Obdicut posted:

How does that logic work to you? Why would people doing mutually bad things to each other just be 'stupid'? Try to actually make a coherent argument, right now your only argument is "This is dumb, I don't like it".


How is it a good way to figure out if something is insulting? How does this make sense to you? What about a minority of people who find it insulting--do they not really find it insulting if the majority does? I'm really interested in the logic of your ol' brain pan, it seems to have cool rules. You keep saying "Japanese people" as though they all think one thing, too, and you keep conflating Japanese and Japanese-American people.


Hahah nice one. I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to believe you actually feel this same, this is just too much a classic "No, you're the racist." US movies have a large problem of undercasting Asians. They cast white people for asian roles, they make very few asian roles, and so, asians are hugely underrepresented in our movies, and they are most especially underrepresented in leading roles. This is a real, actual thing that happens, it's not a feeling or an emotion. The reverse is not true: Asians do not frequently get cast to play white roles, and obviously, whites are overrepresented in hollywood movies. So it's not in the least, in any way, the slightest, to any degree, like saying that stormtroopers can't be black. It's noting that yet again, Hollywood decides to not take an absolutely perfect chance to cast lead Asian actors and instead casts white people for the leads, and the problem of asian under representation remains. The added insult here is that it's also taking a very real place with a very real health crisis in Japan and using it as a horror movie.

Edit: Also are you not from the US and you don't know what racial purity means or something?

7c Nickel posted:

Ok, let's try this. When Native American groups complain about people using their sacred vestments as a fashion statement, are they big privileged babies who don't know about real suffering and should just shut up?

Jarmak posted:

Oh no, I'm using that term quite intentionally and I'm not hinting at anything, your screeds about who the true owners of culture are and the need to keep the white man from defiling it are the inverse of 1930's era kkk nonsense.

quote:

This isn't affirmative action here, the idea that cultures need to be forcibly kept pure is racist drivel regardless of the direction in the power relationship it's going.

quote:

Also you just used the word authentic to describe cuisine, which is adorable.

Obdicut posted:

Hah no it's not, it's considered wildly biased by modern ethnographers, anthropologists, and sociologists and rife with methodological problems. Who told you it's still highly regarded? The same people who told you race was a real thing?

Jarmak posted:

Oh no, I'm using that term quite intentionally and I'm not hinting at anything, your screeds about who the true owners of culture are and the need to keep the white man from defiling it are the inverse of 1930's era kkk nonsense.

This isn't affirmative action here, the idea that cultures need to be forcibly kept pure is racist drivel regardless of the direction in the power relationship it's going.

Also you just used the word authentic to describe cuisine, which is adorable.

Paladinus posted:

The books is obviously not flawless and is somewhat outdated, but in my opinion, and I cursory googled if anything has changed in the past 10 years, you are underestimating the book's significance. There might be some scholars who are very vocal and harsh critics of Benedict, like Lummis, but they are not without they own critics (like Pauline Kent). I maintain that even in Japan Benedict's work is still highly regarded in general.
Nevertheless, if you feel like mass media just won't do to give even some basic perspective, feel free to link to a scientific article that explores this subject. Anything will do, really.

quote:

This is not to say that Chrysanthemum has no academic value, as Watsuji emotionally declared. But it was a project in applied anthropology that served the specific needs of the war and the aftermath of the war. Although the bulk of research Benedict used for her data had been collected during the war, she actually wrote the book after the war. Hence, there was a different ethos in the reception of the book as compared to the wartime enemy morals studies in which Benedict and many other anthropologists in the U.S. had participated. These included Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, who assisted the Office of War Information in trying to gain the upper hand in psychological warfare (see note 2). By the time Benedict published Chrysanthemum, the U. S. had dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Japan’s defeat was complete. Sympathy for Japan and Japanese culture was a real possibility.

Who What Now posted:

"Treating other cultures with a bare-minimum amount of respect" is now on the same level as lynching a black person. Got it.

Jarmak posted:

Disrespecting and trivializing people's religious beliefs is disrespectful.

Trivializing and commercializing cultural icons and concepts that are held solemn is disrespectful.

Trying to equate these things to a cafeteria worker over cooking your sushi rice or Hollywood casting a white samurai is also disrespectful to people with legitimate grievances.

I don't need this ridiculous framework to reach those conclusions.

rudatron posted:

No one's using it to delegitimize 'concerns of minorities as a whole', it's being used to critique the concept of cultural appropriation as useful and consistent. You don't get to just make poo poo up to put yourself on the moral high ground, buddy.

Effectronica posted:

Rudatron, being unable to comprehend a simple English sentence, as you have demonstrated with this post, means that you are too stupid, dishonest, or jackassy to have a conversation with.

rudatron posted:

I changed the response because he might be referring to people in general, but I've yet to see anyone itt use it in that way. Also:

If you're gong to be melodramatic about posting in a dead, gay comedy forum, you could at least be consistent about it.

rudatron posted:

No one's using it itt to delegitimize 'concerns of minorities as a whole', it's being used to critique the concept of cultural appropriation as useful and consistent.

Effectronica posted:

This isn't a conversation, it's me talking at you to relieve stress. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And, again, in this thread, you can't actually say that you're definitively sure nobody is using it for any purpose other than straight critique. I suspect many people are not using it for such, because they do not act in a way consistent with criticism.

rudatron posted:

CA not used as a morally-neutral category term, but as a kind of 'culture-crime'. If it in itself cannot be shown to actually be wrong, there's something wrong with that concept.

quote:

An example: If I invented the term 'stabby motions' to categorize both stabbing someone to death and fencing, used the obvious crime of stabbing to declare that 'stabby motions' was always bad and, therefore, so was fencing, would you accept that as valid? So, if something as pointless as food, or hair, or any of that other bullshit can be declared culturally appropriative, then you have to actually get into the thick of the utility of the term 'cultural appropriation'.

quote:

Racism, in contrast, is always bad. Why? Because that follows from the actual meaning of the category, you're dehumanizing people with magical thinking. Anything you can call racist (and I mean actually call racist, as in show why it matches the popular definition of the term) carries the same connotation. It is therefore a useful category when talking about human behaviors.

Obdicut posted:

Yeah that sure would be dumb. What if instead, you made a loving horrible analogy? What would happen then?

Obdicut posted:

There is no such thing as 'it in itself', it is about the relationship and transaction that occurs, there's no abstraction of it any more than there is an abstraction of racism beyond the ineffable.

rudatron posted:

Your challenge now, Obdicut, is to intellectually refute the analogy without violating this response of yours:

That is, pretend that this is my response to your claims that 'stabby motions' is stupid.

Obdicut posted:

Okay. Stabby motions is stupid because it lumps in positive things with negative things. Cultural appropriation only addresses negative things, even if some of those negatives are extremely trivial. Cultural appropriation is not cultural exchange or participation.

Jarmak posted:

Except no, that's the entire point, cultural appropriation is attempting to tie a bunch of positive and neutral poo poo to a handful of actually bad things. Like I don't know how I could be more clear, I'm not dismissing bad bahn mi as "trivial" I'm saying it's not problematic at all. The problematic part is some privileged gently caress who complains that the underfunded under trained cafeteria staff tried to be more culturally inclusive in their lovely mass produced food.

Obdicut posted:

Obdicut posted:

Why is that a useful thing to do? Is that useful for other terms, like 'racism', or is it possible that, since we don't have to only say the words 'cultural appropriation' and then run away, we can contextualize it so that even though the two words themselves encompass something with a broad area, any particular usage of it is specific. Similarly, when we say 'racism', we are allowed to say other words so we can specify if we mean an individually-trivial microaggression or the outright statement that a race is subhuman.

Why hold 'cultural appropriation' to a standard no other term is held to?

rudatron posted:

No one's using it itt to delegitimize 'concerns of minorities as a whole', it's being used to critique the concept of cultural appropriation as useful and consistent.

7c Nickel posted:

But the people bringing up poo poo like sushi rice as a legitimate issue are vastly vastly outnumbered by the ones using it to delegitimize the concerns of minorities as a whole.

Squalid posted:

In the case of the current discussion, you did a poor job of contextualizing your criticism of the film The Sea of Trees. This led to a long and pointless slap-fight about what evidence can be used to gage public opinion in Japan rather than a more meaningful discussion about the marginalization of Asian-Americans, which I think was your actual criticism. Once someone has missed your point it can be hard to get them back on track.

Cultural appropriation is vague enough a concept that it often seems to encompass many benign processes, with the only difference between it and harmless acculturation being how people feel about any particular issue. This makes discussing actual problematic instances difficult because it can be hard to explain what's wrong through the lens of cultural appropriation.

Also I'd like to point out that the marginalization of Asians in Hollywood isn't cultural appropriation. I'm not convinced that The Sea of Trees is a case of "the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of a different culture," or if it is, Asian protagonists wouldn't make it less appropriative.


TBH I'm getting a sense that some posters are. Maybe not intentionally but this thread has a noxious air.

edit: basically this:

rudatron posted:

Neon Genesis Evangelion?

Who What Now posted:

Even by the low standards of anime NGE sucks hard rear end.

rudatron posted:

Say that to my face bitchboy.

Jarmak posted:

I believe the legitimate concerns of minorities are trivialized by attempting to address them via a framework that lumps the native American genocide in with white girls wearing kimonos.

Effectronica posted:

Oh, hey, finally, something we can agree on.

NovemberMike posted:

This is interesting, because most people here seem to be using 'cultural appropriation' as a dog whistle for 'racial purity'.

I always understood cultural appropriation to refer to things like models wearing Native American headdresses as a fashion statement when the headdress is a symbol of authority and accomplishment in the native culture. It'd be similar to the Japanese deciding to print a bunch of Medal of Honors and wear them when they go drinking.

The cultural appropriation people are talking about here is much more restrictive and it's getting to the point where people are walking like racist shitheels and quacking like racist shitheels, so there might be something going on.

rudatron posted:

Say that to my face bitchboy.

Industrial Society and its Future posted:

Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists push for affirmative action, for moving black people into high-prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more money for such schools; the way of life of the black “underclass” they regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into the system, make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just like upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the last thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white man; instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a black-style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects more leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to make black fathers “responsible.” they want black gangs to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the industrial-technological system. The system couldn't care less what kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a “responsible” parent, is nonviolent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it, the oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the system and make him adopt its values.

Who What Now posted:

While I'm positive you could find a tumblr that claims this, this isn't something that any significant amount of people in the real world have ever said or actually believe. Stop bitching.

Who What Now posted:

Which is the view silence_kit seems to hold, and what I was trying to say is a stupid view to have.

silence_kit posted:

No way, it is totally built into the ideology. Their idea of racism is really a lot like the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. The idea does sound uglier and a little more controversial when it is put in plain words or made clear via analogy and not hidden behind obfuscating jargon.

If it is no big deal to declare something or someone as racist, why would social justice proponents go through the trouble of redefining the word racism to make their racially discriminatory ideologies by definition not racist? Obviously, the reason why they do that is because the accusation of something or someone being racist holds a lot of weight and they'd prefer that their ideas not be associated with that word. It's not a matter-of-fact thing to say.

silence_kit posted:

No way, it is totally built into the ideology. Their idea of racism is really a lot like the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. The idea does sound uglier and a little more controversial when it is put in plain words or made clear via analogy and not hidden behind obfuscating jargon.


If it is no big deal to declare something or someone as racist, why would social justice proponents go through the trouble of redefining the word racism to make their racially discriminatory ideologies by definition not racist? Obviously, the reason why they do that is because the accusation of something or someone being racist holds a lot of weight and they'd prefer that their ideas not be associated with that word. It's not a matter-of-fact thing to say.

Ytlaya posted:

It's the exact same litmus test that applies to things like racial slurs. If an action makes a non-insignificant number of people upset, you should stop doing that action. If you don't, you're an rear end in a top hat. No one is saying the government should step in and prevent cultural appropriation; just that if you do it and it upsets people from the culture in question, you're a bad person.

Luxury Communism posted:

And when the insignificant number invokes the meme of "cultural appropriation", how do you respond Ytlaya?

Effectronica posted:

I'd tell the rereg to go jump in a lake, personally.