“Undoubtedly, Hello Kitty—as product, as logo, as design—is artistic expression.” Christine Yano makes that assertion in Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific, her new anthropological study of all things Hello Kitty, but it seems open to question. It’s true that Hello Kitty—the mouthless Japanese icon of kawaii (“cute,” more or less)—is an image, an artistic creation. But she’s not a product of cartoons or comic books, like Mickey Mouse or Snoopy. She’s a brand of the Japanese company Sanrio, which created and distributes her. There’s no original art, only images on products—all of which Yano’s book giddily revels in. Hello Kitty lunchboxes, Hello Kitty key chains, Hello Kitty furniture, Hello Kitty dolls, Hello Kitty Barbie, the Hello Kitty Lady Gaga photo shoot, Hello Kitty bedsheets, Hello Kitty condoms, and the infamous Hello Kitty massage wand, aka the Hello Kitty vibrator—to call Kitty art is like calling the Nike swoosh or the Michelin Man art. It effectively erases the line between capitalism and . . . well, between capitalism and anything else.
Another way to think about Hello Kitty as both product and art is through subversion. Kitty may be a product, but she is a knowing product who can wink at herself; indeed, Yano notes, Sanrio has marketed a winking Kitty. Along the same lines, 90s Riot Grrrl appropriated Hello Kitty as a punk icon—then Sanrio began marketing Hello Kitty with piercings, appropriating the appropriators. Even anti-Kitty websites, Yano writes, can end up promoting the icon as icon. So can fine artists who appropriate Kitty for their work, with or without Sanrio sanction. Art and product can be reconciled in part because it’s possible for Hello Kitty as art to critique Hello Kitty as product.
By Christine Yano (Duke University Press)
