Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey you welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, Robert,
Speaker 1: have you seen all these cute Jason Vorhees dolls and
Speaker 1: cartoons and fan art all over the Internet. Of course
Speaker 1: you have. I've at least seen some of it. But
Speaker 1: I know you shared with me an image of Jason
Speaker 1: plush doll, and I had not encountered that specific cute
Speaker 1: horror before. So he's got the machete and there's blood
Speaker 1: on the machete. But he's adorable, but he has blood
Speaker 1: on it, like you know, murder weapons. I mean, even
Speaker 1: if we didn't know who he is, the context here
Speaker 1: is that this is a killer. Yeah. He's got a
Speaker 1: huge head, huge low set eyes. He just looks so sweet,
Speaker 1: little stumpy limbs. He's like a little cute baby Jason.
Speaker 1: And there are cute Freddy Krueger's in the same way,
Speaker 1: cute Freddy Kruger cartoons, dolls, toys, uh things all over
Speaker 1: the Internet. And you've seen the cute vampires, the cute werewolves,
Speaker 1: cute versions of the girl from the Ring. I looked
Speaker 1: it up that exists cute predators from the movie Predator.
Speaker 1: I saw that that's that's kind of easy, because the
Speaker 1: predator already has a sort of baby shaped head. You
Speaker 1: just make the eyes bigger. They're cute xeno morphs. You'd
Speaker 1: think that'd be difficult to do, but they're all over
Speaker 1: the internet. What is with this epidemic of monsters originally
Speaker 1: imagined to be horrifying, threatening to haunt our dreams, to
Speaker 1: chase us through our nightmares, to murder us and our friends,
Speaker 1: and instead we're making all these versions of them that
Speaker 1: are adorable, with infantile characteristics that you just want to
Speaker 1: hug and snuggle. It seems inevitable, doesn't it, even even
Speaker 1: in weird cases like, for instance, the Babba Duke, which
Speaker 1: is like a child murdering monster, right, And then the
Speaker 1: same with penny Wise the clown. Like you would think
Speaker 1: that Pennywise, this thing that appears as a clown in
Speaker 1: order to, you know, drain the essence out of children
Speaker 1: and pull them into horrify them and pull them into sewers.
Speaker 1: You would think that would be beyond our ability to
Speaker 1: make cute. And yet just the other day I was
Speaker 1: looking at a cute pins of Pennywise, I'll cute it up. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to go in the cosmic direction, how
Speaker 1: about all the cute Illifid montheror the cute you know,
Speaker 1: uh cathuloom with those stuff. Yeah, when cute cute plush case.
Speaker 1: When my son came into my life, but I was,
Speaker 1: one of the first things we gave him was a
Speaker 1: plush Cathulu, which he loves. And it's an adorable looking creature.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he doesn't even know that it is essentially
Speaker 1: supposed to be a scary monster. I guess it's not
Speaker 1: funny to children in the same way it is funny
Speaker 1: to adults. No, that he just sees it as a cool,
Speaker 1: pretend little creature. It's like if you encountered snuff alophagus
Speaker 1: and then somebody said, oh, yes, stuff alophagus is actually
Speaker 1: a patterned after this hideous monster, right, this thing that
Speaker 1: snorts you up as a liquid through its trunk. Though,
Speaker 1: I do want to say, before this epidemic of cute
Speaker 1: cartoon versions and cute dolls and stuff like that of
Speaker 1: say Freddy Krueger, there is a precedent for this within
Speaker 1: the horror media itself. Because you've seen the Freddy Krueger movies,
Speaker 1: right the Nightmare on Elm Street. I've seen the first one,
Speaker 1: and I've seen the remake, and I like both of those,
Speaker 1: and the rest it's just mostly clips and just the
Speaker 1: pop cultural absorption of this ever ridiculous Freddy Krueger that
Speaker 1: that you know, that that has all these catchphrases and
Speaker 1: and ingenious kills. That's that all the compilers together for me. Well,
Speaker 1: there there's definitely an arc throughout the series where, over
Speaker 1: time the Freddy Krueger of the first movie and the
Speaker 1: first night Nightmare on Elm Street, I think Wes Craven
Speaker 1: went out of his way to make him not just
Speaker 1: a threatening monster, the standard kind of monster that will
Speaker 1: hurt you and chases you, but to make him repulsive
Speaker 1: and really just nasty. I mean, Freddy Krueger in the
Speaker 1: first movie is a character who's supposed to be a
Speaker 1: child murderer, and there are these suggestions of perversity and
Speaker 1: this this kind of gross creepiness, not just threatening monstrosity,
Speaker 1: and so from that point, I think it's really amazing
Speaker 1: that over the arc of the series Freddie becomes sort
Speaker 1: of almost something like an anti hero, Like he's never
Speaker 1: actually a good guy, but he stops becoming this gross
Speaker 1: creep that you don't even want to look at, and
Speaker 1: becomes this jokester who dances and mugs for the camera
Speaker 1: and has one liners, makes jokes, and he becomes the
Speaker 1: star of the films. He becomes the reason people watch it,
Speaker 1: and it's because he's fun and he's comic. He becomes
Speaker 1: the crypt keeper, he becomes Hull Cogan. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: it's certainly by Jason versus Freddie you're probably rooting for
Speaker 1: one or the other. He is, like, there's kind of
Speaker 1: a fifty split there that that you may be backing
Speaker 1: this character in the brawl. Yeah, and maybe you could
Speaker 1: chalk that up in the Fredd movies just to the
Speaker 1: actor who played him, Robert England, being a great and
Speaker 1: likable actor, despite the fact that he settled with this
Speaker 1: incredibly repulsive role. Uh, maybe Robert England just bleeds through
Speaker 1: so much that you want to make him more and
Speaker 1: more likable. Well. It it even got to the point
Speaker 1: when they when the remake of Nightmare Him Street came out. Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't like it. I actually really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I thought it was. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a fine hard film. I didn't like it, he didn't
Speaker 1: like I. I I enjoyed it. But then again, I'm less
Speaker 1: attached to the series. But but one of the criticisms
Speaker 1: that I saw level at it was how could you
Speaker 1: make Freddie a pedophile? How could you make this his avert,
Speaker 1: make this creepiness in his character so avert, as if
Speaker 1: that like ruined a hero and not just made a
Speaker 1: grotesque monster a little creepier. I think it was always
Speaker 1: kind of implicitly suggested back in the first movie. Look,
Speaker 1: I mean, they never said that outright that I recall,
Speaker 1: but it's always there in the fact that, like we
Speaker 1: were saying, he's not just a threat, he's a creep
Speaker 1: he's perverse. Yeah, So it's it's interesting to see how
Speaker 1: people responded to kind of a doubling down on on
Speaker 1: on the grotesque monstrosity of the character in a way
Speaker 1: from the ridiculous pop culture version of the character. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the version in the remake is not going to be
Speaker 1: doing I don't know, Domino's pizza commercials or whatever Freddie
Speaker 1: was doing in the eighties. But of course Freddy Krueger
Speaker 1: and the Nutmaar on elm Street series is not the
Speaker 1: only series where we see a monstrous, horrifying character transformed
Speaker 1: over time into something that's more approachable, more likable, more identifiable,
Speaker 1: maybe even kind of snugly. This happens a lot in
Speaker 1: horror literature and even in horror folklore. Yeah. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: definitely going to get into some examples from from folklore
Speaker 1: and legend, particularly some examples from Japanese folklore, because as
Speaker 1: we're talking, we inevitably talk about both monsters and the
Speaker 1: world of cute. Like you have to go to Japan,
Speaker 1: because Japan is h is the home not only of
Speaker 1: some pretty hideous folkloreic monsters, but also kauaii. This this
Speaker 1: notion of of of like overt just overpowered cuteness, the
Speaker 1: hello Kitty level of cuteness that has not only taken
Speaker 1: Japan by storm, but has has spread its cuttly tentacles
Speaker 1: into just about every portion of the earth. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like overclocking the adorability process almost to the point of insanity.
Speaker 1: And I should also point out that this also goes
Speaker 1: the other way. Of course, just as monsters often become cute,
Speaker 1: there are also plenty of examples of people taking something
Speaker 1: cute and making it monstrous. Um I kind of did
Speaker 1: it just a few minutes ago talking about snuffle Up,
Speaker 1: I guess. But you you inevitably see people who say,
Speaker 1: do a love crafty and take on totoro or and
Speaker 1: then there's a whole area of Kauai known as Kauai
Speaker 1: and noir, which is like dark cute where they have
Speaker 1: something that pretty much intentionally has a lag or maybe
Speaker 1: a tentacle in both the cute and the monstrous content bucket.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is something that very often happens
Speaker 1: in comedy animation. I think you know, shows like South
Speaker 1: Park and Futurama and Simpsons and stuff like that always
Speaker 1: have a scene at some point where a very cute
Speaker 1: animal turns out to be a horrifying killer. So in
Speaker 1: today's episode, we're gonna explore this. We're gonna explore what
Speaker 1: is the relationship between the monstrous and the cute, why
Speaker 1: is there there this interesting interplay? And in doing that,
Speaker 1: we're going to, of course discuss a little bit about
Speaker 1: what a monster is. So I think we've hit that
Speaker 1: harder in previous episodes. Here stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about what it is to be cute.
Speaker 1: What's going on when something cute hijacks our brain? And
Speaker 1: then at the end of the episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: look to really three specific examples of Japanese monsters that
Speaker 1: may or may not be transformed into something cute. We'll
Speaker 1: be discussing the Only, the Kappa, and the Tango. All right, Robert,
Speaker 1: what is a monster? Oh? Well, you know it's it's
Speaker 1: it's like cute. It's like pornography. We know it when
Speaker 1: we see it, right, But if you if you really
Speaker 1: have to, you know, if you really force somebody to
Speaker 1: to define it, what you tend to think about something
Speaker 1: that is awesome inform or size. It's novel and it's
Speaker 1: chimerical combination of natural forms, you know, like it's got
Speaker 1: the head of a sea horse in the body of
Speaker 1: a cow. That's a monster um or you know, you
Speaker 1: know where it's just a giant sea horse. A sea
Speaker 1: horse the size of the school bus would also be
Speaker 1: a monster. I subscribe to the Metallica theory of monster dum,
Speaker 1: which is that a monster is the thing that should
Speaker 1: not be. It's a thing that you behold and realize
Speaker 1: that it is not only not something you recognize from nature,
Speaker 1: but it's something that you do not wish nature had. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously we violate those norms all the time because we
Speaker 1: get into monsters. We we find ourselves at home thinking
Speaker 1: about monsters, and we kind of do wish there was
Speaker 1: a giant mummy crocodile with laser eyes. Right, But at
Speaker 1: least in theory, the thing a monster is is it
Speaker 1: violates natural categories in some way and it horrifies you,
Speaker 1: makes you afraid, makes you not want it to be there.
Speaker 1: And as we discussed in our episode The First Monster,
Speaker 1: which which came out previously for for this year's Halloween, um,
Speaker 1: there's often a message there, if if not a message
Speaker 1: that is tied up in the monster's form, then tied
Speaker 1: up in the monsters presence or in the stories about it,
Speaker 1: Like this monster is a danger to you because of why,
Speaker 1: because you went somewhere, or you did something, or you're
Speaker 1: engaged in a culture that went somewhere did something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Rarely do monsters appear in folklore without some kind of
Speaker 1: warning or social message. Right. Okay, so that's monsters in
Speaker 1: a nutshell. But but how about cute cute? Uh is
Speaker 1: in a way easier to nail down, but also just
Speaker 1: as ambiguous as monstrosity. Well, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that everybody can identify it by sight, you know, you
Speaker 1: can tell, well, that's cute, that's not, that's cute, that's not.
Speaker 1: But when you're asked to give a set of criteria
Speaker 1: for how you're making the decision, you'd you'd often come
Speaker 1: up at a loss for words. Right, what's certainly the
Speaker 1: eyes of the whole there, But we can tease it
Speaker 1: apart to a certain extent. We can say, look at
Speaker 1: almost a universal images of of the cute and see
Speaker 1: what's connecting with us there, and then figure out why
Speaker 1: it's connecting with us. So, for instance, kittens, babies, or
Speaker 1: of course Hello Kitty, which is essentially a kitten combined
Speaker 1: with a baby or a small child with psychedelic color schemes.
Speaker 1: Psychedelic color schemes. And then of course many cute creatures
Speaker 1: of either real ones or fanciful ones. What do they have?
Speaker 1: They have big adorable eyes or perhaps big jowls, baby
Speaker 1: like cheeks. They're kind of Winston Churchill's yeah no no,
Speaker 1: so yeah, there do appear to be some biological roots
Speaker 1: to our recognition of cuteness. It does seem to go
Speaker 1: into our mammalian brains and not just into cultural categories.
Speaker 1: So culture may very well inform a lot of what
Speaker 1: we find cute downstream of these biological cues. So, in
Speaker 1: his eighteen seventy two book The Freshion of the Emotions
Speaker 1: in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin suggested that natural selection
Speaker 1: is probably gonna favor creatures which, in infancy possess features
Speaker 1: that cause the adults of that species to protect them
Speaker 1: and take care of their needs. Right, if you are
Speaker 1: a species that has a genome that says we usually
Speaker 1: give birth to babies we find repulsive and don't want
Speaker 1: anything to do with, that species, isn't gonna do very well, right,
Speaker 1: or at least you're gonna have a situation like the
Speaker 1: Komodo dragon, where the young of the Komodo dragon they
Speaker 1: pretty much they're on their own right and they have
Speaker 1: to protect themselves from such threats as adult komodo dragons exactly.
Speaker 1: So this would be in species that need to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time protecting and caring for their young.
Speaker 1: This is something we see in mammals right, and other species,
Speaker 1: but especially in mammals. So a lot of Darwin's book
Speaker 1: deals with things like the screams of infants and how
Speaker 1: the scream of an infant elicits parental attention. But you really,
Speaker 1: if an object is screaming at you, you don't you
Speaker 1: just you know, don't you just find it annoying? Like
Speaker 1: you want to get away from it. Like if there's
Speaker 1: just us an orb in a room screaming at you,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to care for it. I would run away. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: If if a human on a train is screaming, um,
Speaker 1: either may be you want to find out what's happening.
Speaker 1: You might even want to help. But there's there's at
Speaker 1: least that question mark phase of the screaming. Right, what
Speaker 1: is going on here? Let me find out so that
Speaker 1: I can act accordingly. Yeah, it's attention getting, But the
Speaker 1: demands of an infant have to be more than simply
Speaker 1: attention getting to be adaptive. They have to be sharpened
Speaker 1: to appeal to specific vulnerabilities in the adult caregiver's brain,
Speaker 1: like vulnerabilities that soften anger responses and encourage protectiveness, and
Speaker 1: encourage generosity and sharing of resources and so forth. So
Speaker 1: something about the infant version of an animal has to
Speaker 1: convince the adult version of that animal to feel an
Speaker 1: attachment and to make sacrifices on behalf of this little creature.
Speaker 1: Now we'll talk about this more in a second. But
Speaker 1: in some species these appeals for parenting could be straightforwardly chemical, right,
Speaker 1: Pheromones and scent would be examples. But couldn't these biological
Speaker 1: appeals also be visual? It makes sense, right, that's and
Speaker 1: one of the most immediate ways to interact with with
Speaker 1: an object or being is you see them and then
Speaker 1: you respond. Right. So, in the middle of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: the Austrian ethologist Conrad Lorenz, who I guess we should
Speaker 1: maybe acknowledged it's always weird, like should you bring this
Speaker 1: up or not? He was also a Nazi. After World
Speaker 1: War Two repudiated his views. I'm not aware that his
Speaker 1: ideology played any role in coming up with this schema
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about, but I guess it's worth acknowledging.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, I think it's always worth noting
Speaker 1: when a scientist has that in their background, because in
Speaker 1: some cases you you definitely have science that it was
Speaker 1: skewed or compromised by its association with the Third Reich. Uh,
Speaker 1: so you have you have to at least acknowledge that
Speaker 1: it was there in order to determine if it was
Speaker 1: a factor. Yeah, I mean, like you had people doing
Speaker 1: science that was ideologically determined, not very objective. But I
Speaker 1: don't think that's necessarily the case in this case. So
Speaker 1: Larens plunged into this field by observing animal species and
Speaker 1: coming up with what's known as the Kinschen Schemma or
Speaker 1: the baby schema. It's a list of features that he
Speaker 1: believed were sculpted in order to trigger or release caregiving
Speaker 1: behaviors in adult animals. And he gave about seven criteria.
Speaker 1: So let me know what you think about these. Robert
Speaker 1: A large head Okay, Yeah, babies have big heads. Predominance
Speaker 1: of the brain capsule. So that's going to mean not
Speaker 1: just a large head, but sort of the large forehead,
Speaker 1: like the swelling of the upper part of the head,
Speaker 1: large and low lying eyes, a bulging cheek region. There's
Speaker 1: the Churchill jowls. We're talking about, short and thick extremities,
Speaker 1: a springy or elastic consistency. Yeah, they when you when
Speaker 1: you poke them in a soft body, there's your plush doll.
Speaker 1: And finally, clumsy movements, Yes, the toddling of the toddler right,
Speaker 1: and subsequent studies have found evidence to partially support Lorenz's schema.
Speaker 1: So this is one reason to think that, you know,
Speaker 1: even if he's got some kind of crazy ideology, there
Speaker 1: might be something to this because subsequent studies seem to
Speaker 1: find some of the same stuff is true. So I'll
Speaker 1: mention one study from two thousand nine published in Ethology
Speaker 1: by Melanie Glocker at All, and this is called baby
Speaker 1: schema in Infant Faces induces cuteness, perception and motivation for
Speaker 1: caretaking in adults. And what they did in this study
Speaker 1: was they used real photos of infants digitally manipulated to
Speaker 1: accentuate or to downplay some of the features that are
Speaker 1: in line with Lorenz's criteria. And so among a group
Speaker 1: of undergraduates, the study found that the faces manipulated towards
Speaker 1: the criteria as a meaning they manipulated them to have
Speaker 1: larger eyes or a rounder face or a higher forehead,
Speaker 1: were judged to be cuter and elicited greater motivation for caregiving.
Speaker 1: People said they were more likely to give care to these, uh,
Speaker 1: these more baby scheme of faces than the ones where
Speaker 1: they really downplayed those criteria, giving them smaller eyes, smaller
Speaker 1: foreheads and narrower face and stuff like that. Now I've
Speaker 1: got a picture here, Yeah, I'm I'm looking at this
Speaker 1: right now. So, um, basically we have an array of
Speaker 1: six images, three per row. So we have this grid
Speaker 1: of baby heads here that we're looking at and um
Speaker 1: and in the idea that there's a change in uh
Speaker 1: like cuteness from left to right. Yeah, So you've got
Speaker 1: like normal baby heads in the middle, and then on
Speaker 1: the right you've got ultra babified baby faces with like
Speaker 1: these gigantic eyes, really round faces, really sort of low
Speaker 1: faces with large foreheads, big brain capsules. And then on
Speaker 1: the right you've got unbabified baby faces that look sort
Speaker 1: of more like the kid in the omen or they
Speaker 1: look more adult. Basically, they look more like old men,
Speaker 1: you know. They're they're kind of in that category of
Speaker 1: like the older baby babies that when you look at
Speaker 1: them and maybe you you cringe a little bit before
Speaker 1: you tell the parents that it's a beautiful baby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they tend to have like smaller eyes, a smaller forehead,
Speaker 1: a narrower head, and a less rounding of the skull
Speaker 1: that they look they look like weird adults rather than babies,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's interesting to to look at this
Speaker 1: and think of it in in light of our basically
Speaker 1: our evolved reaction to these faces. I was looking at
Speaker 1: a study that said the scientists have used magneto and
Speaker 1: cephalography to observe a seventh of a second response time
Speaker 1: in adults to unfamiliar infant faces, but of course not
Speaker 1: adult faces. And that's going to that's uh, that difference
Speaker 1: is gonna be manifest in this array of faces as well.
Speaker 1: Like the cute or the baby, the more immediate your
Speaker 1: response to it, I imagine. So, like you see this
Speaker 1: cute baby face with the highly babified features, and you're like,
Speaker 1: whoa that I need to pay attention to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got to look at that, and if it needs something,
Speaker 1: I guess I will go buy it some milk or
Speaker 1: some pudding or whatever it is. Baby's eat, right. Put
Speaker 1: zip ties on all my cabinets, those horrible plastic things
Speaker 1: and all my wall plugs. I know, I'm still trying
Speaker 1: to work through all the baby proofing on my house. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's still some annoying baby proofing that I haven't quite
Speaker 1: like broken by forcing a grower open. But so one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things about the recognition of cuteness and
Speaker 1: it's biological function is that it appears to work not
Speaker 1: just within species. Now, I can't see any real reason
Speaker 1: that you would evolve to have a caregiving preference for
Speaker 1: animals other than your own species. So it might be
Speaker 1: one of those things that's just a byproduct of something
Speaker 1: that's highly adaptable. Yeah, I mean, we're all we're related
Speaker 1: to all the the other mammalion creatures, and and they're
Speaker 1: all they all have the basically basically the same survival
Speaker 1: um techniques in place in terms of parental care for
Speaker 1: the infant. Yeah, and it's kind of obvious from our
Speaker 1: experiences with kittens and puppies and so forth. But experiments
Speaker 1: do confirm that our appreciation for cuteness goes beyond the
Speaker 1: infant Homo sapiens. One example is a study found by
Speaker 1: Anthony Little from two thousand and twelve published again in
Speaker 1: Ethology called Manipulation of Infant Like Traits Effects Perceived cuteness
Speaker 1: of infante, adults and cat faces. So it found that
Speaker 1: among images of three types of faces, babies, adults, and cats,
Speaker 1: first of all, people found the babies and the cats
Speaker 1: cuter than adults. But then also when the faces from
Speaker 1: all three categories were manipulated to have baby scheme of characteristics,
Speaker 1: for example decreasing the jaws, eyes, and increasing the forehead height,
Speaker 1: people found them cuter. And this worked for adult faces,
Speaker 1: for human baby face is and for cat faces. Okay,
Speaker 1: so getting into kind of the Betty boot area there
Speaker 1: of like the weird like infantile but but arguably attractive
Speaker 1: adult female. Yeah, it's it's just seeming to imply that
Speaker 1: we have the same kind of caregiving response or cuteness
Speaker 1: response to faces of all different types of creatures, no
Speaker 1: matter what age and no matter what species. Even if
Speaker 1: there's a face and you make these certain types of
Speaker 1: changes to the face, we think it's cute usually and
Speaker 1: we respond with all you know, zip tide, the chemical cabinet.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting to think of it in terms
Speaker 1: of survival adaptations for non human animals when you think
Speaker 1: of of domesticated animals, cats and dogs, because certainly, I
Speaker 1: think that I've certainly read some studies that argue for
Speaker 1: the the the cat's ability to essentially hijack us by
Speaker 1: making us think it's a baby on some level, you know,
Speaker 1: and and and I think dogs do that too to
Speaker 1: a large extent, as it's sorta with puppies. So I
Speaker 1: could see it as a situation where uh, an infant
Speaker 1: dog or or cat that is either found or s
Speaker 1: obtained when the parents are killed like suddenly, those are
Speaker 1: less likely to be then killed and eaten or skinned
Speaker 1: or left for dead by the humans who have found
Speaker 1: it if it hits those same triggers you know. Now,
Speaker 1: another study I came across, the two thousand twelve Japanese
Speaker 1: study publishing p OS one, and they tested the effect
Speaker 1: of viewing kauai images or cute images on attentiveness, and
Speaker 1: they found that individuals who viewed infinite animal images performed
Speaker 1: tasks better than those who viewed adult animals. Yeah, seems
Speaker 1: like so just if you had to have a calendar
Speaker 1: at your desk, have the baby animals calendar as opposed
Speaker 1: to the grown up animals calendar. Huh. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel I feel unfairly skeptical of that result. Has
Speaker 1: that been replicated? Well, love, Well, let's let's let's see.
Speaker 1: So it's not just a matter according to this study
Speaker 1: of cute things making us happier or amusing us. They
Speaker 1: also allegedly improve performance in quote tasks that require behavioral carefulness. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can see that. Yeah, so it's not it's not
Speaker 1: so much. There's not a magical effect going on here.
Speaker 1: This is the idea that the cute visible stimuli may
Speaker 1: actually narrow the breath of attentional focus. I can see that. No,
Speaker 1: like that seeing a baby face would put the mind
Speaker 1: into a don't drop the baby gear exactly, and then
Speaker 1: you take that gear and you apply it to working
Speaker 1: in your spreadsheet. I can see that. Yeah, okay, I
Speaker 1: understand the mechanism. Now. Now, different studies have also looked
Speaker 1: at the effects of cute marketing on consumer restraint of course, uh,
Speaker 1: and and also on whether it has a to what
Speaker 1: extent it affects indulgent behavior because the whole don't drop
Speaker 1: the baby mentality. Do you want your consumer using that
Speaker 1: that kind of mentality when they're potentially behind your product, right,
Speaker 1: you want to encourage them to drop the wallet? Yeah.
Speaker 1: They found that, uh that for some people, cute images
Speaker 1: with big eyes or baby cheeks seem to induce more
Speaker 1: careful or strained behavior. But uh, but again not every case.
Speaker 1: But it's an interesting additional study related to this whole
Speaker 1: idea of intensified attentiveness. Now, it's also worth noting that
Speaker 1: when we're talking about cute, we're inevitably talking about visual
Speaker 1: stimulant a lot here, because that's going to be the
Speaker 1: thing that's bound up in either a you know, a
Speaker 1: plushed all of of a horror monster or Halloween cost
Speaker 1: him that's derived from it. Now, they're obviously also cute sounds, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the cute baby sound, but even the cute baby smell.
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about this, but you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: if you've ever smelled a baby, it's fabulous and it's
Speaker 1: hard to really put a put put a finger on
Speaker 1: what's happening there, Like, why is this an attractive smell
Speaker 1: to smell a baby's head? I'm sorry, I have no
Speaker 1: idea what you're talking about. Really, well, the next time
Speaker 1: you're around a baby, do yourself a favor, uh smell it.
Speaker 1: It's creepy unless it's your baby. Well, no, you can.
Speaker 1: You can ask you and say, hey, I've been I've
Speaker 1: been reading some studies and in uh, you know, in
Speaker 1: the name of science, would you allow me to smell
Speaker 1: your baby's head. Yeah, have you seen that product on
Speaker 1: the market that is like a bottled cathead smell? No,
Speaker 1: like an actual cat's head or a cathead biscuit? I think, Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's what does a cat head biscuit?
Speaker 1: It's just a big old biscuit that's roughly the size
Speaker 1: of a cat's head. I'm not sure which what region
Speaker 1: uh that that is found in. I guess somewhere in
Speaker 1: the south here. I think it's actually supposed to be
Speaker 1: a cat's head. It's like a perfume you can buy
Speaker 1: that's supposed to smell like a cat head. But cats
Speaker 1: don't really smell like anything if if it's unless it's
Speaker 1: a dirty cat like they tend to have. Like maybe
Speaker 1: they smell like pennies, a little bit like batteries, but
Speaker 1: that's about the extent of it. Uh, don't usually smell
Speaker 1: like sulfur. We're not the ones I'm handstone. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: so on that note, let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: we come back. We will get more into this conflict,
Speaker 1: this battle between cute and monstrosity. All right, So we're back.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about cute, We've talked about monsters. We've
Speaker 1: talked about them mostly is distant islands, you know, entirely
Speaker 1: separate from each other. So on one hand, you have
Speaker 1: the Isle of misfit Toys and then you have Monster
Speaker 1: Island on the other. I suppose waiter the misfit toys
Speaker 1: not also monsters. Well, yeah, I guess they're kind of monstrous.
Speaker 1: What would be the what would be the cute island? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's that island in Japan that's got all the cats
Speaker 1: on it. Cat have an Island. There you go, that'll work.
Speaker 1: So it's the difference between Cat Haven, Cat Have An
Speaker 1: Island and uh and Monster Island. But we have to
Speaker 1: have to wonder are these two states all that different?
Speaker 1: Are they really two separate things or are they different
Speaker 1: points on a spectrum? Well, I ran across a really
Speaker 1: thought provoking paper titled Monstrous slash Cute Notes on the
Speaker 1: ambivalent ambivalent nature of cuteness, and this is by social
Speaker 1: scientists Maja Rozozoska Brancenska. I hope I pronounced that at
Speaker 1: least halfway right. But I will try and link to
Speaker 1: this paper in the landing page for this episode Stuff
Speaker 1: to your Mind dot com so you can see it
Speaker 1: for yourself. Um, Maja bb As, I will refer to her.
Speaker 1: She dives into all of this, noting that there's a
Speaker 1: certain ambiguity and hybridity to both monsters and cute entities.
Speaker 1: So they're cuties, if you will, cute, so they're not
Speaker 1: just different things, but there's something lying along the same scale.
Speaker 1: Maybe yeah, that you can think of them as both
Speaker 1: both of them as exaggerated states. And she also points
Speaker 1: out that cute images boast safe aesthetics that indicate harmless ethics.
Speaker 1: So I think it's perplexing because infants, I think we
Speaker 1: can all agree, are our home holly blameless creatures. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you can't look at one in in
Speaker 1: horror or fear, but that horror or fear is generally
Speaker 1: tied to the ethical nature of the creature itself. You mean,
Speaker 1: not tied right, Yeah, I'm sorry. It's generally not tied
Speaker 1: to the ethical nature of the creature itself. It's tied
Speaker 1: to you know, your maybe it's tiped feelings of commitment
Speaker 1: or h you know, uncertainty about the state of the world,
Speaker 1: or I guess the closest you could come to having
Speaker 1: an absolute, authentic horror to the creature of the infant
Speaker 1: is to just be appalled at what it does in
Speaker 1: its diaper, you know. But well, you could also have
Speaker 1: some kind of doctrine, I don't know, some original sin
Speaker 1: type thing. Well, yes, but that's that's you're really you're
Speaker 1: you're cheating at that point. I think you're creating a
Speaker 1: narrative that actually shames an infant, and so shame on
Speaker 1: you for doing it. And of course you might have
Speaker 1: some sort of response to just sort of the chaotic
Speaker 1: nature of infants. But if infants are chaotic, and they
Speaker 1: certainly can be, they're definitely chaotic neutral. If not chaotic, good,
Speaker 1: They're they're not chaotic evil. Okay, you've convinced me infants are, okay, Robert.
Speaker 1: Now Likewise, the monster is traditionally a thing as rotten
Speaker 1: on the inside as it is on the outside. The
Speaker 1: monster with a heart of gold is an exception, granted up,
Speaker 1: a pretty widespread exception at this point, but it's an
Speaker 1: exception that proves the rule. Well, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: those uh the exception that proves the rule on the
Speaker 1: other side would be those evil baby movies. Exactly like
Speaker 1: a possessed demon invent or something. Yeah, but generally, like
Speaker 1: a monster is as evil it is as it is ugly,
Speaker 1: and a cute baby or cartoon character is as sweet
Speaker 1: as it is visually cute. Now I like this, uh
Speaker 1: this idea of cuteness being not just a thing that
Speaker 1: we respond to as caregivers and that makes us want
Speaker 1: to give up our protection and resources for it, but
Speaker 1: it's also something that signals harmlessness because it makes me
Speaker 1: think about the human domestication of animals. Uh. Like, For example,
Speaker 1: if you look at dogs, the domestic dog that we
Speaker 1: have today evolved both through natural but mostly artificial selection
Speaker 1: from some type of wolf like candid species within the
Speaker 1: history of anatomically modern humans. Now, because humans were selecting
Speaker 1: which features to breed into their dogs, I think we
Speaker 1: often assume that cute dog breeds where the adult of
Speaker 1: the dog is very cute. We're bred for cuteness simply
Speaker 1: for esthetic reasons, right, we wanted them to look cute
Speaker 1: because we like it. But it's also worth thinking about
Speaker 1: the possibility of a correlation between cuteness and the domesticated
Speaker 1: affect itself. Like domestic dogs seem to have been selected
Speaker 1: to retain juvenile characteristics into adulthood, and these would include
Speaker 1: things like a wider face, shorter snouts, floppy ears, a
Speaker 1: curly tail, but also positive responses to humans. This is
Speaker 1: something you would probably see in like wolf cubs or
Speaker 1: fox cubs, but not in adult wolves or adult foxes.
Speaker 1: They're the juvenile characteristics of the wild ancestor or the
Speaker 1: wild cousin that are retained into adulthood and the asticated version.
Speaker 1: And so cuteness might not only be something that releases
Speaker 1: caregiving behaviors and adults, but it's literally correlated with the
Speaker 1: biological transformation of a wild, unruly animal that cannot be
Speaker 1: contained and is somewhat dangerous into this friendly, pliable, non threatening,
Speaker 1: domestic companion. Like the cuteness shows that it has made
Speaker 1: a biological transformation into something that won't bite you and
Speaker 1: in fact might want to snuggle with you. I mean
Speaker 1: that explains that the form of the pug right down
Speaker 1: to a t, the pug is essentially a dog that
Speaker 1: we have bread to look as much like a human
Speaker 1: infant as possible. Oh yeah, it is a human baby
Speaker 1: with four legs in a tail that can obviously by you.
Speaker 1: Though if um, do pugs have teeth? Really yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: how much more awful would it be if we've managed
Speaker 1: to breathe the teeth out of the dog. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've metaphorically bred the teeth out of out of the dog,
Speaker 1: but but not literally. Yeah. Alright, So that Maja baby
Speaker 1: paper that I was discussing earlier, she also uh points
Speaker 1: a lot of this out about Japanese kauai that the
Speaker 1: term itself the again, this is the Japanese cuteness or hypercuteness.
Speaker 1: Kauai derives from the word uh kawa yushi, which principally
Speaker 1: means shy and embarrassed, as well as vulnerable, small, and darling,
Speaker 1: and it's applied to both babies and old people, perhaps
Speaker 1: denoting a certain helplessness. And I'm also seen where there's
Speaker 1: a variation on kauai uh like a variant word that
Speaker 1: is uh that that is used as a put down
Speaker 1: that has a negative connotation as meaning pet, pathetic, poor,
Speaker 1: or pitiable and in a generally negative way. Oh. So
Speaker 1: it's like on the playground when a bully says the
Speaker 1: other kid is like all little baby. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to bring that up because my my son
Speaker 1: is in kindergarten and he's still at the age where
Speaker 1: that is the ultimate put down, Like if you're gonna
Speaker 1: insult somebody, you you call them a baby, and it's
Speaker 1: the worst thing in the world, to the point where
Speaker 1: our cat, if our cat misbehaves, yeah, are then my
Speaker 1: son will say, oh, baby mochi or even it doesn't
Speaker 1: even have to be a person or a thing. It
Speaker 1: can just be a general idea, or it can be
Speaker 1: an object. But and you just put baby in front
Speaker 1: of it, and that's like the ultimate belittling of it.
Speaker 1: Like the toaster won't work. It's a baby, Yes, baby toaster.
Speaker 1: Like instead of saying stupid toaster or or some or
Speaker 1: some other more adult um word, you just say baby toaster. Uh.
Speaker 1: But that's funny because I think the literature reflects that
Speaker 1: children do respond well to these infantile features as well, right,
Speaker 1: Like children like the baby schema, Children like cuteness a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you just have to look at their stuffed
Speaker 1: animals and and there's the proof. So the idea here
Speaker 1: is perhaps the monsters and the cute are the same
Speaker 1: energy applied in opposite directions. In fact, manage be the
Speaker 1: rights of cuteness as a pendulum. It quote works inevitably
Speaker 1: as a sort of pendulum, swinging to and fro and
Speaker 1: thus being able to play its role only up to
Speaker 1: a certain point where the sweetness becomes a mock and
Speaker 1: a pitiful or ironic alter ego of itself. And I
Speaker 1: would wonder if the same holds true of monsters as well,
Speaker 1: because if if monstrousness and cuteness, if these are essentially
Speaker 1: one slider, and you know, think of it as like
Speaker 1: photoshopry of a slider between dark and light or something,
Speaker 1: or you know, or it's a slider for shade or
Speaker 1: tenant or something. Could you push the sliders so far
Speaker 1: in not only the cute direction, but the monster direction,
Speaker 1: so that the monstrous thing becomes ridiculous. Now, obviously all
Speaker 1: this in this in the eye of the beholder, But
Speaker 1: I instantly thought of rat thinks. I thought of some
Speaker 1: of the monsters from the Spawn comics, and I thought
Speaker 1: of the monsters from the wonderful movie Freaked, which are
Speaker 1: very much modeled after I think rat thinks. So rat
Speaker 1: thinks the are like these monsters for em bulging eyes, um,
Speaker 1: you know, grotesque smiles and teeth that are that would
Speaker 1: that were shown illustrated to ride a hot rod around
Speaker 1: and they're not scary. They're not I wouldn't say they're
Speaker 1: necessarily cute, but it's like the monstrous elements of the
Speaker 1: character design are pushed to such a degree that it's
Speaker 1: almost impossible to find it frightful anymore. Right, It's like
Speaker 1: you almost intuitively detect excess. Yeah, and and it becomes
Speaker 1: funny yeah and and with cute I can think of.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of those you know what when
Speaker 1: you see it examples, But we've all encountered sickeningly sweet,
Speaker 1: sickening lee cute, where something has been just designed so
Speaker 1: cute that it is almost repulsive. Uh. And then the
Speaker 1: only example I can think about hand is that I
Speaker 1: feel like the character Gur in Invader Zim this is
Speaker 1: the Yonn Basquez comic and uh in TV series. The
Speaker 1: character of Gur is intentionally just so cute looking that
Speaker 1: you're it causes revulsion. Well, a lot of times the
Speaker 1: revulsion comes in, I think in the addition of text
Speaker 1: or speech. Like I think of the memes where you've
Speaker 1: got a kitten, and the kitten might just be adorable
Speaker 1: on its own, but like if you add some meme
Speaker 1: text to it, it becomes gross, where the kitten says, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I made you a cookie, but I eat
Speaker 1: it it. Yes, that is that's like linguistically signally cute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why is that? Why does that feel over the edge?
Speaker 1: It's like so cute it's unpleasant. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I guess it's it kind of falls into the same
Speaker 1: way like children are when they use grammar incorrectly. It
Speaker 1: can be cute um to to an almost destructive degree,
Speaker 1: like trying to remember there's something that my son would
Speaker 1: say and I actually hesitated to correct him because it
Speaker 1: was so adorable, and then I found it's like, I
Speaker 1: just can't do that. It's selfish of me. I need
Speaker 1: to teach the boys to speak properly, even if it
Speaker 1: means destroying these cute moments. Was he calling like a
Speaker 1: broken toy, a baby or something? No? What was it?
Speaker 1: He said? It was it'll come to me later. So
Speaker 1: Mansha b b does not shouldn't push this slighter idea specifically,
Speaker 1: but I think I think she would agree with it
Speaker 1: because she says, quote, it's possible to position both cute
Speaker 1: and monstrous in one dimension. The space that Michelle Fhuco
Speaker 1: called heterotopia the place outside the norm, the site of
Speaker 1: revolutionary potential, to change, to pose an alternate order where
Speaker 1: the coherence between words and reality is no more possible,
Speaker 1: and the paradox is the structuring rule. So it's so cute,
Speaker 1: it's insane, or it's so monstrous. Ye yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's like that left craft Ian vibe, like the
Speaker 1: monster is so terrifying that you just lose your entire mind.
Speaker 1: And likewise, something could be that cute that you just
Speaker 1: you just you can't, you just have to it. It
Speaker 1: kind of gets into the whole theory about the biting
Speaker 1: of babies, like the desire to pinch a baby because
Speaker 1: it's so cute. I know you've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but I don't know much about it. What's the deal here?
Speaker 1: We have an older episode. There's what I did with
Speaker 1: Julie on this this topic. But it's it's been studied.
Speaker 1: Like basically, you see something so cute and you just
Speaker 1: want to you want to bite it, you want to
Speaker 1: pinch it. You know, it could be a kitten or
Speaker 1: or a puppy or a child, and it's it's really
Speaker 1: that the cute has become overpowering, that it has to
Speaker 1: be counterbalanced with something awful. Huh. Yeah, so you need
Speaker 1: to hand the cute puppy a blood spattered machete like
Speaker 1: Jason Doll. It's interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but
Speaker 1: in a way that that blood splattered machete is the pinch.
Speaker 1: It's the counterbalance here. And I wonder if there are
Speaker 1: other examples we could look to and and cute iconography.
Speaker 1: Where we have we have added a little you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of an adult elements, some you know, violence
Speaker 1: or terror to something, and it does serve to to
Speaker 1: balance it out and making and prevent us from going
Speaker 1: completely insane. All right, Well, we've already looked at a
Speaker 1: bunch of monsters from you know, modern fiction and modern
Speaker 1: horror and stuff like that. I think we should turn
Speaker 1: our attention to traditional folkloric monsters and see if they
Speaker 1: make this same transition in our popular culture and and
Speaker 1: become cute over time. So let's let's do the case
Speaker 1: studies next from Japanese folklore after we come back from
Speaker 1: this break. Than alright, we're back. So obviously the Japanese
Speaker 1: have many spirits, many demons, many monsters, just a rich
Speaker 1: assortment of yokai to choose from. But we're going to
Speaker 1: focus on what you can think of as the Big three,
Speaker 1: the Kappa, the Only, and the Tingu. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: let's start with the cap Are you're you're familiar with
Speaker 1: the Capa. Yeah, we both read this great paper from
Speaker 1: Asian Folklore Studies from by the scholar Michael Dill and
Speaker 1: Foster called the Metamorphosis of the Kappa Transformation of folklore
Speaker 1: to folklorism in Japan. And this has is just replete
Speaker 1: with all these great old Cappa legends. This is a
Speaker 1: fun monster, just despite the fact that in its original
Speaker 1: incarnation it was not cute. It was a nasty, creepy, gross,
Speaker 1: horrific little demon. Yeah. It it's hard to really come
Speaker 1: up with a creepier, grosser, just more nefarious monster than this.
Speaker 1: Like in a way, it rivals what we were talking
Speaker 1: about with Freddie, the original Freddy Krueger, like something that's
Speaker 1: just like a weak, evil thing that has to in
Speaker 1: Freddie's case, prey on children in their dreams while they're sleeping.
Speaker 1: And likewise, the Kappa is essentially a drowning monster. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a monster that is that serves as a
Speaker 1: as a warning and a signifier of the risks of
Speaker 1: swimming or swimming alone. Uh you know, you know a
Speaker 1: pond or a river, or even walking by a river,
Speaker 1: the inherent danger of water or using a toilet. I mean,
Speaker 1: it'll get you anywhere that's wet. Oh, it will get
Speaker 1: you too. So the kappa also known as Kawako or
Speaker 1: the child of the river. Um. Yeah, it's essentially a
Speaker 1: Japanese manifestation of drowning fierce, particularly young children. And it's
Speaker 1: signature hybridity because you're gonna find this hybrid nature in
Speaker 1: any monster pretty much, and certainly in the three we're
Speaker 1: looking at here. Is that it's essentially a tortoise with
Speaker 1: a monkey's head, or it's like a monkey that has
Speaker 1: scales on it as well, maybe webbed fingers. And some
Speaker 1: accounts also go in an otter direction by making it hairy. Oh,
Speaker 1: but that will make it cute, right, well, depends on
Speaker 1: the otter. Otters are they're not as cute as I think,
Speaker 1: depends on the otter. Like the giant otter. If you've
Speaker 1: ever seen like a giant I think it's an Amazonian
Speaker 1: river otter, they look rather hellish. And if you actually
Speaker 1: study like the mating behavior of otters, Like they're all
Speaker 1: pretty gross, Like there's a lot of violence and they're
Speaker 1: mating horrible face chewing. That's sort of thing. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: in the case of the of the Kappa here, it's
Speaker 1: other most notable feature is a small depression in the
Speaker 1: top of its skull called a sara, which contains a
Speaker 1: fluid that serves as its life force. And we'll get
Speaker 1: we'll get back to the implications of that in a second.
Speaker 1: So if this were like a low budget horror movie,
Speaker 1: it would be a cuphead, I guess. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: capa draws people and animals into water, where they devour
Speaker 1: their prey and or drink their blood or their life essence.
Speaker 1: They're also big sumo fans, so they might yes, they
Speaker 1: love sumo wrestling, and they might try and wrestle you.
Speaker 1: And there are there at least eight regional variations on
Speaker 1: the Kappa, and most of what we know of them
Speaker 1: comes from early twenty century folklorus and or amateur collectors.
Speaker 1: But if you want to avoid the Kappa, there are
Speaker 1: three ways. One, don't go where there are cappas. That's
Speaker 1: there's a big one, you know. Don't go near the water.
Speaker 1: At all, or you can befriend them by bringing a
Speaker 1: cute cumber. And stories vary because they like cucumbers, but
Speaker 1: stories vary on whether eating a cucumber prior to swimming
Speaker 1: will attract or repel the monster. Now, they like cucumbers,
Speaker 1: but they don't like gourds. That's right, gourd's will repel them.
Speaker 1: And there's there's some interesting material in the in the
Speaker 1: paper here that gets into exactly like what that means,
Speaker 1: the symbolic meaning of like the fallic cucumber and an
Speaker 1: arguably yawnick gourd. So it's it gets heavy. It's a
Speaker 1: great paper. Uh. And then finally you can make a
Speaker 1: low bow to the kappa, especially if it's challenging you
Speaker 1: to assume a wrestling match. Uh. And this will re
Speaker 1: force it to respond in kind, so it'll dump its
Speaker 1: own life force out onto the ground. Cupet is tricked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is fascinating because this may be the
Speaker 1: only monster they can be slain through adiquette alone. It's
Speaker 1: proper Japanese adiquette, and you will defeat it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: this does seem to make it not quite as you know,
Speaker 1: absolutely horrific as some other monsters now they're horrific qualities
Speaker 1: to it. But the fact that you can so easily
Speaker 1: trick it, and uh in the fact that it seems
Speaker 1: bound by some standards of politeness does sort of undercut
Speaker 1: its original horror. Maybe yeah, yeah, a little bit. But
Speaker 1: then again, you also have to look at this in
Speaker 1: any monster and realize that it's it's it's not occurring
Speaker 1: in one place at one time. It's their various traditions,
Speaker 1: various versions of it. So you can easily see some
Speaker 1: somebody comes along like, this monster sounds horrible. This monster
Speaker 1: needs rules to keep it in place. And these are
Speaker 1: the cultural rules that will keep the monster at bay um. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking to yourself with the cop that competence
Speaker 1: sound that monstrous? So it you know, so it drowns
Speaker 1: or drains a few children, Well wait for this because uh,
Speaker 1: Foster in his paper points out quote not only does
Speaker 1: the Kappa have a penchant for pulling both children and
Speaker 1: adults into the water, but it often does this in
Speaker 1: order to steal the liver, a feat it achieves by
Speaker 1: reaching its arm up through the victim's anus to snatch
Speaker 1: the desired organ. Yes, you heard that right, folks. It
Speaker 1: will steal your liver through your anus. And to do
Speaker 1: that it gets worse. Uh. In order to steal the liver,
Speaker 1: it has to essentially uncork the human anus by removing
Speaker 1: the non existent organ known as a sharik o dama
Speaker 1: quote a ball once thought to be the mouth of
Speaker 1: the anus. This is maybe something we should do an
Speaker 1: entire episode on someday. Is all of the non existent
Speaker 1: human organs people used to believe existed. That would be
Speaker 1: That would be good. Let's let's let's remember that one
Speaker 1: for later. Uh. Now you're probably wondering, well, why why
Speaker 1: would they make this up? Point is there? There has
Speaker 1: to be a reason to make up this organ. And
Speaker 1: like clearly you can you can inspect yourself and realize
Speaker 1: that there's no cork uh organ in your anus. But
Speaker 1: the grim reality here is that you have a drowning victim.
Speaker 1: A drowning victim is found and they may have a
Speaker 1: quote open an is due to the unclenched sphincter muscles
Speaker 1: and this this falls in line, of course with the
Speaker 1: Coppas role as a monster of drowning. So you find
Speaker 1: this this body and here it is, there's something peculiar
Speaker 1: about it. It's anus does not look like a living
Speaker 1: person's anus. But wouldn't this be the case with any
Speaker 1: dead person, not just somebody who drowned. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: something that that Foster brings up. However, my read on it, though,
Speaker 1: is that if you're dealing with people who have drowned,
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a higher possibility that that body
Speaker 1: is found nude or mostly nude, since it was swimming,
Speaker 1: whereas bodies in other situations may be covered with clothing
Speaker 1: and then therefore less susceptible to susceptible to this kind
Speaker 1: of folkloric exploration of what is happening. Okay, but it's
Speaker 1: not just going to pull you into the river or
Speaker 1: the lake or whatever. The Kappa also haunts toilets, that's right.
Speaker 1: It may wait until you are vulnerable while pooping or ping,
Speaker 1: perhaps near the water, and it is it is ready
Speaker 1: to attack the buttocks and hips, according to Foster, um
Speaker 1: So it's it's not only a murderous creature, it's a
Speaker 1: creature of profound sexual violence as well. Like it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's part of its design, this kPa. That's just
Speaker 1: how monstrous it is. It's it's very much like the
Speaker 1: Fredy Krueger, like the Kappa and Freddie are essentially cut
Speaker 1: from the same mold, not just threatening but really gross.
Speaker 1: So how do we get from from this to cute?
Speaker 1: You're probably wondering well as us. As Foster explores in
Speaker 1: his paper, by by the nineteen sixties, fulk belief in
Speaker 1: the creature had all but vanished, and it become a
Speaker 1: quote clean cute creature, used as a symbol of tourism,
Speaker 1: of commerce, of clean water, and even as a symbol
Speaker 1: of village and national identity. Huh. And he says that
Speaker 1: this falls in line with Hans Moser's two notion of folkloreism,
Speaker 1: in which an existing folklore is taken out of context
Speaker 1: and altered or invented for a specific purpose. And of
Speaker 1: course medium commers play a heavy role in this. Now
Speaker 1: I thought this was interesting because I wondered about this
Speaker 1: concept of folkloreism, and the idea is that someone would
Speaker 1: take existing folklore and change it, or invent new folklore,
Speaker 1: or or manipulated take it out of context for some
Speaker 1: kind of intentional, conscious purpose. But it makes me wonder, um,
Speaker 1: how is that different from the way in which bits
Speaker 1: of folklore are are originally created? Like why It's almost
Speaker 1: as if assuming that folklore um is arises unconsciously out
Speaker 1: of the spirit of the people, and that when people
Speaker 1: consciously manipulate folklore, that's a different kind of thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I sort of wonder to what extent the things
Speaker 1: we think of as folklore the original stories are consciously created,
Speaker 1: are they not? Well, I mean, it comes back to
Speaker 1: the whole rules thing I said earlier, like imagining someone
Speaker 1: or multiple people coming wrong and tweeting an existing legend
Speaker 1: or folklore in order to convey a point or to
Speaker 1: convey a slightly different point um and then and then likewise,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, there's a there's one example that Foster
Speaker 1: points out, and this is from the Edo periods. This
Speaker 1: was sixteen o three to eighteen sixty eight Japanese history.
Speaker 1: And in this case, apparently you had a doctor who
Speaker 1: used a story about a kappa as a way to
Speaker 1: promote his business. The idea being that this is the
Speaker 1: case with a lot of these monsters. They have some
Speaker 1: sort of hidden knowledge or hidden powers that a crafty
Speaker 1: individual can trick them out of. And so this doctor
Speaker 1: learned some I think a bone setting uh technique from
Speaker 1: the Kappa, and he basically put that on his calling card.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna go to the doctor, then go to
Speaker 1: the go to you know, go to doctor Kappa touched,
Speaker 1: and he will he will use his mystical abilities to
Speaker 1: heal you, which is essentially a marketing ploy. So keep
Speaker 1: all that in mind. But basically what happens is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: after a while, people have forgotten about the Kappa, like
Speaker 1: there's there's not a lot of there's no longer any
Speaker 1: belief in it. People are not reporting sightings of the
Speaker 1: Kappa and uh. And then but you end up going
Speaker 1: with through several waves of sort of you know, the
Speaker 1: Kappa renaissance, where people rediscover it and they start using
Speaker 1: it in new ways, um and uh and and and
Speaker 1: this is inevitably going to involve outsiders crafting it. That's
Speaker 1: the argument here, is that the Kappa is is a
Speaker 1: creature of rural areas. It is a creature of the
Speaker 1: people of the rural people. It's essentially kind of a
Speaker 1: peasant monster. But then you're gonna have people that are
Speaker 1: cut off from all of that. Essentially, you're gonna city
Speaker 1: fall come along, take the Kappa myth, reinvent it, reutilize it,
Speaker 1: and then after a while, like, no one's connected to
Speaker 1: it back in the rural areas anymore. So they take
Speaker 1: it back. They take this in, this re reformed version
Speaker 1: of the Kappa, and then what do they do with it, Well,
Speaker 1: they sort of turned it into a cultural mascot. It
Speaker 1: makes me think of it. Have you ever seen the
Speaker 1: tourism materials that are sent out by the Iceland Tourism
Speaker 1: Board or whatever it is that promote the fact that
Speaker 1: people in Iceland believe in the fairies, the hidden folk,
Speaker 1: you know, the secret other world, the hidden folk that
Speaker 1: live or believe in elves and stuff like that. I
Speaker 1: don't know to what extent it's true that that many
Speaker 1: people in Iceland literally believe the fairies are there. I
Speaker 1: know some people probably do, but I doubt it is
Speaker 1: true in a literal sense to the extent to which
Speaker 1: it's promoted. But it does seem to be a thing
Speaker 1: that is Uh, it's a rumor that's spread to bring
Speaker 1: people to Iceland for tourism, because isn't that cute people
Speaker 1: there believe in elves or believe in hidden folk. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Forgetting of of course, the fact that belief in hidden
Speaker 1: forces often in many cases can have pretty horrifying real
Speaker 1: world results. But it is this, it is a sanitized
Speaker 1: version on it and uh and Foster points out that
Speaker 1: what what you have here is that you have a
Speaker 1: sanitized monster that was you that ends up being used
Speaker 1: to promote a sanitized notion of rural life in Japan.
Speaker 1: And he says that the craziest thing is that quote,
Speaker 1: had the Kappa not been snatched up by the mechanism
Speaker 1: of folkloreism, it most likely would have died or survived
Speaker 1: only as a museum relicant collections of folklore. Folkloreism change,
Speaker 1: in other words, kept the monster alive. So this conscious
Speaker 1: manipulation of the folklore is the only reason the folklore
Speaker 1: really stays prominent. Yeah, well, like with Freddie, we can
Speaker 1: go back to Freddie and say, yeah, you can bemoan
Speaker 1: the fact that this, this, this horrifying thing from the
Speaker 1: first film was kind of killed by this subsequent incarnation.
Speaker 1: But if Freddie know how many people but I see
Speaker 1: what you're saying. But but certainly like that's how it survived.
Speaker 1: It grew into the shape and the size that was
Speaker 1: sustained by the culture. Freddie became the Freddie that uh,
Speaker 1: that that that we needed, that that that was essential
Speaker 1: apparently too modern western living, right, or maybe not the
Speaker 1: freddy we need, but the freddy we deserve. Okay, So
Speaker 1: how about another monster from Japanese folklore, the One? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so we read another paper about this called the Transformation
Speaker 1: of the One from the frightening and diabolical to the
Speaker 1: cute and sexy, and this is by a Japanese scholar
Speaker 1: named Nariko T. Rider, also in the journal Asian Folklore Studies,
Speaker 1: and this is from two thousand three. So writer's paper
Speaker 1: is really interesting. It charts a very very similar arc
Speaker 1: to what we talked about with the Kappa, this folklore
Speaker 1: monster transforming into something that's different in modern twentieth century
Speaker 1: pop culture. The One appear in Japanese literature and folklore
Speaker 1: going back to ancient times, and the only are generally
Speaker 1: these large, disgusting, shape shifting monsters with one or more
Speaker 1: horns on the head. They wear tiger skinned garments, and
Speaker 1: they like to eat human flesh. Other common powers in
Speaker 1: include flight and the ability to shoot lightning. And they're
Speaker 1: they're sort of different breeds of ony, right, Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're basically two varieties. There's like the terrestrial one in
Speaker 1: the infernal o E and the infernal only is there
Speaker 1: to drag you to how at the moment of your
Speaker 1: death if you were in fact deserving of one of
Speaker 1: the hell's. Yeah. So, first, let's look at the old
Speaker 1: vision of the only before they were, before they were
Speaker 1: tamed or domesticated like the Let's look at their wolf
Speaker 1: like Canada ancestor so. The scholar Ishibashi Gaha argues that
Speaker 1: the Japanese only concept evolved from a previous type of
Speaker 1: spirit or monster, the yomotsushi kome, which is literally fearful
Speaker 1: creatures of the Netherland, and these appear as early as
Speaker 1: the Japanese creation myth known as the Kojiki. So in
Speaker 1: the first known Japanese language dictionary, compiled sometime around the
Speaker 1: year nine thirty c e only is defined as quote
Speaker 1: hiding behind things, not wishing to appear. It is a
Speaker 1: spirit or soul of the dead. So in this earlier vision,
Speaker 1: it's more of a spirit, I mean. And there are
Speaker 1: these different categories of of Japanese folkloric beings. They're you know,
Speaker 1: more like the comi you know, the deities, and then
Speaker 1: there are the yokai, which are more like the monsters. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it was during the medieval period in Japan that
Speaker 1: the Only became a major part of popular folklore. In
Speaker 1: this classical monster form that we first introduced, common only
Speaker 1: features in the medieval folklore are going to include some
Speaker 1: of what we've already described, things like one or more
Speaker 1: horns on the head, skin colors like red or blue
Speaker 1: or black or yellow, a third eye in the forehead,
Speaker 1: carrying an iron mace as a weapon, wearing a tiger
Speaker 1: skin loincloth, and the fact that they're usually male, but
Speaker 1: not always and only were these horrific demon monsters that
Speaker 1: people believe to exist in the world, kidnapping people, especially
Speaker 1: young women, drinking blood, eating their flesh, but they also
Speaker 1: seemed to be this useful cultural concept. In the words
Speaker 1: of a scholar named Kumatsu, that the writers sites in
Speaker 1: her paper many only were quote people who had different
Speaker 1: customs or lived beyond the reach of the emperor's control.
Speaker 1: And you can see this in the way that Only
Speaker 1: were deployed in Japanese imperial propaganda during World War Two,
Speaker 1: which was depicting enemies of the States such as Winston
Speaker 1: Churchill or f DR or the Chinese leader Chang Kai
Speaker 1: check as on e and it's common, of course during
Speaker 1: war to motivate your populace against the enemy by characterizing
Speaker 1: them as devils of some sort. Yeah. We see plenty
Speaker 1: of examples of that in in western countries as well
Speaker 1: during the same time period. Absolutely. Yeah. But apparently this
Speaker 1: this cultural inclusion and exclusion tactic follows the one monster
Speaker 1: specifically deep into history. So a few stories about the
Speaker 1: only One story appears in the tenth century CE narrative
Speaker 1: Tales of the Essay, and it goes like the US.
Speaker 1: You got a man and he falls in love with
Speaker 1: a woman of high social status, and he kidnaps her
Speaker 1: and they're fleeing in the night, and there's a thunderstorm.
Speaker 1: So the man decides they should take shelter at a
Speaker 1: ruined building near the Akuta River, and the woman goes
Speaker 1: inside the building for shelter, and the man stands guard
Speaker 1: at the door all night. But when the woman is
Speaker 1: alone inside and one appears and it eats her in
Speaker 1: a single bite. That's gonna be a big owning, right,
Speaker 1: She screams when the one is they're eating her, but
Speaker 1: the man standing guard doesn't hear her because of the thunder,
Speaker 1: And this portrays this sort of alliance between the one,
Speaker 1: and these powerful elemental forces like lightning storms owning are
Speaker 1: sometimes said to be able to shoot lightning. Now. Another
Speaker 1: story is contained in a ninth century collection called the
Speaker 1: Nihone Ryuiki, and the story translates to on a woman
Speaker 1: devoured by an ony. So at the time the Emperor
Speaker 1: Shomu reigned, a rich family in Yamato events had this
Speaker 1: beautiful daughter and lots of men wanted to marry her,
Speaker 1: but she was like nah, not interested, until a suitor
Speaker 1: shows up with unbelievably extravagant gifts to win her over,
Speaker 1: including three carriages full of silk, so she accepts his
Speaker 1: marriage proposal, and on the wedding night, the newlyweds stay
Speaker 1: in the house of the bride's parents. The woman's parents
Speaker 1: hear her crying out in pain during the night, but
Speaker 1: they don't do anything about it, and when her mother
Speaker 1: enters the bride in the groom's bedroom in the morning,
Speaker 1: all that's left is her daughter's head and a single finger,
Speaker 1: and the rest has been eaten by a shape shifting
Speaker 1: one which apparently appeared in the form of a handsome
Speaker 1: young man. And this is evidence early on that they
Speaker 1: only have this power of shape shifting. One of the
Speaker 1: most common things, like very often in other stories, Only
Speaker 1: would appear as beautiful women in order to seduce men,
Speaker 1: and then they would turn into owny and try to
Speaker 1: devour them or kill them or something. Someone should do
Speaker 1: a version of the werewolf game with one. They're perfect,
Speaker 1: you know, that would be perfect on a Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are only among us? Okay, So how did the only
Speaker 1: become cute? Yeah? Because it's like with the Cappa, this
Speaker 1: sounds pretty monstrous and horrific. It's like a standard like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, woman eating ogre here, how does it become
Speaker 1: a cute thing? Well? Writer Sites several examples of how
Speaker 1: only have become cute and modern Japan on a very
Speaker 1: similar time scale to what we talked about with the Kappa,
Speaker 1: you know, the Kappa especially having these cute incarnations in
Speaker 1: the second half of the twentieth century, especially around the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. One example of cute Only that Rider sites
Speaker 1: is The Loom Invader. So in nineteen seventy eight, the
Speaker 1: Japanese manga artist Rumiko Takahashi created this incredibly popular series
Speaker 1: called urus say Yatsura, which translates literally into something like
Speaker 1: those obnoxious aliens, and beginning of the nineteen eighties it
Speaker 1: was adapted into a TV series, films, and a bunch
Speaker 1: of other spinoff media. Uh and the premise is that
Speaker 1: there's a group of one from outer space that arrive
Speaker 1: on Earth, sort of blending one folklore with these alien
Speaker 1: invasion stories that started to become popular in the middle
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. And one of these invaders is
Speaker 1: an one called Loom, who at first is part of
Speaker 1: this invasion force, but somehow she ends up becoming the
Speaker 1: the loving and devoted wife of a lecherous teenage boy
Speaker 1: on Earth. Unlike the one from medieval folklore, Lum is
Speaker 1: not overtly monstrous. Instead, she's represented primarily as cute and
Speaker 1: through overtly eroticized characteristics. In short, she's depicted as as
Speaker 1: she's supposed to be sexy, and Loom has these subtle
Speaker 1: signs pointing toward the traditional one. For example, owny usually
Speaker 1: have horns, Loom has these couple of diminutive horns on
Speaker 1: top of her head. She sometimes seems to have fangs
Speaker 1: and other indications of a cannibalistic nature. She seems to
Speaker 1: have the power to shoot lightning, which is associated with
Speaker 1: some ony legend you can fly like the one and
Speaker 1: only are often depicted I mentioned earlier as males wearing
Speaker 1: a tiger skin loincloth, loam wears a tiger skin bikini.
Speaker 1: I was talking with our coworker, Lauren Vogelbaum, one of
Speaker 1: the hosts of food Stuff, another podcast in the house
Speaker 1: Stuff Works network you should check out if you enjoy
Speaker 1: food and all things edible and imbibable. But I was
Speaker 1: talking to her about this because I know she is
Speaker 1: an insightful consumer of manga, and she pointed out that
Speaker 1: there are actually plenty of other anime and manga characters
Speaker 1: that display this trend of taking a traditional monster and
Speaker 1: making a cute or making it sexy or both. And
Speaker 1: one example she mentioned was a manga series known as Sayuki,
Speaker 1: in which the main characters are the monkey King character
Speaker 1: and his demon companions, but they are rendered as cute boys.
Speaker 1: These like attractive young men, sort of like an you know,
Speaker 1: manga boy band um, but a demonic one, and they
Speaker 1: are essentially a male parallel to the cute and sexualized
Speaker 1: one we see in Loom. But as with the Kappa,
Speaker 1: all of this with the one comes down to like
Speaker 1: the revitalization of of rural areas. Right. Oh, well, that's
Speaker 1: another aspect of it too. Yeah, so you've got this
Speaker 1: stuff in mass media. But then you've also got like
Speaker 1: we saw with the Kappa being used as some kind
Speaker 1: of a rural mascot for a town or a village.
Speaker 1: You know. The town revitalization movement is another thing that
Speaker 1: Writer points out is a place that the only re
Speaker 1: entered the modern consciousness and kind of metamorphosed into something
Speaker 1: much sweeter. So there's this movement, the town revitalization movement
Speaker 1: in Japanese. I think it's maki okashi and uh so,
Speaker 1: in the same way that the Kappa was embraced as
Speaker 1: a local mascot, it seems to only have been as well.
Speaker 1: And Writer sites these examples the Oemachi in Kyoto, which
Speaker 1: is located near Mount o A. This is the traditional
Speaker 1: setting of a story called The Shooting Doji, which is
Speaker 1: about this band of ony that live in the mountains
Speaker 1: and they're doing their owny thing, you know. They're kidnapping
Speaker 1: and eating locals, especially local maidens, and the eat their
Speaker 1: flesh and drink their blood until some warriors in filtrate
Speaker 1: the only hideout and kill all the only and writer
Speaker 1: writes that at the time of this paper, this town
Speaker 1: with the original setting near the shooting Doji, the town
Speaker 1: is facing a depopulation crisis, with the population essentially growing
Speaker 1: old and younger people not replacing them, and one way
Speaker 1: the residents apparently sought to revitalize the town was to
Speaker 1: embrace the only legend and the imagery in order to
Speaker 1: attract interest and tourists. So they developed these only related
Speaker 1: legends and sites. They got an one museum. So a
Speaker 1: creature that would have once caused unspeakable terror is now
Speaker 1: this fun attraction to draw people and money. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like the small town kid, uh, you know, makes good,
Speaker 1: he leaves the small town, makes it big, and then
Speaker 1: it's just invited back in and becomes a hero, even
Speaker 1: though they kind of treated him like dart to begin with. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: it also sort of reminds me of what you might
Speaker 1: see and say, Salem, Massachusetts, where originally you had the
Speaker 1: fear of witchcraft, which was a genuine panic that terrified
Speaker 1: people and led to deaths, and now it's more to
Speaker 1: it's embraced in this kitchy way, like witches have become
Speaker 1: a cute part of Salem's identity as a town. So
Speaker 1: they love which museums and which souvenirs and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: despite the horrifying reality of the essential like human monstrosity
Speaker 1: of the whole situation exactly. So what can we take
Speaker 1: away from this example? Well, writer has got some ideas.
Speaker 1: So we've got these two different things. I mentioned the cute,
Speaker 1: non threatening and eroticized one that appear in Japanese cartoons
Speaker 1: and the embracing of one folklore as an economic and
Speaker 1: tourism draw. And writer writes that much of the art
Speaker 1: and entertainment in Japan still views the one as evil
Speaker 1: and terrifying beings, like it's not all cute. Only now
Speaker 1: she gives the example of the film Dreams by Kasa,
Speaker 1: and one of the stories in this movie apparently tells
Speaker 1: the story of humans who were turned into one by
Speaker 1: a nuclear blast. Oh man, I vaguely remember that. I
Speaker 1: mainly remember the space section of it. Yeah, that's so
Speaker 1: much the only optic back and watch it. It's a
Speaker 1: horrifying idea. But now we also have these only with
Speaker 1: inherent aspects of harmlessness, cuteness, the the eroticized aspects. They
Speaker 1: are the ones that are simply fun and familiar like
Speaker 1: the witches now, and she seems to think that this
Speaker 1: is an outgrowth of Japan's postwar economic transformation. In other words,
Speaker 1: horrifying folk beliefs and monsters don't really make you the
Speaker 1: big box, but apparently cute, harmless, fun and familiar monsters
Speaker 1: can bring massive economic dividends. Capitalistic folklorism in the sense
Speaker 1: that we explored in that previous paper, folkloreism the manipulation
Speaker 1: of folklore seems to be directly at work in writer's
Speaker 1: point of view, but it also sort of makes me
Speaker 1: wonder why monsters in the first place, Like, if it's
Speaker 1: simply that cute, harmless or sexy characters and imagery command
Speaker 1: more economic power, why why isn't it just that we're
Speaker 1: seeing new characters of this type created, Like why are
Speaker 1: traditionally horrified and disgusting monsters being transformed into these cute
Speaker 1: or sexy or otherwise harmless versions. Well, I wonder if
Speaker 1: part of it is that there is, perhaps even subconsciously,
Speaker 1: it's an interaction with a monstrous figure that had power
Speaker 1: over us and maybe still has power over us. And
Speaker 1: by making it cute, you are you're you're making it harmless.
Speaker 1: You're taking the punch out of this monstrous creature. You're
Speaker 1: it's it's like laughing in the face of horror. Well,
Speaker 1: it almost makes me wonder if this transformation is an
Speaker 1: outgrowth of the of the skepticism and secularization of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Like, as people tend to believe less literally
Speaker 1: in demons, monsters, and devils, would we tend to take
Speaker 1: them less seriously as genuine threats? I mean, obviously we would.
Speaker 1: And if we think that there's no genuine monster danger
Speaker 1: to warn against, what prevents us from stripping the fear
Speaker 1: inducing elements out of the monster folklore? Uh? Is it
Speaker 1: a thing we do simply because we can? Does that
Speaker 1: make sense? Like if in the past people didn't make
Speaker 1: the monsters harmless because they believed that you genuinely had
Speaker 1: to understand that these monsters were dangerous. As soon as
Speaker 1: we stopped taking monster legends literally, then we had the
Speaker 1: power to render them to defang them. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I would buy that. It sounds like a good read
Speaker 1: hunt it. Yeah, But there's another thing that I wonder
Speaker 1: about is like, could it represent an actual direct rebuke
Speaker 1: of the past kind of a you know, a middle
Speaker 1: finger to the superstition that produced belief in monsters throughout
Speaker 1: you know, every culture in the history of humanity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's because we've touched on this a number
Speaker 1: of times when we've talked about older ideas, mythologies, religion,
Speaker 1: even where it's it's easy to take a modern approach
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well, those people were stupid. Look at
Speaker 1: the things they believed in. Monsters in the woods eating you, um,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of strange turtle creature reaching up
Speaker 1: your anus after your liver um. But when you do,
Speaker 1: when you begin to dissect these ideas and you put
Speaker 1: them in the context of the time, it's not so
Speaker 1: simple as to just say, oh, well, these these people
Speaker 1: were dumb. No, they weren't stupid. They knew less, and
Speaker 1: that's not the same thing, right, I mean, in a way,
Speaker 1: they perhaps knew more because they knew to take a
Speaker 1: like say, a dangerous area or a dangerous uh, you know,
Speaker 1: cultural area and it and assign a monster to it
Speaker 1: to toward people away from it, to to keep the
Speaker 1: curious from getting too close. And children don't go, don't
Speaker 1: go near the water's edge because there's a monster there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And even if you you're not up on the reasons
Speaker 1: to stay away from the water, like the realistic reasons.
Speaker 1: The monster still resonates. And we've actually touched on this
Speaker 1: on the podcast in regard to creating potentially creating new monsters,
Speaker 1: new mythologies to guards, say, places where radioactive waste or deposited. Right,
Speaker 1: so you've got high level waste, you know, the really
Speaker 1: dangerous stuff stored at a place somewhere on earth, and
Speaker 1: that's going to be dangerous for literally thousands of years,
Speaker 1: much longer than any kind of sign you would probably
Speaker 1: put up would be there, or I mean if you
Speaker 1: maybe even made a really erobal sign, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: going to outlast almost any measures you put in place
Speaker 1: to keep people away. So it's almost like you wish
Speaker 1: you could come up with a lasting cultural belief that
Speaker 1: this place is cursed and there's a monster that dwells
Speaker 1: there and there's nothing of value, and you should just
Speaker 1: a sticky image that will drive people away for hundreds
Speaker 1: of generations. And that, Yeah, that's exactly what a monster
Speaker 1: is that of. You know, nations fall, empires, fall laws, fade,
Speaker 1: signs of warning fall into the dust, but the monster
Speaker 1: persevere and yeah, and so coming back to how we
Speaker 1: make the monsters cute, I'm wondering if it's this secular rebuke,
Speaker 1: like is turning a monster cute an attempt to say
Speaker 1: even unconsciously, Maybe not like people do this on purpose,
Speaker 1: But are they at some level saying there are no demons,
Speaker 1: devils or monsters and I'll show you. And they do
Speaker 1: it by making the image cute. Is it like sort
Speaker 1: of the equivalent of blasphemy, but instead of against the gods,
Speaker 1: it's against the monster belief. Yeah, And of course it's
Speaker 1: dangerous to rebuke the monster because no matter how silly
Speaker 1: you think it is, no matter how two dimensional the
Speaker 1: monster might seem, Uh, there's probably a lot more going
Speaker 1: on there than meets the eyes. Totally, you know, I
Speaker 1: was thinking one other way to clarify what might be
Speaker 1: happening here. I don't know, Maybe maybe this won't be
Speaker 1: any additional clarity. But are there any monsters we can
Speaker 1: think of that have not undergone this process where there
Speaker 1: are no cute versions of them? Were almost no cute
Speaker 1: versions of them. There's not any pervasive attempt in the
Speaker 1: culture to make a toothless version of the creature. Well,
Speaker 1: if we're looking at Japanese demons, I would say that
Speaker 1: the tingo is probably an interesting case of this. Now
Speaker 1: that's not to say they are no cute tingu. You
Speaker 1: can certainly find them. I found them just doing image
Speaker 1: searches for them for the English word tingu. But you
Speaker 1: think they're less prevalent. I'm getting the you know, somebody
Speaker 1: with more experience with Japanese culture and pop culture can
Speaker 1: maybe chime in on this, but it seems like there's
Speaker 1: less of it. You do see tingu showing up in
Speaker 1: video games and manga and all other forms of media,
Speaker 1: but they tend to retain a certain seriousness that is
Speaker 1: lacking from you know, again, the Kappa. You don't see
Speaker 1: Kappa snatching livers out of anuses as much anymore. But
Speaker 1: in these cases, the tingoo still tends to retain a
Speaker 1: certain regal character and a and a certain dangerous element
Speaker 1: as well. So I should probably talk about what the
Speaker 1: tingoo is though for anyone who who's not familiar. Alright,
Speaker 1: So the Tingo. They are a warrior class of monsters
Speaker 1: who reside in the mountain forest of Mount to Karama,
Speaker 1: north of Kyoto, and their hybridity is that of a
Speaker 1: bird and a man. Usually they're described as having a
Speaker 1: humanoid body but with glowing eyes and a long red beak,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that beak is more depicted as a long nose.
Speaker 1: So I imagine if you've ever played a video game
Speaker 1: and there's a character that seems to have a mask
Speaker 1: with a long red nose, that's essentially a Tingo. So
Speaker 1: they have feathered wings, and they're warlike, they're skilled in
Speaker 1: martial arts. Humans sometimes seek them out to learn their arts,
Speaker 1: but frequently go mad upon encountering them. And then of
Speaker 1: course they also have this mischievous side. So if you're
Speaker 1: if you're in the mountain woods and you hear something
Speaker 1: like laughter, well that might be the laughter of Tingo.
Speaker 1: If a tree falls, it might have been taken down
Speaker 1: by a Tingu wind. And these examples are from the
Speaker 1: book by Hruku Wakabashi, the Seven Tingoo Scrolls. So the
Speaker 1: thing about the Tingoo is that they were you know,
Speaker 1: they varied in form, purpose, and even alignment. Uh. There
Speaker 1: were in some cases good Tingou, but for the most
Speaker 1: part they were portrayed as uh, especially in medieval Japan,
Speaker 1: as being evil, vengeful, chaotic spirits. They were enemies of Buddhism.
Speaker 1: In some cases they were falling priests who failed to
Speaker 1: achieve nirvana, and they were the embodiment of Ma or
Speaker 1: Mara or obstacles to Buddhist enlightenment. Now it's worth knowing
Speaker 1: that they were different from moral evil in this regard
Speaker 1: or or Aku and this the tingou were they were.
Speaker 1: You can essentially think of them as obstructionists. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know they were. They were there to just um to
Speaker 1: try and prevent you from achieving enlightenment, and you had
Speaker 1: to battle them in your life to get past them.
Speaker 1: So they were kind of serious business, you know, and
Speaker 1: very high minded monstrous symbols. And I think that's key
Speaker 1: to whereas these other examples were rural monsters, these were
Speaker 1: kind of the peasants monsters. The Tingu was the thinking
Speaker 1: man's monster, and that thinks that plays into its survival. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I wonder if something about the level to which
Speaker 1: a creature is incorporated into formalized religion rather than just
Speaker 1: being a part of informal folk creature or deity belief.
Speaker 1: That's that's true because there are shrines even uh with
Speaker 1: Tingu imagery. So they were more divine in many respects.
Speaker 1: And again more more regal, more a property of the
Speaker 1: ruling class and the priestly class as well. Um. They
Speaker 1: were also tied up with explanations for a lot of
Speaker 1: serious stuff that was going on in the medieval period,
Speaker 1: a lot of the chronic social disorder and instability. They were.
Speaker 1: They were symbols of chaos to explain the rise of
Speaker 1: the warrior class war and this the political disunity, uh
Speaker 1: in what some saw is the final age of Buddha's
Speaker 1: teachings at the time. So again, you it's not that
Speaker 1: you won't find cute tingu out there or just you know,
Speaker 1: very pop culturally uh distilled images of the tingu, but
Speaker 1: I feel like you see far less of it. The
Speaker 1: tingoo still retains a lot of its original potency. Now
Speaker 1: that's got me wondering about other monsters in other traditions
Speaker 1: around the world and whether the level to which they're
Speaker 1: incorporated into the formalized version of the local religion determines
Speaker 1: how likely they are to be to be euthanized with cuteness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you look at Christianity and you you don't see this, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is not the case with the devil. You see
Speaker 1: plenty of cute devils out there. Um, but well, yeah
Speaker 1: you do. I guess that's right. I mean I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, you don't see as many cute demons as
Speaker 1: you see like cute vampires and cute werewolves. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: you have a point there. Maybe there are they are
Speaker 1: far more cute vampires and wolves, and there are cute
Speaker 1: demons or or some of the more potentially problematic characters.
Speaker 1: I guess, like the the Angel of God. How many
Speaker 1: how many cute angels wrestling humans are there? And I
Speaker 1: guess you also have to ask the question like how
Speaker 1: how many trolls are there in the culture, Like how
Speaker 1: many how many people were willing to take even you know,
Speaker 1: sacred cows and make them cute just for the sheer,
Speaker 1: you know, just for the giggles of doing it. Well
Speaker 1: then again, I mean, so I think there might be
Speaker 1: something to that sort of blasphemy equivalent. It's not blasphemy
Speaker 1: against the gods, but blasphemy against the monster is a
Speaker 1: sort of intentional rebuke and the desire to undercut their
Speaker 1: perceived power. There might be something to that, But I
Speaker 1: don't know if I really feel that. When I like,
Speaker 1: if I were to draw a cute vampire fire. I
Speaker 1: don't know if i'd feel spiteful in doing that. Well,
Speaker 1: I might just feel kind of like, oh, that's funny.
Speaker 1: You can't imagine someone going get away from me, baby Satan.
Speaker 1: You have no power over me. Here, get me behind me,
Speaker 1: baby Satan. So another thing I was talking to Lauren
Speaker 1: Vogelbaum about was was about this question of what contributes
Speaker 1: to the transformation of terrifying monsters into these cute versions
Speaker 1: of themselves. And she made a point that I thought
Speaker 1: was really interesting. She said, in the context of Japanese
Speaker 1: depictions of cute monsters in manga and anime um, what
Speaker 1: if it's the creeping sense of delayed adulthood and the
Speaker 1: extension of childhood that we see in a lot of
Speaker 1: cultures in the twentieth century and especially the second half
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century and in the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe there are some cultural critics who would
Speaker 1: come back and say this is not really a thing,
Speaker 1: this is one of those you know, bs trend pieces.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of people who would argue
Speaker 1: that there is a sort of creeping infantilism among adults
Speaker 1: in the in the Western world especially. I mean I
Speaker 1: know you've heard that argument, right, Robert, Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and certainly you we it does seem like we remain
Speaker 1: many of us remain children longer we we don't, you know,
Speaker 1: give up all of our childish things as we as
Speaker 1: we become adults, right, we tend to stay in school longer,
Speaker 1: we get married later. All of these things that are
Speaker 1: traditionally in cultures thought of as sort of rites of
Speaker 1: passage to adulthood get like delayed later and later into life.
Speaker 1: And so it could be possible to think about the
Speaker 1: idea of of the cuteness of monster imagery, uh well,
Speaker 1: being related to the fact that children tend to like
Speaker 1: cute imagery. So could the transformation into cuteness represent an
Speaker 1: increasingly in fantalize adult cultures attempt to make monster folklore
Speaker 1: more palatable, more cuddly for those of us who don't
Speaker 1: want to hack scariness. Yeah, I think it could very
Speaker 1: well be the case. And of course it comes back
Speaker 1: to the idea too, of cute cuteness and monstrosity being
Speaker 1: upon the same spectrum, being within the same dimension, And
Speaker 1: so there's this They're interconnected already anyway, so it's all
Speaker 1: the more easier to begin tweaking these images and skewing
Speaker 1: their meaning. Now, I want to be clear that I'm
Speaker 1: not necessarily endorsing the idea that adults are more infantile
Speaker 1: than they used to be. I just know that that
Speaker 1: is a theory out there. I'm not sure if I
Speaker 1: buy it. I remain agnostic. You know. One more thing
Speaker 1: that this makes me think about is back to our
Speaker 1: episode on euphemisms. Robert, you remember the concept of the
Speaker 1: euphemism treadmill and the dysphemism treadmill. I do, yes, So
Speaker 1: the euphemism treadmill is this concept. I can't remember who
Speaker 1: came up with it. Was it Stephen Pinker? I believe,
Speaker 1: So that sounds right if I'm gonna say it's Stephen Pinker,
Speaker 1: and I can be the one that's wrong. Essentially, the
Speaker 1: idea is that you have a euphemism, which is a
Speaker 1: term you introduce to be a polite sort of illusion
Speaker 1: word indicate a concept that somehow problematic or offensive or
Speaker 1: causes people, you know, like, uh, it's the nice new
Speaker 1: word that you say. But eventually that word itself tends
Speaker 1: to become perceived in the culture as not nice. So,
Speaker 1: for example, uh, crippled was supposed to be the nice
Speaker 1: word for people with disabilities, and then it came to
Speaker 1: become a word that you would never want to call
Speaker 1: somebody um. And so there's this process like that. But
Speaker 1: then the same thing happens the other way with dysphemisms,
Speaker 1: with words that we want to use with negative connotations.
Speaker 1: So for example, how the word sucks, you know, to say,
Speaker 1: like that movie really sucked. That used to be an
Speaker 1: incredibly vulgar and offensive, just nasty thing to say, and
Speaker 1: now little kids say it. I mean, it's everywhere. It's
Speaker 1: lost its power to shock and offend. So you have
Speaker 1: to keep inventing new words. And so you're saying, essentially,
Speaker 1: we have to keep inventing new monsters as well, because
Speaker 1: the old ones lose their power. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that could to some extent be true. Like uh that
Speaker 1: we are we may be seeing some kind of equivalent
Speaker 1: of the dysphamism treadmill with the monsters of old. Over time,
Speaker 1: they're just going to lose their power to shock and offend,
Speaker 1: and they become like the little kids saying sucks, the
Speaker 1: little kids running around with cute vampire dolls. And it
Speaker 1: really It's super hard nowadays with the Internet, because you
Speaker 1: have like a probably a lag time of just hours
Speaker 1: after a film comes out, before someone has made a
Speaker 1: cute button or a cute T shirt or just a
Speaker 1: meme based on that monster. Yeah, it happens immediately when
Speaker 1: when there's a new movie, it happens. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: think it creates a great challenge for say, horror movie
Speaker 1: creators to make a traditional monster scary. Again, think about
Speaker 1: how many recent vampire movies you can think of that
Speaker 1: have really scary vampires. They've sort of lost their power,
Speaker 1: haven't they. Yeah, it's if you you just can't trot
Speaker 1: off the same vampire over and over again because nobody's
Speaker 1: buying it anymore. Right. I mean, when Bella Legostie first
Speaker 1: showed up on screens, he had people screaming in the
Speaker 1: aisles of theaters. Now you watch it and bell Leghostie
Speaker 1: is great, but he's not scary. Yeah. We often forget
Speaker 1: just how how terrifying that performance actually was, and he
Speaker 1: is if you if you look at it with new eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if you knew that he would end up in
Speaker 1: Edward movies. That's that's true. All right. Well, there you
Speaker 1: have it. We have explored the monstrous, we've explored the cute,
Speaker 1: and we have explored the bridge between. I want to
Speaker 1: know from you out there, what do you think is
Speaker 1: going on psychologically culturally? What is happening when we take
Speaker 1: these horrifying images and creatures and make them into cute
Speaker 1: plush dolls to cuddle with? Why do we keep doing it?
Speaker 1: And what effect does it have on the culture? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are your favorite examples of this process? And what monsters,
Speaker 1: if any, have not gone cute? Uh? And for how
Speaker 1: long will they remain that way? As always, you can
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Speaker 1: host themselves. And uh hey also Stuff to Blow your
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