The big idea: why do we find cuteness so hard to resist?
Saturated in pink and sparkles, the Barbie movie is full of ribbons and hearts, gingham and polka dots: a universe of cuteness. And yet, according to the internet at least, the most adorable thing in the film is not the eponymous heroine but her consort, Ken. Margot Robbie’s Barbie may be glamorous, but Ryan Gosling’s Ken is cute – quite an accomplishment for a manbaby intent on imposing patriarchy on Barbie Land.
Scientists have been studying the nature of cuteness for decades. It’s now widely accepted that we are hardwired to both look and act cute when we’re very young and to respond to cuteness ourselves. When kids are cute, women and men alike pay attention to them and care for them, which not only helps children to survive but also to learn how to communicate and cooperate.
That’s why characteristics that make something cute tend towards the baby-like. Our cuteness detector is generally set off by a big, round head with large, low-set eyes, chubby cheeks and limbs, plus an awkward, tottering gait. Brain scans show that objects with these qualities immediately capture our attention, even before conscious thought occurs. Cute things activate the pleasure centres of our brains and prepare us to act with empathy and compassion. Studies have shown that people are more likely to fill out a survey, sign a petition or offer to help others when the request is accompanied by a puppy or even a cute picture.
Cute qualities are great for triggering consumption as well as care, which explains why so many consumer products are designed to piggyback on our responses. Some of these, like ones in the Hello Kitty range, achieve maximum cuteness with minimal features. Drawn without a mouth, the character emulates the blank look of a child who has yet to understand the world.
Other aspects of cute culture are, by contrast, way over the top. In Barbie Land, soothing pastel colours are highly saturated to make them pop, and round, comforting shapes abound. Cars are too small; toothbrushes are too big. Waffles and conference tables are heart-shaped, details that overload the audience with cuteness.
Which brings us back to Gosling’s Ken. Though he lacks the obvious visual features that scientists have identified as cute, his behaviour is appealingly childlike. He dons a fluffy fur coat in a vain attempt to wield authority. Through all his wannabe badboy behaviour he beams goodwill and vulnerability. Furthermore, his immaturity signals the potential to change. To his fans he’s cute because of his flaws, not in spite of them.
The question of how to trigger the cuteness response has implications beyond toys and movies. Though childlike behaviour can be appealing, it’s difficult to get it right in the real world. For example, one AI chatbot named Pi is designed to project a warm persona and to show curiosity and enthusiasm. However, with responses peppered with emojis and bland expressions, Pi can be cloying rather than cute. It’s a fine line, and people’s levels of tolerance vary. “Are you too cute?” I asked Pi, only for the chatbot to thank me for the compliment.
Though striking a balance between cute and cutesy is difficult, developers in the fields of AI and robotics will no doubt keep trying. Adding cuteness can bridge “the uncanny valley” – that sense of creepiness induced by not-quite-human replicas. We’re more likely to indulge cute entities and forgive their “childlike” mistakes. So don’t be surprised if new robotic or artificial personas use cuteness to solicit our affection.
There is a new take on why we find cuteness so hard to resist, which may help explain some of Ken’s appeal. Many scientists support the theory that females at the dawn of human evolution may have preferred kinder, gentler males who would help take care of children. In other words, Homo sapiens emerged because women preferred men who exhibited this kind of adult cuteness. The preference might even have caused us to become the first self-domesticated species.
When animals are domesticated, they become cute as well as tame, retaining more juvenile features in adulthood. For a long time, it was assumed that this “domestication syndrome” was a result of selective breeding. But, initially at least, we didn’t breed animals to stay young-looking – we bred them to be friendlier. Why do these traits emerge?
The answer may lie in the neural crest, a structure that plays an important role in developing embryos. Cells migrate from the neural crest to many areas of the body, but they are inhibited in less fearful and aggressive individuals. Selecting for this inhibition has knock-on effects, which lead to the other features of domestication syndrome, from curly tails and floppy ears to shorter snouts and smaller jaws.
While humans don’t have floppy ears or tails, we have smaller, rounder skulls and reduced brow ridges compared with other early hominins. Simply put, we’re cuter than Neanderthals. Are we also tamer than they were? Violence and sexism are still endemic to our species, but overall we are less aggressive and patriarchal than chimpanzees, our closest living relatives. Aeons ago, did women prefer cute, sociable Kens to belligerent cavemen? Over time, such choices may have bent the arc of our evolution away from our ape-like ancestors and made us who we are.
• Joshua Paul Dale is a professor at Chuo University, Tokyo. His book Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired Our Brains and Conquered the World will be published by Profile on 9 November. To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Further reading
The Power of Cute by Simon May (Princeton, £12.99)
Survival of the Friendliest by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods (Oneworld, £10.99)
Kawaii!: Japan’s Culture of Cute by Manami Okazaki and Geoff Johnson (Prestel, £19.99)
Adding cuteness can bridge ‘the uncanny valley’ – that sense of creepiness induced by not-quite-human replicas
tity and fascist ideology. The films are subversive insofar as they are morally complex, frequently carnal and often downright weird. But they are also secure – even elitist – in their focus on posh ballerinas and righteous squires, blustering colonels and jovial lairds. While the Archers’ work spoke truth to power, it did so in the service of propping up the old order. It was challenging and radical, but it was never bent on revolution.
The critic Raymond Durgnat once called Powell a “High Tory”. Thelma Schoonmaker – Powell’s widow – objects to that. “It’s too simple,” she says. “Michael was much more complicated. He wasn’t necessarily a political person, but he cared deeply about people, about his community, and was always open to the world. He lived every moment to the full – he wasn’t a High Tory at all. That description of him is completely wrong.”
When the Archers fell from favour, Powell initially went to ground in Gloucestershire. The director couldn’t afford to heat his cottage. At one point, he was reduced to selling porcelain ducks door-to-door. “In that way, yes, he was a victim of political change,” Schoonmaker admits. “The Labour government came in. The kitchen sink school was just beginning. The films that he made with Emeric were seen as old-fashioned and colonial. That was hard for him to deal with, first because it was wrong, but also because he loved England so much, right to the very end of his life.”
James Bell, the BFI’s senior curator, was raised on kitchen sink dramas and the French New Wave. Like me, he approached Powell and Pressburger’s films with suspicion. The received pronunciation accents were a barrier, the patriotism reeked of mothballs. You had to set aside your preconceptions to allow the movies’ magic to take hold. “In the 90s there was still a whiff of musty Englishness about them,” Bell says. “I remember a colleague saying, ‘But aren’t they cosy teatime films?’ – which couldn’t be further from the truth.”
The way he sees it, the Archers’ subject is British identity and the way it connects with the rest of the world. The stories are about tradition and continuity. But the films are questioning and critical – not cosy at all. Explicitly or otherwise, they ask us who we are and where we stand. Bell says: “I think that chimes more than ever in a post-Brexit world.”
Schoonmaker balked at the High Tory tag. Bell, though, is less certain. “If it is High Tory to champion social responsibility, then that is definitely there. If it is High Tory to want to preserve the countryside, then that is there as well. There is also a mystical aspect to the films – that great romantic, inclusive quality. You could make the case that this is High Tory, too.”
I call Kevin Macdonald in Los Angeles. Macdonald is the director of Touching the Void, State of Play and The Last King of Scotland. But he is also Pressburger’s grandson and an authority on his work. Pressburger fled Nazi Berlin and lost his mother in Auschwitz. So he was an alien, an outsider. He desperately wanted to belong. “He was like so many other refugees in that he never felt 100% at home in the UK,” Macdonald says. “But he also wouldn’t ever hear a bad word said against the country. He was a member of the Conservative party. I found his party membership.”
The films are conservative but that doesn’t make them reactionary. “They’re only Tory in the sense that they recognise the value of continuity in the culture,” Macdonald says. “You see that in A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I’m Going, Gone to Earth and Colonel Blimp. They value social responsibility and the history that is embedded in a community. To me, that’s a major factor of old-fashioned, paternalistic, pre-Thatcherite Toryism.”
I am glad he raises A Canterbury Tale. It is my favourite PowellPressburger, maybe my all-time favourite film: a work of gorgeous, broken glory that spins the tale of three wartime pilgrims (land girl, British soldier, US sergeant) in the Kent countryside. For years, I assumed this was mostly Powell’s picture. In fact, it is the one that Pressburger claimed as his own. A Canterbury Tale was a story of exiles as told by an exile; a British movie produced by an immigrant crew. The cinematographer and production designer were both German Jews. The composer – Allan Gray – was born Józef Żmigrod in Poland. Even Pressburger, a registered “enemy alien”, had to report back to London every night of the shoot.
“A Canterbury Tale was seen as wartime propaganda,” says Macdonald. “But really it’s a film about fragility. It’s about people struggling to hold on, fighting for their values. I think that was always the central feature of Emeric’s work. It’s not about the people, it’s not even about the place. It’s always about the underlying values with him.”
I’m speaking to Macdonald in the week of the Conservative party conference. The headlines are dominated by tribalism and wedge issues. Redmeat rhetoric targets asylum seekers and multiculturalism. Our concept of conservatism has changed; the Overton window has lurched rightwards. Powell and Pressburger’s politics were once dismissed as retrograde and naive.
These days, they feel humane and progressive – even borderline radical.
If anything, the films become fresher the more time goes by. “I used to think that it was because of their oddness,” Macdonald says. “The weird characters, jokes and stories, the postmodern self-consciousness that was somehow ahead of its time. But now I think it’s more about their human values. Their films are about rejecting bigotry, treating people with decency and finding connections in the cultural melee that might otherwise divide us. Look around us right now. We are living in a time when everything is about division and hatred and fear. Powell and Pressburger stood against all of that. I think they still do today.”
Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger is at the BFI Southbank, London, and across the UK until 31 December.
Powell couldn't heat his cottage and ended up selling porcelain ducks door-to-door