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March 25, 2009
Cuteness and Subversiveness at Design Benign
Over at Design Benign Blog, author Nicole Peterson offers a meditation on the subversive power of cute that is right on target. She is prompted to write by a comment to a post on BoingBoing.net about a set of hand-made plush-dolls in the image of the twin towers as airplanes collided into them. Click through to read her whole entry as it tries to make some subtle points.
... I saw a different reaction: "Nothing that happened on 9/11 was cute."; "I find this couple's work infantile at best, and entirely lacking in profunditiy."; "They are basically saying the suffering involved is trivial and stupid." Though attraction to cuteness is programmed into our brains as a survival mechanism, ensuring that younger members of the species receive protection and care, there is still a strong, negative reaction against cuteness, especially when cuteness treads where it dare not.
Posted by Rafael Fajardo at March 25, 2009 09:00 AM