Cunningly Cute, Laughter’s Better.

Exhibition Review - Cute, Somerset House, London, 1/25/2024 - 4/14/2024

April 2024
(Reading Time: 8 min)

There are two ways to utilize the word “cute” in our everyday context. One may say, “Aww. That’s cuuute!” The expression shows a sincere aesthetic labeling for the thing in question. It brings a specific emotional joy to both the receiving end of the statement and the initiator of the expression. On the contrary, one may also utter, “That’s cute.” Here, the emotion takes a 180-degree turn. It is full of sarcasm and contempt. It puts the power dynamic between the subject and object, which participate in the dialogue, in a heightened and imbalanced state. There is no longer joy, but a harsh judgment.

This dichotomous usage of the word embodies the very essence of “cute.” There is an ultra-elastic quality to the label “cute.” It is both vulnerable and powerful. It is both joking and being serious. It is sincere and deceitful. It is naïve and sinister. “Cute” works with the extremes, and it is omnipresent.

The ongoing exhibition at the Somerset House—Cute—takes a careful curatorial position to explore the multiple polarities that are intrinsic to the aesthetic category[1] of “cute” and presents it to an audience in the neoliberal context of London. Claire Catterall, the curator, and her team organize the cultural products and newly commissioned art pieces into five clusters. The themes include Cry Baby, Play Together, Monstrous Other, Sugar-coated Pill, and Hypersonic. Each theme taps into the niched traits of cuteness, and a list of artifacts makes up the clusters. Cry Baby explores the compassionate emotional response of cuteness, which portrays vulnerability and the diminutive. Play Together exemplifies cuteness’s ability to offer comfort, respite, and a sense of belonging. Monstrous Other articulates how the hybridity of the opposites is a nature of cuteness. This allows for negative connotations such as trouble or malice to put on a mask of kindness and acceptance. Similarly, Sugar-coated Pill unpacks how cuteness can be used as a Trojan horse. It makes powerful authority and certain ideologies more digestible. Finally, Hypersonic asks the question of whether cuteness in the contemporary digital world represents the pinnacle of capitalism or whether it may also undermine the dominant economic system.

Arguably, the common denominator of all the exhibition themes is that they try to uncover the hidden entity behind the popular façade of cuteness. Catterall and her team did this strategically because the exhibition also “celebrates” the 50th anniversary of Hello Kitty, a character created by the Japanese company—Sanrio. If one were to look for images or videos by people who visit the exhibition, a giant statue of Hello Kitty outside of Somerset House is impossible to miss. In addition, not only does Hello Kitty have its own designated gallery painted in the same saturated red as Hello Kitty’s hair bow, but it also features a Hello Kitty-themed café serving all things related to the character. Under all five themes of the exhibition, there is also no trace of any characters created by Sanrio. This all seemed like a surprising contradiction at first. An exhibition that unveils the cunningness of cuteness also promotes one of the most prominent and influential figures of cuteness. Then, at the very bottom of the website, we gleefully learn that Sanrio is a principal partner of the exhibition.

Cuteness, or kawaii, has a traceable provenance if we were to unpack the history of Sanrio and post-WWII Japan. Sanrio was founded in 1960, and it manufactured merchandise for Snoopy before it created its first kawaii character—Hello Kitty—in 1974.[3] The postwar Japan at that time was undergoing reform and rebuilding. Since the international postwar treaty strictly disallowed the nation to invade other parts of the world, Japan had no incentive to invest in its military after the defeat, nor does it have the capacity. Japan could only maintain a military force to defend itself. Additionally, with the inherent Japanese culture that is more repressive than its Western counterpart, politeness and social/corporate hierarchy have made living in Japan extremely stressful. This high-stressed society, consequently, engendered the birth of kawaii culture with manga (Japanese comic books). Kawaii becomes the countercultural movement in Japan. It is a rebellion against seriousness.[4] In many ways, people find relief and comfort through kawaii. They escape from reality and depression. Ultimately, Japan, and most notably, Sanrio, have contestably aestheticized and commodified this counterculture. And its success is still reverberating and growing half a century later.

Cuteness (aww) and Humor (hahaha)

Now, if kawaii is a form of respite or an escape from reality, then it intrinsically shares a common ground with humor. However, despite the strong affinity between the two, there are some nuances that separate them. The two affinities are presented as follows. First, cuteness and humor both share the principle of double coding. It encompasses two extremities at the same time. It is both this and that. There is an inherent ambiguity built into both. Second, cuteness and humor (or specifically, laughter) thrive in a context of suppression. Because of their removal from seriousness, they offer a haven for relief and liberation. They both impede the notion of urgency.

The nuances between kawaii and humor are also two-fold. However, before we get into the nooks and crannies of the differences, it is important to introduce two onomatopoeias to trigger emotions to better grasp the concepts. If cuteness can be expressed by “aww,” then the equivalent to that for humor is “hahaha.” First, very often, the effectiveness of “aww” lasts much longer than “hahaha.” When we laugh at jokes, it hardly lasts for a long period of time without another trigger. This is similar in aesthetic discourses. When we burst out laughing at a meme, a short video, or a building, we don’t go on and laugh continuously. On the other hand, “aww” can usually last much longer. When we adore a thing, we allow the thing in question to imprint on our brain. It does not only have an aesthetic effect on our perception, but it also has a psychological influence.[5] We naturally feel closer to the “aww” because we invest more time in it, both in perception and in psychology. “Hahaha” is transient. “Aww” is enduring.

The second nuance between “aww” and “hahaha” is the triggering conditions. To laugh at a matter, a piece of writing, an image, or a building, we need to be in with the jokes. The audience is selective. A hilarious joke may not be as effective for one audience as another. The receiver of the jokes needs to understand the references, not be offended by the jokes, and be immersed in the context. On the contrary, for one to express “aww,” we do not often need to understand the pretext. According to one of the themes from the exhibition, Cute, Cry Baby explicitly highlights the notion of childish sensibility and the innate playful naivete of “aww.” In other words, we’re all kids at some point in our lives, so it is much easier to be contagious with cuteness. Comedians must try to find the right audience to sell the joke. “Kawaiians” only need to present themselves. “Hahaha” is contextual. “Aww” is universal. After all, perhaps this is precisely why kawaiican colonize the world at such a scale in our culture and rake in all the profit, while comedians are only working in their own niches.

Cuteness and Architecture

For cuteness to succeed in the global context, it is imperative that it work with the predominant economic system. Some may argue that architecture works the same way: whenever and wherever there is capital, buildings and projects encounter exponential growth and boom. Between cuteness and architecture, the correlation is also apparent in the sense of the market and built projects. In Japan, Sanrio commissioned a strawberry-shaped store to be built in Tokyo in 1983 that appeared in the kawaii character the company created, called Button Nose. For decades, The Walt Disney Company also commissioned fairy-tale castles and imbued cute aesthetics with their Mickey Mouse character. More recently, Japanese video game conglomerate—Nintendo—also introduced Super Nintendo World (a theme park based on the character Super Mario) with Universal Studios in both the US and Japan. Cuteness and capitalism seem to have an indelible, woven relationship.

The market is not the only thing that ties cuteness and architecture together. Even though it is very limited, cuteness has also found its way into the discourse of the architectural discipline in recent years. Character and storytelling are two aspects that have been explored. In 2016, Joanna Grant’s graduate thesis, Overly Attached Cute, at Princeton investigated the characteristics and contexts of cuteness. Grant posited to apply cuteness to underappreciated architectural styles. She writes, “Perhaps cuteness can act as a Trojan horse to talk about impolite matters, exactly in the same way that it responds to the strict cultural codes of Asia.”[6] The project sets out to remove censored styles or terms in architecture by injecting cuteness. The product resulted in an interactive video game that re-represents postmodern buildings, such as Michael Graves’ Portland Building, and metabolism buildings, such as Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower, as cute cartoonish stickers with thick white silhouettes. Here, Grant transforms the re-representation of buildings into a seemingly innocent character. However, what we learned from cuteness is that naivety is often only a disguise. There must be a hidden entity behind the curtains. Ultimately, Grant’s project tries to expand the audience by arguing for cute architecture. She continues, “The reproduction of the images of architecture as cute buildings is the method through which the general reception of architecture can be altered, perhaps even acting as the biological adaptation for survival.”[7] Arguably, cuteness is productive in architecture when it comes to opening to a wider audience. Yet, the thesis falls short of addressing the cunningness of cuteness. The more innocent a thing is, the more sinister its hidden agenda is. Cuteness seems to always break down our defense. In turn, we mimic its vulnerability and become vulnerable to its hidden ideology. Grant’s thesis is an argument for aesthetics. A style. A manner.

The other aspect that has been explored in architecture is evident in the method of storytelling. Lisa Hsieh’s recent article investigates cuteness in Hideyuki Nakayama’s architecture. She coined the term “function follows fantasy.”[8] She posits that cuteness is a removal of reality and transports one into a fantastic world. She continues, “While breaking the dichotomy between the powerful and the powerless, Nakayama’s kawaii architecture has nonetheless remained innocent.”[9] Hsieh emphasizes how Nakayama utilizes child play in his narrative and drawings. Here, cuteness is once again limned as a naïve entity. Kawaii, for Hsieh, allows us to be imaginative. Even though Hsieh acknowledged how kawaii was deployed as a diplomatic tool and capitalizing tool after the Japanese government realized its efficacy, she argues that Nakayama’s kawaii architecture is purer and child-like. However, it is precisely the power of kawaii here that Nakayama was able to win competitions and land commissions.[10] Perhaps kawaii is, in essence, a concept for marketing architecture. A method to acquire work.

In both Grant’s thesis and Hsieh’s reading of Hideyuki Nakayama’s work, cuteness seems to be an instrument for architects to communicate with a wider audience. The question of audience is a perpetual topic of concern in the discipline. In some ways, the expression “aww” will always generate a more successful cult than “hahaha” can ever do. Perhaps the audience does not matter. Perhaps a targeted audience, even if it means that it is only intended for architects, is sufficient. Perhaps cuteness is too omnipotent to be tamed, and humor is the sweet spot. Humor does not try to conquer the world, nor does it try to colonize the architectural discipline. It will remain counterculture because it is incapable of reaching the mainstream.

Circling back to the exhibition at Somerset House, cuteness is merely a tool. And we must understand what the tool means before we use it. The exhibition presents the tool, but it is part of the tool’s agenda. Without Sanrio’s partnership, the exhibition would probably not be able to present the materials. Despite the curator’s intention is to unveil the hidden motives of cuteness, the exhibition is only another apparatus to strengthen the colonization of kawaii.

“That’s cute.”

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[1] Sianne Ngai. Introduction to The Cute. Edited by Sianne Ngai. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2022), 12.
[2] Cute Guide. Somerset House, 2024. Accessed March 27, 2024. https://www.cute.guide/.
[3] Ken Belson, and Brian Bremner, Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon. (Singapore: Wiley, 2004), 59.
[4] Joanna Grant, “Getting Real,” in MAS Context, no. 32. (2019), 219.
[5] Lisa Hsieh, “Make Me a Fantastical World,” in Log, no. 58 (Summer 2023), 51.
[6] Joanna Grant, “Getting Real,” in MAS Context, no. 32. (2019), 222.
[7] Ibid, 223.
[8] Lisa Hsieh, “Make Me a Fantastical World,” in Log, no. 58 (Summer 2023), 54.
[9] Ibid, 51.
[10] Ibid, 50.