Plump-Sweet cartoon cats, pens and bags with smiling animated characters, T-Shirts with disarmingly cute cartoon iconography, girls with hairdos that make them look like walking dolls, even guys who look like cute girls! Taiwan is a cute-extravaganza.
Cuteness fills up almost all the aspects of everyday life. Things are made to look candy cute, animation like, harmless, simplified and somewhat detached from the reality of everyday life.
You can see cuteness as an advertising device. So ads for credit cards used the popular Japanese fat cat images.
And posters for milk ads used a cute animated cow wearing a T-shirt exclaiming she loves milk!
Even advertising to promote Taipei tourism had real pictures of scenic tea gardens overlaid with an animated story of, what looked like an animated cat.
The cat looks strikingly similar to another character used by the famous Coca Cola brand from Japan called ‘Qoo’, it is quite popular with kids in South East Asia.
Even advertising for Banks had to be cute as I saw them using animated characters that looked like they were coming out of Lego Land!
Use of animation, making things look cute, and this detachment from everyday images was not limited to advertising. As I walked around the city, I discovered more. A footwear store had a special area designated to determine the shoe size but it was not all that serious. All the size options in multiple candy cute colors were were happily smiling at you.
A popcorn-vending cart was ‘silently cute’
because it was not just a popcorn machine on top of a cart – it was a teddy
bear car being driven by a toy bear and had another bear as a co driver. All
this while it just ‘happened to have a popcorn machine attached to it’! I found
this intriguing for the snack vending machine was not stationed in a children
play area or a movie theatre showing a new cartoon release. It was just a
shopping center full of adults!
If there is a thing like cuteness quotient – then my
perceived cuteness quotient of Taipei city went a notch further up when I saw
that cuteness was not being used just as an advertising or selling device. Even
public notices had to be cute! For instance a notice announcing ‘dogs not
allowed’ could not be complete by just using a graphic symbol or image outline
of a dog. It had to be a dog like he was coming out of some cartoon show and was
curiously happy for some unknown reason (observe the wagging tail and the harmless
expression on his face!).
Furthermore, the love for animated cute characters has also fused
with symbols of tradition and culture. Look at this classic Chinese poster –
the ones we usually see at the entrance of homes, offices and shops etc. This
one uses Disney characters along side the traditional Chinese characters for fortune
and prosperity (恭喜发财).
But Taipei city’s suffusion with cuteness does not end here.
What really amazed me was how the city is very comfortable in an animated
portrayal of country’s leaders. The curio shop in the Chiang Kai Shek memorial
hall had little figurines of political leaders. President Deg Xiao Ping was
seen holding his proverbial Black Cat and White Cats. While General Shek &
Chaiman Mao were seen sharing a
laugh!
What does all
this mean?
Of course it means that animation works in
Taiwan. Of course this also has to do with the Japanese influence.
But beyond that - is animation popular
because the society is stressed and cartoon & animation simplifies things?
Brings in some kind of relief?
Is it that the society is relaxed and
animation is only a reflection of this relaxed state of affairs?
Does cuteness reflect Taipei city’s warmth
and her simplicity or reflects the effeminate side of the society?
While
desk researching this I discovered two perspectives about cuteness from Japan
(Wikipedia). Japan is surely the global hub of anything that is cute. Here is
what Wikipedia has to say. “As a cultural phenomenon, cuteness accepted
in Japan as a part of Japanese Culture and national
identity. Tomoyuki Sugiyama, believes that "cuteness" is rooted in
Japan's harmony-loving culture.
On the other hand, those skeptical of cuteness consider it a sign of an infantile mentality. In particular, Hiroto Murasawa, professor of beauty and culture at Osaka Shoin Women’s University asserts that cuteness is "a mentality that breeds non-assertion ... Individuals who choose to stand out get beaten down."
Somehow I tend to side with the latter. I
feel that non-assertion and cuteness have high correlation. For some of us who
would have traveled to south Asia would see what I mean by this.
Still, I feel there is a lot more to cuteness
that what meets the eye. The more we can understand it the more we would be
able to interpret people’s unstated motivations.
