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Is Cute the New Cool? Some Car Commercials from Kia

When it comes to cars, a non-driver like myself associates them with the power, speed and sleek design you see in ads -- and the hassles you don't.

That's why I found some TV spots currently running for the Kia Sorento and Soul intriguing.  These cars are portrayed, by contrast, as cute.

This isn't the first time cars have been marketed like this.  The Volkswagen Beetle had a cute look from the beginning of its life in the U.S.  It's been called the automotive version of a smiley face.

But these spots take cuteness one step further.  One is scored to what sounds like neo-soul; the other, hip-hop -- both signs of hipness.  The takeaway I get: not only are these cars cute, but they're cool because they're cute.

When you look into the marketing strategy for both, equating cute with cool makes total sense.  The Sorento ad (which I think ran first during the Superbowl) is designed for young parents.  According to Kia:

"Created by David & Goliath, 'Joyride Dream' speaks to young couples who are entering a new life stage and facing adult responsibilities while still desiring the style, freedom and fun they've always enjoyed."

The animals and toys that, in essence, do their partying for them, are the sorts of objects that signify their new lifestyle.  As new parents, these are the kinds of cute things that would be left in their back seats by their kids.

As the late Stephen Jay Gould suggested, cuteness awakens the innate response to nurture.  The spot is saying: your new, nurturing life can be just as fun as your old partying one, especially if you take the family around in a cute car like a Sorento.

The hamster ads, according to automotive reporter Jim Henry (writing about an earlier spot in the campaign) are designed to appeal to a younger crowd.  The "cool" hamsters in Kias are meant to "stand out" against unhip animals that (in this commercial) are riding in everything from washing machines to cardboard boxes.

From what I've read, smaller, cube-like cars are already considered hip, urban rides.  The cute hamsters add a light-hearted touch to Kia's version of this sort of vehicle: for me, they communicate that these are fun cars -- the perfect wheels to get the party started.

The Science of Cute

Noticing how these ads elicited an inner-smile from the inner-child I've been assured I have, I wondered about what made something cute in the first place.  It turns out there's a whole science of cuteness -- and that the topic has been a hot one for online critics for years.  Gould's observations are a touchpoint for them all.

Gould traced how the figure of Mickey Mouse had, over the years, been transformed -- from a wise guy  rodent with a long, sharp snout -- to a cuddly mouse with big ears, big hands, an oversized head -- and a button-like nose.  Gould said that as Mickey got older in historical years, in terms of what he stood for, he got younger.

What the artists at Disney discovered was something Zoologist Konrad Lorenz constructed a theory about: that the more you made an animal look like a human baby, the cuter it became. 

In this light, it's pretty clear why so many ads pursue cuteness.  As Gary Genosko at Invisible Culture put it, commerce "remakes" bodies in the interest of cuteness to give "everyone a chance to be a kind of nurturer through consumption."

The Triumph of Cuteness

Sentimentality, it's often said, is the other side of cynicism.  So, perhaps the flip side of our cool, ironic culture is unabashed cuteness.

But, speaking impressionistically, it appears to me that cute has been winning out lately.  It almost seems more modern, at least in terms of popular aesthetics, to be cute (in everything from indie music to digital products) than merely cool.

Why might this be?  One possible answer: the digital products that, along with cars, dominate commercial space, especially in their mobile incarnation, are smaller than old time media (TV, movie screens, etc.). And though they don't look like children, they are diminutive and toy-like.  Even grown ups devote a lot of their day to playing games on them.

To sell such experiences, popular culture increasingly encourages regression: it's as if consciousness is being remodeled like Mickey Mouse's image -- to get more childlike.  As one of AT&T's spots (while advertising its digital capabilities to stressed professionals) announces: "Welcome to your fifth birthday, again."

Of course, in the great recession people need to unwind.  But why, I wonder, is it now necessary to think like a little kid to do so?  Thoughts?                 

Survival of the Fittest Literature? Darwin and the new Literary "Evocriticism"

According to Hilary and Steven Rose in the latest issue of New Left Review, Charles Darwin's 200th Birthday last year and the 150th anniversary "of the publication of The Origin [of Species] saw the famously modest biologist turned into that very 21st-century phenomenon, the global celebrity." (p.93)  

In keeping with this picture, the commemorative buzz around Darwin and his work portrayed its originality via the "Great Man Theory" (93-94), rather than acknowledge -- as historians of science have -- that his discoveries were fruit of a historical process with many contributors.  (This can't be said, though, about the recent film Creation, which acknowledges that Alfred Russel Wallace "got there first" as it were.)

Rose and Rose suggest that this bias distorts the way evolutionary theory is currently being adapted throughout the culture.  From "evolutionary aesthetics" to economics and literary criticism, these authors see a tendency to erase the social in favor of an individualist (i.e. "selfish genes") version of biology. (91, 107)

Reading their piece, I remembered hearing about "the new Evolutionary Literary Criticism" but never quite knowing what it was.  So I dug up two pieces I had glanced at in the past that bring together aspects of the theory of evolution and literary studies.

After reading them more carefully, I have to admit finding the whole discourse more interesting than I had assumed.

On the Origin of Stories

Even a socially oriented literary critic such as Terry Eagleton admits some fascination with "evocriticism". Writing back in 2009 about a book by Brian Boyd titled On the Origin of Stories, Eagleton thought it might offer a corrective to some of the excesses of what's now mainstream literary scholarship.

"Given the rampant culturalism of much current literary work, which can see the natural only as an ideologically insidious 'naturalizing'," Eagleton writes, "it is agreeable to read a work which discusses Homer cheek by jowl with allusions to dung beetles, the neocortex and cases of sexual harassment among pigeons."

What Eagleton likes about such criticism is that it offers a way to speak about "nature" again -- something lost in postmodern thinking, even, as he says, in "an ecological age." 

At the same time, where Boyd's book fails is that often it uses its complex scientific vocabulary merely to restate truisms about literature.  It's as if such work has discovered a new vocabulary in which to dress-up cliches.

To ilustrate, Eagleton offers this example: " 'We may never be shipwrecked on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe,' Boyd consolingly informs us, 'but we can learn from the example of his fortitude, resolution and ingenuity.' " For this we need Darwin?

"In Boyd's evolutionary world," he adds, "nothing seems to be done just for the hell of it."  As Eagleton points out, we often derive pleasure from the arts because they give us a break from our utilitarian lives.

Franco Moretti on Sherlock Holmes

Back in 2004, the distinguished literary scholar Franco Moretti employed evolutionary theory in, to my mind, a much more interesting way (later collected in Graphs, Maps, Trees).  Like Darwin, Moretti does   sweeping quantitative surveys of his subject matter.  His research covers forgotten literature -- as Darwin's did failed species.

This allows him to pose questions about literature in a new way.  In one study, he wonders why, out of the hundreds of British crime stories of a certain period, it is only Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales that are still read today.  Why did this particular "literary organism" avoid extinction?

His answer is just as original.  In neo-Darwinian fashion, Moretti locates the survivability of Doyle's stories in a single ("genetic") trait: their use of clues.  Clues became extremely popular as this genre evolved, but Doyle's stories used them better than anyone else.

What does "better" mean?  Moretti is refreshingly specific.  Only the Sherlock Holmes stories 1) made clues integral parts of the narrative (not just add-ons for popularity sake) and 2) created clues that were "decodable" by the reader. (49-50)

Many such stories contained one or the other trait -- but very few contained both, and in as masterful way as Doyle's did.  As a result, crime fans kept (and keep) coming back to Sherlock Holmes (while competitors end up in the remainder pile).

But Why Do People Like Clues in the First Place?

Moretti works with a form of popular literature in the example I gave.  You wonder what he'd do with "fine art."  And you wonder also about something even more basic: why do readers find clues absorbing in the first place?

Is that a question simple enough for a Darwinian answer?         

   

        

If You Create a New Species, Is It OK to Have Sex With It? Thoughts About the Movie "Splice"

(Spoiler Alert: Contains details about the movie plot.)

I recently saw Splice, the latest film inspired by the ethical questions raised by genetic research.  In it, a married pair of scientists, played by the always cool Sarah Polley and Oscar winner Adrian Brody, through gene splicing experiments, create a new life form.

As in earlier films, like The Island of Dr. Moreau, the being is an amalgam of creatures.  It's got some of Polley's genes, so it looks partly human.  But it has legs like a bald kangaroo's, and a tail with a stinger (like a scorpion or stingray).  It chirps like a menacing bird -- and it unfurls majestic wings when excited, taking on the look of something above-human: an angel.

The being can look sexy, too.  Played by Delphine Chaneac, the creature sometimes resembles a runway model. The following scene captures a bit of the sexy/scary quality of this "new species":

What I like about this clip is that it suggests the mix of fascination/horror public discourse about new science and technology often carries with it.  We love this stuff, yet we're afraid it will kill us if we get too close.

In fact, what's new about the film is that it pushes that "love" all the way into Eros.  There's even a sex scene between Brody's character and Dren (the name given the creature), where her angel wings flutter in ecstasy.

But, as the stinger at Polley's throat reminds us, Dren is "not of our kind."  (That stinger will pierce the heart of one of the characters later, administering a death blow not unlike what killed Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter.)

One of the things that keeps the film from resolving into cliche is that it maintains this ambivalence through to the very end.  Of course, Polley and Brody are punished in various ways for their Promethean hubris.  Like Adam and Eve, they've accessed knowledge it seems they should have left alone.

But in the last scene, this idea is thrown into doubt.  We find out Polley's character is pregnant. The baby could be the progeny of her (now dead) husband or of the creature itself -- who at one point transformed itself into a man and raped her.  In a rather futuristic take on the Pro-Choice position, she decides to keep the baby.

And her boss at the genetics firm has gone from condemnation of her creation to approval.  It turns out her research produced profitable new patents for the company.  Polley's character is lauded for her courage.

Tradition and the Posthuman Individual

As I was wondering about the film's vacillations, I came across some interesting observations by the philosopher Slavoj Zizek on the public rhetoric surrounding genetic research.

 Zizek, thinking about the way the news of genetics breakthroughs has been received in Europe, notes a tendency which "on the one hand, tacitly tolerates scientific and technical progress, while on the other...tries to control its effects on our socio-symbolic order, that is, to prevent the existing theological-ethical world picture from changing." (p. 62)

I think Zizek's comments explain the caution around such discoveries when it comes to public policy rhetoric.  In the U.S. at least, such "official statements" are influenced by a politics that speaks the language of (if not rules according to) Judeo-Christian ethics.  And the film certainly reflects this influence. But what of its simultaneous delight and endorsement with such dabbling? 

There's one U.S. institution stronger than Church and State combined: Business.  And this force is governed more by cost/value equations than ethics.  As such, it tends to be morally agnostic.

The movie can be read as a parable about the difficulty of splicing all these forces together -- into anything resembling an integrated social whole.  And though this integration never happens, along the way the film offers up some fascinating and hilarious conundrums.  Here's my favorite:

After walking in on Brody and Dren, Polley's character mutters a standard movie expression, along the lines of: "There are some things you just don't do."  This draws a big laugh from the audience.

Maybe that's partly because it's hard to define Brody's transgression: has he committed adultery?  Incest? Or something new -- human/alien sex -- that we don't have a sin for yet?  In which case, you find yourself asking: is it really bad?               

Is Nature Superstitious? Science, Religion and Science Fiction

Recently I bought an anthology of science fiction stories titled The New Space Opera 2.  The beginning of one tale in particular, "The Island" by Peter Watts, compelled me to read on:

"You sent us here.  We do this for you: spin your webs and build your magic gateways, thread the needle's eye at sixty thousand kilometers a second.  We never stop, never even dare to slow down, lest the light of your coming turn us to plasma.  All so you can step from star to star without dirtying your feet in these endless, empty wastes between. 

Is it really too much to ask that you might talk to us now and then?" And then, a little later on the page: "Why have you forsaken us?" (p. 31)

The addressee here is not God but, as far as I could tell on first reading, a post-human intelligence, perhaps some combination of man/machine.  And this prayer is uttered not in a Church, but in one of those Cathedrals of the far future: a rocket ship.

The character thinking these words is tens of thousands of years old.  But she's not supernatural either. She's simply one of a small crew of workers whose Sisyphean task is to travel thousands of light years across the cosmos, as she helps build things for a kind of intergalactic Robert Moses (the "person" addressed earlier).  To make this task possible, she and her crew only get to stay awake for a few weeks every thousand years or so (the rest of the time they're kept in an "undead" state by intelligent robots).

Talk about work alienation: "...there is no finish line," she mutters.  "We go on forever, crawling across the universe like ants, dragging your goddamed superhighway behind us." (p. 69)

Natural Supernaturalism

Why was I compelled to read on?  The pleasure of this text for me was in watching how it elegantly translated the motifs of older, biblical, devotional and mystical literature (and the feelings these stirred) into a secular tale.  In this, the SF genre shares something with Romanticism.  It too derives some of its appeal from what the great literary scholar M.H. Abrams termed (in a book of the same name) Natural Supernaturalism.

According to Abrams, the Romantics (and their progeny) -- reacting against the more mechanistic side of the Enlightenment -- found ways to reinvent older spiritual (and biblical) literatures by "reconstituting them in a way that would make them intellectually acceptable, as well as emotionally pertinent." (p. 66)

So, for example, the figure of "Prophet" becomes the "visionary poet" in Wordsworth.  "Providence" is transformed into the march of the Idea through history by Hegel.  The Millennial Kingdom is reborn as the post-historical age of Communism in Marx.

Pulp Vs. Hard SF

From what I know of the history of SF, the term "Space Opera" (derived from "horse opera") was originally derogatory.  It described a strain of the form full of fanciful science, with a premium placed on adventure. It was also known as "Space Romance."

"The New Space Opera" appears (at least on the basis of this tale) to be an attempt to renew the "wow" factor of its pulp ancestor (its sense of the cosmic infinite or sublime) by offering greater attention to hard science fact and theory, in order to enhance speculative plausibility.

 What's touching in this tale, though, is a sense of mourning for the lost innocence of older SF.  At one point, for example, there is a vision of nature reminiscent of a more Romantic heritage: a living star that signals "Stop, stop, stop" to the rocket as it nears.

The narrator tells us that no human crew has been able to communicate with an alien life form, and the very possibility sets off her utopian imagination.  She becomes convinced this being (called "The Island" or DHF 428) is evidence of a kinder, gentler, version of evolution: 

"The Island puts the lie to everything we were ever told about the machinery of life.  Sun-powered, perfectly adapted, immortal, it won no struggle for survival: where are the predators, the competitors, the parasites?  All life around 428 is one vast continuum, one grand act of symbiosis.  Nature here is not red in tooth and claw.  Nature, out here, is the helping hand." (p. 54)

But, as one might expect from a post-Romantic Space Romance, this proves untrue.  Through great effort, the ship, heeding the pleas of 428, adjusts its course, so as not to collide with it.  Later, though, we discover this being "conned" them" -- into killing another life form in its vicinity.  "I let myself believe in life without conflict," the narrator mourns, "in sentience without sin." (p. 69)

Science Vs. Ideology

Have we then, through this disillusion, escaped the Natural Supernaturalism of the Space Romance? Perhaps.  But doesn't it sound like the narrator, presenting a more "realistic" version of evolution is getting it mixed up with older doctrines like "Original Sin"?

Some cultural critics consider this "dog-eat-dog" version of "hard science" to be suspiciously close to competitive market rhetoric.  Evolution, so I've read, can be influenced by cooperative ventures like culture, as well as "selfish genes."

So you might read this tale as a cautionary one.  Perhaps it warns that sometimes you give up religion, only to replace it with ideology.