I have an unhealthy preoccupation

with my iGoogle theme. (It’s “tea house,” and it’s adorable.) It makes me think about affect and what the hidden affective dimensions of kawaii are — something the Wired blog entry above touches on.

Grant McCracken has done some very good scholarship associating affect and branding with imagined or projected or self-defined identities, and I buy most of it, but I don’t think I love iGoogle for that. I think it’s simpler … kawaii, particularly as wikipedia takes it, is coupled with harmony (wa). I think that’s very true, or at least really resonant to me.

Mike and I spent a couple of weeks looking at Knut at the end of each day, and we have more than a few friends who admit to having a Cute Overload nightcap before they go to bed at night. This is something we turn to for comfort.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s a placeholder for the comfort our folks would have gotten at church or synagogue.  The placeholder for transcendence.  The place we go when what we live is tough or disharmonious, and when our cultural apparatus for dealing with that is compromised.