Keane Kids and Kawaii Manga

The Power of Cute.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Walter Keane was famous for his paintings  of big-eyed, weeping children. The paintings look a good deal like manga  art to me.

© Margaret Keane

The Keane paintings became popular on the West Coast about the same  time shoujo manga was taking off in Japan. I’ve often wondered if Keane  Kids made their way across the Pacific and infected the shoujo manga  scene, or vice versa.

Many early shoujo manga didn’t have the big eyes we now think of as a  manga staple. The earliest magazines for young girls generally featured  heavily illustrated prose which showed a Western art influence, and had  photo covers.

Disney art was the biggest influence on the big-eyed manga look.  Osamu Tezuka, the God of Comics, acknowledged this. Later, Disney was  heavily “influenced” by Tezuka, most notably on the film The Lion King (but that’s another matter entirely.)

It’s probable that Western cartoon art influenced both manga and the  Keane look simultaneously, resulting in a kawaii (cute) look with  similar appeal for each culture.

Here’s an article from a book on the history of shoujo manga which  mentions the development of Tezuka’s art and the influence of Disney.  The top image is from an early anime, and the bottom from a Disney film.

© Tezuka Productions
@ Walt Disney Productions

After Tezuka’s Princess Knight, first published in the 1950’s, shoujo manga was dominated by the big-eye look. Princess Knight is considered by many to be the first true shoujo manga, and it  established the look and feel of girl’s comics for decades to come.

While I was not able to find any sources that directly linked Keane  to the development of manga, some contemporary artists, such as Reiko  Sakurai, openly embrace the  Keane appeal.

© Reiko Sakurai

This essay on Miyazaki’s Nausicaa touches on the Keane look, mentions that it is “analogous” to manga, but does not call it an influence.

While it is easy to understand why kawaii images are popular with  young children, the reason they are appealing to teens and adults is  puzzling to some. The rise of uber-cute is, possibly, a rebellion  against female empowerment, or even sexual development. Young teens  embody the safety of childhood and the power of adult sexuality  simultaneously.

Reassuring images of childlike females proliferate in manga, even when masquerading as a girl power construct.

The paradox of girl power is that girl power focuses on  empowering femininity, but restricts itself to patriarchal constructs of  what it means to be feminine. The primary restrictions of girl power in  patriarchy are the body type favored within the girl power construct,  the style of representation, including clothing styles that are  appropriate for girl power practitioners, and the constant stereotyping  of hyperfeminity and youth. Girl power suggests a means for personal  empowerment and independence to the practitioner, especially in terms of  personal pleasure. However, the nature of girl power prevents the  practitioner from fully developing an independent nature. The girl power  body itself is a site of negotiation between these contradictory  values.

From the essay "Young Females as Super Heroes: Superheroines in the Animated Sailor Moon" by Victoria Newsom.

Craig McCracken, creator of Powerpuff Girls, is said to have  been inspired by Keane kids when developing the look of the cartoon,  which also seems to owe a lot to anime/manga.

Power Puff Girls © Cartoon Network

When I was doing consulting work for Bandai, the marketing folks for Sailor Moon wondered why Cartoon Network execs told them that Sailor Moon could not be more popular. Bandai was informed the cute, cartoony,  big-eyed girl character designs were unattractive to Americans. I just  happened to have a copy of The Licensing Book (an industry magazine) with me at a business dinner, and on the back cover was a huge ad for Powerpuff Girls. The Bandai exec’s eyes got big too there for a minute.

It seemed obvious that a lousy time slot had a lot more to do with Sailor Moon ratings than big eyes.

Sailor Moon got the last laugh in the end, but whatever.

While big-eyed weeping children hardly seem a source for female  empowerment, the backstage saga of the Keane kids is a real life girl  power tale, though perhaps more in a second wave feminism sense, as  defined in the above article on Sailor Moon.

The famous divorce trial of Walter Keane and his wife revealed that the true artist behind the sad-eyed tots was actually Margaret Keane, who sued her husband for credit for her works.

At the trial, Margaret challenged her husband to sit in court and  paint. He showed up with his arm in a sling, claiming he had a hurt  shoulder and was unable to create. Margaret sat down and painted a Keane  original before the judge and jury, which awarded her all rights to her work.

“It had been going on for two years by the time I found out  he was telling people he was the artist. And by then, it was hard to  change everything. Plus he said he’d learn to paint if I’d teach him,  and I wanted to believe him.”

Back in the day, it was not uncommon for women creators to take male  names or hide behind a male partner who took all credit. Mr. Keane was,  by many accounts, a huckster who then battled Margaret Keane in court  for a decade in an effort to seal the steal on her work.

Perhaps marriage to this man was the inspiration for the miserable  kids in those paintings. After the divorce, many of the Keane kids wept  no more. Her later works depict big-eyed, softly smiling faces. Here, a  Keane kid looks happy to be dressed in a kimono.

© Margaret Keane

Walter Keane, who, apparently, had no discernable talent, had to ride  his wife’s coattails in order to achieve the recognition he could not  earn for himself. Keane took credit for the work, in part, because he  believed that it was his salesmanship which made the paintings popular.  Be that as it may, he still didn’t paint them, and Margaret Keane continued to enjoy success decades after she dumped her husband.

I recall someone of this ilk saying, “If you want to get revenge on  someone, steal their idea and exploit the crap out of it.” Perhaps  resentment and envy toward his wife were as powerful as greed in Walter  Keane’s case.

Walter Keane’s son (by another wife), photographer Sascha Keane,  was, until recently, posting articles to his website giving his father  full credit for the Keane paintings with barely a mention of Margaret  Keane. However, Sascha Keane’s website is now down.

The Life magazine article linked there has a particularly galling quote:

Margaret, it is true, paints eyes a little like those for  which her husband is famous. But hers are not so big and belong as  unvaryingly to nubile girls as his belong to what appear to be war  waifs.

You know, if the little woman paints it, it’s just not quite as good.

Interesting that so many female creators of my acquaintance (and,  well, me) have similar problems with men imposing themselves on their  work.  Even J.K. Rowling’s ex-husband tried to claim he was central to  the creation of Harry Potter, and had personally edited the manuscript. In fact, they were married for less than two years, and during that time she had yet to create Harry Potter.

This creativity assimilation happens to men too, but the social  dynamics of the experience differ, one assumes. How many works of art  throughout history were the works of women whose accomplishments were  usurped entirely by men in times when divorce and redress in court were  not available to these women?

The issue is not whether one likes the work of Margaret Keane: the issue is that the work is hers, and her own husband tried to steal all the credit for it.

This article was originally written in 2009, rescued and updated from my old blog.