Is cute the new cool?

The conversation started like this. An old friend, a thespian (who shall not be named, considering the propensity for name calling and flaming amongst some segments of our society), was in the shop the other day, and we started bellyaching, as it seems the norm these days, about the ‘Malaysian condition’. He mentioned a friend, also a Malaysian (but shall remain nameless), just back from Australia, who asked him to tell her just one thing Malaysians are good at. Though cornered into a position of indignant ire, all he could do was bluster, but he refused to concede defeat. So, the question remains: what is the one thing Malaysians are good at?

When one is confronted with a question like this, one normally assumes he means: “Tell me one thing Malaysians are ‘world class’ at.” At which juncture, one would be tempted to be flippant and say, “Video piracy, fake ‘Lolek’ watches, football fixing, money laundering, and ‘How about that guy who was arrested in America recently with 400,000 credit card details in his laptop?’”

Seriously.

His was a familiar lament: “The theatre is gone. Nobody wants to work hard. Maybe there is no talent anymore.” That isn’t logical, of course. How can talent simply disappear? Is there such a thing as an entire talentless generation? I, certainly, cannot buy that; I work with so a many young people, though I do remember a time when Malaysia had world class sportsmen, world class universities, world class research institutions, and doctors and engineers and lawyers and ... Maybe we still have them, maybe we are only having one of those ‘good old days’ nostalgia trips, to feed our illusion, our maya.

The discussion was going nowhere, so I decided to divert it. “But, what I really cannot understand is this epidemic of cuteness that’s going around. You should read some of the stuff I get. They can’t write, but they want to be cute.”

“So, that’s it then. If you have no talent, be cute,” he said.

We were both being unfair, of course. I do get good manuscripts sometimes, it’s just that the bad ones outnumber them, and can be seriously bad and painful. “It is about the content, darling, not how cute you are,” one is tempted to say, but never does. One only suffers in silence. (I have a hypothesis about this, from my experience: the more cocky and pushy the writer, the less talented he or she is. The quiet shy ones, the painfully self-effacing ones, often surprise.)

Still, I find this cuteness thing a little bizarre. I was at a wedding dinner at a hotel in Subang Jaya recently. You know how they used to have this cheesy “Eye of the Tiger” routine, with burning torches and all, to introduce the first dish? Anyway, the lights went out, the music (not the one mentioned above) started. I waited for the torches to appear with our dinner. But, nothing. The music went on and on, still nothing  happened as far as I could see. Then I noticed that most eyes were on the stage behind me. I turned around, and almost burst out laughing. On stage, two painted cardboard swans were ‘dancing’ slowly towards one another, finally ‘kissing’, sending out a shower of red ‘hearts’. It was so corny, but I am sure many of the rest thought it was cute.

I must be getting old. Wherever I go these days, I seem to be surrounded by cuteness. Hideous fibre-glass pitcher plants, steel hibiscus lampposts, plastic Christmas trees with cotton wool snow … Ever been to a PTA concert where everyone goes, “Oh they are so cute,” and you are thinking, ‘But they are so talentless’? They are, of course, using the word in its original meaning: cuddly, harmless and sexless -- like babies, puppies and kittens. Referring to grandpas, grandmas, uncles, aunties and other grownups as cute probably suggests the same thing -- sexless and harmless with a certain weirdness or eccentricity.  I am not used to it but, I guess, it’s the fashion. (Remember when we used to say ‘groovy’ for everything -- ughhh!) But when someone says a guy is ‘so cute’ or refers to a girl as a ‘cute chick’, I feel like, “It is so weird, man!”

Then, there is this Facebook thing, with 500 million people out there trying to ‘out-cute’ one another. Now, that is scary, enough cuteness there to start a pandemic of diabetes, or nausea, or both.

Maybe, thinking of the ‘groovy’ old days is not so bad. It is only nostalgia -- useless, lame, embarrassing, but harmless.

It is that time of the year (and decade) again. So, Happy Holidays. (Avoid the malls if canned holiday jingles drive you crazy.)