There is nothing grey about that. That is just some racists closing down an art show because the artist is the wrong color.
‘Cultural Appropriation’ is an excuse for censorship.
They would never do that!
Ang Lee’s 2005 film, Brokeback Mountain, won Oscars, and Lee himself said that he, as a Taiwanese person, was extremely distant (in terms of background) from the issue - “What do I know about gay cowboys in Wyoming?”
Ang Lee is obviously a victim of American Cultural Imperialism.
Yes, I am aware the example I gave is real.
I was intentionally choosing an example of non-western people misusing western religious symbols rather than the reverse in hopes that people would be more likely to “get it”.
But they aren’t “misusing” the ideas, they are repurposing them. They owe Christians exactly jack-shit “reverence” for Christian ideas (just as we owe the Halkomelems exactly jack-shit “reverence” for sasquaches.)
I was raised Catholic. My mother is a devout Catholic. I went to Catholic school, took my first communion, and received confirmation. I’m no longer a Catholic, but even if I were, the notion that the Japanese were “appropriating” Catholicism wouldn’t even occur to me. I may have possibly been slightly offended by the artists’ sexualisation of Catholic iconography, but I probably wouldn’t have been. Even if I had been, I think we can agree that sacrilege is different to cultural appropriation. Big hoop earrings and cornrows aren’t religious symbols. If a white person wears them, they’re not committing anything that anybody could possibly construe as blasphemy.
People who agitate about “Cultural appropriation” have far more terrestrial concerns. They’re saying, in effect, “That symbol/hairstyle/accessory belongs to me and mine and I get to tell everyone else the circumstances under which it can be depicted/worn/used.” Of course, they don’t delineate who “me and mine” actually are with any kind of precision. Nor do they ever take class into account. A white working class kid from Compton with dreads or cornrows is guilty of “cultural appropriation”. A black 1%er from Hartford, Connecticut with dreads or cornrows who went to private school and acts like Carlton Banks isn’t. And, of course, if people from what they perceive as “their” group disagree, they’re all too happy to simply dismiss them, sometimes even going so far as to call them “coons” and “Uncle Toms”. The internal logic of “cultural appropriation” is full of contradictions and falls apart when dispassionately analysed.
I, for one, have too much damn contact. You don’t think I spend my live only on here do you?
Memoirs of a Geisha was written by a white man, not a Japanese woman, but was lauded for its authentic voice.
I was raised a Catholic myself. And like you, I’m not personally offended by people by people dressing up like slutty nuns for a Halloween party. But that’s me. I can see how other people would be offended by it. And I can also see how people might get offended by seeing westerners using their religious iconography.
To give another example from Japan, there are Japanese young people who dress up in rockabilly style. But I don’t think anyone in America is going to complain that they’re disrespecting rockabilly. They’re using rockabilly is pretty much the same Americans used it; as a genre of pop culture.
If I’m understanding you correctly, I agree. Nobody has exclusive ownership of any cultural idea. You’re not stealing or disrespected anyone else’s culture just by using it.
Honestly I get very confused as to what is cultural appropriation and what aint. Is it the relative cultural power dynamic that is supposed to define it? The amount of respect shown? The accuracy?
For discussion let’s go outside of literature and into music.
18th century Eastern Europe Jewish musicians appropriated a variety of regional styles, modifying them and mixing them to create Klezmer music, and then in America various influences, like jazz, were harvested and put into it as well. “Cultural appropriation”? Why or why not?
Today a Black musician plays Klezmer doing some work from the '50s. Appropriation?
For that matter Benny Goodman playing jazz, which had emerged out of American Black culture … appropriation?
Were Mick Jagger and other early British and American rockers culturally appropriating Blues music?
Nun porn appealing to and created by White Catholics very common, clearly not appropriation even if very sacrilegious. If created by an Asian it’s appropriation? Or is it still just porn?
Are American Anglophiles appropriating? Only if they do it badly?
I completely get why disrespecting a cultural symbol, even out of simple ignorance and not malice, causes offense, and why that disrespect is of more meaning when coming from the powerful and privileged than from those whose culture is less traditionally in control of the narrative. And I am still confused.
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck? She won a Nobel Prize and a Pulitzer Prize.
I think the best rule is to try to understand somebody else’s culture rather than just imitating its surface appearances.
That’s a good rule for manners maybe but for deciding what’s “cultural appropriation”?
And what if, say Phyllis, is trying and thinks she understands, but completely misunderstands anyway? Like my example of American Anglophiles who in fact miss the mark?
I think cultural appropriation means something different to different people. Like, I don’t agree that cultural appropriation necessarily involves disrespect through mockery.
To me, cultural appropriation is an offense committed by a group more than it is a crime of an individual. It requires two actors: a party that exploits and another party that perpetuates the exploitation by consuming it. It involves any of the following acts: 1) the taking of cultural elements/artifacts from a subordinate group without fully acknowledging their origin, 2) acknowledging the cultural elements/artifacts originate from a subordinate group, while simultaneously messaging that the subordinate group is inferior, and/or 3) stigmatizing those cultural elements/artifacts when they are practiced by a subordinate group, while viewing them in a positive light when they are practiced by the dominant group. All of these offenses result in some degree of diminishment of the subordinate group relative to the dominant group.
Early white jazz musicians (like Nick LaRocca) committed the first two offenses by proclaiming themselves the innovators of jazz while denigrating black musicians. Their fans were more than eager to reward the appropriation given their own biases and prejudices. It was only when white jazz musicians like Benny Goodman stopped appropriating and started appreciating that black musicans began receiving their proper credit.
The third offense tends to be what raises hackles today. I admit that I feel a tiny bit of eye-roll come over me when I hear about white women expecting applause for braiding their hair. It’s apparent that many people think braided hair is a novelty–something you get done when you want to play with a new look while hanging out at the beach resort (or when you want to get likes on instagram). Meanwhile, black women with braids have to deal with the message that a hairstyle they’ve grown up with, one that enables the same versality that women with long straight hair take for granted, is “too ethnic” and thus incompatible with the workplace. White women with braids = daring trend-setters who should be applauded for defying social norms. Black women with braids = not trying hard enough to assimilate and fit in. Another example of this kind of appropriation is illustrated in Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use”. The narrator tells the story of how her daughter wants one of her handmade quilts so that she, the daughter, can put it on display like a museum piece. But it’s obvious she doesn’t really appreciate the handiwork or its intended purpose (to provide warmth). She just wants to use it as a conversational piece–an object she can use to reference her rural background but in a way that will impress her sophisticated, worldly friends. In her mind, using it for its intended purpose would mark her as a rube. Her mother decides not to cater to this self-centered whim and instead gives the quilt to her other daughter, who isn’t ashamed of where she comes from.
So yeah, cultural appropriation is a thing. I don’t think it’s as big a thing as it used to be, and it certainly doesn’t keep me up at night. But it’s a thing. Like, I think Miley Cyrus deserved the accusation she got a few years back when she did her (bizarre) rendition of twerking to the applause of her white fans, because it was clear to anyone with half a brain the girl was trying to exploit a stigmitized artform from a stigmitized subculture just to elevate her fading status. It would have been one thing if her dancing had been good and had at least seemed authentic. But it came across as a flash-in-the-pan ploy instead. However, I don’t think what she did was so egregious that she should have apologized. Miley is entitled as an artist to express herself any way she wants. Everyone knows attention-whoring is the name of the fame game nowadays. But I also don’t have a problem with people throwing invisible tomatoes when they suspect the game is being unfairly played on the back of another group. Sometimes the accusations are off-base IMHO, but I think it would be a mistake to dismiss all complaints.
You know what would be pretty cool?
Set up a prize “for best book by an author who writes about people who aren’t even remotely like her or him”, as in the OP.
Once the entries are in, choose for each work a judging panel consisting of people in the group being written about. Don’t tell them the identity or any details about the author.
Judging is based on two simple criteria. 1) How much did you enjoy the book. 2) How much does the writer “get” your people (however that’s defined).
Call it the “Writing the Other” prize. Or the “Cultural Understanding Prize”. Or, really, nearly anything except the “Cultural Appropriation Prize”. Because that name in itself is very divisive. It’s exactly the kind of name you’d choose if your main point is ‘it’s so unfair that my kind of people are being prevented from doing what they want, and I’m going to fight this trend’ rather than ‘I believe in social inclusivity and isn’t it great when people can come to understand and sympathise with people who aren’t like them.’
I don’t think that is a very good example. Pearl Buck was born, raised and lived in China for 40 years before writing The Good Earth. Frankly, she understood as much about the subject as pretty much any “real” Chinese capable of writing a novel at the time could have known (Literate Chinese would not have been the peasants depicted in the novel either.)