It’s hard to imagine a company of black performers playing slaves engendering less ire than the production being discussed. The exception would be an African-American troupe reclaiming their history, sort of like the Carolina Chocolate Drops. (As a white person, it took me a long time to say their name without wincing.)
Absent further evidence, I’d assume there was some artistic intent in the choice of white performers.
This is most obviously true of the converse mentioned above, Hamilton. Everything about the show - casting, mixing of musical genres, choreography - was intended to turn our idea of American history on its head. In particular, the show plays heavily on the role of the immigrant in shaping America from the beginning and making history accessible to minorities. In short, you can’t culturally appropriate the dominant culture that surrounds all of us.
I think we can stipulate that “Jews playing Nazis” is as insulting to Nazis as “white people playing slaves” is to Black people. But who cares if Nazis are insulted? They’re Nazis. Fuck ‘em.
I’d say tasteless.
Stupid, too, considering how certain people can get mortally offended by perceived slights.
Mr. CK taught Elementary music in a public school district with 98% African American population. He wanted to teach Jazz during “Black History Month,” but his students objected. They didn’t want to hear any of that “White Music.” :smack:
If a people group does not teach their culture to their own children, can they complain about cultural appropriation when others try? :dubious:
Why? White people were slaves. So were Jewish people. Jewish people even had Jewish slaves. Do people really not know how commonplace slavery used to be?
The spirituals are inextricably connected with Black slavery in the American South. The fact that there were other slaves, in different places and times, is meaningless.
No, the spirituals explicitly invoke the Passover stories. “Go down Moses, go down in Egypt’s land, let my people go”. That’s an appropriation from the Hagudah. Not that I object, just pointing it out.
I disagree, Hari: derived, not appropriated. The songs are called “Black Spirituals” for a reason, and in the words of my former pastor “we’re just a big heretic branch of Judaism”. If we’re going to refer to any cultural trait which derives from one in a previous culture as appropriation, then we’re all appropriating Arabic, Latin, German, Hebrew… pretty much daily. Derivation and appropriation are two very different actions, similar to the difference between getting a son and getting a son-in-law.
Don’t forget, there’s some ugly history of white people playing black people on stage and singing songs while costumed as black people, in minstrel shows. That makes white actors playing black characters more potentially problematic than (say) having a black actor play a Hispanic character, right off the bat.
Actually, it’s not. It is from the Passover story, but not from the Haggadah that is read at Passover Seder. There is not much mention of Moses in the Haggadah, at least not in the traditional one. Some modern Haggadot do have more of a retelling of the story of the Exodus than the traditional one. I created our own Haggadah, and I appropriated “Go Down, Moses” into it, because it seemed thematically appropriate and I wanted to give people who aren’t comfortable singing in Hebrew a chance to sing during the Seder.
The explanation we always got at my grade school, which was named after Martin Luther King, Jr., was that spirituals were encoded references to escaping to the North and that any reference to crossing the River Jordan, etc. should be understood that way.
“Cultural appropriation” seems like such a bullshit term to begin with. You can’t use the appearance or mannerisms of another culture? You have to be German to wear lederhosen or Mexican to wear a sombrero?
Everyone is supposed to respect everyone’s culture, but never imitate it?
Cultural appropriation as an academic concept to be studied is fine. Where the wheels come off that particular bus is when dumb-asses start accusing each other of it for stupid things like being white and having dreadlocks. Or being a chef and cooking some other cuisine than your own, although apparently only when that cuisine is from a non-white culture. It’s apparently not cultural appropriation for me, as a white American with little to no Mediterranean heritage to cook Greek food, but I can be accused of cultural appropriation if I cook Mexican food or “soul” food. Which is pretty rich, because culturally as a Southerner and a Texan, I have a lot more cultural affinity for the latter two than the first. But the first is “white people food”, and the other two are not.
My personal opinion is that cultural appropriation accusations are valid in a narrow set of circumstances, which are if they’re not putting in a reasonable effort to be authentic, and if they’re either trying to make a buck at it, or being generally offensive about it. And the latter one is pretty subjective and should be subject to common sense.
It gets blurry when you get immigrant versions of something that are descendants, but not “authentic”, but are still called by the same name. For example, NY pizza isn’t “authentic” Italian pizza as served in Naples, but it’s definitely authentic Italian immigrant pizza. Same thing for a lot of Tex-Mex dishes- they’re not “Mexican” as such, but they’re definitely border fusion dishes and as authentic in that light as anything out there.
Some months ago, there was a Facebook beef about cultural appropriation as it related to whites wearing braids. I responded that I wished for just one modest dollar for every Black woman walking around with straight hair and/or western styled hair. I also pointed out that, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” It means that you have an attribute that I find so admirable that I want to adopt it myself. That’s an insult?
Exactly, I think it’s more like Cultural Appreciation, and to me it’s a closed-minded attitude to say your “culture” owns something and no one else can have it.
As long as whatever’s being taken isn’t legitimately “sacred”, and no intent to belittle, I see no problem with incorporating it.
I thought the girl getting blasted over wearing a qipao (NOT by Chinese in China) was totally uncalled for and want to smack anybody behind that. Yes, it’s of Chinese origin. No, it is no more sacred than a pair of blue jeans.
They were singing a specific set of “spirituals” that were associated with a specific group of slaves. Not white or Jewish slaves or slaves from 1200 years ago.
And I’m still not seeing the problem. We don’t have any problems with gentiles - of any colour - singing the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves in Nabucco, for example. We don’t have problems with black people singing Auld Lang Syne. And so on. Cultural Appropriation as a complaint is stupid, racist, and rubbish.
The problems come when you imitate it in a disrespectful way. This would be stuff like using things that are sacred in their culture for secular purposes, or Halloween costumes that use ethnic stereotypes to make fun of an ethnic group.
You could produce an old-time minstrel show that included African-American spirituals as well as unflattering stereotypes of black people. That wouldn’t be respectful, obviously.
It’s also a problem when you use the appearance, mannerisms, or food of another culture, but actual members of that culture are not welcome to participate. That’s adding insult to injury. It gets tricky because there are subtle ways of excluding people of other racial or cultural backgrounds from various activities or groups. You might not have an explicit “no blacks allowed” rule in your theatre troupe, but if everybody in it is white you might have to put forth some extra effort to make sure people of other races feel welcome. Unconscious bias is also a thing in interviews or auditions.