Aesthetics of Cute II

Cartoons are funny; death is not. So cartoons face into their limits when they picture death. Either they make death funny, in which case death never appears, or they push the limits of being cute cartoons, and they are no longer funny.

The Coyote and Road Runner series, and Warner Brothers generally, treat death as funny. Warner Brothers even applies this aesthetic directly to hunting in the character of Elmer Fudd and his intended prey, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Warner Brothers does not criticize hunting; hunting just provides a setting in which human and animals can have comic interactions. Death is funny only because no one ever dies.

There is little aesthetic difference between Warner Brothers cartoons and the early Walt Disney shorts. However, with Fantasia (1940) and Bambi (1942), Disney began to produce feature length films which introduced a different aesthetic. Cute remained: Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, Thumper, Flower, and Bambi in Bambi. But Disney introduces a new aesthetic alongside cute. The new aesthetic allowed for death, even tragedy, in the form of a cartoon.

In response to Fantasia, Warner Brothers laughed. They produced "What's Opera Doc" to lighten up the dark wizards at Disney. But to Bambi the response could only be Elmer Fudd.

to be continued

Aesthetics of Cute

Cute defines the aesthetic genre of Precious Moments figurines and the heroines of Walt Disney feature length cartoons. The eyes dominate the face; the balloon of a head sits precariously on a small body. Absolutely any example will validate the claim. Adults are simply larger children; and children are exaggerated infants. The aesthetic of the cute is aimed at children and those who want to hold on to the child’s vision of the world.

There are realities, realities many adults will affirm as good, which the aesthetic of cute cannot present. Imagine first a Precious Moments version of a crucifix. We immediately know something has gone terribly wrong. The crucifixion is not cute; those who think of it as cute have warped sensibilities. They are the avowed enemies of those who would worship the crucified one. But we may respond to a cute crucifix in two ways. First we may claim that “cute” presents a true vision of the world; we may modify Paul and insist “whatever is cute, whatever is sweet, think on these things.” That is, we might say, since a crucifix and what it represents cannot be cute, we should not have crucifixes and we should not think about crucifixions. Alternatively, we might conclude that if cute cannot present a crucifix, so much the worse for cute.

Imagine – unfortunately, in the internet age, one need not imagine – Disney characters engaged in the act of sex. Again, we know immediately that something has gone wrong. Sex is not cute; those who present it as such have warped desires. Confronted with Disney characters engaged in sex, we suspect that the real aim is, again, children. Pedophilias may prey on children by introducing them to sex in a child-friendly aesthetic. If we reject pedophilia, however, we still must choose between the adequacy of the cute and the goodness of good sex. If cuteness is adequate to reality, then we may reject sex because it is unpresentable and as boring in Disney films. On the other hand, if the cute cannot present sex as good, then the cute does not define the good.

Tomorrow: the cute critique of hunting.

Aesthetics of the Hunt

The challenge of "looking at death" leads me to the next topic. The topic of the pleasures and pains produced on the senses we call "aesthetics." Beauty has dominated, perhaps rightly, the topic. But there are other forms of aesthetics: the ugly, of course, but also, the sublime, the trivial, the silly, the disgusting, the delicious.

For the next several posts, I will argue that there are aesthetic modes that are inappropriate to death -- they make it impossible to see death and so we recoil.

Next post: Death and the Cute.