gordonl@microsoft.UUCP (Gordon Letwin) (08/12/85)
I've been following the discussion on cuteness with interest Biologists and animal ethologists (behaviorists) have a pretty good handle on what and why "cute" is, and its interesting to compare this against the theorys presented here. One theory is that "cute" is something just coincidentally recognized by humans, and that selective human predation has selected for cuteness in animals. This is close to the mark in some ways... Another theory recently posed is that "cute" is a cultural phenominon which has just recently developed. This is certainly not true... Someone posted a "cartoonists guide to cuteness" that was very close to the mark, and I though for sure that he was going to spill the beans, but no... The explanation which is widely excepted by ethologists (and even a few computer scientists like me) is that "cuteness" is a built in acceptance factor for human infants. Basically, an infant is a pain in the posterior - it makes noise and demands, gets into things, and in general encourages anger and hostility on the part of adults. Recalling that child abuse laws are recent inventions, people have evolved another mechanism to encourage maternal/paternal treatment and to reduce/disarm anger and hostility - cuteness. (Note that parential tolerence of infants and children is induced by a lot of other factors, powerful ones aimed at protecting the genitic investment. Now that we have language we call those feelings "love". But these feelings apply very strongly only to the mother - cuteness is an important factor in insuring tolerence from the rest of the social group). The requirements of cuteness are well known - re: the cartoonist's guidebook. They are: 1) large eyes 2) large head in proportion to the body 3) large ears, generally placed forward 4) rounded limbs and joints - a minimum of narrow appendages, sharply defined joints, etc. 5) clumsiness and awkwardness This list, and probably a few I've forgotten, make up the cute lexicon. A creature exhibiting these characteristics is known as cute. Think how these apply to classical max-cutness items, such as teddy bears. Does a teddy bear have a head/body size proportion which is realistic, or is its head typically 1/3 or 1/2 the size of the body? What about limbs? Many bears and animal dolls have limbs which are literally rounded stubs. We don't see this as deformed, but as cute. A human infant obviously fits these criteria... in fact, the claim is that the human infant DEFINES these criteria. There was a fascinating article in natural history a couple of years ago, called the "Neonatal Evolution of Mickey Mouse". It contained a series of drawing of the character which showed how Mickey's body shape was actually regressing into infancy, becomming progressively more cute. The original Mickey had thin, long limbs, sharp joints, small eyes, smaller head, etc. The character was perceived (and sometimes acted) as mischievious, mean, and agressive. As time progressed, however, Mickey was made progressively more infantile and cuter. Now he no longer has an elbow joint, but the limb just bends smoothly... eye size is dramatically larger, etc. For a more recent example, look at a copy of the first Garfield collection that was published. In the initial cartoons Garfield has eyes of an anotimically accurate size, but within a couple of dozen strips he'd developed into his current, large-eyed cute form. Bottom line, cuteness is one of those built-in buttons that filmmakers (I'd say "shameless filmmakers") can push with great ease and predictibility. Personally, I think going for such a cheap shot, and in fact basing a large part of the acceptance of your movie on such a cheap shot, is a mark of hack film making. Gordon Letwin decvax!microsoft!gordonl uw-beaver!microsoft!gordonl p.s. - reading some later articles, I see that my major points above have been mentioned by others. Thats USENET - you're obsolete before you've hit CTL-D...