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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey you welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, Robert,

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Speaker 1: have you seen all these cute Jason Vorhees dolls and

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Speaker 1: cartoons and fan art all over the Internet. Of course

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Speaker 1: you have. I've at least seen some of it. But

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Speaker 1: I know you shared with me an image of Jason

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Speaker 1: plush doll, and I had not encountered that specific cute

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

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Speaker 1: on the machete. But he's adorable, but he has blood

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Speaker 1: on it, like you know, murder weapons. I mean, even

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Speaker 1: if we didn't know who he is, the context here

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Speaker 1: is that this is a killer. Yeah. He's got a

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Speaker 1: huge head, huge low set eyes. He just looks so sweet,

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Speaker 1: little stumpy limbs. He's like a little cute baby Jason.

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Speaker 1: And there are cute Freddy Krueger's in the same way,

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Speaker 1: cute Freddy Kruger cartoons, dolls, toys, uh things all over

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Speaker 1: the Internet. And you've seen the cute vampires, the cute werewolves,

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Speaker 1: cute versions of the girl from the Ring. I looked

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Speaker 1: it up that exists cute predators from the movie Predator.

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Speaker 1: I saw that that's that's kind of easy, because the

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

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Speaker 1: just make the eyes bigger. They're cute xeno morphs. You'd

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: and instead we're making all these versions of them that

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Speaker 1: are adorable, with infantile characteristics that you just want to

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that Pennywise, this thing that appears as a clown in

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Speaker 1: order to, you know, drain the essence out of children

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Speaker 1: and pull them into horrify them and pull them into sewers.

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Speaker 1: You would think that would be beyond our ability to

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Speaker 1: make cute. And yet just the other day I was

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Speaker 1: looking at a cute pins of Pennywise, I'll cute it up. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: if you want to go in the cosmic direction, how

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Speaker 1: about all the cute Illifid montheror the cute you know,

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Speaker 1: uh cathuloom with those stuff. Yeah, when cute cute plush case.

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Speaker 1: When my son came into my life, but I was,

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Speaker 1: one of the first things we gave him was a

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Speaker 1: plush Cathulu, which he loves. And it's an adorable looking creature.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, he doesn't even know that it is essentially

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Speaker 1: supposed to be a scary monster. I guess it's not

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Speaker 1: funny to children in the same way it is funny

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Speaker 1: to adults. No, that he just sees it as a cool,

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Speaker 1: pretend little creature. It's like if you encountered snuff alophagus

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Speaker 1: and then somebody said, oh, yes, stuff alophagus is actually

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Speaker 1: a patterned after this hideous monster, right, this thing that

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Speaker 1: snorts you up as a liquid through its trunk. Though,

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Speaker 1: I do want to say, before this epidemic of cute

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Speaker 1: cartoon versions and cute dolls and stuff like that of

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Speaker 1: say Freddy Krueger, there is a precedent for this within

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Speaker 1: the horror media itself. Because you've seen the Freddy Krueger movies,

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Speaker 1: right the Nightmare on Elm Street. I've seen the first one,

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

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Speaker 1: and the rest it's just mostly clips 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: and ingenious kills. That's that all the compilers together for me. Well,

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Speaker 1: there there's definitely an arc throughout the series where, over

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Speaker 1: time the Freddy Krueger of the first movie and the

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Speaker 1: first night Nightmare on Elm Street, I think Wes Craven

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Speaker 1: went out of his way to make him not just

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Speaker 1: a threatening monster, the standard kind of monster that will

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Speaker 1: hurt you and chases you, but to make him repulsive

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Speaker 1: and really just nasty. I mean, Freddy Krueger in the

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Speaker 1: first movie is a character who's supposed to be a

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Speaker 1: child murderer, and there are these suggestions of perversity and

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Speaker 1: this this kind of gross creepiness, not just threatening monstrosity,

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Speaker 1: and so from that point, I think it's really amazing

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Speaker 1: that over the arc of the series Freddie becomes sort

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Speaker 1: of almost something like an anti hero, Like he's never

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Speaker 1: actually a good guy, but he stops becoming this gross

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Speaker 1: creep that you don't even want to look at, and

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Speaker 1: becomes this jokester who dances and mugs for the camera

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Speaker 1: and has one liners, makes jokes, and he becomes the

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Speaker 1: star of the films. He becomes the reason people watch it,

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Speaker 1: and it's because he's fun and he's comic. He becomes

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Speaker 1: the crypt keeper, he becomes Hull Cogan. Uh. And then

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Speaker 1: it's certainly by Jason versus Freddie you're probably rooting for

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Speaker 1: one or the other. He is, like, there's kind of

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Speaker 1: a fifty split there that that you may be backing

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Speaker 1: this character in the brawl. Yeah, and maybe you could

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Speaker 1: chalk that up in the Fredd movies just to the

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Speaker 1: actor who played him, Robert England, being a great and

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Speaker 1: likable actor, despite the fact that he settled with this

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Speaker 1: incredibly repulsive role. Uh, maybe Robert England just bleeds through

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Speaker 1: so much that you want to make him more and

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Speaker 1: more likable. Well. It it even got to the point

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Speaker 1: when they when the remake of Nightmare Him Street came out. Um,

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Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't like it. I actually really

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

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Speaker 1: a fine hard film. I didn't like it, he didn't

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Speaker 1: like I. I I enjoyed it. But then again, I'm less

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Speaker 1: attached to the series. But but one of the criticisms

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Speaker 1: that I saw level at it was how could you

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Speaker 1: make Freddie a pedophile? How could you make this his avert,

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Speaker 1: make this creepiness in his character so avert, as if

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Speaker 1: that like ruined a hero and not just made a

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Speaker 1: grotesque monster a little creepier. I think it was always

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Speaker 1: kind of implicitly suggested back in the first movie. Look,

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Speaker 1: I mean, they never said that outright that I recall,

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Speaker 1: but it's always there in the fact that, like we

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

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Speaker 1: he's perverse. Yeah, So it's it's interesting to see how

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Speaker 1: people responded to kind of a doubling down on on

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Speaker 1: on the grotesque monstrosity of the character in a way

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Speaker 1: 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 Nutmaar 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 folkloreic 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 you inevitably see people who say,

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Speaker 1: do a love crafty and take on totoro or and

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Speaker 1: then there's a whole area of Kauai known as Kauai

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Speaker 1: and noir, which is like dark cute where they have

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Speaker 1: something that pretty much intentionally has a lag or maybe

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: animal turns out to be a horrifying killer. 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 interesting 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 Tango. 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, right, But if you if you really

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

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Speaker 1: to define it, what you tend to think about something

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Speaker 1: that is awesome inform or size. It's novel and it's

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Speaker 1: chimerical combination of natural forms, you know, like it's got

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Speaker 1: the head of a sea horse in the body of

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

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

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Speaker 1: horse the size of the school bus would also be

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

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Speaker 1: which is that a monster is the thing that should

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Speaker 1: not be. It's a thing that you behold and realize

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

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Speaker 1: but 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 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 if not a message

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: because you went somewhere, or you did something, or you're

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Speaker 1: 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 whole there, But we can tease it

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

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Speaker 1: almost a universal images of of the cute and see

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

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Speaker 1: it's connecting with us. So, for instance, kittens, babies, or

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Speaker 1: of course Hello Kitty, which is essentially a kitten combined

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Speaker 1: with a baby or a small child with psychedelic color schemes.

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Speaker 1: Psychedelic color schemes. And then of course many cute creatures

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Speaker 1: of either real ones or fanciful ones. What do they have?

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Speaker 1: They have big adorable eyes or perhaps big jowls, baby

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Speaker 1: like cheeks. They're kind of Winston Churchill's yeah no no,

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Speaker 1: so yeah, there do appear to be some biological roots

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

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Speaker 1: into our mammalian brains and not just into cultural categories.

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Speaker 1: So culture may very well inform a lot of what

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Speaker 1: we find cute downstream of these biological cues. So, in

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Speaker 1: his eighteen seventy two book The Freshion of the Emotions

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Speaker 1: in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin suggested that natural selection

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Speaker 1: is probably gonna favor creatures which, in infancy possess features

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Speaker 1: that cause the adults of that species to protect them

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Speaker 1: and take care of their needs. Right, if you are

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Speaker 1: a species that has a genome that says we usually

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Speaker 1: give birth to babies we find repulsive and don't want

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Speaker 1: anything to do with, that species, isn't gonna do very well, right,

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Speaker 1: or at least you're gonna have a situation like the

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Speaker 1: Komodo dragon, where the young of the Komodo dragon they

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Speaker 1: pretty much they're on their own right and they have

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Speaker 1: to protect themselves from such threats as adult komodo dragons exactly.

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

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

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Speaker 1: This is something we see in mammals 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 you really,

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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 screaming. 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: Now 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 Lorenz, 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 its 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: Larens plunged into this field by observing animal species and

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Speaker 1: coming up with what's known as the Kinschen Schemma 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. We're talking about, short and thick extremities,

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Speaker 1: a springy or elastic consistency. Yeah, they when you when

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

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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 got some kind of crazy ideology, there

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: in line with Lorenz's criteria. And so among a group

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Speaker 1: of undergraduates, the study found that the faces manipulated towards

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Speaker 1: the criteria as a meaning they manipulated them to have

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Speaker 1: larger eyes or a rounder face or a higher forehead,

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Speaker 1: were judged to be cuter and elicited greater motivation for caregiving.

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Speaker 1: People said 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 eyes, smaller

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Speaker 1: foreheads and narrower face and stuff like that. Now I've

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Speaker 1: got a picture here, Yeah, I'm I'm looking at this

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Speaker 1: right now. So, um, basically we have an array of

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Speaker 1: six images, three per row. So we have this grid

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Speaker 1: of baby heads here that we're looking at and um

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

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Speaker 1: like cuteness from left to right. Yeah, So you've got

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Speaker 1: like normal baby heads in the middle, and then on

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Speaker 1: the right you've got ultra babified baby faces with like

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Speaker 1: these gigantic eyes, really round faces, really sort of low

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Speaker 1: faces with large foreheads, big brain capsules. And then on

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Speaker 1: the right you've got unbabified baby faces that look sort

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Speaker 1: of more like the kid in the omen or they

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Speaker 1: look more adult. Basically, they look more like old men,

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Speaker 1: you know. They're they're kind of in that category of

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Speaker 1: like the older baby babies that when you look at

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

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Speaker 1: you tell 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 in light of our basically

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: adult faces. And that's going to that's uh, that difference

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

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Speaker 1: Like the cute or the baby, the more immediate your

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Speaker 1: response to it, I imagine. So, like you see this

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Speaker 1: cute baby face with the highly babified features, and you're like,

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Speaker 1: whoa that I need to pay attention to that. Yeah,

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: zip ties on all my cabinets, those horrible plastic things

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Speaker 1: and all my wall plugs. I know, 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: it's 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 the the other mammalion creatures, and and they're

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

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Speaker 1: um techniques in place in terms of parental care for

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Speaker 1: the infant. Yeah, and it's kind of obvious from our

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Speaker 1: experiences with kittens and puppies and so forth. But experiments

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Speaker 1: do confirm that our appreciation for cuteness goes beyond the

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Speaker 1: infant Homo sapiens. One example is a study found by

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Speaker 1: Anthony Little from two thousand and twelve published again in

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Speaker 1: Ethology called Manipulation of Infant Like Traits Effects Perceived cuteness

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Speaker 1: of infante, adults and cat faces. So it found that

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Speaker 1: among images of three types of faces, babies, adults, and cats,

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Speaker 1: first of all, people found the babies and the cats

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Speaker 1: cuter than adults. But then also when the faces from

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Speaker 1: all three categories were manipulated to have baby scheme of characteristics,

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

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

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Speaker 1: for human baby face is and for cat faces. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so getting into kind of the Betty boot area there

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Speaker 1: of like the weird like infantile but but arguably attractive

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Speaker 1: adult female. Yeah, it's it's just seeming to imply that

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Speaker 1: we have the same kind of caregiving response or cuteness

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Speaker 1: response to faces of all different types of creatures, no

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Speaker 1: matter what age and no matter what species. Even if

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Speaker 1: there's a face and you make these certain types of

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Speaker 1: changes to the face, we think it's cute usually and

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Speaker 1: we respond with all you know, zip tide, the chemical cabinet.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting to think of it in terms

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: making us think it's a baby on some level, you know,

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

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Speaker 1: a large extent, as it's sorta with puppies. So I

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

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Speaker 1: dog or or cat that is either found or s

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: it if it hits those same triggers you know. Now,

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

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Speaker 1: study publishing p OS one, and they tested the effect

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Speaker 1: of viewing kauai images or cute images on attentiveness, and

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Speaker 1: they found that individuals who viewed infinite animal images performed

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Speaker 1: tasks better than those who viewed adult animals. Yeah, seems

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Speaker 1: like so just if you had to have a calendar

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Speaker 1: at your desk, have the baby animals calendar as opposed

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Speaker 1: to the grown up animals calendar. Huh. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I feel I feel unfairly skeptical of that result. Has

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Speaker 1: that been replicated? Well, love, Well, let's let's let's see.

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Speaker 1: So it's not just a matter according to this study

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Speaker 1: of cute things making us happier or amusing us. They

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Speaker 1: also allegedly improve performance in quote tasks that require behavioral carefulness. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I can see that. Yeah, so it's not it's not

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Speaker 1: so much. There's not a magical effect going on here.

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Speaker 1: This is the idea that the cute visible stimuli may

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Speaker 1: actually narrow the breath of attentional focus. I can see that. No,

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Speaker 1: like that seeing a baby face would put the mind

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Speaker 1: into a don't drop the baby gear exactly, and then

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Speaker 1: you take that gear and you apply it to working

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Speaker 1: in your spreadsheet. I can see that. Yeah, okay, I

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Speaker 1: understand the mechanism. Now. Now, different studies have also looked

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Speaker 1: at the effects of cute marketing on consumer restraint of course, uh,

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Speaker 1: and and also on whether it has a to what

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Speaker 1: extent it affects indulgent behavior because the whole don't drop

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Speaker 1: the baby mentality. Do you want your consumer using that

424
00:23:54,320 --> 00:23:57,439
Speaker 1: that kind of mentality when they're potentially behind your product, right,

425
00:23:57,480 --> 00:23:59,760
Speaker 1: you want to encourage them to drop the wallet? Yeah.

426
00:24:00,320 --> 00:24:03,640
Speaker 1: They found that, uh that for some people, cute images

427
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:06,240
Speaker 1: with big eyes or baby cheeks seem to induce more

428
00:24:06,280 --> 00:24:10,879
Speaker 1: careful or strained behavior. But uh, but again not every case.

429
00:24:11,080 --> 00:24:14,480
Speaker 1: But it's an interesting additional study related to this whole

430
00:24:15,320 --> 00:24:20,879
Speaker 1: idea of intensified attentiveness. Now, it's also worth noting that

431
00:24:20,880 --> 00:24:23,200
Speaker 1: when we're talking about cute, we're inevitably talking about visual

432
00:24:23,200 --> 00:24:25,080
Speaker 1: stimulant a lot here, because that's going to be the

433
00:24:25,119 --> 00:24:27,840
Speaker 1: thing that's bound up in either a you know, a

434
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:31,960
Speaker 1: plushed all of of a horror monster or Halloween cost

435
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:36,920
Speaker 1: him that's derived from it. Now, they're obviously also cute sounds, right, yeah, yeah,

436
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 1: the cute baby sound, but even the cute baby smell.

437
00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:43,400
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about this, but you know, obviously,

438
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:46,160
Speaker 1: if you've ever smelled a baby, it's fabulous and it's

439
00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:48,879
Speaker 1: hard to really put a put put a finger on

440
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:52,280
Speaker 1: what's happening there, Like, why is this an attractive smell

441
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:54,720
Speaker 1: to smell a baby's head? I'm sorry, I have no

442
00:24:54,760 --> 00:24:56,520
Speaker 1: idea what you're talking about. Really, well, the next time

443
00:24:56,560 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 1: you're around a baby, do yourself a favor, uh smell it.

444
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:02,840
Speaker 1: It's creepy unless it's your baby. Well, no, you can.

445
00:25:03,440 --> 00:25:06,720
Speaker 1: You can ask you and say, hey, I've been I've

446
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:10,600
Speaker 1: been reading some studies and in uh, you know, in

447
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:12,720
Speaker 1: the name of science, would you allow me to smell

448
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:16,119
Speaker 1: your baby's head. Yeah, have you seen that product on

449
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 1: the market that is like a bottled cathead smell? No,

450
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:24,200
Speaker 1: like an actual cat's head or a cathead biscuit? I think, Oh,

451
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 1: I don't know what's what does a cat head biscuit?

452
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:28,800
Speaker 1: It's just a big old biscuit that's roughly the size

453
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:32,520
Speaker 1: of a cat's head. I'm not sure which what region

454
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:36,440
Speaker 1: uh that that is found in. I guess somewhere in

455
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: the south here. I think it's actually supposed to be

456
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:42,280
Speaker 1: a cat's head. It's like a perfume you can buy

457
00:25:42,280 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 1: that's supposed to smell like a cat head. But cats

458
00:25:44,359 --> 00:25:47,680
Speaker 1: don't really smell like anything if if it's unless it's

459
00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:50,200
Speaker 1: a dirty cat like they tend to have. Like maybe

460
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:53,800
Speaker 1: they smell like pennies, a little bit like batteries, but

461
00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:56,200
Speaker 1: that's about the extent of it. Uh, don't usually smell

462
00:25:56,240 --> 00:26:02,200
Speaker 1: like sulfur. We're not the ones I'm handstone. All right, Well,

463
00:26:02,240 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 1: so on that note, let's take a quick break and

464
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:06,840
Speaker 1: we come back. We will get more into this conflict,

465
00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:13,880
Speaker 1: this battle between cute and monstrosity. All right, So we're back.

466
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 1: So we've talked about cute, We've talked about monsters. We've

467
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:21,520
Speaker 1: talked about them mostly is distant islands, you know, entirely

468
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:23,560
Speaker 1: separate from each other. So on one hand, you have

469
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:26,000
Speaker 1: the Isle of misfit Toys and then you have Monster

470
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 1: Island on the other. I suppose waiter the misfit toys

471
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:31,280
Speaker 1: not also monsters. Well, yeah, I guess they're kind of monstrous.

472
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:33,640
Speaker 1: What would be the what would be the cute island? Oh,

473
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 1: it's that island in Japan that's got all the cats

474
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,400
Speaker 1: on it. Cat have an Island. There you go, that'll work.

475
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:40,879
Speaker 1: So it's the difference between Cat Haven, Cat Have An

476
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:45,280
Speaker 1: Island and uh and Monster Island. But we have to

477
00:26:45,359 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 1: have to wonder are these two states all that different?

478
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:52,480
Speaker 1: Are they really two separate things or are they different

479
00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:56,480
Speaker 1: points on a spectrum? Well, I ran across a really

480
00:26:56,600 --> 00:27:01,040
Speaker 1: thought provoking paper titled Monstrous slash Cute Notes on the

481
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:04,600
Speaker 1: ambivalent ambivalent nature of cuteness, and this is by social

482
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:09,119
Speaker 1: scientists Maja Rozozoska Brancenska. I hope I pronounced that at

483
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:11,720
Speaker 1: least halfway right. But I will try and link to

484
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: this paper in the landing page for this episode Stuff

485
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:15,919
Speaker 1: to your Mind dot com so you can see it

486
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:19,880
Speaker 1: for yourself. Um, Maja bb As, I will refer to her.

487
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:22,199
Speaker 1: She dives into all of this, noting that there's a

488
00:27:22,280 --> 00:27:28,880
Speaker 1: certain ambiguity and hybridity to both monsters and cute entities.

489
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 1: So they're cuties, if you will, cute, so they're not

490
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 1: just different things, but there's something lying along the same scale.

491
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:38,480
Speaker 1: Maybe yeah, that you can think of them as both

492
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:42,119
Speaker 1: both of them as exaggerated states. And she also points

493
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 1: out that cute images boast safe aesthetics that indicate harmless ethics.

494
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:52,119
Speaker 1: So I think it's perplexing because infants, I think we

495
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:55,880
Speaker 1: can all agree, are our home holly blameless creatures. Um,

496
00:27:56,080 --> 00:27:58,239
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you can't look at one in in

497
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:01,800
Speaker 1: horror or fear, but that horror or fear is generally

498
00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:04,880
Speaker 1: tied to the ethical nature of the creature itself. You mean,

499
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 1: not tied right, Yeah, I'm sorry. It's generally not tied

500
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:09,720
Speaker 1: to the ethical nature of the creature itself. It's tied

501
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 1: to you know, your maybe it's tiped feelings of commitment

502
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:16,920
Speaker 1: or h you know, uncertainty about the state of the world,

503
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:19,200
Speaker 1: or I guess the closest you could come to having

504
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: an absolute, authentic horror to the creature of the infant

505
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:25,800
Speaker 1: is to just be appalled at what it does in

506
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:29,119
Speaker 1: its diaper, you know. But well, you could also have

507
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:32,000
Speaker 1: some kind of doctrine, I don't know, some original sin

508
00:28:32,119 --> 00:28:35,640
Speaker 1: type thing. Well, yes, but that's that's you're really you're

509
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 1: you're cheating at that point. I think you're creating a

510
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:41,080
Speaker 1: narrative that actually shames an infant, and so shame on

511
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 1: you for doing it. And of course you might have

512
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:44,920
Speaker 1: some sort of response to just sort of the chaotic

513
00:28:45,040 --> 00:28:48,440
Speaker 1: nature of infants. But if infants are chaotic, and they

514
00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:52,480
Speaker 1: certainly can be, they're definitely chaotic neutral. If not chaotic, good,

515
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:56,600
Speaker 1: They're they're not chaotic evil. Okay, you've convinced me infants are, okay, Robert.

516
00:28:56,960 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 1: Now Likewise, the monster is traditionally a thing as rotten

517
00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 1: on the inside as it is on the outside. The

518
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:07,440
Speaker 1: monster with a heart of gold is an exception, granted up,

519
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:09,719
Speaker 1: a pretty widespread exception at this point, but it's an

520
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 1: exception that proves the rule. Well, it's kind of like

521
00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: those uh the exception that proves the rule on the

522
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:17,280
Speaker 1: other side would be those evil baby movies. Exactly like

523
00:29:17,360 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 1: a possessed demon invent or something. Yeah, but generally, like

524
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:24,280
Speaker 1: a monster is as evil it is as it is ugly,

525
00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:28,440
Speaker 1: and a cute baby or cartoon character is as sweet

526
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 1: as it is visually cute. Now I like this, uh

527
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 1: this idea of cuteness being not just a thing that

528
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 1: we respond to as caregivers and that makes us want

529
00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: to give up our protection and resources for it, but

530
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 1: it's also something that signals harmlessness because it makes me

531
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:48,360
Speaker 1: think about the human domestication of animals. Uh. Like, For example,

532
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:50,960
Speaker 1: if you look at dogs, the domestic dog that we

533
00:29:51,040 --> 00:29:55,080
Speaker 1: have today evolved both through natural but mostly artificial selection

534
00:29:55,560 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 1: from some type of wolf like candid species within the

535
00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 1: history of anatomically modern humans. Now, because humans were selecting

536
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: which features to breed into their dogs, I think we

537
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 1: often assume that cute dog breeds where the adult of

538
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:14,880
Speaker 1: the dog is very cute. We're bred for cuteness simply

539
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 1: for esthetic reasons, right, we wanted them to look cute

540
00:30:18,080 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 1: because we like it. But it's also worth thinking about

541
00:30:20,960 --> 00:30:26,480
Speaker 1: the possibility of a correlation between cuteness and the domesticated

542
00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: affect itself. Like domestic dogs seem to have been selected

543
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 1: to retain juvenile characteristics into adulthood, and these would include

544
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 1: things like a wider face, shorter snouts, floppy ears, a

545
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:45,360
Speaker 1: curly tail, but also positive responses to humans. This is

546
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:48,160
Speaker 1: something you would probably see in like wolf cubs or

547
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 1: fox cubs, but not in adult wolves or adult foxes.

548
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 1: They're the juvenile characteristics of the wild ancestor or the

549
00:30:56,280 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 1: wild cousin that are retained into adulthood and the asticated version.

550
00:31:01,520 --> 00:31:04,560
Speaker 1: And so cuteness might not only be something that releases

551
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 1: caregiving behaviors and adults, but it's literally correlated with the

552
00:31:08,480 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 1: biological transformation of a wild, unruly animal that cannot be

553
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:18,560
Speaker 1: contained and is somewhat dangerous into this friendly, pliable, non threatening,

554
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 1: domestic companion. Like the cuteness shows that it has made

555
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 1: a biological transformation into something that won't bite you and

556
00:31:26,400 --> 00:31:29,120
Speaker 1: in fact might want to snuggle with you. I mean

557
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 1: that explains that the form of the pug right down

558
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:35,040
Speaker 1: to a t, the pug is essentially a dog that

559
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: we have bread to look as much like a human

560
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 1: infant as possible. Oh yeah, it is a human baby

561
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:44,400
Speaker 1: with four legs in a tail that can obviously by you.

562
00:31:44,440 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 1: Though if um, do pugs have teeth? Really yes, I mean,

563
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:53,000
Speaker 1: how much more awful would it be if we've managed

564
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 1: to breathe the teeth out of the dog. I mean,

565
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 1: we've metaphorically bred the teeth out of out of the dog,

566
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:02,840
Speaker 1: but but not literally. Yeah. Alright, So that Maja baby

567
00:32:02,960 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 1: paper that I was discussing earlier, she also uh points

568
00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:10,200
Speaker 1: a lot of this out about Japanese kauai that the

569
00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:14,720
Speaker 1: term itself the again, this is the Japanese cuteness or hypercuteness.

570
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 1: Kauai derives from the word uh kawa yushi, which principally

571
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: means shy and embarrassed, as well as vulnerable, small, and darling,

572
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:27,120
Speaker 1: and it's applied to both babies and old people, perhaps

573
00:32:27,160 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 1: denoting a certain helplessness. And I'm also seen where there's

574
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:35,720
Speaker 1: a variation on kauai uh like a variant word that

575
00:32:35,880 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 1: is uh that that is used as a put down

576
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 1: that has a negative connotation as meaning pet, pathetic, poor,

577
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 1: or pitiable and in a generally negative way. Oh. So

578
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:47,200
Speaker 1: it's like on the playground when a bully says the

579
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:50,880
Speaker 1: other kid is like all little baby. Yeah. I mean,

580
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: it's interesting to bring that up because my my son

581
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 1: is in kindergarten and he's still at the age where

582
00:32:56,800 --> 00:33:00,240
Speaker 1: that is the ultimate put down, Like if you're gonna

583
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: insult somebody, you you call them a baby, and it's

584
00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:05,840
Speaker 1: the worst thing in the world, to the point where

585
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:10,280
Speaker 1: our cat, if our cat misbehaves, yeah, are then my

586
00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:14,440
Speaker 1: son will say, oh, baby mochi or even it doesn't

587
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 1: even have to be a person or a thing. It

588
00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:18,440
Speaker 1: can just be a general idea, or it can be

589
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 1: an object. But and you just put baby in front

590
00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:23,719
Speaker 1: of it, and that's like the ultimate belittling of it.

591
00:33:23,800 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 1: Like the toaster won't work. It's a baby, Yes, baby toaster.

592
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:30,160
Speaker 1: Like instead of saying stupid toaster or or some or

593
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: some other more adult um word, you just say baby toaster. Uh.

594
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:39,440
Speaker 1: But that's funny because I think the literature reflects that

595
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: children do respond well to these infantile features as well, right,

596
00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 1: Like children like the baby schema, Children like cuteness a lot. Yeah.

597
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:49,840
Speaker 1: I mean you just have to look at their stuffed

598
00:33:49,840 --> 00:33:53,680
Speaker 1: animals and and there's the proof. So the idea here

599
00:33:53,720 --> 00:33:56,240
Speaker 1: is perhaps the monsters and the cute are the same

600
00:33:56,360 --> 00:34:00,280
Speaker 1: energy applied in opposite directions. In fact, manage be the

601
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 1: rights of cuteness as a pendulum. It quote works inevitably

602
00:34:04,360 --> 00:34:06,520
Speaker 1: as a sort of pendulum, swinging to and fro and

603
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:09,080
Speaker 1: thus being able to play its role only up to

604
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 1: a certain point where the sweetness becomes a mock and

605
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: a pitiful or ironic alter ego of itself. And I

606
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:18,959
Speaker 1: would wonder if the same holds true of monsters as well,

607
00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 1: because if if monstrousness and cuteness, if these are essentially

608
00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:26,719
Speaker 1: one slider, and you know, think of it as like

609
00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:30,719
Speaker 1: photoshopry of a slider between dark and light or something,

610
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:33,319
Speaker 1: or you know, or it's a slider for shade or

611
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:36,200
Speaker 1: tenant or something. Could you push the sliders so far

612
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,200
Speaker 1: in not only the cute direction, but the monster direction,

613
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 1: so that the monstrous thing becomes ridiculous. Now, obviously all

614
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:45,719
Speaker 1: this in this in the eye of the beholder, But

615
00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:50,000
Speaker 1: I instantly thought of rat thinks. I thought of some

616
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: of the monsters from the Spawn comics, and I thought

617
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:56,759
Speaker 1: of the monsters from the wonderful movie Freaked, which are

618
00:34:56,840 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: very much modeled after I think rat thinks. So rat

619
00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:03,160
Speaker 1: thinks the are like these monsters for em bulging eyes, um,

620
00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:06,400
Speaker 1: you know, grotesque smiles and teeth that are that would

621
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 1: that were shown illustrated to ride a hot rod around

622
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:14,040
Speaker 1: and they're not scary. They're not I wouldn't say they're

623
00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:17,799
Speaker 1: necessarily cute, but it's like the monstrous elements of the

624
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:21,520
Speaker 1: character design are pushed to such a degree that it's

625
00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: almost impossible to find it frightful anymore. Right, It's like

626
00:35:25,200 --> 00:35:30,040
Speaker 1: you almost intuitively detect excess. Yeah, and and it becomes

627
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:33,080
Speaker 1: funny yeah and and with cute I can think of.

628
00:35:33,719 --> 00:35:35,560
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of those you know what when

629
00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:38,680
Speaker 1: you see it examples, But we've all encountered sickeningly sweet,

630
00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:43,399
Speaker 1: sickening lee cute, where something has been just designed so

631
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:47,319
Speaker 1: cute that it is almost repulsive. Uh. And then the

632
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:49,400
Speaker 1: only example I can think about hand is that I

633
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: feel like the character Gur in Invader Zim this is

634
00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:58,200
Speaker 1: the Yonn Basquez comic and uh in TV series. The

635
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:01,560
Speaker 1: character of Gur is intentionally just so cute looking that

636
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:05,000
Speaker 1: you're it causes revulsion. Well, a lot of times the

637
00:36:05,040 --> 00:36:07,880
Speaker 1: revulsion comes in, I think in the addition of text

638
00:36:08,080 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 1: or speech. Like I think of the memes where you've

639
00:36:12,040 --> 00:36:15,520
Speaker 1: got a kitten, and the kitten might just be adorable

640
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:17,600
Speaker 1: on its own, but like if you add some meme

641
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 1: text to it, it becomes gross, where the kitten says, like,

642
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:23,319
Speaker 1: you know, I made you a cookie, but I eat

643
00:36:23,440 --> 00:36:30,200
Speaker 1: it it. Yes, that is that's like linguistically signally cute. Yeah,

644
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:32,279
Speaker 1: why is that? Why does that feel over the edge?

645
00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:35,879
Speaker 1: It's like so cute it's unpleasant. I don't know why.

646
00:36:35,920 --> 00:36:38,359
Speaker 1: I guess it's it kind of falls into the same

647
00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: way like children are when they use grammar incorrectly. It

648
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 1: can be cute um to to an almost destructive degree,

649
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:50,120
Speaker 1: like trying to remember there's something that my son would

650
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:54,319
Speaker 1: say and I actually hesitated to correct him because it

651
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:56,400
Speaker 1: was so adorable, and then I found it's like, I

652
00:36:56,480 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: just can't do that. It's selfish of me. I need

653
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: to teach the boys to speak properly, even if it

654
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 1: means destroying these cute moments. Was he calling like a

655
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:07,759
Speaker 1: broken toy, a baby or something? No? What was it?

656
00:37:07,880 --> 00:37:12,600
Speaker 1: He said? It was it'll come to me later. So

657
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:17,319
Speaker 1: Mansha b b does not shouldn't push this slighter idea specifically,

658
00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:18,920
Speaker 1: but I think I think she would agree with it

659
00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:22,920
Speaker 1: because she says, quote, it's possible to position both cute

660
00:37:22,920 --> 00:37:26,360
Speaker 1: and monstrous in one dimension. The space that Michelle Fhuco

661
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: called heterotopia the place outside the norm, the site of

662
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:35,760
Speaker 1: revolutionary potential, to change, to pose an alternate order where

663
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 1: the coherence between words and reality is no more possible,

664
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:44,000
Speaker 1: and the paradox is the structuring rule. So it's so cute,

665
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: it's insane, or it's so monstrous. Ye yeah, I mean

666
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:49,360
Speaker 1: it's it's like that left craft Ian vibe, like the

667
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:52,960
Speaker 1: monster is so terrifying that you just lose your entire mind.

668
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 1: And likewise, something could be that cute that you just

669
00:37:57,120 --> 00:38:00,200
Speaker 1: you just you can't, you just have to it. It

670
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:02,320
Speaker 1: kind of gets into the whole theory about the biting

671
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:05,040
Speaker 1: of babies, like the desire to pinch a baby because

672
00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:07,160
Speaker 1: it's so cute. I know you've talked about this before,

673
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:09,040
Speaker 1: but I don't know much about it. What's the deal here?

674
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:11,480
Speaker 1: We have an older episode. There's what I did with

675
00:38:11,560 --> 00:38:15,520
Speaker 1: Julie on this this topic. But it's it's been studied.

676
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:18,279
Speaker 1: Like basically, you see something so cute and you just

677
00:38:18,320 --> 00:38:20,000
Speaker 1: want to you want to bite it, you want to

678
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:22,680
Speaker 1: pinch it. You know, it could be a kitten or

679
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:25,799
Speaker 1: or a puppy or a child, and it's it's really

680
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 1: that the cute has become overpowering, that it has to

681
00:38:28,640 --> 00:38:33,080
Speaker 1: be counterbalanced with something awful. Huh. Yeah, so you need

682
00:38:33,120 --> 00:38:35,960
Speaker 1: to hand the cute puppy a blood spattered machete like

683
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:39,719
Speaker 1: Jason Doll. It's interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but

684
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:43,880
Speaker 1: in a way that that blood splattered machete is the pinch.

685
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 1: It's the counterbalance here. And I wonder if there are

686
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:50,239
Speaker 1: other examples we could look to and and cute iconography.

687
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:52,960
Speaker 1: Where we have we have added a little you know,

688
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:55,480
Speaker 1: some sort of an adult elements, some you know, violence

689
00:38:55,640 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 1: or terror to something, and it does serve to to

690
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:02,959
Speaker 1: balance it out and making and prevent us from going

691
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 1: completely insane. All right, Well, we've already looked at a

692
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 1: bunch of monsters from you know, modern fiction and modern

693
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 1: horror and stuff like that. I think we should turn

694
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:16,680
Speaker 1: our attention to traditional folkloric monsters and see if they

695
00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 1: make this same transition in our popular culture and and

696
00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:23,400
Speaker 1: become cute over time. So let's let's do the case

697
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:27,560
Speaker 1: studies next from Japanese folklore after we come back from

698
00:39:27,560 --> 00:39:34,880
Speaker 1: this break. Than alright, we're back. So obviously the Japanese

699
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:38,839
Speaker 1: have many spirits, many demons, many monsters, just a rich

700
00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:42,600
Speaker 1: assortment of yokai to choose from. But we're going to

701
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:45,800
Speaker 1: focus on what you can think of as the Big three,

702
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:51,120
Speaker 1: the Kappa, the Only, and the Tingu. Okay, so let's

703
00:39:51,200 --> 00:39:52,960
Speaker 1: let's start with the cap Are you're you're familiar with

704
00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 1: the Capa. Yeah, we both read this great paper from

705
00:39:56,160 --> 00:40:00,160
Speaker 1: Asian Folklore Studies from by the scholar Michael Dill and

706
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 1: Foster called the Metamorphosis of the Kappa Transformation of folklore

707
00:40:04,719 --> 00:40:08,320
Speaker 1: to folklorism in Japan. And this has is just replete

708
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:12,239
Speaker 1: with all these great old Cappa legends. This is a

709
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:15,440
Speaker 1: fun monster, just despite the fact that in its original

710
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 1: incarnation it was not cute. It was a nasty, creepy, gross,

711
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:25,440
Speaker 1: horrific little demon. Yeah. It it's hard to really come

712
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:30,080
Speaker 1: up with a creepier, grosser, just more nefarious monster than this.

713
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:31,959
Speaker 1: Like in a way, it rivals what we were talking

714
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 1: about with Freddie, the original Freddy Krueger, like something that's

715
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:38,759
Speaker 1: just like a weak, evil thing that has to in

716
00:40:38,840 --> 00:40:43,000
Speaker 1: Freddie's case, prey on children in their dreams while they're sleeping.

717
00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:47,480
Speaker 1: And likewise, the Kappa is essentially a drowning monster. It's

718
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:50,360
Speaker 1: a it's a monster that is that serves as a

719
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:53,480
Speaker 1: as a warning and a signifier of the risks of

720
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:56,520
Speaker 1: swimming or swimming alone. Uh you know, you know a

721
00:40:56,560 --> 00:40:58,920
Speaker 1: pond or a river, or even walking by a river,

722
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:03,480
Speaker 1: the inherent danger of water or using a toilet. I mean,

723
00:41:03,520 --> 00:41:05,920
Speaker 1: it'll get you anywhere that's wet. Oh, it will get

724
00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:10,120
Speaker 1: you too. So the kappa also known as Kawako or

725
00:41:10,160 --> 00:41:13,000
Speaker 1: the child of the river. Um. Yeah, it's essentially a

726
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:16,719
Speaker 1: Japanese manifestation of drowning fierce, particularly young children. And it's

727
00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:20,040
Speaker 1: signature hybridity because you're gonna find this hybrid nature in

728
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:22,399
Speaker 1: any monster pretty much, and certainly in the three we're

729
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:25,160
Speaker 1: looking at here. Is that it's essentially a tortoise with

730
00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:28,920
Speaker 1: a monkey's head, or it's like a monkey that has

731
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: scales on it as well, maybe webbed fingers. And some

732
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 1: accounts also go in an otter direction by making it hairy. Oh,

733
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:39,040
Speaker 1: but that will make it cute, right, well, depends on

734
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:42,520
Speaker 1: the otter. Otters are they're not as cute as I think,

735
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:45,279
Speaker 1: depends on the otter. Like the giant otter. If you've

736
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:47,080
Speaker 1: ever seen like a giant I think it's an Amazonian

737
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 1: river otter, they look rather hellish. And if you actually

738
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:54,719
Speaker 1: study like the mating behavior of otters, Like they're all

739
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:58,000
Speaker 1: pretty gross, Like there's a lot of violence and they're

740
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 1: mating horrible face chewing. That's sort of thing. Yeah, But

741
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:06,279
Speaker 1: in the case of the of the Kappa here, it's

742
00:42:06,320 --> 00:42:09,200
Speaker 1: other most notable feature is a small depression in the

743
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:12,319
Speaker 1: top of its skull called a sara, which contains a

744
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:15,879
Speaker 1: fluid that serves as its life force. And we'll get

745
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:18,600
Speaker 1: we'll get back to the implications of that in a second.

746
00:42:18,680 --> 00:42:20,919
Speaker 1: So if this were like a low budget horror movie,

747
00:42:20,920 --> 00:42:25,000
Speaker 1: it would be a cuphead, I guess. Yeah. So the

748
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 1: capa draws people and animals into water, where they devour

749
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:31,800
Speaker 1: their prey and or drink their blood or their life essence.

750
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:35,560
Speaker 1: They're also big sumo fans, so they might yes, they

751
00:42:35,560 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: love sumo wrestling, and they might try and wrestle you.

752
00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:41,200
Speaker 1: And there are there at least eight regional variations on

753
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:43,560
Speaker 1: the Kappa, and most of what we know of them

754
00:42:43,560 --> 00:42:48,800
Speaker 1: comes from early twenty century folklorus and or amateur collectors.

755
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:51,319
Speaker 1: But if you want to avoid the Kappa, there are

756
00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 1: three ways. One, don't go where there are cappas. That's

757
00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:56,439
Speaker 1: there's a big one, you know. Don't go near the water.

758
00:42:56,480 --> 00:42:59,560
Speaker 1: At all, or you can befriend them by bringing a

759
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:03,759
Speaker 1: cute cumber. And stories vary because they like cucumbers, but

760
00:43:03,880 --> 00:43:06,800
Speaker 1: stories vary on whether eating a cucumber prior to swimming

761
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:10,000
Speaker 1: will attract or repel the monster. Now, they like cucumbers,

762
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:13,399
Speaker 1: but they don't like gourds. That's right, gourd's will repel them.

763
00:43:13,440 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 1: And there's there's some interesting material in the in the

764
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:20,040
Speaker 1: paper here that gets into exactly like what that means,

765
00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: the symbolic meaning of like the fallic cucumber and an

766
00:43:23,560 --> 00:43:27,200
Speaker 1: arguably yawnick gourd. So it's it gets heavy. It's a

767
00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:30,960
Speaker 1: great paper. Uh. And then finally you can make a

768
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:34,080
Speaker 1: low bow to the kappa, especially if it's challenging you

769
00:43:34,120 --> 00:43:36,840
Speaker 1: to assume a wrestling match. Uh. And this will re

770
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: force it to respond in kind, so it'll dump its

771
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 1: own life force out onto the ground. Cupet is tricked. Yeah,

772
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 1: I think this is fascinating because this may be the

773
00:43:46,520 --> 00:43:50,359
Speaker 1: only monster they can be slain through adiquette alone. It's

774
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:53,480
Speaker 1: proper Japanese adiquette, and you will defeat it. Yeah, And

775
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:56,040
Speaker 1: this does seem to make it not quite as you know,

776
00:43:56,120 --> 00:44:00,400
Speaker 1: absolutely horrific as some other monsters now they're horrific qualities

777
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:02,920
Speaker 1: to it. But the fact that you can so easily

778
00:44:03,200 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 1: trick it, and uh in the fact that it seems

779
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:10,800
Speaker 1: bound by some standards of politeness does sort of undercut

780
00:44:10,920 --> 00:44:15,080
Speaker 1: its original horror. Maybe yeah, yeah, a little bit. But

781
00:44:15,120 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 1: then again, you also have to look at this in

782
00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:21,760
Speaker 1: any monster and realize that it's it's it's not occurring

783
00:44:21,760 --> 00:44:25,000
Speaker 1: in one place at one time. It's their various traditions,

784
00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:27,239
Speaker 1: various versions of it. So you can easily see some

785
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:30,400
Speaker 1: somebody comes along like, this monster sounds horrible. This monster

786
00:44:30,480 --> 00:44:33,520
Speaker 1: needs rules to keep it in place. And these are

787
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:39,320
Speaker 1: the cultural rules that will keep the monster at bay um. Now,

788
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 1: if you're thinking to yourself with the cop that competence

789
00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 1: sound that monstrous? So it you know, so it drowns

790
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:47,960
Speaker 1: or drains a few children, Well wait for this because uh,

791
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 1: Foster in his paper points out quote not only does

792
00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:53,440
Speaker 1: the Kappa have a penchant for pulling both children and

793
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:56,040
Speaker 1: adults into the water, but it often does this in

794
00:44:56,160 --> 00:44:59,080
Speaker 1: order to steal the liver, a feat it achieves by

795
00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 1: reaching its arm up through the victim's anus to snatch

796
00:45:02,200 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 1: the desired organ. Yes, you heard that right, folks. It

797
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:08,759
Speaker 1: will steal your liver through your anus. And to do

798
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:11,759
Speaker 1: that it gets worse. Uh. In order to steal the liver,

799
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:16,520
Speaker 1: it has to essentially uncork the human anus by removing

800
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:20,200
Speaker 1: the non existent organ known as a sharik o dama

801
00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:23,880
Speaker 1: quote a ball once thought to be the mouth of

802
00:45:23,920 --> 00:45:26,480
Speaker 1: the anus. This is maybe something we should do an

803
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:30,360
Speaker 1: entire episode on someday. Is all of the non existent

804
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:33,880
Speaker 1: human organs people used to believe existed. That would be

805
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 1: That would be good. Let's let's let's remember that one

806
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:39,799
Speaker 1: for later. Uh. Now you're probably wondering, well, why why

807
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:42,239
Speaker 1: would they make this up? Point is there? There has

808
00:45:42,239 --> 00:45:44,600
Speaker 1: to be a reason to make up this organ. And

809
00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:48,640
Speaker 1: like clearly you can you can inspect yourself and realize

810
00:45:48,640 --> 00:45:51,880
Speaker 1: that there's no cork uh organ in your anus. But

811
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:55,240
Speaker 1: the grim reality here is that you have a drowning victim.

812
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:58,719
Speaker 1: A drowning victim is found and they may have a

813
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,680
Speaker 1: quote open an is due to the unclenched sphincter muscles

814
00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:05,640
Speaker 1: and this this falls in line, of course with the

815
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:07,959
Speaker 1: Coppas role as a monster of drowning. So you find

816
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:11,120
Speaker 1: this this body and here it is, there's something peculiar

817
00:46:11,160 --> 00:46:14,160
Speaker 1: about it. It's anus does not look like a living

818
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:16,759
Speaker 1: person's anus. But wouldn't this be the case with any

819
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:19,680
Speaker 1: dead person, not just somebody who drowned. Yeah, and that's

820
00:46:19,719 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 1: something that that Foster brings up. However, my read on it, though,

821
00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:27,400
Speaker 1: is that if you're dealing with people who have drowned,

822
00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:31,320
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a higher possibility that that body

823
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:35,400
Speaker 1: is found nude or mostly nude, since it was swimming,

824
00:46:36,239 --> 00:46:40,320
Speaker 1: whereas bodies in other situations may be covered with clothing

825
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:43,759
Speaker 1: and then therefore less susceptible to susceptible to this kind

826
00:46:43,760 --> 00:46:47,879
Speaker 1: of folkloric exploration of what is happening. Okay, but it's

827
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:50,799
Speaker 1: not just going to pull you into the river or

828
00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:54,440
Speaker 1: the lake or whatever. The Kappa also haunts toilets, that's right.

829
00:46:54,920 --> 00:47:00,160
Speaker 1: It may wait until you are vulnerable while pooping or ping,

830
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:03,960
Speaker 1: perhaps near the water, and it is it is ready

831
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:07,640
Speaker 1: to attack the buttocks and hips, according to Foster, um

832
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:10,279
Speaker 1: So it's it's not only a murderous creature, it's a

833
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:13,759
Speaker 1: creature of profound sexual violence as well. Like it is.

834
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:16,840
Speaker 1: It's it's part of its design, this kPa. That's just

835
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 1: how monstrous it is. It's it's very much like the

836
00:47:19,080 --> 00:47:22,879
Speaker 1: Fredy Krueger, like the Kappa and Freddie are essentially cut

837
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:26,600
Speaker 1: from the same mold, not just threatening but really gross.

838
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:29,359
Speaker 1: So how do we get from from this to cute?

839
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 1: You're probably wondering well as us. As Foster explores in

840
00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:35,400
Speaker 1: his paper, by by the nineteen sixties, fulk belief in

841
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:37,320
Speaker 1: the creature had all but vanished, and it become a

842
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:40,600
Speaker 1: quote clean cute creature, used as a symbol of tourism,

843
00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:43,400
Speaker 1: of commerce, of clean water, and even as a symbol

844
00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: of village and national identity. Huh. And he says that

845
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:51,440
Speaker 1: this falls in line with Hans Moser's two notion of folkloreism,

846
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:54,839
Speaker 1: in which an existing folklore is taken out of context

847
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:59,239
Speaker 1: and altered or invented for a specific purpose. And of

848
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:01,799
Speaker 1: course medium commers play a heavy role in this. Now

849
00:48:01,840 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 1: I thought this was interesting because I wondered about this

850
00:48:04,840 --> 00:48:09,400
Speaker 1: concept of folkloreism, and the idea is that someone would

851
00:48:09,440 --> 00:48:13,879
Speaker 1: take existing folklore and change it, or invent new folklore,

852
00:48:14,560 --> 00:48:17,600
Speaker 1: or or manipulated take it out of context for some

853
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:22,399
Speaker 1: kind of intentional, conscious purpose. But it makes me wonder, um,

854
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:25,800
Speaker 1: how is that different from the way in which bits

855
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:31,800
Speaker 1: of folklore are are originally created? Like why It's almost

856
00:48:31,800 --> 00:48:37,759
Speaker 1: as if assuming that folklore um is arises unconsciously out

857
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:41,040
Speaker 1: of the spirit of the people, and that when people

858
00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:45,040
Speaker 1: consciously manipulate folklore, that's a different kind of thing. I mean,

859
00:48:45,120 --> 00:48:47,520
Speaker 1: I I sort of wonder to what extent the things

860
00:48:47,640 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 1: we think of as folklore the original stories are consciously created,

861
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:54,560
Speaker 1: are they not? Well, I mean, it comes back to

862
00:48:54,600 --> 00:48:57,240
Speaker 1: the whole rules thing I said earlier, like imagining someone

863
00:48:57,560 --> 00:49:02,000
Speaker 1: or multiple people coming wrong and tweeting an existing legend

864
00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 1: or folklore in order to convey a point or to

865
00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:08,840
Speaker 1: convey a slightly different point um and then and then likewise,

866
00:49:08,880 --> 00:49:11,200
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, there's a there's one example that Foster

867
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:14,200
Speaker 1: points out, and this is from the Edo periods. This

868
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:18,400
Speaker 1: was sixteen o three to eighteen sixty eight Japanese history.

869
00:49:18,719 --> 00:49:22,240
Speaker 1: And in this case, apparently you had a doctor who

870
00:49:22,520 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 1: used a story about a kappa as a way to

871
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:28,560
Speaker 1: promote his business. The idea being that this is the

872
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 1: case with a lot of these monsters. They have some

873
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:34,480
Speaker 1: sort of hidden knowledge or hidden powers that a crafty

874
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:37,400
Speaker 1: individual can trick them out of. And so this doctor

875
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:41,439
Speaker 1: learned some I think a bone setting uh technique from

876
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:44,520
Speaker 1: the Kappa, and he basically put that on his calling card.

877
00:49:44,840 --> 00:49:46,440
Speaker 1: If you're gonna go to the doctor, then go to

878
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:49,320
Speaker 1: the go to you know, go to doctor Kappa touched,

879
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: and he will he will use his mystical abilities to

880
00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:56,839
Speaker 1: heal you, which is essentially a marketing ploy. So keep

881
00:49:56,880 --> 00:49:59,640
Speaker 1: all that in mind. But basically what happens is, Yeah,

882
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:03,120
Speaker 1: after a while, people have forgotten about the Kappa, like

883
00:50:03,160 --> 00:50:05,279
Speaker 1: there's there's not a lot of there's no longer any

884
00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:08,239
Speaker 1: belief in it. People are not reporting sightings of the

885
00:50:08,280 --> 00:50:10,640
Speaker 1: Kappa and uh. And then but you end up going

886
00:50:10,719 --> 00:50:12,840
Speaker 1: with through several waves of sort of you know, the

887
00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:17,200
Speaker 1: Kappa renaissance, where people rediscover it and they start using

888
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:21,160
Speaker 1: it in new ways, um and uh and and and

889
00:50:21,160 --> 00:50:25,200
Speaker 1: this is inevitably going to involve outsiders crafting it. That's

890
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 1: the argument here, is that the Kappa is is a

891
00:50:28,080 --> 00:50:31,440
Speaker 1: creature of rural areas. It is a creature of the

892
00:50:31,480 --> 00:50:33,920
Speaker 1: people of the rural people. It's essentially kind of a

893
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:37,200
Speaker 1: peasant monster. But then you're gonna have people that are

894
00:50:37,200 --> 00:50:39,640
Speaker 1: cut off from all of that. Essentially, you're gonna city

895
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:43,640
Speaker 1: fall come along, take the Kappa myth, reinvent it, reutilize it,

896
00:50:44,080 --> 00:50:46,239
Speaker 1: and then after a while, like, no one's connected to

897
00:50:46,280 --> 00:50:48,760
Speaker 1: it back in the rural areas anymore. So they take

898
00:50:48,760 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 1: it back. They take this in, this re reformed version

899
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:55,080
Speaker 1: of the Kappa, and then what do they do with it, Well,

900
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 1: they sort of turned it into a cultural mascot. It

901
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:00,960
Speaker 1: makes me think of it. Have you ever seen the

902
00:51:01,320 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 1: tourism materials that are sent out by the Iceland Tourism

903
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:09,680
Speaker 1: Board or whatever it is that promote the fact that

904
00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:12,760
Speaker 1: people in Iceland believe in the fairies, the hidden folk,

905
00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:15,719
Speaker 1: you know, the secret other world, the hidden folk that

906
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:19,440
Speaker 1: live or believe in elves and stuff like that. I

907
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:23,040
Speaker 1: don't know to what extent it's true that that many

908
00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:26,719
Speaker 1: people in Iceland literally believe the fairies are there. I

909
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:29,000
Speaker 1: know some people probably do, but I doubt it is

910
00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:31,839
Speaker 1: true in a literal sense to the extent to which

911
00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:34,839
Speaker 1: it's promoted. But it does seem to be a thing

912
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:39,040
Speaker 1: that is Uh, it's a rumor that's spread to bring

913
00:51:39,080 --> 00:51:42,360
Speaker 1: people to Iceland for tourism, because isn't that cute people

914
00:51:42,400 --> 00:51:45,520
Speaker 1: there believe in elves or believe in hidden folk. Yeah.

915
00:51:45,560 --> 00:51:48,240
Speaker 1: Forgetting of of course, the fact that belief in hidden

916
00:51:48,280 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 1: forces often in many cases can have pretty horrifying real

917
00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:54,680
Speaker 1: world results. But it is this, it is a sanitized

918
00:51:54,800 --> 00:51:57,879
Speaker 1: version on it and uh and Foster points out that

919
00:51:57,920 --> 00:51:59,360
Speaker 1: what what you have here is that you have a

920
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:02,399
Speaker 1: sanitized monster that was you that ends up being used

921
00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:05,800
Speaker 1: to promote a sanitized notion of rural life in Japan.

922
00:52:06,560 --> 00:52:09,320
Speaker 1: And he says that the craziest thing is that quote,

923
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:11,920
Speaker 1: had the Kappa not been snatched up by the mechanism

924
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:15,800
Speaker 1: of folkloreism, it most likely would have died or survived

925
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:20,760
Speaker 1: only as a museum relicant collections of folklore. Folkloreism change,

926
00:52:20,840 --> 00:52:24,480
Speaker 1: in other words, kept the monster alive. So this conscious

927
00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:27,920
Speaker 1: manipulation of the folklore is the only reason the folklore

928
00:52:28,040 --> 00:52:31,719
Speaker 1: really stays prominent. Yeah, well, like with Freddie, we can

929
00:52:31,760 --> 00:52:34,000
Speaker 1: go back to Freddie and say, yeah, you can bemoan

930
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:36,719
Speaker 1: the fact that this, this, this horrifying thing from the

931
00:52:36,760 --> 00:52:40,719
Speaker 1: first film was kind of killed by this subsequent incarnation.

932
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:44,959
Speaker 1: But if Freddie know how many people but I see

933
00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:48,440
Speaker 1: what you're saying. But but certainly like that's how it survived.

934
00:52:48,920 --> 00:52:51,920
Speaker 1: It grew into the shape and the size that was

935
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:55,880
Speaker 1: sustained by the culture. Freddie became the Freddie that uh,

936
00:52:55,960 --> 00:52:59,080
Speaker 1: that that that we needed, that that that was essential

937
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:05,319
Speaker 1: apparently too modern western living, right, or maybe not the

938
00:53:05,320 --> 00:53:09,759
Speaker 1: freddy we need, but the freddy we deserve. Okay, So

939
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:14,200
Speaker 1: how about another monster from Japanese folklore, the One? Oh yeah,

940
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:17,920
Speaker 1: so we read another paper about this called the Transformation

941
00:53:18,000 --> 00:53:20,680
Speaker 1: of the One from the frightening and diabolical to the

942
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:23,360
Speaker 1: cute and sexy, and this is by a Japanese scholar

943
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 1: named Nariko T. Rider, also in the journal Asian Folklore Studies,

944
00:53:27,640 --> 00:53:30,439
Speaker 1: and this is from two thousand three. So writer's paper

945
00:53:30,520 --> 00:53:33,440
Speaker 1: is really interesting. It charts a very very similar arc

946
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 1: to what we talked about with the Kappa, this folklore

947
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:40,440
Speaker 1: monster transforming into something that's different in modern twentieth century

948
00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:45,200
Speaker 1: pop culture. The One appear in Japanese literature and folklore

949
00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:47,840
Speaker 1: going back to ancient times, and the only are generally

950
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:52,919
Speaker 1: these large, disgusting, shape shifting monsters with one or more

951
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:56,319
Speaker 1: horns on the head. They wear tiger skinned garments, and

952
00:53:56,360 --> 00:53:59,880
Speaker 1: they like to eat human flesh. Other common powers in

953
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:04,279
Speaker 1: include flight and the ability to shoot lightning. And they're

954
00:54:04,320 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 1: they're sort of different breeds of ony, right, Yeah, they're

955
00:54:07,760 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: they're basically two varieties. There's like the terrestrial one in

956
00:54:11,120 --> 00:54:13,839
Speaker 1: the infernal o E and the infernal only is there

957
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:16,120
Speaker 1: to drag you to how at the moment of your

958
00:54:16,160 --> 00:54:19,040
Speaker 1: death if you were in fact deserving of one of

959
00:54:19,080 --> 00:54:21,800
Speaker 1: the hell's. Yeah. So, first, let's look at the old

960
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:24,279
Speaker 1: vision of the only before they were, before they were

961
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:27,280
Speaker 1: tamed or domesticated like the Let's look at their wolf

962
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:32,560
Speaker 1: like Canada ancestor so. The scholar Ishibashi Gaha argues that

963
00:54:32,600 --> 00:54:36,239
Speaker 1: the Japanese only concept evolved from a previous type of

964
00:54:36,280 --> 00:54:40,960
Speaker 1: spirit or monster, the yomotsushi kome, which is literally fearful

965
00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:45,120
Speaker 1: creatures of the Netherland, and these appear as early as

966
00:54:45,160 --> 00:54:49,000
Speaker 1: the Japanese creation myth known as the Kojiki. So in

967
00:54:49,080 --> 00:54:52,759
Speaker 1: the first known Japanese language dictionary, compiled sometime around the

968
00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:56,280
Speaker 1: year nine thirty c e only is defined as quote

969
00:54:56,640 --> 00:55:00,360
Speaker 1: hiding behind things, not wishing to appear. It is a

970
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:04,399
Speaker 1: spirit or soul of the dead. So in this earlier vision,

971
00:55:04,440 --> 00:55:06,560
Speaker 1: it's more of a spirit, I mean. And there are

972
00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:11,440
Speaker 1: these different categories of of Japanese folkloric beings. They're you know,

973
00:55:11,520 --> 00:55:14,920
Speaker 1: more like the comi you know, the deities, and then

974
00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:18,200
Speaker 1: there are the yokai, which are more like the monsters. Uh,

975
00:55:18,239 --> 00:55:20,560
Speaker 1: and it was during the medieval period in Japan that

976
00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:23,680
Speaker 1: the Only became a major part of popular folklore. In

977
00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:27,759
Speaker 1: this classical monster form that we first introduced, common only

978
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:30,360
Speaker 1: features in the medieval folklore are going to include some

979
00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:33,320
Speaker 1: of what we've already described, things like one or more

980
00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:37,680
Speaker 1: horns on the head, skin colors like red or blue

981
00:55:38,040 --> 00:55:42,400
Speaker 1: or black or yellow, a third eye in the forehead,

982
00:55:42,960 --> 00:55:46,960
Speaker 1: carrying an iron mace as a weapon, wearing a tiger

983
00:55:47,120 --> 00:55:50,719
Speaker 1: skin loincloth, and the fact that they're usually male, but

984
00:55:50,800 --> 00:55:54,680
Speaker 1: not always and only were these horrific demon monsters that

985
00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:58,719
Speaker 1: people believe to exist in the world, kidnapping people, especially

986
00:55:58,800 --> 00:56:02,399
Speaker 1: young women, drinking blood, eating their flesh, but they also

987
00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:05,640
Speaker 1: seemed to be this useful cultural concept. In the words

988
00:56:05,680 --> 00:56:08,600
Speaker 1: of a scholar named Kumatsu, that the writers sites in

989
00:56:08,640 --> 00:56:12,200
Speaker 1: her paper many only were quote people who had different

990
00:56:12,239 --> 00:56:16,719
Speaker 1: customs or lived beyond the reach of the emperor's control.

991
00:56:17,400 --> 00:56:18,919
Speaker 1: And you can see this in the way that Only

992
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:22,719
Speaker 1: were deployed in Japanese imperial propaganda during World War Two,

993
00:56:22,760 --> 00:56:25,720
Speaker 1: which was depicting enemies of the States such as Winston

994
00:56:25,800 --> 00:56:29,319
Speaker 1: Churchill or f DR or the Chinese leader Chang Kai

995
00:56:29,440 --> 00:56:33,279
Speaker 1: check as on e and it's common, of course during

996
00:56:33,320 --> 00:56:36,520
Speaker 1: war to motivate your populace against the enemy by characterizing

997
00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:38,960
Speaker 1: them as devils of some sort. Yeah. We see plenty

998
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:41,920
Speaker 1: of examples of that in in western countries as well

999
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:45,479
Speaker 1: during the same time period. Absolutely. Yeah. But apparently this

1000
00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:49,360
Speaker 1: this cultural inclusion and exclusion tactic follows the one monster

1001
00:56:49,480 --> 00:56:53,960
Speaker 1: specifically deep into history. So a few stories about the

1002
00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:57,600
Speaker 1: only One story appears in the tenth century CE narrative

1003
00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:00,239
Speaker 1: Tales of the Essay, and it goes like the US.

1004
00:57:00,440 --> 00:57:02,520
Speaker 1: You got a man and he falls in love with

1005
00:57:02,520 --> 00:57:05,640
Speaker 1: a woman of high social status, and he kidnaps her

1006
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:09,919
Speaker 1: and they're fleeing in the night, and there's a thunderstorm.

1007
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:12,360
Speaker 1: So the man decides they should take shelter at a

1008
00:57:12,480 --> 00:57:16,120
Speaker 1: ruined building near the Akuta River, and the woman goes

1009
00:57:16,160 --> 00:57:18,920
Speaker 1: inside the building for shelter, and the man stands guard

1010
00:57:18,960 --> 00:57:21,440
Speaker 1: at the door all night. But when the woman is

1011
00:57:21,440 --> 00:57:24,840
Speaker 1: alone inside and one appears and it eats her in

1012
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:27,840
Speaker 1: a single bite. That's gonna be a big owning, right,

1013
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:31,480
Speaker 1: She screams when the one is they're eating her, but

1014
00:57:31,560 --> 00:57:35,080
Speaker 1: the man standing guard doesn't hear her because of the thunder,

1015
00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:39,120
Speaker 1: And this portrays this sort of alliance between the one,

1016
00:57:39,360 --> 00:57:42,880
Speaker 1: and these powerful elemental forces like lightning storms owning are

1017
00:57:42,920 --> 00:57:46,320
Speaker 1: sometimes said to be able to shoot lightning. Now. Another

1018
00:57:46,360 --> 00:57:49,040
Speaker 1: story is contained in a ninth century collection called the

1019
00:57:49,120 --> 00:57:53,600
Speaker 1: Nihone Ryuiki, and the story translates to on a woman

1020
00:57:53,680 --> 00:57:57,000
Speaker 1: devoured by an ony. So at the time the Emperor

1021
00:57:57,120 --> 00:58:00,640
Speaker 1: Shomu reigned, a rich family in Yamato events had this

1022
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:03,880
Speaker 1: beautiful daughter and lots of men wanted to marry her,

1023
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:07,600
Speaker 1: but she was like nah, not interested, until a suitor

1024
00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:11,680
Speaker 1: shows up with unbelievably extravagant gifts to win her over,

1025
00:58:12,080 --> 00:58:16,000
Speaker 1: including three carriages full of silk, so she accepts his

1026
00:58:16,080 --> 00:58:19,360
Speaker 1: marriage proposal, and on the wedding night, the newlyweds stay

1027
00:58:19,440 --> 00:58:22,840
Speaker 1: in the house of the bride's parents. The woman's parents

1028
00:58:23,080 --> 00:58:25,240
Speaker 1: hear her crying out in pain during the night, but

1029
00:58:25,320 --> 00:58:28,000
Speaker 1: they don't do anything about it, and when her mother

1030
00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:30,480
Speaker 1: enters the bride in the groom's bedroom in the morning,

1031
00:58:30,520 --> 00:58:33,960
Speaker 1: all that's left is her daughter's head and a single finger,

1032
00:58:34,800 --> 00:58:37,480
Speaker 1: and the rest has been eaten by a shape shifting

1033
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:40,320
Speaker 1: one which apparently appeared in the form of a handsome

1034
00:58:40,360 --> 00:58:43,000
Speaker 1: young man. And this is evidence early on that they

1035
00:58:43,040 --> 00:58:45,720
Speaker 1: only have this power of shape shifting. One of the

1036
00:58:45,720 --> 00:58:48,960
Speaker 1: most common things, like very often in other stories, Only

1037
00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:52,480
Speaker 1: would appear as beautiful women in order to seduce men,

1038
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:55,280
Speaker 1: and then they would turn into owny and try to

1039
00:58:55,360 --> 00:58:58,120
Speaker 1: devour them or kill them or something. Someone should do

1040
00:58:58,120 --> 00:59:00,919
Speaker 1: a version of the werewolf game with one. They're perfect,

1041
00:59:00,920 --> 00:59:04,040
Speaker 1: you know, that would be perfect on a Yeah, there

1042
00:59:04,040 --> 00:59:08,320
Speaker 1: are only among us? Okay, So how did the only

1043
00:59:08,440 --> 00:59:10,560
Speaker 1: become cute? Yeah? Because it's like with the Cappa, this

1044
00:59:10,560 --> 00:59:14,800
Speaker 1: sounds pretty monstrous and horrific. It's like a standard like, um,

1045
00:59:14,920 --> 00:59:18,520
Speaker 1: you know, woman eating ogre here, how does it become

1046
00:59:18,640 --> 00:59:21,680
Speaker 1: a cute thing? Well? Writer Sites several examples of how

1047
00:59:21,680 --> 00:59:24,000
Speaker 1: only have become cute and modern Japan on a very

1048
00:59:24,040 --> 00:59:26,400
Speaker 1: similar time scale to what we talked about with the Kappa,

1049
00:59:26,440 --> 00:59:29,360
Speaker 1: you know, the Kappa especially having these cute incarnations in

1050
00:59:29,400 --> 00:59:32,520
Speaker 1: the second half of the twentieth century, especially around the

1051
00:59:32,600 --> 00:59:37,160
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. One example of cute Only that Rider sites

1052
00:59:37,800 --> 00:59:42,040
Speaker 1: is The Loom Invader. So in nineteen seventy eight, the

1053
00:59:42,120 --> 00:59:47,320
Speaker 1: Japanese manga artist Rumiko Takahashi created this incredibly popular series

1054
00:59:47,360 --> 00:59:52,040
Speaker 1: called urus say Yatsura, which translates literally into something like

1055
00:59:52,240 --> 00:59:56,040
Speaker 1: those obnoxious aliens, and beginning of the nineteen eighties it

1056
00:59:56,080 --> 00:59:58,760
Speaker 1: was adapted into a TV series, films, and a bunch

1057
00:59:58,760 --> 01:00:02,400
Speaker 1: of other spinoff media. Uh and the premise is that

1058
01:00:02,440 --> 01:00:05,400
Speaker 1: there's a group of one from outer space that arrive

1059
01:00:05,520 --> 01:00:08,640
Speaker 1: on Earth, sort of blending one folklore with these alien

1060
01:00:08,720 --> 01:00:11,400
Speaker 1: invasion stories that started to become popular in the middle

1061
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:14,520
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. And one of these invaders is

1062
01:00:14,520 --> 01:00:17,560
Speaker 1: an one called Loom, who at first is part of

1063
01:00:17,600 --> 01:00:20,400
Speaker 1: this invasion force, but somehow she ends up becoming the

1064
01:00:20,400 --> 01:00:23,600
Speaker 1: the loving and devoted wife of a lecherous teenage boy

1065
01:00:23,640 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 1: on Earth. Unlike the one from medieval folklore, Lum is

1066
01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:32,320
Speaker 1: not overtly monstrous. Instead, she's represented primarily as cute and

1067
01:00:32,480 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 1: through overtly eroticized characteristics. In short, she's depicted as as

1068
01:00:37,600 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 1: she's supposed to be sexy, and Loom has these subtle

1069
01:00:41,160 --> 01:00:45,200
Speaker 1: signs pointing toward the traditional one. For example, owny usually

1070
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:48,520
Speaker 1: have horns, Loom has these couple of diminutive horns on

1071
01:00:48,600 --> 01:00:52,800
Speaker 1: top of her head. She sometimes seems to have fangs

1072
01:00:52,840 --> 01:00:56,240
Speaker 1: and other indications of a cannibalistic nature. She seems to

1073
01:00:56,240 --> 01:00:58,840
Speaker 1: have the power to shoot lightning, which is associated with

1074
01:00:58,920 --> 01:01:02,320
Speaker 1: some ony legend you can fly like the one and

1075
01:01:02,440 --> 01:01:05,800
Speaker 1: only are often depicted I mentioned earlier as males wearing

1076
01:01:05,800 --> 01:01:10,200
Speaker 1: a tiger skin loincloth, loam wears a tiger skin bikini.

1077
01:01:11,000 --> 01:01:13,960
Speaker 1: I was talking with our coworker, Lauren Vogelbaum, one of

1078
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:16,800
Speaker 1: the hosts of food Stuff, another podcast in the house

1079
01:01:16,800 --> 01:01:19,080
Speaker 1: Stuff Works network you should check out if you enjoy

1080
01:01:19,280 --> 01:01:23,520
Speaker 1: food and all things edible and imbibable. But I was

1081
01:01:23,560 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 1: talking to her about this because I know she is

1082
01:01:25,800 --> 01:01:29,120
Speaker 1: an insightful consumer of manga, and she pointed out that

1083
01:01:29,160 --> 01:01:32,080
Speaker 1: there are actually plenty of other anime and manga characters

1084
01:01:32,120 --> 01:01:35,680
Speaker 1: that display this trend of taking a traditional monster and

1085
01:01:35,760 --> 01:01:39,080
Speaker 1: making a cute or making it sexy or both. And

1086
01:01:39,160 --> 01:01:42,440
Speaker 1: one example she mentioned was a manga series known as Sayuki,

1087
01:01:42,480 --> 01:01:45,600
Speaker 1: in which the main characters are the monkey King character

1088
01:01:46,080 --> 01:01:50,200
Speaker 1: and his demon companions, but they are rendered as cute boys.

1089
01:01:50,360 --> 01:01:53,640
Speaker 1: These like attractive young men, sort of like an you know,

1090
01:01:53,920 --> 01:01:57,800
Speaker 1: manga boy band um, but a demonic one, and they

1091
01:01:57,800 --> 01:02:01,240
Speaker 1: are essentially a male parallel to the cute and sexualized

1092
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:04,000
Speaker 1: one we see in Loom. But as with the Kappa,

1093
01:02:04,040 --> 01:02:06,640
Speaker 1: all of this with the one comes down to like

1094
01:02:06,720 --> 01:02:10,880
Speaker 1: the revitalization of of rural areas. Right. Oh, well, that's

1095
01:02:10,880 --> 01:02:12,880
Speaker 1: another aspect of it too. Yeah, so you've got this

1096
01:02:12,920 --> 01:02:15,200
Speaker 1: stuff in mass media. But then you've also got like

1097
01:02:15,400 --> 01:02:17,920
Speaker 1: we saw with the Kappa being used as some kind

1098
01:02:17,920 --> 01:02:20,280
Speaker 1: of a rural mascot for a town or a village.

1099
01:02:20,320 --> 01:02:23,040
Speaker 1: You know. The town revitalization movement is another thing that

1100
01:02:23,080 --> 01:02:25,200
Speaker 1: Writer points out is a place that the only re

1101
01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:28,840
Speaker 1: entered the modern consciousness and kind of metamorphosed into something

1102
01:02:28,920 --> 01:02:33,840
Speaker 1: much sweeter. So there's this movement, the town revitalization movement

1103
01:02:34,200 --> 01:02:37,600
Speaker 1: in Japanese. I think it's maki okashi and uh so,

1104
01:02:37,680 --> 01:02:39,680
Speaker 1: in the same way that the Kappa was embraced as

1105
01:02:39,680 --> 01:02:42,160
Speaker 1: a local mascot, it seems to only have been as well.

1106
01:02:42,200 --> 01:02:45,800
Speaker 1: And Writer sites these examples the Oemachi in Kyoto, which

1107
01:02:45,880 --> 01:02:49,160
Speaker 1: is located near Mount o A. This is the traditional

1108
01:02:49,200 --> 01:02:51,560
Speaker 1: setting of a story called The Shooting Doji, which is

1109
01:02:51,600 --> 01:02:54,440
Speaker 1: about this band of ony that live in the mountains

1110
01:02:54,600 --> 01:02:57,200
Speaker 1: and they're doing their owny thing, you know. They're kidnapping

1111
01:02:57,240 --> 01:03:00,400
Speaker 1: and eating locals, especially local maidens, and the eat their

1112
01:03:00,400 --> 01:03:04,520
Speaker 1: flesh and drink their blood until some warriors in filtrate

1113
01:03:04,640 --> 01:03:07,400
Speaker 1: the only hideout and kill all the only and writer

1114
01:03:07,520 --> 01:03:10,400
Speaker 1: writes that at the time of this paper, this town

1115
01:03:10,520 --> 01:03:14,439
Speaker 1: with the original setting near the shooting Doji, the town

1116
01:03:14,480 --> 01:03:18,080
Speaker 1: is facing a depopulation crisis, with the population essentially growing

1117
01:03:18,080 --> 01:03:20,960
Speaker 1: old and younger people not replacing them, and one way

1118
01:03:20,960 --> 01:03:24,040
Speaker 1: the residents apparently sought to revitalize the town was to

1119
01:03:24,160 --> 01:03:27,840
Speaker 1: embrace the only legend and the imagery in order to

1120
01:03:27,880 --> 01:03:32,240
Speaker 1: attract interest and tourists. So they developed these only related

1121
01:03:32,440 --> 01:03:35,640
Speaker 1: legends and sites. They got an one museum. So a

1122
01:03:35,680 --> 01:03:38,840
Speaker 1: creature that would have once caused unspeakable terror is now

1123
01:03:38,920 --> 01:03:42,240
Speaker 1: this fun attraction to draw people and money. It's kind

1124
01:03:42,240 --> 01:03:45,200
Speaker 1: of like the small town kid, uh, you know, makes good,

1125
01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:47,560
Speaker 1: he leaves the small town, makes it big, and then

1126
01:03:47,560 --> 01:03:49,840
Speaker 1: it's just invited back in and becomes a hero, even

1127
01:03:49,840 --> 01:03:52,320
Speaker 1: though they kind of treated him like dart to begin with. Yeah. Well,

1128
01:03:52,360 --> 01:03:54,120
Speaker 1: it also sort of reminds me of what you might

1129
01:03:54,160 --> 01:03:58,080
Speaker 1: see and say, Salem, Massachusetts, where originally you had the

1130
01:03:58,120 --> 01:04:01,640
Speaker 1: fear of witchcraft, which was a genuine panic that terrified

1131
01:04:01,640 --> 01:04:04,280
Speaker 1: people and led to deaths, and now it's more to

1132
01:04:04,560 --> 01:04:07,440
Speaker 1: it's embraced in this kitchy way, like witches have become

1133
01:04:07,480 --> 01:04:11,040
Speaker 1: a cute part of Salem's identity as a town. So

1134
01:04:11,080 --> 01:04:14,080
Speaker 1: they love which museums and which souvenirs and stuff like that,

1135
01:04:14,120 --> 01:04:17,800
Speaker 1: despite the horrifying reality of the essential like human monstrosity

1136
01:04:17,840 --> 01:04:20,400
Speaker 1: of the whole situation exactly. So what can we take

1137
01:04:20,440 --> 01:04:23,000
Speaker 1: away from this example? Well, writer has got some ideas.

1138
01:04:23,000 --> 01:04:25,040
Speaker 1: So we've got these two different things. I mentioned the cute,

1139
01:04:25,080 --> 01:04:28,880
Speaker 1: non threatening and eroticized one that appear in Japanese cartoons

1140
01:04:29,280 --> 01:04:31,920
Speaker 1: and the embracing of one folklore as an economic and

1141
01:04:31,960 --> 01:04:35,800
Speaker 1: tourism draw. And writer writes that much of the art

1142
01:04:35,840 --> 01:04:39,120
Speaker 1: and entertainment in Japan still views the one as evil

1143
01:04:39,160 --> 01:04:42,440
Speaker 1: and terrifying beings, like it's not all cute. Only now

1144
01:04:42,520 --> 01:04:46,000
Speaker 1: she gives the example of the film Dreams by Kasa,

1145
01:04:47,080 --> 01:04:50,120
Speaker 1: and one of the stories in this movie apparently tells

1146
01:04:50,160 --> 01:04:53,480
Speaker 1: the story of humans who were turned into one by

1147
01:04:53,480 --> 01:04:57,560
Speaker 1: a nuclear blast. Oh man, I vaguely remember that. I

1148
01:04:57,640 --> 01:05:00,080
Speaker 1: mainly remember the space section of it. Yeah, that's so

1149
01:05:00,160 --> 01:05:01,920
Speaker 1: much the only optic back and watch it. It's a

1150
01:05:01,920 --> 01:05:05,240
Speaker 1: horrifying idea. But now we also have these only with

1151
01:05:05,360 --> 01:05:09,880
Speaker 1: inherent aspects of harmlessness, cuteness, the the eroticized aspects. They

1152
01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:12,600
Speaker 1: are the ones that are simply fun and familiar like

1153
01:05:12,680 --> 01:05:15,040
Speaker 1: the witches now, and she seems to think that this

1154
01:05:15,120 --> 01:05:19,600
Speaker 1: is an outgrowth of Japan's postwar economic transformation. In other words,

1155
01:05:19,920 --> 01:05:23,200
Speaker 1: horrifying folk beliefs and monsters don't really make you the

1156
01:05:23,200 --> 01:05:27,200
Speaker 1: big box, but apparently cute, harmless, fun and familiar monsters

1157
01:05:27,560 --> 01:05:32,439
Speaker 1: can bring massive economic dividends. Capitalistic folklorism in the sense

1158
01:05:32,480 --> 01:05:35,880
Speaker 1: that we explored in that previous paper, folkloreism the manipulation

1159
01:05:35,920 --> 01:05:38,960
Speaker 1: of folklore seems to be directly at work in writer's

1160
01:05:39,000 --> 01:05:42,320
Speaker 1: point of view, but it also sort of makes me

1161
01:05:42,360 --> 01:05:46,640
Speaker 1: wonder why monsters in the first place, Like, if it's

1162
01:05:46,640 --> 01:05:51,280
Speaker 1: simply that cute, harmless or sexy characters and imagery command

1163
01:05:51,400 --> 01:05:55,320
Speaker 1: more economic power, why why isn't it just that we're

1164
01:05:55,320 --> 01:05:58,360
Speaker 1: seeing new characters of this type created, Like why are

1165
01:05:58,480 --> 01:06:04,320
Speaker 1: traditionally horrified and disgusting monsters being transformed into these cute

1166
01:06:04,400 --> 01:06:07,280
Speaker 1: or sexy or otherwise harmless versions. Well, I wonder if

1167
01:06:07,320 --> 01:06:10,040
Speaker 1: part of it is that there is, perhaps even subconsciously,

1168
01:06:11,000 --> 01:06:15,400
Speaker 1: it's an interaction with a monstrous figure that had power

1169
01:06:15,760 --> 01:06:18,040
Speaker 1: over us and maybe still has power over us. And

1170
01:06:18,040 --> 01:06:20,680
Speaker 1: by making it cute, you are you're you're making it harmless.

1171
01:06:20,680 --> 01:06:24,880
Speaker 1: You're taking the punch out of this monstrous creature. You're

1172
01:06:25,120 --> 01:06:27,840
Speaker 1: it's it's like laughing in the face of horror. Well,

1173
01:06:27,920 --> 01:06:31,320
Speaker 1: it almost makes me wonder if this transformation is an

1174
01:06:31,360 --> 01:06:35,520
Speaker 1: outgrowth of the of the skepticism and secularization of the

1175
01:06:35,560 --> 01:06:39,600
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Like, as people tend to believe less literally

1176
01:06:39,640 --> 01:06:43,120
Speaker 1: in demons, monsters, and devils, would we tend to take

1177
01:06:43,160 --> 01:06:46,760
Speaker 1: them less seriously as genuine threats? I mean, obviously we would.

1178
01:06:47,120 --> 01:06:49,920
Speaker 1: And if we think that there's no genuine monster danger

1179
01:06:49,960 --> 01:06:53,479
Speaker 1: to warn against, what prevents us from stripping the fear

1180
01:06:53,520 --> 01:06:57,360
Speaker 1: inducing elements out of the monster folklore? Uh? Is it

1181
01:06:57,400 --> 01:06:59,800
Speaker 1: a thing we do simply because we can? Does that

1182
01:06:59,840 --> 01:07:03,080
Speaker 1: make sense? Like if in the past people didn't make

1183
01:07:03,120 --> 01:07:07,160
Speaker 1: the monsters harmless because they believed that you genuinely had

1184
01:07:07,200 --> 01:07:10,360
Speaker 1: to understand that these monsters were dangerous. As soon as

1185
01:07:10,360 --> 01:07:13,840
Speaker 1: we stopped taking monster legends literally, then we had the

1186
01:07:13,920 --> 01:07:17,480
Speaker 1: power to render them to defang them. Yeah, I think

1187
01:07:17,520 --> 01:07:20,040
Speaker 1: I would buy that. It sounds like a good read

1188
01:07:20,120 --> 01:07:22,240
Speaker 1: hunt it. Yeah, But there's another thing that I wonder

1189
01:07:22,280 --> 01:07:25,800
Speaker 1: about is like, could it represent an actual direct rebuke

1190
01:07:25,920 --> 01:07:27,800
Speaker 1: of the past kind of a you know, a middle

1191
01:07:27,880 --> 01:07:32,280
Speaker 1: finger to the superstition that produced belief in monsters throughout

1192
01:07:32,360 --> 01:07:35,040
Speaker 1: you know, every culture in the history of humanity. Yeah.

1193
01:07:35,040 --> 01:07:37,040
Speaker 1: I mean it's because we've touched on this a number

1194
01:07:37,040 --> 01:07:41,520
Speaker 1: of times when we've talked about older ideas, mythologies, religion,

1195
01:07:41,560 --> 01:07:44,120
Speaker 1: even where it's it's easy to take a modern approach

1196
01:07:44,160 --> 01:07:45,840
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well, those people were stupid. Look at

1197
01:07:45,840 --> 01:07:49,400
Speaker 1: the things they believed in. Monsters in the woods eating you, um,

1198
01:07:49,400 --> 01:07:52,320
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of strange turtle creature reaching up

1199
01:07:52,320 --> 01:07:54,960
Speaker 1: your anus after your liver um. But when you do,

1200
01:07:55,240 --> 01:07:57,360
Speaker 1: when you begin to dissect these ideas and you put

1201
01:07:57,400 --> 01:08:00,360
Speaker 1: them in the context of the time, it's not so

1202
01:08:00,400 --> 01:08:02,440
Speaker 1: simple as to just say, oh, well, these these people

1203
01:08:02,480 --> 01:08:05,840
Speaker 1: were dumb. No, they weren't stupid. They knew less, and

1204
01:08:05,880 --> 01:08:08,440
Speaker 1: that's not the same thing, right, I mean, in a way,

1205
01:08:08,200 --> 01:08:11,640
Speaker 1: they perhaps knew more because they knew to take a

1206
01:08:11,760 --> 01:08:14,840
Speaker 1: like say, a dangerous area or a dangerous uh, you know,

1207
01:08:14,920 --> 01:08:17,960
Speaker 1: cultural area and it and assign a monster to it

1208
01:08:18,320 --> 01:08:21,400
Speaker 1: to toward people away from it, to to keep the

1209
01:08:21,479 --> 01:08:24,400
Speaker 1: curious from getting too close. And children don't go, don't

1210
01:08:24,400 --> 01:08:26,840
Speaker 1: go near the water's edge because there's a monster there. Yeah,

1211
01:08:26,840 --> 01:08:28,959
Speaker 1: And even if you you're not up on the reasons

1212
01:08:28,960 --> 01:08:31,280
Speaker 1: to stay away from the water, like the realistic reasons.

1213
01:08:31,320 --> 01:08:33,840
Speaker 1: The monster still resonates. And we've actually touched on this

1214
01:08:33,920 --> 01:08:39,479
Speaker 1: on the podcast in regard to creating potentially creating new monsters,

1215
01:08:39,520 --> 01:08:45,080
Speaker 1: new mythologies to guards, say, places where radioactive waste or deposited. Right,

1216
01:08:45,120 --> 01:08:47,320
Speaker 1: so you've got high level waste, you know, the really

1217
01:08:47,400 --> 01:08:50,400
Speaker 1: dangerous stuff stored at a place somewhere on earth, and

1218
01:08:50,439 --> 01:08:53,280
Speaker 1: that's going to be dangerous for literally thousands of years,

1219
01:08:53,400 --> 01:08:56,200
Speaker 1: much longer than any kind of sign you would probably

1220
01:08:56,200 --> 01:08:59,000
Speaker 1: put up would be there, or I mean if you

1221
01:08:59,040 --> 01:09:01,120
Speaker 1: maybe even made a really erobal sign, but yeah, it's

1222
01:09:01,120 --> 01:09:03,880
Speaker 1: going to outlast almost any measures you put in place

1223
01:09:03,920 --> 01:09:06,400
Speaker 1: to keep people away. So it's almost like you wish

1224
01:09:06,400 --> 01:09:09,519
Speaker 1: you could come up with a lasting cultural belief that

1225
01:09:09,640 --> 01:09:12,280
Speaker 1: this place is cursed and there's a monster that dwells

1226
01:09:12,280 --> 01:09:15,200
Speaker 1: there and there's nothing of value, and you should just

1227
01:09:16,080 --> 01:09:19,320
Speaker 1: a sticky image that will drive people away for hundreds

1228
01:09:19,360 --> 01:09:21,880
Speaker 1: of generations. And that, Yeah, that's exactly what a monster

1229
01:09:22,040 --> 01:09:26,120
Speaker 1: is that of. You know, nations fall, empires, fall laws, fade,

1230
01:09:27,080 --> 01:09:30,040
Speaker 1: signs of warning fall into the dust, but the monster

1231
01:09:30,400 --> 01:09:33,559
Speaker 1: persevere and yeah, and so coming back to how we

1232
01:09:33,640 --> 01:09:37,360
Speaker 1: make the monsters cute, I'm wondering if it's this secular rebuke,

1233
01:09:37,479 --> 01:09:41,800
Speaker 1: like is turning a monster cute an attempt to say

1234
01:09:41,840 --> 01:09:45,080
Speaker 1: even unconsciously, Maybe not like people do this on purpose,

1235
01:09:45,160 --> 01:09:48,719
Speaker 1: But are they at some level saying there are no demons,

1236
01:09:48,760 --> 01:09:51,840
Speaker 1: devils or monsters and I'll show you. And they do

1237
01:09:51,920 --> 01:09:55,080
Speaker 1: it by making the image cute. Is it like sort

1238
01:09:55,080 --> 01:09:58,960
Speaker 1: of the equivalent of blasphemy, but instead of against the gods,

1239
01:09:58,960 --> 01:10:01,800
Speaker 1: it's against the monster belief. Yeah, And of course it's

1240
01:10:01,880 --> 01:10:04,639
Speaker 1: dangerous to rebuke the monster because no matter how silly

1241
01:10:04,680 --> 01:10:07,559
Speaker 1: you think it is, no matter how two dimensional the

1242
01:10:07,600 --> 01:10:11,000
Speaker 1: monster might seem, Uh, there's probably a lot more going

1243
01:10:11,040 --> 01:10:13,519
Speaker 1: on there than meets the eyes. Totally, you know, I

1244
01:10:13,560 --> 01:10:15,840
Speaker 1: was thinking one other way to clarify what might be

1245
01:10:15,920 --> 01:10:17,880
Speaker 1: happening here. I don't know, Maybe maybe this won't be

1246
01:10:18,320 --> 01:10:21,120
Speaker 1: any additional clarity. But are there any monsters we can

1247
01:10:21,160 --> 01:10:23,800
Speaker 1: think of that have not undergone this process where there

1248
01:10:23,800 --> 01:10:26,679
Speaker 1: are no cute versions of them? Were almost no cute

1249
01:10:26,760 --> 01:10:29,760
Speaker 1: versions of them. There's not any pervasive attempt in the

1250
01:10:29,800 --> 01:10:33,920
Speaker 1: culture to make a toothless version of the creature. Well,

1251
01:10:34,080 --> 01:10:36,800
Speaker 1: if we're looking at Japanese demons, I would say that

1252
01:10:36,840 --> 01:10:40,479
Speaker 1: the tingo is probably an interesting case of this. Now

1253
01:10:40,479 --> 01:10:43,120
Speaker 1: that's not to say they are no cute tingu. You

1254
01:10:43,200 --> 01:10:45,799
Speaker 1: can certainly find them. I found them just doing image

1255
01:10:45,840 --> 01:10:49,040
Speaker 1: searches for them for the English word tingu. But you

1256
01:10:49,040 --> 01:10:52,160
Speaker 1: think they're less prevalent. I'm getting the you know, somebody

1257
01:10:52,160 --> 01:10:55,880
Speaker 1: with more experience with Japanese culture and pop culture can

1258
01:10:55,880 --> 01:10:58,000
Speaker 1: maybe chime in on this, but it seems like there's

1259
01:10:58,040 --> 01:11:00,559
Speaker 1: less of it. You do see tingu showing up in

1260
01:11:00,680 --> 01:11:04,440
Speaker 1: video games and manga and all other forms of media,

1261
01:11:04,560 --> 01:11:08,160
Speaker 1: but they tend to retain a certain seriousness that is

1262
01:11:08,320 --> 01:11:11,120
Speaker 1: lacking from you know, again, the Kappa. You don't see

1263
01:11:11,200 --> 01:11:14,920
Speaker 1: Kappa snatching livers out of anuses as much anymore. But

1264
01:11:14,960 --> 01:11:17,960
Speaker 1: in these cases, the tingoo still tends to retain a

1265
01:11:18,000 --> 01:11:22,880
Speaker 1: certain regal character and a and a certain dangerous element

1266
01:11:22,880 --> 01:11:25,320
Speaker 1: as well. So I should probably talk about what the

1267
01:11:25,360 --> 01:11:29,160
Speaker 1: tingoo is though for anyone who who's not familiar. Alright,

1268
01:11:29,200 --> 01:11:32,360
Speaker 1: So the Tingo. They are a warrior class of monsters

1269
01:11:32,360 --> 01:11:35,280
Speaker 1: who reside in the mountain forest of Mount to Karama,

1270
01:11:35,360 --> 01:11:38,640
Speaker 1: north of Kyoto, and their hybridity is that of a

1271
01:11:38,680 --> 01:11:41,320
Speaker 1: bird and a man. Usually they're described as having a

1272
01:11:41,360 --> 01:11:44,320
Speaker 1: humanoid body but with glowing eyes and a long red beak,

1273
01:11:44,640 --> 01:11:48,120
Speaker 1: and sometimes that beak is more depicted as a long nose.

1274
01:11:48,680 --> 01:11:51,720
Speaker 1: So I imagine if you've ever played a video game

1275
01:11:51,760 --> 01:11:53,280
Speaker 1: and there's a character that seems to have a mask

1276
01:11:53,360 --> 01:11:56,479
Speaker 1: with a long red nose, that's essentially a Tingo. So

1277
01:11:56,520 --> 01:11:59,600
Speaker 1: they have feathered wings, and they're warlike, they're skilled in

1278
01:11:59,640 --> 01:12:02,920
Speaker 1: martial arts. Humans sometimes seek them out to learn their arts,

1279
01:12:02,920 --> 01:12:06,000
Speaker 1: but frequently go mad upon encountering them. And then of

1280
01:12:06,000 --> 01:12:08,599
Speaker 1: course they also have this mischievous side. So if you're

1281
01:12:08,760 --> 01:12:11,000
Speaker 1: if you're in the mountain woods and you hear something

1282
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:12,840
Speaker 1: like laughter, well that might be the laughter of Tingo.

1283
01:12:13,360 --> 01:12:15,439
Speaker 1: If a tree falls, it might have been taken down

1284
01:12:15,439 --> 01:12:19,360
Speaker 1: by a Tingu wind. And these examples are from the

1285
01:12:19,400 --> 01:12:25,280
Speaker 1: book by Hruku Wakabashi, the Seven Tingoo Scrolls. So the

1286
01:12:25,320 --> 01:12:27,680
Speaker 1: thing about the Tingoo is that they were you know,

1287
01:12:27,840 --> 01:12:31,240
Speaker 1: they varied in form, purpose, and even alignment. Uh. There

1288
01:12:31,320 --> 01:12:34,000
Speaker 1: were in some cases good Tingou, but for the most

1289
01:12:34,040 --> 01:12:37,360
Speaker 1: part they were portrayed as uh, especially in medieval Japan,

1290
01:12:37,439 --> 01:12:41,800
Speaker 1: as being evil, vengeful, chaotic spirits. They were enemies of Buddhism.

1291
01:12:42,360 --> 01:12:44,720
Speaker 1: In some cases they were falling priests who failed to

1292
01:12:44,760 --> 01:12:48,080
Speaker 1: achieve nirvana, and they were the embodiment of Ma or

1293
01:12:48,200 --> 01:12:51,599
Speaker 1: Mara or obstacles to Buddhist enlightenment. Now it's worth knowing

1294
01:12:51,680 --> 01:12:54,479
Speaker 1: that they were different from moral evil in this regard

1295
01:12:55,040 --> 01:12:57,840
Speaker 1: or or Aku and this the tingou were they were.

1296
01:12:57,880 --> 01:13:01,000
Speaker 1: You can essentially think of them as obstructionists. Uh, you

1297
01:13:01,000 --> 01:13:02,840
Speaker 1: know they were. They were there to just um to

1298
01:13:02,920 --> 01:13:06,080
Speaker 1: try and prevent you from achieving enlightenment, and you had

1299
01:13:06,120 --> 01:13:08,679
Speaker 1: to battle them in your life to get past them.

1300
01:13:09,040 --> 01:13:11,680
Speaker 1: So they were kind of serious business, you know, and

1301
01:13:12,240 --> 01:13:16,360
Speaker 1: very high minded monstrous symbols. And I think that's key

1302
01:13:16,400 --> 01:13:20,080
Speaker 1: to whereas these other examples were rural monsters, these were

1303
01:13:20,400 --> 01:13:24,439
Speaker 1: kind of the peasants monsters. The Tingu was the thinking

1304
01:13:24,479 --> 01:13:28,759
Speaker 1: man's monster, and that thinks that plays into its survival. Yeah,

1305
01:13:28,800 --> 01:13:32,760
Speaker 1: So I wonder if something about the level to which

1306
01:13:32,800 --> 01:13:38,000
Speaker 1: a creature is incorporated into formalized religion rather than just

1307
01:13:38,160 --> 01:13:41,880
Speaker 1: being a part of informal folk creature or deity belief.

1308
01:13:41,920 --> 01:13:45,360
Speaker 1: That's that's true because there are shrines even uh with

1309
01:13:45,439 --> 01:13:49,520
Speaker 1: Tingu imagery. So they were more divine in many respects.

1310
01:13:49,640 --> 01:13:52,479
Speaker 1: And again more more regal, more a property of the

1311
01:13:52,560 --> 01:13:57,040
Speaker 1: ruling class and the priestly class as well. Um. They

1312
01:13:57,040 --> 01:13:59,400
Speaker 1: were also tied up with explanations for a lot of

1313
01:13:59,400 --> 01:14:01,280
Speaker 1: serious stuff that was going on in the medieval period,

1314
01:14:01,280 --> 01:14:05,000
Speaker 1: a lot of the chronic social disorder and instability. They were.

1315
01:14:05,280 --> 01:14:08,000
Speaker 1: They were symbols of chaos to explain the rise of

1316
01:14:08,040 --> 01:14:13,160
Speaker 1: the warrior class war and this the political disunity, uh

1317
01:14:13,240 --> 01:14:16,320
Speaker 1: in what some saw is the final age of Buddha's

1318
01:14:16,320 --> 01:14:19,479
Speaker 1: teachings at the time. So again, you it's not that

1319
01:14:19,520 --> 01:14:23,040
Speaker 1: you won't find cute tingu out there or just you know,

1320
01:14:23,280 --> 01:14:27,840
Speaker 1: very pop culturally uh distilled images of the tingu, but

1321
01:14:27,920 --> 01:14:29,640
Speaker 1: I feel like you see far less of it. The

1322
01:14:29,640 --> 01:14:33,240
Speaker 1: tingoo still retains a lot of its original potency. Now

1323
01:14:33,280 --> 01:14:37,960
Speaker 1: that's got me wondering about other monsters in other traditions

1324
01:14:38,000 --> 01:14:41,479
Speaker 1: around the world and whether the level to which they're

1325
01:14:41,520 --> 01:14:47,360
Speaker 1: incorporated into the formalized version of the local religion determines

1326
01:14:47,439 --> 01:14:51,639
Speaker 1: how likely they are to be to be euthanized with cuteness. Yeah,

1327
01:14:51,720 --> 01:14:55,400
Speaker 1: because you look at Christianity and you you don't see this, Uh,

1328
01:14:55,600 --> 01:14:57,360
Speaker 1: this is not the case with the devil. You see

1329
01:14:57,360 --> 01:15:01,160
Speaker 1: plenty of cute devils out there. Um, but well, yeah

1330
01:15:01,280 --> 01:15:03,400
Speaker 1: you do. I guess that's right. I mean I was

1331
01:15:03,400 --> 01:15:06,240
Speaker 1: gonna say, you don't see as many cute demons as

1332
01:15:06,240 --> 01:15:10,000
Speaker 1: you see like cute vampires and cute werewolves. Yeah, maybe

1333
01:15:10,040 --> 01:15:12,360
Speaker 1: you have a point there. Maybe there are they are

1334
01:15:12,400 --> 01:15:15,240
Speaker 1: far more cute vampires and wolves, and there are cute

1335
01:15:15,320 --> 01:15:19,559
Speaker 1: demons or or some of the more potentially problematic characters.

1336
01:15:19,560 --> 01:15:21,919
Speaker 1: I guess, like the the Angel of God. How many

1337
01:15:21,960 --> 01:15:26,120
Speaker 1: how many cute angels wrestling humans are there? And I

1338
01:15:26,120 --> 01:15:28,200
Speaker 1: guess you also have to ask the question like how

1339
01:15:28,560 --> 01:15:30,880
Speaker 1: how many trolls are there in the culture, Like how

1340
01:15:30,880 --> 01:15:33,439
Speaker 1: many how many people were willing to take even you know,

1341
01:15:33,520 --> 01:15:37,519
Speaker 1: sacred cows and make them cute just for the sheer,

1342
01:15:37,600 --> 01:15:39,559
Speaker 1: you know, just for the giggles of doing it. Well

1343
01:15:39,600 --> 01:15:41,360
Speaker 1: then again, I mean, so I think there might be

1344
01:15:41,400 --> 01:15:44,840
Speaker 1: something to that sort of blasphemy equivalent. It's not blasphemy

1345
01:15:44,880 --> 01:15:47,519
Speaker 1: against the gods, but blasphemy against the monster is a

1346
01:15:47,600 --> 01:15:51,760
Speaker 1: sort of intentional rebuke and the desire to undercut their

1347
01:15:51,840 --> 01:15:55,000
Speaker 1: perceived power. There might be something to that, But I

1348
01:15:55,040 --> 01:15:57,960
Speaker 1: don't know if I really feel that. When I like,

1349
01:15:58,000 --> 01:16:00,920
Speaker 1: if I were to draw a cute vampire fire. I

1350
01:16:00,960 --> 01:16:04,000
Speaker 1: don't know if i'd feel spiteful in doing that. Well,

1351
01:16:04,120 --> 01:16:06,639
Speaker 1: I might just feel kind of like, oh, that's funny.

1352
01:16:07,360 --> 01:16:10,439
Speaker 1: You can't imagine someone going get away from me, baby Satan.

1353
01:16:11,760 --> 01:16:14,160
Speaker 1: You have no power over me. Here, get me behind me,

1354
01:16:14,320 --> 01:16:17,320
Speaker 1: baby Satan. So another thing I was talking to Lauren

1355
01:16:17,400 --> 01:16:21,160
Speaker 1: Vogelbaum about was was about this question of what contributes

1356
01:16:21,200 --> 01:16:24,320
Speaker 1: to the transformation of terrifying monsters into these cute versions

1357
01:16:24,360 --> 01:16:26,439
Speaker 1: of themselves. And she made a point that I thought

1358
01:16:26,520 --> 01:16:30,720
Speaker 1: was really interesting. She said, in the context of Japanese

1359
01:16:30,760 --> 01:16:35,080
Speaker 1: depictions of cute monsters in manga and anime um, what

1360
01:16:35,200 --> 01:16:38,840
Speaker 1: if it's the creeping sense of delayed adulthood and the

1361
01:16:38,920 --> 01:16:41,680
Speaker 1: extension of childhood that we see in a lot of

1362
01:16:41,720 --> 01:16:45,200
Speaker 1: cultures in the twentieth century and especially the second half

1363
01:16:45,200 --> 01:16:48,160
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century and in the twenty first century.

1364
01:16:47,920 --> 01:16:51,519
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe there are some cultural critics who would

1365
01:16:51,560 --> 01:16:53,280
Speaker 1: come back and say this is not really a thing,

1366
01:16:53,439 --> 01:16:56,840
Speaker 1: this is one of those you know, bs trend pieces.

1367
01:16:56,840 --> 01:16:59,200
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of people who would argue

1368
01:16:59,320 --> 01:17:03,240
Speaker 1: that there is a sort of creeping infantilism among adults

1369
01:17:03,240 --> 01:17:06,200
Speaker 1: in the in the Western world especially. I mean I

1370
01:17:06,240 --> 01:17:08,720
Speaker 1: know you've heard that argument, right, Robert, Yeah, yeah, I mean,

1371
01:17:08,720 --> 01:17:12,200
Speaker 1: and certainly you we it does seem like we remain

1372
01:17:12,720 --> 01:17:16,439
Speaker 1: many of us remain children longer we we don't, you know,

1373
01:17:16,479 --> 01:17:19,120
Speaker 1: give up all of our childish things as we as

1374
01:17:19,160 --> 01:17:22,719
Speaker 1: we become adults, right, we tend to stay in school longer,

1375
01:17:22,960 --> 01:17:25,360
Speaker 1: we get married later. All of these things that are

1376
01:17:25,360 --> 01:17:28,080
Speaker 1: traditionally in cultures thought of as sort of rites of

1377
01:17:28,080 --> 01:17:32,519
Speaker 1: passage to adulthood get like delayed later and later into life.

1378
01:17:32,840 --> 01:17:35,120
Speaker 1: And so it could be possible to think about the

1379
01:17:35,240 --> 01:17:39,599
Speaker 1: idea of of the cuteness of monster imagery, uh well,

1380
01:17:39,680 --> 01:17:41,760
Speaker 1: being related to the fact that children tend to like

1381
01:17:41,880 --> 01:17:45,760
Speaker 1: cute imagery. So could the transformation into cuteness represent an

1382
01:17:45,800 --> 01:17:50,200
Speaker 1: increasingly in fantalize adult cultures attempt to make monster folklore

1383
01:17:50,560 --> 01:17:53,439
Speaker 1: more palatable, more cuddly for those of us who don't

1384
01:17:53,439 --> 01:17:56,400
Speaker 1: want to hack scariness. Yeah, I think it could very

1385
01:17:56,400 --> 01:17:58,080
Speaker 1: well be the case. And of course it comes back

1386
01:17:58,080 --> 01:18:02,080
Speaker 1: to the idea too, of cute cuteness and monstrosity being

1387
01:18:02,680 --> 01:18:06,360
Speaker 1: upon the same spectrum, being within the same dimension, And

1388
01:18:06,400 --> 01:18:10,639
Speaker 1: so there's this They're interconnected already anyway, so it's all

1389
01:18:10,680 --> 01:18:13,400
Speaker 1: the more easier to begin tweaking these images and skewing

1390
01:18:13,439 --> 01:18:15,840
Speaker 1: their meaning. Now, I want to be clear that I'm

1391
01:18:15,840 --> 01:18:19,680
Speaker 1: not necessarily endorsing the idea that adults are more infantile

1392
01:18:19,800 --> 01:18:21,479
Speaker 1: than they used to be. I just know that that

1393
01:18:21,720 --> 01:18:23,840
Speaker 1: is a theory out there. I'm not sure if I

1394
01:18:23,880 --> 01:18:27,080
Speaker 1: buy it. I remain agnostic. You know. One more thing

1395
01:18:27,200 --> 01:18:29,200
Speaker 1: that this makes me think about is back to our

1396
01:18:29,240 --> 01:18:32,280
Speaker 1: episode on euphemisms. Robert, you remember the concept of the

1397
01:18:32,360 --> 01:18:36,640
Speaker 1: euphemism treadmill and the dysphemism treadmill. I do, yes, So

1398
01:18:36,680 --> 01:18:39,479
Speaker 1: the euphemism treadmill is this concept. I can't remember who

1399
01:18:39,520 --> 01:18:42,280
Speaker 1: came up with it. Was it Stephen Pinker? I believe,

1400
01:18:42,320 --> 01:18:45,880
Speaker 1: So that sounds right if I'm gonna say it's Stephen Pinker,

1401
01:18:45,880 --> 01:18:48,040
Speaker 1: and I can be the one that's wrong. Essentially, the

1402
01:18:48,080 --> 01:18:50,800
Speaker 1: idea is that you have a euphemism, which is a

1403
01:18:50,880 --> 01:18:54,200
Speaker 1: term you introduce to be a polite sort of illusion

1404
01:18:54,320 --> 01:18:57,840
Speaker 1: word indicate a concept that somehow problematic or offensive or

1405
01:18:57,880 --> 01:19:01,200
Speaker 1: causes people, you know, like, uh, it's the nice new

1406
01:19:01,240 --> 01:19:04,799
Speaker 1: word that you say. But eventually that word itself tends

1407
01:19:04,840 --> 01:19:08,320
Speaker 1: to become perceived in the culture as not nice. So,

1408
01:19:08,400 --> 01:19:12,160
Speaker 1: for example, uh, crippled was supposed to be the nice

1409
01:19:12,280 --> 01:19:15,360
Speaker 1: word for people with disabilities, and then it came to

1410
01:19:15,520 --> 01:19:17,920
Speaker 1: become a word that you would never want to call

1411
01:19:18,000 --> 01:19:22,800
Speaker 1: somebody um. And so there's this process like that. But

1412
01:19:22,840 --> 01:19:25,760
Speaker 1: then the same thing happens the other way with dysphemisms,

1413
01:19:25,760 --> 01:19:28,080
Speaker 1: with words that we want to use with negative connotations.

1414
01:19:28,120 --> 01:19:32,160
Speaker 1: So for example, how the word sucks, you know, to say,

1415
01:19:32,200 --> 01:19:34,519
Speaker 1: like that movie really sucked. That used to be an

1416
01:19:34,560 --> 01:19:38,160
Speaker 1: incredibly vulgar and offensive, just nasty thing to say, and

1417
01:19:38,200 --> 01:19:40,639
Speaker 1: now little kids say it. I mean, it's everywhere. It's

1418
01:19:40,760 --> 01:19:43,600
Speaker 1: lost its power to shock and offend. So you have

1419
01:19:43,680 --> 01:19:46,840
Speaker 1: to keep inventing new words. And so you're saying, essentially,

1420
01:19:46,880 --> 01:19:49,200
Speaker 1: we have to keep inventing new monsters as well, because

1421
01:19:49,240 --> 01:19:51,120
Speaker 1: the old ones lose their power. I mean, I think

1422
01:19:51,160 --> 01:19:53,920
Speaker 1: that could to some extent be true. Like uh that

1423
01:19:54,000 --> 01:19:56,080
Speaker 1: we are we may be seeing some kind of equivalent

1424
01:19:56,120 --> 01:19:59,920
Speaker 1: of the dysphamism treadmill with the monsters of old. Over time,

1425
01:20:00,240 --> 01:20:03,080
Speaker 1: they're just going to lose their power to shock and offend,

1426
01:20:03,120 --> 01:20:05,880
Speaker 1: and they become like the little kids saying sucks, the

1427
01:20:05,920 --> 01:20:09,640
Speaker 1: little kids running around with cute vampire dolls. And it

1428
01:20:10,080 --> 01:20:12,720
Speaker 1: really It's super hard nowadays with the Internet, because you

1429
01:20:13,040 --> 01:20:15,840
Speaker 1: have like a probably a lag time of just hours

1430
01:20:16,000 --> 01:20:19,000
Speaker 1: after a film comes out, before someone has made a

1431
01:20:19,080 --> 01:20:21,479
Speaker 1: cute button or a cute T shirt or just a

1432
01:20:21,560 --> 01:20:25,679
Speaker 1: meme based on that monster. Yeah, it happens immediately when

1433
01:20:25,680 --> 01:20:28,599
Speaker 1: when there's a new movie, it happens. Uh. And I

1434
01:20:28,600 --> 01:20:31,280
Speaker 1: think it creates a great challenge for say, horror movie

1435
01:20:31,720 --> 01:20:35,160
Speaker 1: creators to make a traditional monster scary. Again, think about

1436
01:20:35,200 --> 01:20:38,040
Speaker 1: how many recent vampire movies you can think of that

1437
01:20:38,160 --> 01:20:41,719
Speaker 1: have really scary vampires. They've sort of lost their power,

1438
01:20:41,920 --> 01:20:44,240
Speaker 1: haven't they. Yeah, it's if you you just can't trot

1439
01:20:44,240 --> 01:20:46,639
Speaker 1: off the same vampire over and over again because nobody's

1440
01:20:46,640 --> 01:20:49,519
Speaker 1: buying it anymore. Right. I mean, when Bella Legostie first

1441
01:20:49,560 --> 01:20:51,640
Speaker 1: showed up on screens, he had people screaming in the

1442
01:20:51,680 --> 01:20:54,040
Speaker 1: aisles of theaters. Now you watch it and bell Leghostie

1443
01:20:54,120 --> 01:20:56,360
Speaker 1: is great, but he's not scary. Yeah. We often forget

1444
01:20:56,400 --> 01:20:59,560
Speaker 1: just how how terrifying that performance actually was, and he

1445
01:20:59,680 --> 01:21:02,320
Speaker 1: is if you if you look at it with new eyes. Yeah,

1446
01:21:02,400 --> 01:21:03,960
Speaker 1: especially if you knew that he would end up in

1447
01:21:04,040 --> 01:21:08,960
Speaker 1: Edward movies. That's that's true. All right. Well, there you

1448
01:21:09,000 --> 01:21:12,519
Speaker 1: have it. We have explored the monstrous, we've explored the cute,

1449
01:21:13,200 --> 01:21:16,240
Speaker 1: and we have explored the bridge between. I want to

1450
01:21:16,280 --> 01:21:18,360
Speaker 1: know from you out there, what do you think is

1451
01:21:18,400 --> 01:21:22,840
Speaker 1: going on psychologically culturally? What is happening when we take

1452
01:21:22,880 --> 01:21:26,000
Speaker 1: these horrifying images and creatures and make them into cute

1453
01:21:26,000 --> 01:21:29,080
Speaker 1: plush dolls to cuddle with? Why do we keep doing it?

1454
01:21:29,320 --> 01:21:31,559
Speaker 1: And what effect does it have on the culture? Yeah,

1455
01:21:31,560 --> 01:21:35,560
Speaker 1: what are your favorite examples of this process? And what monsters,

1456
01:21:35,600 --> 01:21:38,800
Speaker 1: if any, have not gone cute? Uh? And for how

1457
01:21:38,840 --> 01:21:42,000
Speaker 1: long will they remain that way? As always, you can

1458
01:21:42,160 --> 01:21:44,719
Speaker 1: find us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,

1459
01:21:44,720 --> 01:21:47,439
Speaker 1: and Instagram. And hey, on Facebook, we have this wonderful

1460
01:21:47,560 --> 01:21:50,200
Speaker 1: little discussion module you can look up. It's a group.

1461
01:21:50,240 --> 01:21:52,559
Speaker 1: You can join it and you can chat with other

1462
01:21:52,600 --> 01:21:54,720
Speaker 1: folks who listen to the show, as well as the

1463
01:21:54,720 --> 01:21:58,400
Speaker 1: host themselves. And uh hey also Stuff to Blow your

1464
01:21:58,400 --> 01:22:00,240
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's the mother ship. That's we'll find

1465
01:22:00,280 --> 01:22:02,679
Speaker 1: all the episodes going back to the beginning of time.

1466
01:22:02,960 --> 01:22:04,320
Speaker 1: And if you want to get in touch with us

1467
01:22:04,320 --> 01:22:06,760
Speaker 1: directly with feedback on this episode or any other, you

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