Cute
I have railed against cute. I hate cute. I hate being called cute. But to be honest, when met with scenes from Cute Overload, I’m just as likely as the next person to say, “Oooooooo, lookit the cute widdle HANDS on that hamster! Lookit it eat broccoli! So CUTE!”
So I admit the power of cute. It is indeed powerful. And I found myself forced to tap into this power in a recent scene.
I am working on a new novel - project name UNDERGROUND. In the novel, I’m shooting for black humor. The kind of humor that makes you laugh and wince at the same time. It’s a tough humor to hit, as you need to tread that line - don’t have enough wince, and it’s not funny enough. Have too much wince and you’ve gone beyond funny.
I wanted a scene in a restaurant frequented by demons and other horrific creatures. And I wanted one of the demons to have a birthday. Where a waiter would, in our world, bring out a flaming cake, I wanted waiters here to attend to their customers. I wanted something sick and funny. I needed something terrible to happen to something cute.
Cute is a dangerous track. In the early days of Cute Overload, they discussed what made the pictures cute. Little paws looking like hands. Sleepy animals. Young animals. A large animal coupled with a smaller animal looking just like it. And so on. And I realized that there are levels of cute. There are the cute you cannot touch: kittens and puppies.
And I’m sure many of you geeks will point out that in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, demons played poker for the chance to win delicious kittens. However, we never saw harm befall the kittens. I needed a scene where the terrible thing was happening.
Hedgehogs.
Hedgehogs are grumpy creatures whose cuteness is magnified by the fact that they’re grumpy and prickly and prefer to hide in a dirty tshirt rather than come out and play. The do not bat at string. They do not fetch balls. They do not follow their mother in an adorable straight line. They crouch, nocturnally, and grumble.
Hedgehogs became, what I thought, the perfect target to test my black humor on. In the demon restaurant, the customers pop live, rolled up hedgehogs in their mouths as if they were fat marshmallows. They do so with great relish as if it were a special occasions.
Hedgehogs are like pumpkin pie, you see. Everyone likes them, but they only eat them on special days. You don’t just step out of your door one day and think, “Hey, a hedgehog sounds real good right now.” No, it’s for special occasions. Which makes it funnier.
I could be talking out of my ass here. But suffice to say, my new book places hedgehogs in great peril, the grumpy prickly bastards turn out to be just the right sort of delightful that demons are looking for, especially in an upscale restaurant. And thus cute has served its purpose.
About the Author: I am a writer and podcast producer, writing for magazines and RPGs. I am a wanna-be fiction writer with several short fiction, comic scripts, and one novel sale. Playing For Keeps will be out August, '08.
Maria Myrback | Jan 12, 2008 | Reply
LOVE the hedgehog idea. It will please you to know that I was both laughing AND cringing at the imagery. BTW, if you have ever seen Firefly, in one episode Wash is talking about a planet he once visited where the main form of entertainment was juggling goslings. So I completely get where you’re coming from in relation to finding a way to blend dark humor with cuteness.
fred | Jan 13, 2008 | Reply
Of course, having one of the demons pull a quill out it’s mouth and then pick it’s teeth with it is cliche, but only because it works. Best of luck with the new WIP.
junkfoodmonkey | Jan 13, 2008 | Reply
I like the hedgehogs, because they are cute, but they are also spiky, so eating them seems like something you’d have to be a weird demon to do anyway. I mean people will eat hedgehog, but the meat not the spines!
And it’s less obvious than kittens or puppies, where it could seem you’re trying too hard to shock or gross out the reader.
pseudojoe | Jan 13, 2008 | Reply
perfect.
clsteele | Jan 13, 2008 | Reply
Mur, I wrote my senior thesis on the power of cute. Being a BFA major in Drawing and Painting I created series of drawings and a few paintings that centered around playing with “that line” between what is and then suddenly is no longer cute. Horrible things happened to cute bunnies in all of the paintings and after 2 months of people asking me if I was a psychopath (I just happened to have two rabbits who were good models. I never tortured or did anything to any animal, it was all imaginary. I lost count of how many people said they were going to report me to the ASPCA.) I switched to ‘torturing’ stuffed animals and a series of cartoons in which two cute bunnies ‘accidentally’ did horrendous things to each other. It was terrific listening in on people as they passed the work during a show, polling them on how they felt about it… and how many ‘got it, you’re playing with where the line of cuteness ends’ and how many felt I needed a straight jacket. It’s tough, just don’t forget (as I had) there are many people where simply implying that the hedgehog is about to suffer an untimely fate is over the moral line.
And I like Fred’s idea of the toothpicks. Or more subtle, having the demon sport a new hedgehog quill piercing a few days later.
Good Luck!
Erika | Jan 13, 2008 | Reply
When I was home in MT over Christmas, my sister’s new boyfriend was talking about the perfect bait for trapping bobcats: kittens.
They build them their own little cage-within-a-cage, so they’re technically “safe,” but that struck me as a very black humor setup. “Here Suzie. You can have your kitten back, now. I’m done with it.” Little thing is frozen solid with terror. (I’m the anti-hunter, btw.)
Helen E. H. Madden | Jan 13, 2008 | Reply
By any chance, do you watch the Graham Norton show on BBC America? If not, it’s like the Tonight Show, only funnier and everybody can actually swear and drink and talk about sex.
Anyway, Gerard Depardieu was a guest one night, and apparently his father used to cook hedgehogs. I’m not quite sure how the recipe worked, because Mr. Depardieu related it in a mix of English and French, but apparently you have to wrap the hedgehog in clay, throw it onto an open fire to bake, crack the clay open and then use a plunger to suck the innards out the back end. Not exactly cute, but hysterically funny when acted out on stage before a live audience.
Jennifer | Jan 14, 2008 | Reply
This reminds me of reading Narbonic (a webcomic, now rerunning on narbonic.com). There is a cute evil kitten named Sir Pounce. Who not only dies, but is shown in Hell to boot. People are sad because of his cuteness.
Aaron | Jan 16, 2008 | Reply
The power of cute can be both good and bad but I think you have a good idea here and the execution of that should work out. This is why beta readers are great.
Jessica | Jan 30, 2008 | Reply
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.
James | Feb 7, 2008 | Reply
Cute is a dangerous game, I think. I that there are very few universal cultural icons of cute: puppies, kittens and ducklings and then almost nothing. The other cute animals are a bit more ambivalent, cute to certain people in certain situations, but not to everyone all the time. Further to that, I suspect there are very few genuinely interesting ways to use cute animals (although i’ll admit eating one is probably a good one).
For a genuinely funny, but incredibly sick example of cute and funny, I’d recommend the mayhem that is “HAPPY TREE FRIENDS”. So bad, it’s good.
Nice podcast, and thanks for broadcasting BTW!
Grizzly | Feb 29, 2008 | Reply
I agree with you in hating to be called cute. Happens to me all the time. Of course, you actually -are- cute — but in a fierce, vibrant, Woman of the New Millenium way, of course.
…I was about to say Woman of the ’90s, showing my vast age…
In fiction, I guess I’m just too suggestible. When the bad guys get too bad, I just walk away and pick another book. Life is too short, and there’s far too much Horror already in the world. I don’t see the need to create more. I’ve gotten so I can’t struggle through the early parts of a book, where the bad guys are winning at every turn, without a healthy leavening of how strong and good the Good Guys are being or becoming. Early on, I’m fine with the Good Guys being Bad, because the process of their becoming Good makes me feel better, and I know that’s coming.
But I utterly despise horror as a genre. Seen too much of what I consider the Real Deal over the years. Still, since you’re talking about writing, you gotta talk about that, too, I guess.
But you’re still cute! Nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!