Hello Kitty Secret House 2006
How the Visitor Becomes an Interpassive Subject
An exhibition by Sanrio Company Ltd., called the Hello Kitty Secret House, was staged in Hong Kong in the summer of 2006. The exhibition was reported to be a huge success, yet the responses of Kitty fans to the exhibition were indeed mixed. While most of them admired the interactive designs in the house, a lot of people were not happy because photo-shooting was banned (which is the rule for most museums), the place was too small and stuffy, and one could not help but feel as if s/he was hurried along a miniature doll house with an endless stream of visitors. Not a few voices commented that there was nothing genuinely new about the things at the exhibition, and when they reminisced the experience, they felt that it was not really worth the money at all.
The Interpassive Subject
The consumption of Hello Kitty can be viewed in a negative, restrictive way, which hinges precisely on the interactive properties of the media. Though it is commonplace to emphasize how, with the new electronic media, the consumer increasingly interacts with the text in a virtual community, according to Zizek (2002), the other side of this interactivity is “interpassivity”, and he defines the interpassive subject as one whose act of cognition or perception is replaced, usurped or anticipated by the thing meant to provoke the reaction. His examples include how Western Leftist intellectuals have acted out their ideological fantasies, such as being “multi-ethnic”, through engaging their research with Bosnians, but continuing to lead their undisturbed upper-middle-class academic existence. More mundane examples include canned laughter as a signpost for humour, which simultaneously prompts one to laugh while laughing in one’s place.
How could the visitor to the Hello Kitty Secret House become passive, if such a visit genuinely took place? Though the museum contained several immobile human-size dolls of Hello Kitty and her family members, much of its attraction came from the interactive media designs inside it, and the mobile Hello Kitty always appeared in the form of virtual screen images. Indeed, before visitors entered the house, they were offered a very interesting experience of walking along the “Apple River,” which was one of the most intriguing interactive designs of the whole exhibition: as their feet touched the apples, the sank into the river and ripples would appear. The interactive designs that supposedly demanded the most participation from visitors included the garden, where visitors could ride on the bicycle and raced with Kitty, which appeared on the screen; and the bedroom, where visitors were expected to tell bedtime stories to Kitty, in order to settle her to sleep.
The interactive media, nonetheless, were not as “interactive” as they seemed to be. The apples in the river invited and anticipated the same action from the visitors – which was stepping on them – though most seemed to appreciate its ingenuity. A lot of visitors found the bedroom design particularly artificial, however, as Kitty was found to “fall sleep” as long as the voice of the storyteller was loud enough to be received by the programme, but regardless of the level of enthusiasm exhibited, let alone that the whole thing did not involve any difficulty at all. One commentator on the online forum actually recalled how childish and embarrassing it was for her to take up the role of the storyteller, and so she would only watch other people do so, and derived some sense of vicarious satisfaction in being a bystander, because she was expected to feel satisfied anyway.
Purchasing Souvenirs: More Interpassivity
The interpassivity induced by the design of the museum further triggered a series of interpassive participation from some visitors, who bought the souvenirs offered at and after the exhibition. The mentality is not difficult to fathom: something ought to be done so as not to let go of the experience, which was not satisfying, and purchasing the souvenirs, which bore the logo of the Secret House, would be a convenient way to achieve this. The purchase of souvenirs just for the sake of doing so is comparable to Zizek’s picture of people using the VCR to tape films without ever watching them (2002): while these people derive huge satisfaction with the knowledge that they have a huge collection of taped films, the Kitty fans were at least happy after they had bought the souvenirs of the exhibition – not so much with the souvenirs themselves, as with their ownership of them. Whether they actually use them in future in another issue altogether.
Souvenirs ....
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