Quatsch-watch

Quick, what do the following cultural and pop culture phenomena have in common? LOLcats; Hello Kitty-themed products (and the Japanese kawaii aesthetic in general); the supposedly indie movies "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Juno"; and Dave Eggers's sprawling, unstoppable literary empire (McSweeney's, for short)?

According to an ambitious trend-spotting article -- by Sharon Steel, in the current issue of The Boston Phoenix -- titled "The cuteness surge" the answer to this riddle is: quatsch. "At their core," Steel claims, these phenomena are "pretty much the same thing: offbeat, but just so; eccentric, but not too; awkward, but self-aware; quirky, but formulaic in their quirkiness." The productions mentioned above -- plus rock writer Chuck Klosterman, FOUND Magazine, and indie filmmaker/artist Miranda July, for example -- combine elements of quirk, kitsch, cheese, camp, and cuteness. (Full disclosure: Steel quotes me on the subject of quirk.) Hence Steel's inspired neologism, quatsch.*

Quatsch is in the ascendant right now, according to Steel, because it provides "a short-term means of forgetting about the sickening post-post-modernist distress and socio-political angst currently plaguing us." Like all paradis artificiels, though, it's addictive. We've had our fun. Now it's time to go cold turkey.

* Quatsch is -- as far as I can tell -- German slang for "nonsense." Which works, too.