Joshua Paul Dale is a professor of American literature and culture at Chuo University in Tokyo and a pioneer in what is apparently a burgeoning academic field called ‘Cute Studies’ – or what Damon Runyon might have called ‘Pretty Cute’ Studies, as in ‘“Are You Kidding Me? You Study This?” Studies.’
In fairness, Dale makes a strong case for his subject to be taken seriously. Irresistible is packed with references to all sorts of neuroscientific studies and cultural studies and studies about theories of animal domestication and the evolution of ‘affiliative social behaviour’, which lead Dale to posit that cuteness is a ‘species-wide emotion’.
Is it an emotion? I don’t think so. But one can only admire the breadth and range of his cute examples, from Pokémon and Hello Kitty to the rise of cupid art, P.T. Barnum’s baby shows, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Konrad Lorenz’s ‘child schema’ (Kindcherschema), Shirley Temple, and the more recent phenomena of VTubers (I had to look this up, but it is, as you might expect, a virtual YouTuber, i.e.
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