Breaking News - Hello Kitty Is A Cat

 

Yesterday, I was stunned to read - in The Independent, no less - that “Hello Kitty is not a cat.” According to the article, which quotes as its source Sanrio director of retail business development Jill Koch, in an interview she gave on the Today Show, "She’s actually a little girl born and raised in the suburbs in London."

It seemed so unlikely I wasn't prepared to accept it just like that, even on the say-so of a respectable, old media source like a national print newspaper, where traditional, pre-internet journalistic standards might be presumed still to exist, so I engaged in a modicum of fact-checking. Something you might have thought whoever subbed the piece for the Indie might have thought to do before running it.

It's not as though it took me much time or effort, either. It took maybe thirty seconds to confirm that

a) It's not true.

and

b) It's not news.

The claim originally surfaced a decade ago in a 2014 Los Angeles Times article, ahead of the style icon's 40th Anniversary, when Christine R Yano, an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii and the author of  Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek across the Pacific, was interviewed in relation to a Hello Kitty exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum. 

Among other surprising facts, Yano revealed that Hello Kitty "is not a cat. She’s a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She’s never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature." She also explained that Sanrio, who presumably ought to know, had made all of this very clear to her in a response to the script she sent them for approval while preparing the show.

It seems the revelation didn't gain quite as much traction in the U.K. back then as it has now, on the occasion of Hello Kitty's fiftieth anniversary, when it suddenly resurfaced and became a news story across the British media. If you google it, you'll find numerous reports on all kinds of responsible outlets, from The Guardian to Sky News.

Once again, none of them seemed to think it worth checking with Sanrio for confirmation, possibly because this time the claims were, after all, being made by a senior representative of the company.Apparently no-one even bothered googling it.

Had they done so, they'd soon have discovered, as Kotaku did back in 2014, that the whole thing was nothing more than a combination of translation issues and cultural differences. The Kotaku piece goes into considerable detail about the nuances of language that apparently led to the confusion, all of which are very interesting but which I won't repeat here. 

The key facts were summarised neatly by The Week, where Catherine Garcia explains 

"Hello Kitty is just one in a long line of personified animal characters, including Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, and others. Although he may be able to drive cars, steer boats, and serve as a sorcerer's apprentice, Mickey's still a mouse, just like Hello Kitty — who bakes, goes to school, and is on the side of a 777 — is still a cat."

Why it ever needed anyone to spell this blindingly obvious fact out in simple terms is as much a mystery as how the story came to be resurrected (Hint: It's the fiftieth anniversary and hey, look! There's Hello Kitty in the news!) I'm actually more concerned by the apparent failure of almost all of the mainstream news sources to realise the "news" they were breaking was a decade out of date than I am to find they didn't bother to do due diligence on a silly-season story about a cartoon cat.

Anyway, in honor of the Great Event I'm pleased to present for you a choice selection from the many, many songs that have been written in Kitty White's honor over the last half century. That's Hello Kitty's real name, by the way. Did you not know?

Some of these may have appeared here before but they may also be the best ones so no apologies for bringing them back. And with that, let's have

Hello Kitty - Avril Lavigne

Avril's having something of a renaissance right now. She played Glastonbury for the first time and in what the NME described as "one of the weekend’s most highly-anticipated performances" she played a dozen of her best-known hits. This wasn't one of them.

Hello Kitty - Jazmin Bean

I'm pretty sure Kitty and her twin sister Mimmy would't be allowed to watch this. It'd either give them  nightmares or make them big-headed. Bigger-headed....

Hello Kitty - PiNKII 

Or this one, either, probably. For other reasons. Then again, PiNKII is PG compared to most of the rappers who've riffed off  HK. I had to stop clicking on those after about the fifth one I tried. Seriously, what is with rap and Hello Kitty?

HELLO KiTTY - OH!DULCEARi x LESTON

Spanish-language hyperpop is a sub-genre I am coming to adore. The glitching in this is superb. Two million views on YouTube says I'm not crazy, too.

🪲Hëłłœ Kįttÿ🐜 Alice Longyu Gao

Pretty much just Avril Lavigne for little Kitty White then, I guess. I mean, this one probably could do with a content warning. I guess they all could, although it's a bit late now...

Maybe we'd better finish with something wholesome.

Hello Kitty: Super Style! - Carly Rae Jepsen

Pity it's so short but then - SO IS HELLO KITTY!

Boom! Boom!

Okay, now that makes me wonder... is Basil Brush really a fox...? 

Hello Kitty would get that reference. She is British, after all.