Pokémon’s cuteness aesthetic reconciled Japanese ambivalences about capitalism and childhood.

Evidence

In the waning days of the 20th century the world was taken by storm by the phenomenon of Pokémon, a multi-platform cultural commodity aimed at children between the ages of 4 and 14 (a previously almost unprecedented age range for a toy or amusement). … As Anne Allison (2004, 47) notes, even the most fearsome Pokémon obey an aesthetic imperative of “cuteness” (or kawaisa in Japanese), which, as she puts it, is Japan’s “millennial product,” a means of reconciling and negotiating the ambivalences of (disappearing) nature, (troubled) gender, (post-innocent) childhood and (cultural) capitalism in a moment of neoliberal insecurity and cultural drift. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 352

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s stated goal: how a cultural commodity like Pokémon internalizes and negotiates financialization — bridges to deWaard’s argument about finance colonizing culture. — connects to: Pokémon was engineered as a social medium rather than a passive commodity — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 365; Pokémon Go functioned as a covert surveillance-capitalism apparatus to herd players toward commercial locations — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1000
• DEFINE: Introduces kawaisa (cuteness) as a ‘millennial product’ — an economic-aesthetic category term worth keeping.

Broader Connections

• Pokémon Go functioned as a covert surveillance-capitalism apparatus to herd players toward commercial locations #complicates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1000
• Pokémon was engineered as a social medium rather than a passive commodity #expands (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 365