Cult of kittens: The Hello Kitty show – WELT

2024-07-22 14:16:13

cultural cult kitten

The Hello Kitty introduction

As of: 4:16 pm | Reading time: 2 minutes

Also not that fresh anymore: Hello Kitty under a bridge

Quelle: Image Alliance / NurPhoto

50 years ago, the Japanese Yuoko Shimizu designed the children’s character Hello Kitty. Now the Sanrio company surprisingly reveals: It’s not a cat. But what then? The answer can be found in Western evil, Eastern kawaii culture – and sex toys.

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IPlaying one of the countless movie roles Hello Kitty has ever done for children’s television, she travels to the Cherry Mountains, where a cherry crumble tree is grown for a secret ingredient. “The sweetest candy in the world and of all time”. As we all know, cats eat. But cherry crumble cake?

Now, on the 50th birthday of Hello Kitty, the event is finally explained. Jill Scott, Sanrio manager from Tokyo, where the characters were created and became a worldwide success with the art of books, series and kitsch, appeared in an interview on NBC: The white kitten with the red sky is not a kitten at all , but an eight-year-old girl. named Kitty White who weighs as much as three apples. Kitty is from the suburbs of London.

Cats include domestic cats

The sadness can’t begin to get through the tweets and posts that follow: “It’s a CAT!” – “Kitty in JAPANESE!” However, according to its creator Yuko Shimizo, the kitten or the girl is just inspired by her, Yuko’s, pet’s body. In fact, there is more to tell people: she likes cake, she wears dungarees that match her hair bow, she speaks all living languages ​​and, above all, her own pet cat is called Charmmy Kitty.

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Is Scrooge McDuck a drake? Is Paulchen a pink panther? And is Urmel of Ice a baby dinosaur? In Western culture, such questions are complicated. Enlightenment views the human-animal dilemma dialectically: Nature forbids anthropomorphism of any kind – animals must not be human. The culture does that in its ancient historical style. In the Far East, in the Japanese kawaii cult of all things childlike, innocent and beautiful, Hello Kitty can be anything. A kitten and a girl, eight years and 50 years.

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And something of cultural appropriation: Adults have turned Kitty into art for museums, into fashion for the runway, into pop songs, and massage sticks with her face even into sex toys. For children, the answer is simple: Hello Kitty is Hello Kitty is Hello Kitty.