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The imitation, appropriation, mixing, melding, borrowing, and whatever else that takes place is just the ordinary means of the development and enrichment of human culture and has been since the dawn of time. If western women get to wear saris and indian women get to wear pant suits, all the better for both, since both get more. There is no "this is ours and you can't use or imitate it."
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Mar 25, 2015 16:22
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Space Gopher posted:Sure there is. Go ahead and try to put your own spin on Star Wars, Mickey Mouse, or the Coca-Cola logo out there, for your own profit. See how far you get before the lawyers slap you down. Not a very good comparison is it? A sari isn't anyones intellectual property. Not all reducognizable images are somone's property. Different groups make different contributions to human culture. We celebrate diversity by actively melding it all together. One of the reasons american culture is so strong is because it has an almost limitlessly diverse base. We're exceptionally promiscuous in our borrowing and imitation, and as in so ma y other contexts, diversity is strength and resilience. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Mar 25, 2015 |
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Mar 25, 2015 17:00
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JeffersonClay posted:What's worse, appropriating an oppressed person's culture so that others outside that culture mis perceive it, or convincing an oppressed person that their culture is toxic and should be radically changed? Yup, nothing has ever been so murderous and abominable as the communist campaign against human culture. Real people died, in numbers never before seen and, one can hope, never to be seen again. I know from our privileged and comfortable lives it can seem abstract, but it was your friends and loved ones, your mothers and your children that communism killed. There isn't any difference, all men are brothers. That's why this hand wringing about so called "cultural appropriation" is so obscene. There is one culture, and it is human culture. If some individuals don't know enough to understand and accept that, we should pity them, but never take them seriously. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.
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Mar 25, 2015 19:29
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blowfish posted:I am surprised nobody has mentioned Apache helicopters are cultural appropriation If anything American Indians should be proud that we honor their fierce proud braves with our badass helicopters. The name "Apache" lives on and inspires fear in bad guys. Sort of an aside - Does anyone else notice how the imagery of a ninja replaced the imagery of an Indian brave as being stealthy and skillful? A while ago I overheard an older gentleman saying someone had snuck up on him "like an Indian." I remember as a kid that Indians' leather moccasins were meant to make them able to be silent and stealthy. But, at some point, ninjas seemed to replace Indians in the popular imagination. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Mar 27, 2015 |
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Mar 27, 2015 02:49
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When I was in high school my best friend's dad worked for Boeing there. This was during the Iraq invasion and stuff and I used to joke with him about how his new car ran on dead Iraqi kids blood oil money.
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Mar 28, 2015 17:50
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tsa posted:How on earth is this thread 17 pages and just didn't end with this post. Although I suppose this topic is like the epitome of pointless 'progressive' hand wringing so it makes sense. Fspades is not wrong. Piss in one hand, whine about cultural appropriation in the other. See which one ever makes any difference
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Mar 28, 2015 19:45
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Can we apply a "reasonable person" standard? Like, say, while a reasonable person might be offended if sacrilegious use of some important symbol were made, no reasonable person would be offended by a black or white girl wearing a kimono or doing geisha makeup because she thought it was pretty, or somone getting a chinese character tattoo because he thought it looked cool, or was fascinated by the idea that in chinese, a beautiful symbol can stand for a word or idea? If this kimono and tattoo thing is the crux of "cultural appropriation," then I'm afraid it's a dog that don't hunt, and that surely in this wide world we can all find something a little bit more actually important and worthy of our human dignity to think about.
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Mar 29, 2015 15:41
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Let us English posted:If you're going to buy into some dehumanizing set of ideas that views "minorities" as monolithic entities that speak in one voice instead of human beings with a variety of experiences and viewpoints that change depending on context, then yes, your views on this thread are correct. Do you live in China? During the years I lived in China I was a minority. Sometimes it was tough because I would see people wearing trousers and button up shirts and the kind of shoes that are of a style created and valued by my people. I would even see women carrying around purses and handbags. I even saw many men with purses.men aren't meant to carry purses, that's a big deal in my culture. These chinese men were appropriating part of traditional western female culture and they didn't even care. They'd probably never ever stopped to think about it. My mother has a purse. My father and I bought it for her one year for Christmas. They don't even celebrate Christmas in China. Don't even get me started. Sure, they decorate things for it, but they don't understand its significance. They don't understand my fond memories of the smell of Christmas trees and the thrill of opening presents or driving around looking at Christmas lights. Here I was stuck in China for Christmas, and they were mocking my culture and my feelings for home and they didn't even know it or care. I am a victim of cultural appropriation 
hakimashou fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 15:43
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Squinty posted:FWIW, none of any the Asian Americans I've ever known, myself included, thinks white people getting Chinese or Japanese tattoos is offensive. Funny and maybe a little pathetic, but not really offensive. But Asian Americans all over the internet seem to think it's a big deal so maybe I'm out of touch. Just remember the Internet is for people who don't count because they can't hack it in real life, and it will all start to make perfect sense. Just remember that real life and the Internet are seperate, and it's all so clear.
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Mar 29, 2015 19:56
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SedanChair posted:Talking about supposed "appropriation" of European cultures is irrelevant because they are the ones doing the appropriating, ravenously, for all of history, unless we are talking about the Basques or something. Is that really a bad thing though? Would the world be better off if the west hadn't appropriated tea and chocolate and tobacco and all the rest? Borrowing and imitating and sharing enriches human culture.
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Mar 30, 2015 14:08
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Let us English posted:I'm pretty sure he was trolling and or joking. If not he's woefully ignorant of history. Though I'm sure someone in this thread will be along to tell us why Chinese and Korean appropriation chili pepper is a great insult to somebody. We should start a blog about cultural appropriation in China. I bet these people don't know that the Chinese appropriated the term hamburger to refer to chicken sandwiches.
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Mar 30, 2015 14:29
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on the left posted:See http://www.reddit.com/r/caucasianchinese for true stories of microaggressions faced by Caucasian-Chinese people in China (the reddit was made to troll the Asian American subreddits) I knew a Canadian born chinese girl in China who didn't let the locals know she could speak Chinese.
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Mar 30, 2015 15:04
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How does Bjork fit into the spectrum of perspectives on cultural assimilation?
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Apr 1, 2015 04:34
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Exclamation Marx posted:I wasn't being entirely serious, but "permission" in this case is getting a Maori tattooist to do it. Ngati Toa is a tribe or some kind of organization though isn't it? And the legal ownership of the specific Ka Mate haka doesn't cover "hakas in general" does it? Plus isn't the ownership of it more symbolic than anything else? The wikipedia article says they can't collect royalties on it or make injunctions against its use. That seems to indicate they don't actually have intellectual property rights to it. Even if they did have all those rights with respect to it though, it still wouldn't be a good analogy to tribal tattoos, since the Ka Mate Haka is a specific composition, not a genre. After all this it's still unclear to me how 'a culture' can have an intellectual property interest in some broad practice or some aesthetic.
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Apr 1, 2015 04:45
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Let us English posted:All those atrocities happened, but you weren't talking about western atrocities you were talking about colonialism specifically. None of these are colonialism, a word that has a very specific meaning and historical context, it doesn't just mean bad things the west has done. Yup, it's like we double victimized japan, first by giving them the weapons, tactics, and Imperialist ideas which inexorably forced them to be belligerent in ww2, but then we punished them for it! Those awful us! Question for the group: where do moccassins fall on the spectrum of cultural appropriation. Surely they don't have the objectionable impact of feather headdresses but still, should non-Indians wear them?
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Apr 2, 2015 03:02
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Miltank posted:It exists, it just doesn't matter. Precisely
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Apr 7, 2015 14:44
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So, if Zhang Fuchuan goes to Milwaukee and opens a Chinese restaurant with authentic food from his native Sichuan province, but Francis Hartman opens an American style Chinese restaurant that has food people in Milwaukee like better, perhaps because they don't care for Sichuan mala cuisine, he has committed cultural appropriation against mr Zhang? And if instead he had opened a restaurant that served, say hamburgers, and the popularity of his hamburgers had been such that enough people picked hamburgers over sichuanese food that mr Zhang had to shut down, he wouldn't? And we would be asked to believe that cultural appropriation matters?
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Apr 7, 2015 14:58
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Another question: why is focusing on cultural authenticity not simply seen as a form of fetishization and exoticising? For example, when I think of "authentic Chinese food," something I sometimes pine for, I don't mean food that is somehow "authentically exotic," I think of food I enjoyed eating in China, which is authentically delicious and also hard to find here in the US. While authentic Chinese food may give me a sense of nostalgia for China because of all the time I spent there, it's also something I enjoy eating. If a white guy opened a restaurant here that served authentic Chinese food of the kind I like, it wouldn't matter to me at all that he wasn't chinese. I don't fetishize or exoticize authenticity in a way that is related to people or culture. I think that someone who was critical of the white guy's authentic Chinese restaurant because he himself wasn't authentically Chinese is someone who exoticizes and fetishizes people and culture, and that the whole concept of "authenticity" when applied that way is simply another way of describing exoticism and fetishism. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 15:47
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Talmonis posted:Somehow I don't think food counts. For example, I cook a delicious approximation of Bulgogi beef, after having it at a glorious Korean barbecue place and instantly falling in love. I'd be more than happy to swap my personal burger recipe with some Korean folks for a better one, but I doubt anyone actually gives a poo poo enough to be mad or upset about it. Maybe if I started claiming that my "artisan"-made Kim-chee was better than the traditional kind, or as an original product (do not steal!) someone might give more than an eye roll. This is just writing "I like food, so we aren't going to count food" using different words.
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Apr 7, 2015 19:06
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Zeitgueist posted:
What does inauthentically mean? Did you forget to type the word "exotic" in "inauthentically exotic?" Or did you deliberately leave it out?
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Apr 7, 2015 19:52
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Why isn't the term "authentic" in this context not considered shorthand for "authentically exotic?"
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Apr 8, 2015 02:27
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What is the virtue in preserving a culture to be a certain way? Why are cultural practices more valuable the older they are?
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Apr 10, 2015 14:47
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Arglebargle III posted:Have you guys ever been to an Obama Fried Chicken? I was living in China when president Obama was elected. I did a lot of things there, and saw a lot of sights. All these years later, I live with regret that I never visited a literal Obama fried chicken. I don't regret reading this benighted thread though. I didn't get a graduate degree in psychiatry, but with this, I can begin to understand what is wrong with people. They explain it in such detail
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Apr 11, 2015 19:04
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I have tried to read many of ellectronica's posts in this thread. I mean I have started reading them, but then recoiled and not finished. There are only so many words I will read in my whole life. Anyway, true story, I was once the unwitting victim of cultural appropriation. See, at the time, I didn't even know it existed, since I had not yet been trained in identity politics. What happened was, I found myself living abroad, in the people's republic of China. I wasn't aware at the time, but all these Chinese people I saw were appropriating my people's culture. Chinese owned restaurants were competing against KFC and other American traditional restaurants. Chinese people were eschewing their own traditional dress in favor of the costumes of my people. Chinese women carried handbags which imitated those made by the finest craftsmen and designers in the west. Even Chinese men carried these purses! I thought nothing of it at the time, falling back on that old discredited canard of "imitation is the highest form of flattery," that the cultural imperialist capitalist hegemony uses to justify its crimes against humanity. But now I know, I too am a victim. In a way, all of my people are.
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Apr 13, 2015 14:16
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All men are brothers.
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Apr 13, 2015 17:48
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What we have learned so far is that other cultures have value to the degree that they are exotic. This exoticness is referred to as "authenticity," where "authentic" is always used as a shorthand for "authentically exotic." When normal white people from America, who are the least exotic of all the peoples of the world, appropriate authentic cultural images or practices, the exoticism is diluted, and the result is inauthentic.
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Apr 15, 2015 14:21
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SedanChair posted:Yes, this is the reasoning of the appropriators. Well, "the appropriators" are pretty much almost everyone everywhere, in all times and places. To lots of folks around the world, American culture, or German culture or Italian culture or British culture is quite exotic, so it has a lot of value to them. All around the world you see people dressing like Americans, or for that matter like "British country gentlemen." Tourists from far and wide, the very ends of the earth, take pictures of themselves in tyrolean hats or Scottish kilts. It's exotic, so it has value to them. Everything is relative. What is exotic to us isn't exotic to someone from the Far East. But its authentic exoticness is still what gives it comparative value. It's sometimes hard for us in the west to imagine other powerful cultures, thinking instead that all the others are weak. But consider this article from the times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/b...erish.html?_r=0 These companies need to try to portray themselves as authentically exotic in order to stay competitive. As is the ordinary human way of looking at things, exoticness is the fount of cultural value. Consider the customers of Biemlfdlkk, happily assured that they are dressed in the most authentically exotic German or French golf apparel. Golf is a big deal in China, it's so exotic.
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Apr 15, 2015 16:32
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7c Nickel posted:I bet lowtax could make a couple hundred bucks if he banned everyone in this thread who did the "just asking questions" schtick. If this were a No Questions Zone, how could there be debate or discussion? I think a person could get himself into a lot of trouble if he made this thread into a drinking game where he had to take a shot of liquor every time he saw displays of what Dr. Sir Martyn Poliakoff described as "signs of madness."
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Apr 15, 2015 16:36
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SedanChair posted:No, all people participate in cultural exchange. Only the ignorant and racist are the appropriators. That's an awful thing to say about North Americans, South Americans, Chinese, Japanese, British, Russian, Roman, Greek, Indian, Korean, Thai, Pacific Islander, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Arab, Persian, and African people don't you think?
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Apr 15, 2015 16:39
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SedanChair posted:You are completely failing to understand, or pretending ignorance (I suspect the latter). Only the ignorant and racist people in those cultures are the appropriators. No, there is a third option, don't you think?
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Apr 15, 2015 16:41
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Effectronica posted:Well, yes, but I doubt you'd willingly submit to having the motor nerves in your arms cut. Are you alright? In all seriousness I don't know what to make of that.
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Apr 15, 2015 16:49
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Has anyone considered that this might all be the result of cultures fetishiIng themselves as exotic? I mean, all cultural appropriation really is is the dilution of the authentic exoticness of a culture. To most people. This isn't an issue because we don't see our own cultures as exotic. We see them from our own perspective, as the comfortable default. Surely in order for the dilution of authentic exoticness of one's own culture to be a hardship, one has to first shift his perspective to view his own culture's exoticness as its value. Only then can loss of exoticness begin to equate to loss of value. If we encouraged people to see their own cultures in the right perspectives, as members rather than outsiders, wouldn't all the harm be mitigated completely? A white American can say that wearing a headdress, or what have you, devalues a certain American Indian culture because it dilutes its exotic authenticity, but how can a member of that culture say the same thing unless he already equates his culture's value to its exotic authenticity, and how can he see it that way at all unless he is priviliging the perspective of outsiders over insiders?
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Apr 15, 2015 16:57
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So because I'm a bad stupid person who said a bad stupid thing, I should have my arms mutilated? Maybe I am a bad, stupid person, because I said a bad, stupid thing, and after all, it is considered good form in any discussion or debate to argue against the person, instead of his arguments. It's even called one of the logical accuracies. You aren't making any more sense than you did before. Really is everything ok? hakimashou fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 16:59
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A big flaming stink posted:it's an overly elaborate way to say "stop posting" Your "overly elaborate" is my "disturbingly, Vividly brutal." I have an excuse for my own regrettable post. I was drunk and on a roll, and thought it fit better into my overarching "human life is so valuable that if we have to kill one million people to save one million and one, we absolutely should" theme than it did in retrospect. It certainly makes for a nice "gotcha," for people who are in to that sort of thing. That's why I asked if effectronica was alright. It doesn't seem like something somone would say if they were on an even keel, at the time.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:08
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Nice! I admit I have skimmed over a great many of the back-and-forths in here.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:10
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Effectronica posted:The point of insults is to unsettle and anger people. Is that what the point of insults is? I had always wondered. I try to go out of my way not to insult others, especially in a debate. "Don't make it personal" is a worthy goal to aspire toward, don't you agree? hakimashou fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 17:12
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Miltank posted:E: effectronica told me I should be excecuted for that post btw. He is not ok in his brain. Well, it's good to see that in some circles, "calling for the death of millions!" Only rates some arm cutting, with the death penalty reserved for the most irredeemably heterodox.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:13
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Effectronica posted:
Shouldn't that say "then they lose?" And I prefer to think of "mad" as a synonym for crazy, the way Dr Sir Martyn Poliakoff does.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:18
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Anyway, the point I addressed to the honorable member from sedan chair, was that rather than not understanding, or pretending not to understand his opinion, there was a third option he hadn't considered: That I didnt -agree- with it. All too often we see the ugly head of orthodoxy rear up from its ash heap and proclaim, "ours is not to convince, but to educate! There is no dissent, merely ignorance!" hakimashou fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 17:21
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Venom Snake posted:Are you guys still really arguing with the dude who wanted to nuke the entire Soviet Union. Human life is so precious, that if we had to kill a million people to save a million and one different people, we would have a moral duty to do it. That's my position, what's yours?
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Apr 15, 2015 17:27
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