what happens is, Yeah,

892
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:41,880
Speaker 1: after a while, people have forgotten about the Kappa, Like

893
00:50:41,920 --> 00:50:44,040
Speaker 1: there's there's not a lot of there's no longer any

894
00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:46,960
Speaker 1: belief in it. People are not reporting sightings of the

895
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:49,520
Speaker 1: Kappa and uh, and then you end up going with

896
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 1: through several waves of sort of you know, the Kappa renaissance,

897
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:56,200
Speaker 1: where people rediscover it and they start using it in

898
00:50:56,280 --> 00:51:00,880
Speaker 1: new ways um and uh and and this is inevitably

899
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:04,839
Speaker 1: going to involve outsiders crafting it. That's the argument here,

900
00:51:04,920 --> 00:51:08,360
Speaker 1: is that the cap Is is a creature of the

901
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 1: rural areas. It is a creature of the people of

902
00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:13,480
Speaker 1: the rural people, what's essentially kind of a peasant monster.

903
00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:16,160
Speaker 1: But then you're going to have people that are cut

904
00:51:16,200 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 1: off from all of that. Essentially, you're gonna city folk

905
00:51:18,680 --> 00:51:22,400
Speaker 1: come along, take the Cappa minuth, reinvent it, reutilize it,

906
00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:25,000
Speaker 1: and then after a while, like no one's connected to

907
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:27,479
Speaker 1: it back in the rural areas anymore, so they take

908
00:51:27,520 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 1: it back. They take this this re reformed version of

909
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:33,839
Speaker 1: the Kappa, and then what do they do with it, Well,

910
00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:37,440
Speaker 1: they sort of turned it into a cultural mascot. It

911
00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:40,000
Speaker 1: makes me think of it. Have you ever seen the

912
00:51:40,080 --> 00:51:44,680
Speaker 1: tourism materials that are sent out by the Iceland Tourism

913
00:51:44,719 --> 00:51:48,360
Speaker 1: Board or whatever it is that promote the fact that

914
00:51:48,480 --> 00:51:51,520
Speaker 1: people in Iceland believe in the fairies, the hidden folk,

915
00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:54,480
Speaker 1: you know, the secret other world, the hidden folk that

916
00:51:54,560 --> 00:51:58,160
Speaker 1: live or believe in elves and stuff like that. I

917
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:01,520
Speaker 1: don't know to what extent it is true that that

918
00:52:01,560 --> 00:52:05,359
Speaker 1: many people in Iceland literally believe the fairies are there.

919
00:52:05,360 --> 00:52:08,080
Speaker 1: I know some people probably do, but I doubt it

920
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:10,360
Speaker 1: is true in a literal sense to the extent to

921
00:52:10,400 --> 00:52:13,319
Speaker 1: which it's promoted. But it does seem to be a

922
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:17,319
Speaker 1: thing that is Uh, it's a rumor that's spread to

923
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:20,560
Speaker 1: bring people to Iceland for tourism, because isn't that cute

924
00:52:20,800 --> 00:52:24,239
Speaker 1: people there believe in elves or believe in hidden folk Yeah,

925
00:52:24,320 --> 00:52:27,000
Speaker 1: forgetting of of course the fact that belief in hidden

926
00:52:27,040 --> 00:52:30,359
Speaker 1: forces often in many cases can have pretty horrifying real

927
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:33,840
Speaker 1: world results. But is this it is a sanitized version

928
00:52:33,960 --> 00:52:36,839
Speaker 1: of it and uh. And Foster points out that what

929
00:52:36,840 --> 00:52:38,759
Speaker 1: what you have here is that you have a sanitized

930
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:41,239
Speaker 1: monster that was you that ends up being used to

931
00:52:41,360 --> 00:52:45,360
Speaker 1: promote a sanitized notion of rural life in Japan. And

932
00:52:45,400 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: he says that the craziest thing is that quote. Had

933
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:51,800
Speaker 1: the Kappa not been snatched up by the mechanism of folklorism,

934
00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:55,000
Speaker 1: it most likely would have died or survived only as

935
00:52:55,000 --> 00:52:59,839
Speaker 1: a museum relicant collections of folklore. Folklorism change, in other

936
00:53:00,440 --> 00:53:04,279
Speaker 1: kept the monster alive. Wow, So this conscious manipulation of

937
00:53:04,320 --> 00:53:09,279
Speaker 1: the folklore is the only reason the folklore really stays prominent. Yeah, well,

938
00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:12,080
Speaker 1: like with Freddie, we can go back to Freddie and say, yeah,

939
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:15,000
Speaker 1: you can bemoan the fact that this, this, this horrifying

940
00:53:15,040 --> 00:53:17,839
Speaker 1: thing from the first film was kind of killed by

941
00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:21,399
Speaker 1: this subsequent incarnation. But if Freddie. Don't know how many

942
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:24,160
Speaker 1: people really that fact. But I see what you're saying.

943
00:53:24,480 --> 00:53:29,360
Speaker 1: But certainly like that's how it survived. It grew into

944
00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:31,920
Speaker 1: the shape and the size that was sustained by the culture.

945
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:36,000
Speaker 1: Freddie became the Freddie that uh, that that that we needed,

946
00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:42,480
Speaker 1: that that that was essential apparently too modern Western living, right,

947
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:45,200
Speaker 1: or maybe not the Freddie we need, but the Freddy

948
00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:51,320
Speaker 1: we deserve. Okay, So how about another monster from Japanese folklore,

949
00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:54,840
Speaker 1: the One? Oh yeah, so we read another paper about

950
00:53:54,880 --> 00:53:58,280
Speaker 1: this called the Transformation of the One from the frightening

951
00:53:58,280 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: and diabolical to the cute and sexy. And this is

952
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:04,759
Speaker 1: by a Japanese scholar named Nariko T. Rider, also in

953
00:54:04,760 --> 00:54:07,080
Speaker 1: the journal Asian Folklore Studies, and this is from two

954
00:54:07,080 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 1: thousand three. So writer's paper is really interesting. It charts

955
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:13,040
Speaker 1: a very very similar arc to what we talked about

956
00:54:13,080 --> 00:54:17,160
Speaker 1: with the Kappa, this folklore monster transforming into something that's

957
00:54:17,239 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 1: different in modern twentieth century pop culture. The Only appear

958
00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:25,400
Speaker 1: in Japanese literature and folklore going back to ancient times,

959
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:30,160
Speaker 1: and the Only are generally these large, disgusting, shape shifting

960
00:54:30,239 --> 00:54:33,239
Speaker 1: monsters with one or more horns on the head. They

961
00:54:33,239 --> 00:54:37,000
Speaker 1: wear tiger skinned garments, and they like to eat human flesh.

962
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:41,759
Speaker 1: Other common powers include flight and the ability to shoot lightning.

963
00:54:42,560 --> 00:54:46,120
Speaker 1: And they're they're sort of different breeds of ony, right, Yeah,

964
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:49,640
Speaker 1: they're they're basically two varieties. There's like the terrestrial one

965
00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:52,600
Speaker 1: in the infernal Oi and the infernal Only is there

966
00:54:52,640 --> 00:54:54,839
Speaker 1: to drag you to hew at the moment of your

967
00:54:54,880 --> 00:54:57,799
Speaker 1: death if you were in fact deserving of one of

968
00:54:57,840 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: the hell's. Yeah. So first, let's look at the old

969
00:55:00,680 --> 00:55:03,000
Speaker 1: vision of the Only before they were, before they were

970
00:55:03,040 --> 00:55:06,040
Speaker 1: tamed or domesticated like the Let's look at their wolf

971
00:55:06,120 --> 00:55:11,319
Speaker 1: like Canada ancestor so. The scholar Ishibashi Gaha argues that

972
00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:14,960
Speaker 1: the Japanese Only concept evolved from a previous type of

973
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:19,720
Speaker 1: spirit or monster, the yomotsushi kome, which is literally fearful

974
00:55:19,800 --> 00:55:23,840
Speaker 1: creatures of the Netherland, and these appear as early as

975
00:55:23,920 --> 00:55:27,719
Speaker 1: the Japanese creation myth known as the kojiki. So in

976
00:55:27,800 --> 00:55:31,560
Speaker 1: the first known Japanese language dictionary, compiled sometime around the

977
00:55:31,600 --> 00:55:35,040
Speaker 1: year nine thirty c e Only is defined as quote

978
00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:39,120
Speaker 1: hiding behind things, not wishing to appear. It is a

979
00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:43,160
Speaker 1: spirit or soul of the dead. So in this earlier vision,

980
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:45,319
Speaker 1: it's more of a spirit I mean. And there are

981
00:55:45,320 --> 00:55:50,160
Speaker 1: these different categories of of Japanese folkloric beings. They're you know,

982
00:55:50,280 --> 00:55:53,640
Speaker 1: more like the kami, you know, the deities, and then

983
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:56,960
Speaker 1: there are the yokai, which are more like the monsters. Uh.

984
00:55:57,000 --> 00:55:59,279
Speaker 1: And it was during the medieval period in Japan that

985
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:02,440
Speaker 1: the only came a major part of popular folklore. In

986
00:56:02,440 --> 00:56:06,520
Speaker 1: this classical monster form that we first introduced, common only

987
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:09,120
Speaker 1: features in the medieval folklore are going to include some

988
00:56:09,200 --> 00:56:12,040
Speaker 1: of what we've already described, things like one or more

989
00:56:12,080 --> 00:56:16,400
Speaker 1: horns on the head, skin colors like red or blue

990
00:56:16,800 --> 00:56:21,120
Speaker 1: or black or yellow, a third eye in the forehead,

991
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:25,719
Speaker 1: carrying an iron mace as a weapon, wearing a tiger

992
00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:29,480
Speaker 1: skin loincloth, and the fact that they're usually male, but

993
00:56:29,560 --> 00:56:33,440
Speaker 1: not always and only were these horrific demon monsters that

994
00:56:33,520 --> 00:56:37,480
Speaker 1: people believe to exist in the world, kidnapping people, especially

995
00:56:37,560 --> 00:56:40,880
Speaker 1: young women, drinking their blood, eating their flesh. But they

996
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:44,160
Speaker 1: also seemed to be this useful cultural concept. In the

997
00:56:44,160 --> 00:56:47,239
Speaker 1: words of a scholar named Kamatsu that that Rider sites

998
00:56:47,280 --> 00:56:50,480
Speaker 1: in her paper many only were quote people who had

999
00:56:50,560 --> 00:56:55,480
Speaker 1: different customs or lived beyond the reach of the emperor's control.

1000
00:56:56,160 --> 00:56:57,640
Speaker 1: And you can see this in the way that only

1001
00:56:57,719 --> 00:57:01,399
Speaker 1: were deployed in Japanese Imperial proper ganda during World War Two,

1002
00:57:01,480 --> 00:57:04,480
Speaker 1: which was depicting enemies of the states such as Winston

1003
00:57:04,560 --> 00:57:08,080
Speaker 1: Churchill or f DR or the Chinese leader Shang Kai

1004
00:57:08,120 --> 00:57:12,239
Speaker 1: Scheck as one. And it's common, of course during war

1005
00:57:12,320 --> 00:57:15,480
Speaker 1: to motivate your populace against the enemy by characterizing them

1006
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:17,760
Speaker 1: as devils of some sort. Yeah, we see plenty of

1007
00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:21,040
Speaker 1: examples of that in Western countries as well during the

1008
00:57:21,080 --> 00:57:24,880
Speaker 1: same time period. Absolutely. Yeah. But apparently this this cultural

1009
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:29,560
Speaker 1: inclusion and exclusion tactic follows the One Monster specifically deep

1010
00:57:29,600 --> 00:57:33,560
Speaker 1: into history. So a few stories about the only One

1011
00:57:33,600 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 1: story appears in the tenth century CE narrative Tales of

1012
00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:39,560
Speaker 1: the say, and it goes like this, you got a

1013
00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:41,680
Speaker 1: man and he falls in love with a woman of

1014
00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:46,080
Speaker 1: high social status, and he kidnaps her and they're fleeing

1015
00:57:46,080 --> 00:57:49,480
Speaker 1: in the night and there's a thunderstorm. So the man

1016
00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:52,360
Speaker 1: decides they should take shelter at a ruined building near

1017
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:55,720
Speaker 1: the Akuta River, and the woman goes inside the building

1018
00:57:55,760 --> 00:57:58,320
Speaker 1: for shelter, and the man stands guard at the door

1019
00:57:58,360 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 1: all night. But when the woman as alone inside and

1020
00:58:01,560 --> 00:58:04,600
Speaker 1: only appears and it eats her in a single bite,

1021
00:58:05,240 --> 00:58:08,600
Speaker 1: that's gonna be a big own here, right, She screams

1022
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:11,120
Speaker 1: when the one they're eating her, but the man standing

1023
00:58:11,120 --> 00:58:14,439
Speaker 1: guard doesn't hear her because of the thunder, and this

1024
00:58:15,200 --> 00:58:18,439
Speaker 1: portrays this sort of alliance between the one and these

1025
00:58:18,480 --> 00:58:22,280
Speaker 1: powerful elemental forces like lightning. Storms. Owning are sometimes said

1026
00:58:22,280 --> 00:58:25,480
Speaker 1: to be able to shoot lightning. Now. Another story is

1027
00:58:25,480 --> 00:58:29,080
Speaker 1: contained in a ninth century collection called the Nihone Ryuiki,

1028
00:58:29,560 --> 00:58:33,080
Speaker 1: and the story translates to on a woman devoured by

1029
00:58:33,120 --> 00:58:36,760
Speaker 1: an ony. So at the time the Emperor Shomu reigned,

1030
00:58:36,840 --> 00:58:40,360
Speaker 1: a rich family in Yamato Province had this beautiful daughter

1031
00:58:40,920 --> 00:58:42,920
Speaker 1: and lots of men wanted to marry her, but she

1032
00:58:43,040 --> 00:58:47,000
Speaker 1: was like nah, not interested, until a suitor shows up

1033
00:58:47,080 --> 00:58:51,720
Speaker 1: with unbelievably extravagant gifts to win her over, including three

1034
00:58:51,880 --> 00:58:55,680
Speaker 1: carriages full of silk, so she accepts his marriage proposal,

1035
00:58:55,880 --> 00:58:58,400
Speaker 1: and on the wedding night, the newlyweds stay in the

1036
00:58:58,400 --> 00:59:02,240
Speaker 1: house of the bride's parents. The woman's parents hear her

1037
00:59:02,280 --> 00:59:04,479
Speaker 1: crying out in pain during the night, but they don't

1038
00:59:04,480 --> 00:59:07,360
Speaker 1: do anything about it, and when her mother enters the

1039
00:59:07,400 --> 00:59:09,760
Speaker 1: bride in the groom's bedroom in the morning, all that's

1040
00:59:09,840 --> 00:59:13,640
Speaker 1: left is her daughter's head and a single finger, and

1041
00:59:13,680 --> 00:59:16,520
Speaker 1: the rest has been eaten by a shape shifting one

1042
00:59:16,600 --> 00:59:19,600
Speaker 1: which apparently appeared in the form of a handsome young man.

1043
00:59:20,040 --> 00:59:22,200
Speaker 1: And this is evidence early on that they only have

1044
00:59:22,360 --> 00:59:25,480
Speaker 1: this power of shape shifting. One of the most common things,

1045
00:59:25,520 --> 00:59:28,560
Speaker 1: like very often in other stories, only would appear as

1046
00:59:28,640 --> 00:59:32,200
Speaker 1: beautiful women in order to seduce men, and then they

1047
00:59:32,200 --> 00:59:34,920
Speaker 1: would turn into onny and try to devour them or

1048
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:37,240
Speaker 1: kill them or something. Someone should do a version of

1049
00:59:37,240 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 1: the werewolf game with one their perfect you know, that

1050
00:59:40,320 --> 00:59:45,840
Speaker 1: would be perfect on. Yeah, there are only among us, Okay,

1051
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:48,560
Speaker 1: so how do the only become cute? Yeah? Because it's

1052
00:59:48,600 --> 00:59:51,040
Speaker 1: like with the cap of this sounds pretty monstrous and horrific.

1053
00:59:51,080 --> 00:59:55,600
Speaker 1: This is like a standard like you know, woman eating

1054
00:59:55,760 --> 00:59:58,480
Speaker 1: ogre here, how does it become a cute thing. Well,

1055
00:59:58,520 --> 01:00:01,479
Speaker 1: writer cites several example of how only have become cute

1056
01:00:01,480 --> 01:00:03,920
Speaker 1: and modern Japan on a very similar time scale to

1057
01:00:03,960 --> 01:00:05,480
Speaker 1: what we talked about with the Kappa, you know, the

1058
01:00:05,520 --> 01:00:08,919
Speaker 1: Kappa especially having these cute incarnations in the second half

1059
01:00:08,920 --> 01:00:13,439
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, especially around the nineteen seventies. One

1060
01:00:13,480 --> 01:00:18,200
Speaker 1: example of cute only that rider sites is the Loom Invader.

1061
01:00:19,120 --> 01:00:22,720
Speaker 1: So in nineteen seventy eight, the Japanese manga artist Rumiko

1062
01:00:22,800 --> 01:00:28,120
Speaker 1: Takahashi created this incredibly popular series called urus say Yatsura,

1063
01:00:28,480 --> 01:00:33,360
Speaker 1: which translates literally into something like those obnoxious aliens, and

1064
01:00:33,480 --> 01:00:35,640
Speaker 1: beginning in the nineteen eighties, it was adapted into a

1065
01:00:35,680 --> 01:00:38,760
Speaker 1: TV series, films, and a bunch of other spinoff media.

1066
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:42,320
Speaker 1: And the premise is that there's a group of ony

1067
01:00:42,480 --> 01:00:45,600
Speaker 1: from outer space that arrive on Earth, sort of blending

1068
01:00:45,680 --> 01:00:49,000
Speaker 1: ony folklore with these alien invasion stories that started to

1069
01:00:49,000 --> 01:00:51,920
Speaker 1: become popular in the middle of the twentieth century. And

1070
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:55,280
Speaker 1: one of these invaders is an only called Loom, who

1071
01:00:55,320 --> 01:00:57,760
Speaker 1: at first is part of this invasion force, but somehow

1072
01:00:57,760 --> 01:01:00,760
Speaker 1: she ends up becoming the the loving, into voted wife

1073
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:04,760
Speaker 1: of a lecherous teenage boy on earth. Unlike the Only

1074
01:01:04,880 --> 01:01:08,760
Speaker 1: from medieval folklore, Lum is not overtly monstrous. Instead, she's

1075
01:01:08,800 --> 01:01:14,800
Speaker 1: represented primarily as cute and through overtly eroticized characteristics. In short,

1076
01:01:15,120 --> 01:01:18,280
Speaker 1: she's depicted as as she's supposed to be sexy and

1077
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:22,360
Speaker 1: Loom has these subtle signs pointing toward the traditional Only.

1078
01:01:22,680 --> 01:01:25,800
Speaker 1: For example, Only usually have horns. Loum has these couple

1079
01:01:25,840 --> 01:01:29,880
Speaker 1: of diminutive horns on top of her head. She sometimes

1080
01:01:29,920 --> 01:01:34,040
Speaker 1: seems to have fangs and other indications of a cannibalistic nature.

1081
01:01:34,440 --> 01:01:36,640
Speaker 1: She seems to have the power to shoot lightning, which

1082
01:01:36,680 --> 01:01:39,840
Speaker 1: is associated with some only legend. She can fly like

1083
01:01:40,000 --> 01:01:43,160
Speaker 1: the One and Only are often depicted. I mentioned earlier

1084
01:01:43,160 --> 01:01:47,720
Speaker 1: as males wearing a tiger skin loincloth. Loum wears a

1085
01:01:47,720 --> 01:01:52,400
Speaker 1: tiger skin bikini. I was talking with our coworker, Lauren Vogelbaum,

1086
01:01:52,480 --> 01:01:55,320
Speaker 1: one of the hosts of food Stuff, another podcast in

1087
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:57,320
Speaker 1: the house Touff Works Network. You should check out if

1088
01:01:57,320 --> 01:02:01,120
Speaker 1: you enjoy food and all things uh at all and imbibable.

1089
01:02:01,640 --> 01:02:03,960
Speaker 1: But I was talking to her about this because I

1090
01:02:04,040 --> 01:02:07,240
Speaker 1: know she is an insightful consumer of manga, and she

1091
01:02:07,320 --> 01:02:09,680
Speaker 1: pointed out that there are actually plenty of other anime

1092
01:02:09,800 --> 01:02:12,760
Speaker 1: and manga characters that display this trend of taking a

1093
01:02:12,760 --> 01:02:16,520
Speaker 1: traditional monster and making it cute or making it sexy

1094
01:02:16,760 --> 01:02:19,600
Speaker 1: or both. And one example she mentioned was a manga

1095
01:02:19,640 --> 01:02:22,680
Speaker 1: series known as Sayuki, in which the main characters are

1096
01:02:22,760 --> 01:02:27,360
Speaker 1: the monkey King character and his demon companions, but they

1097
01:02:27,360 --> 01:02:30,640
Speaker 1: are rendered as cute boys. These are these like attractive

1098
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:33,360
Speaker 1: young men, sort of like an you know, manga boy

1099
01:02:33,440 --> 01:02:37,120
Speaker 1: band um, but a demonic one, and they are essentially

1100
01:02:37,160 --> 01:02:40,400
Speaker 1: a male parallel to the cute and sexualized only we

1101
01:02:40,480 --> 01:02:43,000
Speaker 1: see in Loom. But as with the Kappa, all of

1102
01:02:43,040 --> 01:02:45,560
Speaker 1: this with the on E comes down to like the

1103
01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:49,920
Speaker 1: revitalization of of rural areas. Right. Oh, well that's another

1104
01:02:49,960 --> 01:02:51,960
Speaker 1: aspect of it too. Yeah, so you've got this stuff

1105
01:02:52,000 --> 01:02:54,240
Speaker 1: in mass media, but then you've also got like we

1106
01:02:54,280 --> 01:02:56,760
Speaker 1: saw with the Kappa being used as some kind of

1107
01:02:56,760 --> 01:02:59,240
Speaker 1: a rural mascot for a town or a village. Of

1108
01:02:59,360 --> 01:03:02,440
Speaker 1: the town revitalization movement is another thing that writer points

1109
01:03:02,440 --> 01:03:04,760
Speaker 1: out is a place that the only re entered the

1110
01:03:04,800 --> 01:03:08,240
Speaker 1: modern consciousness and kind of metamorphose into something much sweeter.

1111
01:03:08,840 --> 01:03:13,600
Speaker 1: So there's this movement, the town revitalization movement in Japanese

1112
01:03:13,600 --> 01:03:16,640
Speaker 1: I think it's maki Okashi and uh so in the

1113
01:03:16,680 --> 01:03:19,320
Speaker 1: same way that the Kappa was embraced as a local mascot,

1114
01:03:19,320 --> 01:03:21,280
Speaker 1: it seems to only have been as well. And writer

1115
01:03:21,440 --> 01:03:25,240
Speaker 1: cites these examples the Oemachi in Kyoto, which is located

1116
01:03:25,240 --> 01:03:28,320
Speaker 1: near Mount o A. This is the traditional setting of

1117
01:03:28,360 --> 01:03:30,760
Speaker 1: a story called the Shooting Doji, which is about this

1118
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:33,919
Speaker 1: band of one that live in the mountains, and they're

1119
01:03:33,960 --> 01:03:37,040
Speaker 1: doing their owny thing. You know, they're kidnapping and eating locals,

1120
01:03:37,160 --> 01:03:40,000
Speaker 1: especially local maidens. They'll eat their flesh and drink their

1121
01:03:40,040 --> 01:03:44,720
Speaker 1: blood until some warriors infiltrate the only hideout and kill

1122
01:03:44,760 --> 01:03:47,320
Speaker 1: all the only and writer writes that at the time

1123
01:03:47,360 --> 01:03:50,640
Speaker 1: of this paper, this town with the original setting near

1124
01:03:50,680 --> 01:03:55,160
Speaker 1: the Shooting Doji, the town is facing a depopulation crisis,

1125
01:03:55,240 --> 01:03:58,120
Speaker 1: with the population essentially growing old and younger people not

1126
01:03:58,200 --> 01:04:00,919
Speaker 1: replacing them, and one way the rest sents apparently sought

1127
01:04:00,960 --> 01:04:04,560
Speaker 1: to revitalize the town was to embrace the only legend

1128
01:04:05,040 --> 01:04:08,480
Speaker 1: and the imagery in order to attract interest and tourists.

1129
01:04:08,760 --> 01:04:12,440
Speaker 1: So they developed these only related legends and sites. They

1130
01:04:12,520 --> 01:04:15,280
Speaker 1: got an one museum, so a creature that would have

1131
01:04:15,320 --> 01:04:19,120
Speaker 1: once caused unspeakable terror is now this fun attraction to

1132
01:04:19,240 --> 01:04:21,680
Speaker 1: draw people and money. It's kind of like the small

1133
01:04:21,720 --> 01:04:24,440
Speaker 1: town kid, uh you know, makes good, he leaves the

1134
01:04:24,480 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 1: small town, makes it big, and then it's just invited

1135
01:04:27,200 --> 01:04:29,040
Speaker 1: back in and becomes a hero, even though they kind

1136
01:04:29,040 --> 01:04:31,080
Speaker 1: of treated him like dirt to begin with. Yeah, well,

1137
01:04:31,120 --> 01:04:32,880
Speaker 1: it also sort of reminds me of what you might

1138
01:04:32,920 --> 01:04:36,840
Speaker 1: see and say, Salem, Massachusetts, where originally you had the

1139
01:04:36,880 --> 01:04:40,400
Speaker 1: fear of witchcraft, which was a genuine panic that terrified

1140
01:04:40,400 --> 01:04:43,040
Speaker 1: people and led to deaths, and now it's more to

1141
01:04:43,320 --> 01:04:46,200
Speaker 1: it's embraced in this kitchy way, like witches have become

1142
01:04:46,240 --> 01:04:49,760
Speaker 1: a cute part of Salem's identity as a town. So

1143
01:04:49,840 --> 01:04:52,840
Speaker 1: they love which museums and which souvenirs and stuff like that,

1144
01:04:52,880 --> 01:04:56,560
Speaker 1: despite the horrifying reality of the essential like human monstrosity

1145
01:04:56,600 --> 01:04:59,160
Speaker 1: of the whole situation exactly. So what can we take

1146
01:04:59,200 --> 01:05:01,720
Speaker 1: away from this example, Well, writer has got some ideas.

1147
01:05:01,760 --> 01:05:03,800
Speaker 1: So we've got these two different things I mentioned, the cute,

1148
01:05:03,840 --> 01:05:07,640
Speaker 1: non threatening and eroticized one that appear in Japanese cartoons

1149
01:05:08,040 --> 01:05:10,680
Speaker 1: and the embracing of one folklore as an economic and

1150
01:05:10,720 --> 01:05:14,560
Speaker 1: tourism draw. And writer writes that much of the art

1151
01:05:14,600 --> 01:05:17,880
Speaker 1: and entertainment in Japan still views the one as evil

1152
01:05:17,920 --> 01:05:21,200
Speaker 1: and terrifying beings, like it's not all cute only now.

1153
01:05:21,280 --> 01:05:24,760
Speaker 1: She gives the example of the film Dreams by Kasa,

1154
01:05:25,840 --> 01:05:28,880
Speaker 1: and one of the stories in this movie apparently tells

1155
01:05:28,920 --> 01:05:32,240
Speaker 1: the story of humans who were turned into only by

1156
01:05:32,240 --> 01:05:36,320
Speaker 1: a nuclear blast. Oh man, I vaguely remember that. I

1157
01:05:36,400 --> 01:05:38,800
Speaker 1: mainly remember the space section of it. Yeah, not so

1158
01:05:38,880 --> 01:05:40,600
Speaker 1: much the only to go back and watch it. It's

1159
01:05:40,600 --> 01:05:43,680
Speaker 1: a horrifying idea. But now we also have these only

1160
01:05:43,840 --> 01:05:48,560
Speaker 1: with inherent aspects of harmlessness cuteness. The the eroticized aspects

1161
01:05:48,640 --> 01:05:51,360
Speaker 1: are the ones that are simply fun and familiar, like

1162
01:05:51,440 --> 01:05:53,800
Speaker 1: the witches now and she seems to think that this

1163
01:05:53,840 --> 01:05:57,800
Speaker 1: is an outgrowth of Japan's post war economic transformation. In

1164
01:05:57,840 --> 01:06:01,600
Speaker 1: other words, horrifying folk belief and monsters don't really make

1165
01:06:01,680 --> 01:06:04,800
Speaker 1: you the big bucks, but apparently cute, harmless, fun and

1166
01:06:04,880 --> 01:06:10,800
Speaker 1: familiar monsters can bring massive economic dividends. Capitalistic folklorism in

1167
01:06:10,840 --> 01:06:13,720
Speaker 1: the sense that we explored in that previous paper folklorism

1168
01:06:13,760 --> 01:06:17,000
Speaker 1: the manipulation of folklore seems to be directly at work

1169
01:06:17,080 --> 01:06:20,720
Speaker 1: in writer's point of view, but it also sort of

1170
01:06:20,720 --> 01:06:24,960
Speaker 1: makes me wonder why monsters in the first place, Like,

1171
01:06:25,040 --> 01:06:28,400
Speaker 1: if it's simply that cute, harmless or sexy characters and

1172
01:06:28,520 --> 01:06:33,560
Speaker 1: imagery command more economic power, why why isn't it just

1173
01:06:33,760 --> 01:06:36,560
Speaker 1: that we're seeing new characters of this type created, Like

1174
01:06:36,640 --> 01:06:42,520
Speaker 1: why are traditionally horrifying and disgusting monsters being transformed into

1175
01:06:42,520 --> 01:06:45,520
Speaker 1: these cute or sexy or otherwise harmless versions. Well, I

1176
01:06:45,560 --> 01:06:47,800
Speaker 1: wonder if part of it is that there is perhaps

1177
01:06:47,800 --> 01:06:52,920
Speaker 1: even subconsciously it's it's an interaction with a monstrous figure

1178
01:06:53,200 --> 01:06:56,040
Speaker 1: that had power over us and maybe still has power

1179
01:06:56,120 --> 01:06:58,520
Speaker 1: overs And by making it cute, you are You're you're

1180
01:06:58,520 --> 01:07:02,160
Speaker 1: making it harmless, You're taking the punch out of this

1181
01:07:02,360 --> 01:07:05,800
Speaker 1: monstrous creature. You're it's it's like laughing in the face

1182
01:07:05,840 --> 01:07:08,640
Speaker 1: of horror. Well, it almost makes me wonder if this

1183
01:07:08,720 --> 01:07:13,120
Speaker 1: transformation is an outgrowth of the of the skepticism and

1184
01:07:13,160 --> 01:07:16,960
Speaker 1: secularization of the twentieth century, Like, as people tend to

1185
01:07:17,000 --> 01:07:20,960
Speaker 1: believe less literally in demons, monsters and devils, would we

1186
01:07:21,040 --> 01:07:24,520
Speaker 1: tend to take them less seriously as genuine threats? I mean,

1187
01:07:24,520 --> 01:07:27,040
Speaker 1: obviously we would. And if we think that there's no

1188
01:07:27,200 --> 01:07:31,280
Speaker 1: genuine monster danger to warn against, what prevents us from

1189
01:07:31,320 --> 01:07:35,480
Speaker 1: stripping the fear inducing elements out of the monster folklore. Uh?

1190
01:07:35,960 --> 01:07:38,000
Speaker 1: Is it a thing we do simply because we can?

1191
01:07:38,360 --> 01:07:40,960
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Like if in the past people

1192
01:07:41,080 --> 01:07:44,840
Speaker 1: didn't make the monsters harmless because they believed that you

1193
01:07:44,960 --> 01:07:48,720
Speaker 1: genuinely had to understand that these monsters were dangerous. As

1194
01:07:48,800 --> 01:07:52,240
Speaker 1: soon as we stopped taking monster legends literally, then we

1195
01:07:52,320 --> 01:07:55,920
Speaker 1: had the power to render them to defang them. Yeah,

1196
01:07:55,960 --> 01:07:58,440
Speaker 1: I think I would buy that. It sounds like a

1197
01:07:58,440 --> 01:08:00,440
Speaker 1: good read hunt it. Yeah, But there's an other thing

1198
01:08:00,520 --> 01:08:02,800
Speaker 1: that I wonder about is like, could it represent an

1199
01:08:02,840 --> 01:08:06,080
Speaker 1: actual direct rebuke of the past, kind of a you know,

1200
01:08:06,120 --> 01:08:10,000
Speaker 1: a middle finger to the superstition that produced belief in

1201
01:08:10,080 --> 01:08:13,800
Speaker 1: monsters throughout you know, every culture in the history of humanity. Yeah.

1202
01:08:13,800 --> 01:08:15,800
Speaker 1: I mean it's because we've touched on this a number

1203
01:08:15,800 --> 01:08:20,280
Speaker 1: of times when we've talked about older ideas, my mythologies, religion,

1204
01:08:20,320 --> 01:08:22,880
Speaker 1: even where it's it's easy to take a modern approach

1205
01:08:22,880 --> 01:08:24,599
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well, those people were stupid. Look at

1206
01:08:24,600 --> 01:08:28,120
Speaker 1: the things they believed in. Monsters in the woods eating you, um,

1207
01:08:28,160 --> 01:08:31,080
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of strange turtle creature reaching up

1208
01:08:31,080 --> 01:08:33,680
Speaker 1: your anus after your liver um. But when you do

1209
01:08:34,000 --> 01:08:36,120
Speaker 1: when you begin to dissect these ideas and you put

1210
01:08:36,160 --> 01:08:39,120
Speaker 1: them in the context of the time, it's not so

1211
01:08:39,160 --> 01:08:41,200
Speaker 1: simple as to just say, oh, well, these these people

1212
01:08:41,520 --> 01:08:44,599
Speaker 1: were dumb. No, they weren't stupid. They knew less, and

1213
01:08:44,640 --> 01:08:47,200
Speaker 1: that's not the same thing, right, I mean, in a way,

1214
01:08:46,960 --> 01:08:50,400
Speaker 1: they perhaps knew more because they knew to take a

1215
01:08:50,520 --> 01:08:53,600
Speaker 1: like say a dangerous area or a dangerous uh you know,

1216
01:08:53,680 --> 01:08:56,760
Speaker 1: cultural area and it and assign a monster to it

1217
01:08:57,080 --> 01:09:00,160
Speaker 1: to toward people away from it, to to key the

1218
01:09:00,240 --> 01:09:03,120
Speaker 1: curious from getting too close. And children don't go, don't

1219
01:09:03,160 --> 01:09:05,599
Speaker 1: go near the water's edge because there's a monster there. Yeah.

1220
01:09:05,600 --> 01:09:07,679
Speaker 1: And even if you you're not up on the reasons

1221
01:09:07,720 --> 01:09:10,040
Speaker 1: to stay away from the water, like the realistic reasons,

1222
01:09:10,080 --> 01:09:12,600
Speaker 1: the monster still resonates. And we've actually touched on this

1223
01:09:12,680 --> 01:09:18,240
Speaker 1: on the podcast in regard to creating potentially creating new monsters,

1224
01:09:18,280 --> 01:09:23,840
Speaker 1: new mythologies to guards, say, places where radioactive waste are deposited. Right,

1225
01:09:23,880 --> 01:09:26,080
Speaker 1: so you've got high level waste, you know, the really

1226
01:09:26,160 --> 01:09:29,160
Speaker 1: dangerous stuff stored at a place somewhere on Earth, and

1227
01:09:29,200 --> 01:09:32,360
Speaker 1: that's gonna be dangerous for literally thousands of years, much

1228
01:09:32,439 --> 01:09:35,360
Speaker 1: longer than any kind of sign you would probably put up,

1229
01:09:36,000 --> 01:09:38,200
Speaker 1: would be there, or I mean if you maybe even

1230
01:09:38,200 --> 01:09:40,720
Speaker 1: made a really durable sign, but yeah, it's gonna outlast

1231
01:09:40,760 --> 01:09:43,639
Speaker 1: almost any measures you put in place to keep people away.

1232
01:09:44,040 --> 01:09:45,800
Speaker 1: So it's almost like you wish you could come up

1233
01:09:45,840 --> 01:09:49,479
Speaker 1: with a lasting cultural belief that this place is cursed

1234
01:09:49,520 --> 01:09:51,880
Speaker 1: and there's a monster that dwells there and there's nothing

1235
01:09:51,920 --> 01:09:56,040
Speaker 1: of value, and you should just a sticky image that

1236
01:09:56,080 --> 01:09:59,479
Speaker 1: will drive people away for hundreds of generations. And that, Yeah,

1237
01:09:59,479 --> 01:10:01,960
Speaker 1: that's exactly what a monster is that of you know,

1238
01:10:02,160 --> 01:10:07,200
Speaker 1: nations fall, empires, fall, laws, fade, signs of warning fall

1239
01:10:07,280 --> 01:10:10,640
Speaker 1: into the dust, but the monster persevere. And yeah, and

1240
01:10:10,680 --> 01:10:13,759
Speaker 1: so coming back to how we make the monsters cute,

1241
01:10:13,800 --> 01:10:17,679
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if it's this secular rebuke, Like is turning

1242
01:10:17,680 --> 01:10:22,000
Speaker 1: a monster cute an attempt to say even unconsciously, Maybe

1243
01:10:22,000 --> 01:10:24,800
Speaker 1: not like people do this on purpose, but are they

1244
01:10:24,840 --> 01:10:28,000
Speaker 1: at some level saying there are no demons, devils or

1245
01:10:28,040 --> 01:10:31,000
Speaker 1: monsters and I'll show you, and they do it by

1246
01:10:31,080 --> 01:10:34,439
Speaker 1: making the image cute. Is it like sort of the

1247
01:10:34,680 --> 01:10:37,880
Speaker 1: equivalent of blasphemy, but instead of against the gods, it's

1248
01:10:37,920 --> 01:10:41,040
Speaker 1: against the monster belief. Yeah, and of course it's dangerous

1249
01:10:41,080 --> 01:10:43,519
Speaker 1: to rebuke the monster, because no matter how silly you

1250
01:10:43,560 --> 01:10:46,679
Speaker 1: think it is, no matter how two dimensional the monster

1251
01:10:46,800 --> 01:10:49,920
Speaker 1: might seem, uh, there's probably a lot more going on

1252
01:10:49,960 --> 01:10:52,360
Speaker 1: there than meets the eyes totally. You know, I was

1253
01:10:52,400 --> 01:10:55,160
Speaker 1: thinking one other way to clarify what might be happening here.

1254
01:10:55,200 --> 01:10:58,280
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe this won't be any additional clarity.

1255
01:10:58,320 --> 01:11:00,360
Speaker 1: But are there any monsters we can think of that

1256
01:11:00,439 --> 01:11:03,360
Speaker 1: have not undergone this process where there are no cute

1257
01:11:03,479 --> 01:11:06,200
Speaker 1: versions of them or almost no cute versions of them,

1258
01:11:06,360 --> 01:11:09,760
Speaker 1: there's not any pervasive attempt in the culture to make

1259
01:11:09,880 --> 01:11:13,400
Speaker 1: a toothless version of the creature. Well, if we're looking

1260
01:11:13,439 --> 01:11:16,280
Speaker 1: at Japanese demons, I would say that the tingo is

1261
01:11:16,320 --> 01:11:19,600
Speaker 1: probably an interesting case of this. Now, that's not to

1262
01:11:19,640 --> 01:11:23,080
Speaker 1: say they are no cute tingu. You can certainly find them.

1263
01:11:23,120 --> 01:11:25,800
Speaker 1: I found them just doing image searches for them for

1264
01:11:25,840 --> 01:11:28,919
Speaker 1: the English word tingu. But you think they're less prevalent.

1265
01:11:29,040 --> 01:11:32,360
Speaker 1: I'm getting the you know, somebody with more experience with

1266
01:11:32,520 --> 01:11:35,519
Speaker 1: Japanese culture and pop culture can maybe chime in on this,

1267
01:11:35,640 --> 01:11:37,479
Speaker 1: But it seems like there's less of it. You do

1268
01:11:37,600 --> 01:11:41,400
Speaker 1: see tingu showing up in video games and manga and

1269
01:11:41,439 --> 01:11:44,639
Speaker 1: all other forms of media, but they tend to retain

1270
01:11:44,680 --> 01:11:48,519
Speaker 1: a certain seriousness that is lacking from you know, again,

1271
01:11:48,600 --> 01:11:51,960
Speaker 1: the Kappa. You don't see Kappa snatching livers out of

1272
01:11:52,000 --> 01:11:55,320
Speaker 1: anuses as much anymore, but in these cases, the tingoo

1273
01:11:55,320 --> 01:11:59,600
Speaker 1: still tends to retain a certain regal character in a

1274
01:11:59,680 --> 01:12:03,040
Speaker 1: in a certain dangerous element as well. So I should

1275
01:12:03,040 --> 01:12:05,559
Speaker 1: probably talk about what the tingoo is though, for anyone

1276
01:12:05,600 --> 01:12:09,080
Speaker 1: who who is not familiar alright, So the Tingu. They

1277
01:12:09,080 --> 01:12:11,920
Speaker 1: are a warrior class of monsters who reside in the

1278
01:12:11,920 --> 01:12:15,599
Speaker 1: mountain forest of Mount to Karama, north of Kyoto, and

1279
01:12:15,840 --> 01:12:18,160
Speaker 1: their hybridity is that of a bird and a man.

1280
01:12:18,880 --> 01:12:21,080
Speaker 1: Usually they're described as having a humanoid body but with

1281
01:12:21,160 --> 01:12:24,120
Speaker 1: glowing eyes and a long red beak, and sometimes that

1282
01:12:24,200 --> 01:12:27,800
Speaker 1: beak is more depicted as a long nose. So I

1283
01:12:27,680 --> 01:12:30,720
Speaker 1: imagine if you've ever played a video game and there's

1284
01:12:30,720 --> 01:12:32,360
Speaker 1: a character that seems to have a mask with a

1285
01:12:32,360 --> 01:12:35,479
Speaker 1: long red nose, that's essentially a tingu. So they have

1286
01:12:35,520 --> 01:12:39,120
Speaker 1: feathered wings, and they're warlike. They're skilled in martial arts.

1287
01:12:39,360 --> 01:12:41,760
Speaker 1: Humans sometimes seek them out to learn their arts, but

1288
01:12:41,880 --> 01:12:44,920
Speaker 1: frequently go mad upon encountering them, and then of course

1289
01:12:44,960 --> 01:12:47,640
Speaker 1: they also have this mischievous side. So if you're if

1290
01:12:47,640 --> 01:12:50,240
Speaker 1: you're in the mountain woods and you hear something like laughter,

1291
01:12:50,280 --> 01:12:52,320
Speaker 1: well that might be the laughter of Tingu. If a

1292
01:12:52,400 --> 01:12:54,400
Speaker 1: tree falls, it might have been taken down by a

1293
01:12:54,479 --> 01:12:58,720
Speaker 1: Tingu wind. And these examples are from the book by

1294
01:12:58,880 --> 01:13:04,200
Speaker 1: Hruku waka Ashi, the Seven Tingoo Scrolls. So the thing

1295
01:13:04,200 --> 01:13:06,720
Speaker 1: about the Tingo is that they were you know, they

1296
01:13:06,840 --> 01:13:10,680
Speaker 1: varied inform, purpose, and even alignment. Uh. There were in

1297
01:13:10,720 --> 01:13:13,080
Speaker 1: some cases good Tingou, but for the most part, they

1298
01:13:13,080 --> 01:13:17,879
Speaker 1: were portrayed as uh, especially in medieval Japan, as being evil, vengeful,

1299
01:13:18,040 --> 01:13:21,719
Speaker 1: chaotic spirits. They were enemies of Buddhism. In some cases

1300
01:13:21,720 --> 01:13:25,000
Speaker 1: they were falling priests who failed to achieve nirvana, and

1301
01:13:25,040 --> 01:13:28,160
Speaker 1: they were the embodiment of Ma or Mara or obstacles

1302
01:13:28,200 --> 01:13:30,800
Speaker 1: to Buddhist enlightenment. Now it's worth knowing that they were

1303
01:13:30,800 --> 01:13:34,559
Speaker 1: different from moral evil in this regard or or aku

1304
01:13:34,720 --> 01:13:37,240
Speaker 1: and this the Tingu were they were. You can essentially

1305
01:13:37,320 --> 01:13:40,240
Speaker 1: think of them as obstructionists. Uh, you know they were.

1306
01:13:40,280 --> 01:13:43,120
Speaker 1: They were there to just try and prevent you from

1307
01:13:43,200 --> 01:13:46,160
Speaker 1: achieving enlightenment, and you had to battle them in your

1308
01:13:46,200 --> 01:13:48,400
Speaker 1: life to get past them. So they were kind of

1309
01:13:48,439 --> 01:13:54,160
Speaker 1: serious business, you know, uh, and very high minded monstrous symbols.

1310
01:13:54,320 --> 01:13:56,400
Speaker 1: And I think that's key to whereas these other examples

1311
01:13:56,439 --> 01:14:00,800
Speaker 1: were rural monsters, these were kind of the peasant monsters.

1312
01:14:00,840 --> 01:14:05,080
Speaker 1: The tingu was the thinking man's monster, and I think

1313
01:14:05,280 --> 01:14:09,479
Speaker 1: that plays into its survival. Yeah, So I wonder if

1314
01:14:10,000 --> 01:14:13,120
Speaker 1: something about the level to which a creature is incorporated

1315
01:14:13,200 --> 01:14:17,680
Speaker 1: into formalized religion rather than just being a part of

1316
01:14:17,840 --> 01:14:21,679
Speaker 1: informal folk creature or deity belief. That's that's true because

1317
01:14:21,720 --> 01:14:25,920
Speaker 1: there are shrines even uh with tingou imagery. So they

1318
01:14:25,920 --> 01:14:29,719
Speaker 1: were more divine in many respects, and again more more regal,

1319
01:14:29,880 --> 01:14:33,000
Speaker 1: more a property of the ruling class and the priestly

1320
01:14:33,160 --> 01:14:36,720
Speaker 1: class as well. Um, they were also tied up with

1321
01:14:37,000 --> 01:14:39,120
Speaker 1: explanations for a lot of serious stuff that was going

1322
01:14:39,120 --> 01:14:40,759
Speaker 1: on in the medieval period, a lot of the chronic

1323
01:14:40,840 --> 01:14:44,840
Speaker 1: social disorder and instability. They were. They were symbols of

1324
01:14:44,920 --> 01:14:48,880
Speaker 1: chaos to explain the rise of the warrior class war

1325
01:14:49,120 --> 01:14:52,880
Speaker 1: and this the political disunity, uh in what some saw

1326
01:14:53,040 --> 01:14:55,960
Speaker 1: is the final age of Buddha's teachings at the time.

1327
01:14:56,680 --> 01:14:59,679
Speaker 1: So again, you it's not that you won't find cute

1328
01:14:59,680 --> 01:15:02,519
Speaker 1: ting you out there or just you know, very pop

1329
01:15:02,600 --> 01:15:07,000
Speaker 1: culturally uh distilled images of the tingu. But I feel

1330
01:15:07,040 --> 01:15:09,120
Speaker 1: like you see far less of it. The tingoo still

1331
01:15:09,160 --> 01:15:12,400
Speaker 1: retains a lot of its original potency. Now that's got

1332
01:15:12,439 --> 01:15:17,120
Speaker 1: me wondering about other monsters in other traditions around the

1333
01:15:17,160 --> 01:15:21,360
Speaker 1: world and whether the level to which they're incorporated into

1334
01:15:21,400 --> 01:15:26,799
Speaker 1: the formalized version of the local religion determines how likely

1335
01:15:26,840 --> 01:15:30,400
Speaker 1: they are to be to be euthanized with cuteness. Yeah,

1336
01:15:30,479 --> 01:15:34,360
Speaker 1: because you look at Christianity and you you don't see this.

1337
01:15:34,360 --> 01:15:36,080
Speaker 1: This is not the case with the devil. You see

1338
01:15:36,120 --> 01:15:40,519
Speaker 1: plenty of cute devils out there, But well, yeah you do.

1339
01:15:41,000 --> 01:15:42,559
Speaker 1: I guess that's right. I mean I was gonna say,

1340
01:15:42,600 --> 01:15:45,360
Speaker 1: you don't see as many cute demons as you see

1341
01:15:45,400 --> 01:15:48,920
Speaker 1: like cute vampires and cute werewolves. Yeah, maybe you have

1342
01:15:48,960 --> 01:15:51,559
Speaker 1: a point there. Maybe there are they are far more

1343
01:15:51,680 --> 01:15:54,560
Speaker 1: cute of vampires and worlds, and there are acute demons

1344
01:15:55,760 --> 01:15:58,639
Speaker 1: or some of the more potentially problematic characters. I guess,

1345
01:15:58,640 --> 01:16:01,080
Speaker 1: like the the Angel of God. How many how many

1346
01:16:01,120 --> 01:16:05,200
Speaker 1: cute angels wrestling humans are there? And I guess you

1347
01:16:05,200 --> 01:16:07,760
Speaker 1: also have to ask a question like how how many

1348
01:16:07,800 --> 01:16:10,280
Speaker 1: trolls are there in the culture, Like how many, how

1349
01:16:10,320 --> 01:16:12,719
Speaker 1: many people were willing to take even you know, sacred

1350
01:16:12,760 --> 01:16:16,559
Speaker 1: cows and make them cute just for the sheer, you know,

1351
01:16:16,680 --> 01:16:18,760
Speaker 1: just for the giggles of doing it. Well then again,

1352
01:16:18,800 --> 01:16:20,600
Speaker 1: I mean, so I think there might be something to

1353
01:16:20,800 --> 01:16:24,320
Speaker 1: that sort of blasphemy equivalent. It's not blasphemy against the gods,

1354
01:16:24,360 --> 01:16:27,440
Speaker 1: but blasphemy against the monster is a sort of intentional

1355
01:16:27,520 --> 01:16:32,280
Speaker 1: rebuke and the desire to undercut their perceived power. There

1356
01:16:32,320 --> 01:16:34,320
Speaker 1: might be something to that, But I don't know if

1357
01:16:34,360 --> 01:16:37,160
Speaker 1: I really feel that when I, like, if I were

1358
01:16:37,200 --> 01:16:40,360
Speaker 1: to draw a cute vampire, I don't know if I'd

1359
01:16:40,400 --> 01:16:44,000
Speaker 1: feel spiteful in doing that. Well, I might just feel

1360
01:16:44,120 --> 01:16:47,360
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh, that's funny. You can't imagine someone going,

1361
01:16:47,520 --> 01:16:51,240
Speaker 1: get away from me, baby Satan. You have no power

1362
01:16:51,280 --> 01:16:54,160
Speaker 1: over me. Here, get thee behind me, baby Satan. So

1363
01:16:54,200 --> 01:16:57,680
Speaker 1: another thing I was talking to Lauren Vogelbaum about was

1364
01:16:58,080 --> 01:17:00,840
Speaker 1: was about this question of what contributes of the transformation

1365
01:17:00,880 --> 01:17:04,000
Speaker 1: of terrifying monsters into these cute versions of themselves, And

1366
01:17:04,080 --> 01:17:06,040
Speaker 1: she made a point that I thought was really interesting.

1367
01:17:06,840 --> 01:17:10,880
Speaker 1: She said, in the context of Japanese depictions of cute

1368
01:17:10,880 --> 01:17:14,479
Speaker 1: monsters in manga and anime. Um. What if it's the

1369
01:17:14,520 --> 01:17:19,280
Speaker 1: creeping sense of delayed adulthood and the extension of childhood

1370
01:17:19,360 --> 01:17:21,280
Speaker 1: that we see in a lot of cultures in the

1371
01:17:21,280 --> 01:17:24,519
Speaker 1: twentieth century and especially the second half of the twentieth

1372
01:17:24,520 --> 01:17:28,000
Speaker 1: century and in the twenty first century. I mean, maybe

1373
01:17:28,080 --> 01:17:30,840
Speaker 1: there are some cultural critics who would come back and say,

1374
01:17:30,920 --> 01:17:32,720
Speaker 1: this is not really a thing, this is one of

1375
01:17:32,760 --> 01:17:36,479
Speaker 1: those you know, bs trend pieces. But there are a

1376
01:17:36,479 --> 01:17:38,920
Speaker 1: lot of people who would argue that there is a

1377
01:17:39,000 --> 01:17:42,680
Speaker 1: sort of creeping infantilism among adults in the in the

1378
01:17:42,720 --> 01:17:47,240
Speaker 1: Western world especially. I mean, I know you've heard that argument, right, Robert, Yeah, yeah,

1379
01:17:47,240 --> 01:17:50,400
Speaker 1: I mean, and certainly you we it does seem like

1380
01:17:50,439 --> 01:17:54,679
Speaker 1: we remain many of us remain children longer. We we don't,

1381
01:17:55,000 --> 01:17:57,000
Speaker 1: you know, give up all of our childish things as

1382
01:17:57,000 --> 01:18:00,080
Speaker 1: we uh as we become adults, right, we tend to

1383
01:18:00,120 --> 01:18:03,360
Speaker 1: stay in school longer, we get married later. All of

1384
01:18:03,400 --> 01:18:06,160
Speaker 1: these things that are traditionally in cultures thought of as

1385
01:18:06,200 --> 01:18:09,680
Speaker 1: sort of rites of passage to adulthood get like delayed

1386
01:18:09,840 --> 01:18:12,439
Speaker 1: later and later into life. And so it could be

1387
01:18:12,479 --> 01:18:16,120
Speaker 1: possible to think about the idea of of the cuteness

1388
01:18:16,120 --> 01:18:19,360
Speaker 1: of monster imagery, uh well, being related to the fact

1389
01:18:19,360 --> 01:18:22,000
Speaker 1: that children tend to like cute imagery. So could the

1390
01:18:22,000 --> 01:18:26,959
Speaker 1: transformation into cuteness represent an increasingly in fantalize adult cultures

1391
01:18:27,000 --> 01:18:31,200
Speaker 1: attempt to make monster folklore more palatable, more cuddly for

1392
01:18:31,280 --> 01:18:34,080
Speaker 1: those of us who don't want to hack scariness. Yeah,

1393
01:18:34,200 --> 01:18:35,840
Speaker 1: I think it could very well be the case. And

1394
01:18:35,840 --> 01:18:37,800
Speaker 1: of course it comes back to the idea too, of

1395
01:18:37,880 --> 01:18:43,280
Speaker 1: cute cuteness and monstrosity being upon the same spectrum, being

1396
01:18:43,600 --> 01:18:47,040
Speaker 1: within the same dimension. And so there's this. They're interconnected

1397
01:18:47,080 --> 01:18:50,519
Speaker 1: already anyway, so it's all the more easier to begin

1398
01:18:50,520 --> 01:18:53,840
Speaker 1: tweaking these images and skewing their meaning. Now, I want

1399
01:18:53,840 --> 01:18:56,519
Speaker 1: to be clear that I'm not necessarily endorsing the idea

1400
01:18:56,640 --> 01:18:59,320
Speaker 1: that adults are more infantile than they used to be.

1401
01:18:59,479 --> 01:19:02,000
Speaker 1: I just know that is a theory out there. I'm

1402
01:19:02,000 --> 01:19:05,160
Speaker 1: not sure if I buy it. I remain agnostic. You know,

1403
01:19:05,240 --> 01:19:07,479
Speaker 1: one more thing that this makes me think about is

1404
01:19:07,560 --> 01:19:10,240
Speaker 1: back to our episode on euphemisms. Robert, you remember the

1405
01:19:10,280 --> 01:19:15,160
Speaker 1: concept of the euphemism treadmill and the dysphemism treadmill. I do, yes,

1406
01:19:15,280 --> 01:19:18,040
Speaker 1: So the euphemism treadmill is this concept. I can't remember

1407
01:19:18,040 --> 01:19:21,000
Speaker 1: who came up with it. Was it Stephen Pinker, I believe,

1408
01:19:21,040 --> 01:19:23,920
Speaker 1: So that sounds right, and I'm going to say it's

1409
01:19:23,920 --> 01:19:26,639
Speaker 1: Stephen Pinker, and I can be the one that's wrong. Essentially,

1410
01:19:26,680 --> 01:19:29,439
Speaker 1: the idea is that you have a euphemism, which is

1411
01:19:29,479 --> 01:19:32,400
Speaker 1: a term you introduce to be a polite sort of

1412
01:19:32,439 --> 01:19:36,440
Speaker 1: illusion word indicate a concept that somehow problematic or offensive

1413
01:19:36,520 --> 01:19:39,639
Speaker 1: or causes people, you know, like, uh, it's the nice

1414
01:19:39,760 --> 01:19:42,960
Speaker 1: new word that you say, But eventually that word itself

1415
01:19:43,200 --> 01:19:46,559
Speaker 1: tends to become perceived in the culture as not nice.

1416
01:19:46,960 --> 01:19:50,439
Speaker 1: So for example, uh, crippled was supposed to be the

1417
01:19:50,640 --> 01:19:53,960
Speaker 1: nice word for people with disabilities, and then it came

1418
01:19:54,040 --> 01:19:56,479
Speaker 1: to become a word that you would never want to

1419
01:19:56,479 --> 01:20:00,639
Speaker 1: call somebody um. And so there's this process us like that,

1420
01:20:01,439 --> 01:20:04,440
Speaker 1: But then the same thing happens the other way with dysphemisms,

1421
01:20:04,479 --> 01:20:06,800
Speaker 1: with words that we want to use with negative connotations.

1422
01:20:06,880 --> 01:20:10,519
Speaker 1: So for example, how the word sucks. You know, you

1423
01:20:10,560 --> 01:20:13,080
Speaker 1: just say, like that movie really sucked. That used to

1424
01:20:13,080 --> 01:20:16,840
Speaker 1: be an incredibly vulgar and offensive, just nasty thing to say,

1425
01:20:16,840 --> 01:20:19,000
Speaker 1: and now little kids say it. I mean, it's everywhere

1426
01:20:19,200 --> 01:20:22,280
Speaker 1: it's lost its power to shock and offend. So you

1427
01:20:22,280 --> 01:20:25,599
Speaker 1: have to keep inventing new words. And so you're saying, essentially,

1428
01:20:25,600 --> 01:20:27,960
Speaker 1: we have to keep inventing new monsters as well because

1429
01:20:28,000 --> 01:20:29,880
Speaker 1: the old ones lose their power. I mean, I think

1430
01:20:29,880 --> 01:20:32,679
Speaker 1: that could to some extent be true. Like uh, that

1431
01:20:32,720 --> 01:20:34,800
Speaker 1: we are we may be seeing some kind of equivalent

1432
01:20:34,880 --> 01:20:38,719
Speaker 1: of the dysphamism treadmill with the monsters of old. Over time,

1433
01:20:39,000 --> 01:20:41,439
Speaker 1: they're just going to lose their power to shock and

1434
01:20:41,479 --> 01:20:44,240
Speaker 1: offend and they become like the little kids saying sucks,

1435
01:20:44,560 --> 01:20:48,280
Speaker 1: the little kids running around with cute vampire dolls. And

1436
01:20:48,360 --> 01:20:51,439
Speaker 1: it really it's super hard nowadays with the Internet because

1437
01:20:51,439 --> 01:20:53,559
Speaker 1: you have like a probably a lag time of just

1438
01:20:54,080 --> 01:20:57,639
Speaker 1: hours after a film comes out before someone has made

1439
01:20:57,680 --> 01:21:00,080
Speaker 1: a cute button or a cute T shirt or is

1440
01:21:00,200 --> 01:21:04,120
Speaker 1: to meme based on that monster. Yeah, it happens immediately

1441
01:21:04,200 --> 01:21:06,840
Speaker 1: when when there's a new movie, it happens, uh. And

1442
01:21:07,040 --> 01:21:09,719
Speaker 1: I think it creates a great challenge for say, horror

1443
01:21:09,760 --> 01:21:13,680
Speaker 1: movie creators to make a traditional monster scary. Again, think

1444
01:21:13,680 --> 01:21:16,640
Speaker 1: about how many recent vampire movies you can think of

1445
01:21:16,720 --> 01:21:20,160
Speaker 1: that have really scary vampires. They've sort of lost their

1446
01:21:20,200 --> 01:21:22,720
Speaker 1: power haven't they. Yeah, so if you you just can't

1447
01:21:22,760 --> 01:21:24,720
Speaker 1: trot off the same vampire over and over again because

1448
01:21:24,960 --> 01:21:28,040
Speaker 1: nobody's buying it anymore. Right. I mean when Bell Leeghostie

1449
01:21:28,120 --> 01:21:30,280
Speaker 1: first showed up on screens, he had people screaming in

1450
01:21:30,320 --> 01:21:32,320
Speaker 1: the aisles of theaters. Now you watch it and Bill

1451
01:21:32,400 --> 01:21:34,800
Speaker 1: Leegostie is great, but he's not scary. Yeah. We often

1452
01:21:34,840 --> 01:21:38,200
Speaker 1: forget just how how terrifying that performance actually was, and

1453
01:21:38,280 --> 01:21:40,080
Speaker 1: he is really if you if you look at it

1454
01:21:40,080 --> 01:21:42,080
Speaker 1: with new eyes, Yeah, especially if you knew that he

1455
01:21:42,080 --> 01:21:44,880
Speaker 1: would end up in Edward movies. That's true. That's true.

1456
01:21:46,520 --> 01:21:49,040
Speaker 1: All right, Well, there you have it. We have explored

1457
01:21:49,240 --> 01:21:53,320
Speaker 1: the monstrous, we've explored the cute, and we have explored

1458
01:21:53,360 --> 01:21:56,000
Speaker 1: the bridge between. I want to know from you out there,

1459
01:21:56,280 --> 01:22:00,240
Speaker 1: what do you think is going on psychologically culturally? Is

1460
01:22:00,280 --> 01:22:03,800
Speaker 1: happening when we take these horrifying images and creatures and

1461
01:22:03,840 --> 01:22:06,719
Speaker 1: make them into cute plush dolls to cuddle with? Why

1462
01:22:06,760 --> 01:22:09,080
Speaker 1: do we keep doing it? And what effect does it

1463
01:22:09,160 --> 01:22:11,600
Speaker 1: have on the culture? Yeah? What are your favorite examples

1464
01:22:11,640 --> 01:22:15,280
Speaker 1: of this process? And what monsters, if any, have not

1465
01:22:15,400 --> 01:22:18,519
Speaker 1: gone cute? Uh? And for how long will they remain

1466
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Speaker 1: as well as the host themselves. And uh hey, also

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Speaker 1: beginning of time. And if you want to get in

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Speaker 1: touch with us directly with feedback on this episode or

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Speaker 1: any other, you can always email us at blow the

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Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff Works dot com for more on

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