Is Donald Trump cute?
If you use a postmodern definition, Donald Trump has a "nice touch" about it.
A review of The Power of Cute by Simon May, Princeton University Press. 238 pp. $ 18.95.
These days, cute people, animals and things are omnipresent. Think Mickey, the Pokémon monster, E. T., Cabbage Patch Kids, the panda boys, Jeff Koons' balloon dog, and emojis.
In The Power of Sweet Simon May, visiting professor of Philosophy at King's College London and the author of Love: A New Understanding of an Old Emotion, he explains the phenomenon's rise in the postmodern world and pinpoints its salient features. While not entirely convincing, his analysis contains allegations that Donald Trump is fantastic, insightful and provocative.
Cute objects, May argues, are not just childish and childish distractions, sweet sources of safe and reliable sociability and intimacy or projections of innocence. Marked by alienation, apprehension, artistic skill and absurdity, wise but ignorant, innocent, cunning, skilled and nervous, they are instead "joking expressions" of impermanence, insecurity and the absence of lasting meaning "in the heart of man's existence". And they reflect Distrust in sincerity and authenticity ;; a visualization of and flirting with vulnerabilities; Liberation from "clear identities" from Gender, Age, Ethnicity and "the paradigm of power".
He may think "in the spirit of our time" is cute. After World War II, he claims, citizens of Western Europe, the United States, and especially Japan were seized with a desire for innocence, meekness, courtesy and innocence stemming from an aversion to violence and cruel collaboration. The "cult of the sweet" expressed this research. However, May says that a keen awareness of the dark side of human behavior contributes to its "challenging, resilient, and carefree characteristics.
Could be. But in my opinion, the postwar generation, with the exception of a few intellectuals and artists, did not accept the vagueness of human existence. Furthermore, support for the Cold War testifies to the limits of the desire for innocence, courtesy and cooperation, as well as an exit from the paradigm of power. May admits that Japan "makes you sweet", but Germany "regrets". He links Japan's "protean dessert culture" with its long span of history. He notes that "the deep intimacy in Japan - whether parents, brothers and sisters, romantic or marital - seems remarkably lacking in the rituals and symbols of dessert."
More convincing, it seems to me, is May's point of view on dessert than "a party of". childhood in all its complexity and the newly discovered equality between status and adulthood. “Accompanied by a meaning, captured by the metaphor of 'original sin' (incorporated into films such as The Bad Seed) and affirmed by the postmodern postulate that uncertainty and relativism are inherent in a universe previously considered an impeccable law. "
May also invites us to play a board game. Most of us will agree on which personalities are cute and which aren't. Cute bosses won't necessarily be innocent, submissive, or moral by nature. You can be strong and vulnerable at the same time; confident and naive; menacing and kind; beautiful and cruel. For Mai, Lady Gaga isn't pretty, but Shirley Temple was; Winston Churchill was nice, Theresa May was not; Hillary Clinton isn't pretty, but Donald Trump has "a touch" of her.
Americans under Trump's spell, writes May, seek and do not need to know whether he believes his truths or his lies. Trump is an established performance artist with an extraordinary lineage that includes Phineas T. Barnum. He embodies an alienated world threatened by futility and promises relief. He “evokes the mysterious and the comforting, the malevolent and the benevolent, the destructive and the creative ... the promise of chaos and the promise of order; and these "inconsistencies" grow stronger because they are not resolved. Trump has won - and wins - "out of the realm of sincerity" that none of his rivals "could or dare to do".
Many Trump supporters, of course, believe in absolute truths: abortion is murder, Islam is evil, and immigrants pouring across our southern border pose an existential threat to the United States. Even so, it seems to me that Simon May is Trump's key elaborate formula: evoke the fragmentation of the modern world, let alienated American voters experience chaos and threat from afar, and promise a new and old order that "will make great again. America ".
