Cultural Appropriation

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Boing: Jul 12, 2005; trapped in custom title factory, send help

I've been reading about something called "cultural appropriation" and the concept really bothers me for some reason I can't exactly pin my finger on.

There are a lot of sentiments to the effect that white westerners are disrespectful for appropriating the customs and aesthetics of other cultures. The argument goes that adopting the trappings of a culture you don't understand can denigrate members of that culture, especially when it looks like caricature or parody. A white man wearing a Native American headdress to a Halloween party is appropriating a ritual garment used by a people that he might never have met or know anything about. A white woman wearing an Indian bindi because it looks nice doesn't appreciate the religious significance of the item in Hindu custom. This trivialises the original culture and makes people who belong to that group feel marginalised.

Objection to this type of act takes a few forms:

Nadra Kareem Nittle posted:

Examples of Cultural Appropriation

�Borrowing� is a key component of cultural appropriation. In the 1950s, for example, white musicians borrowed the musical stylings of their black counterparts. Because African Americans weren�t widely accepted in U.S. society at that time, record executives chose to have white recording artists replicate the sound of black musicians. This led to musical forms such as rock-n-roll being largely associated with whites in spite of the fact that black musicians were pioneers of the artform. This move also had financial consequences, as many of the black musicians who helped pave the way for rock-n-roll�s success never saw a dime for their contributions to the music form.

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, cultural appropriation remains a concern. Musicians such as Madonna, Gwen Stefani and Miley Cyrus have all been accused of cultural appropriation. Madonna, for instance, popularized the form of personal expression known as voguing, which began in black and Latino sectors of the gay community. Madonna has also used Latin America as a backdrop in a music video and appeared in attire with roots in Asia, as has Gwen Stefani who faced criticism for her fixation on Harajuku culture from Japan.

Nadra Kareem Nittle posted:

When singer Katy Perry performed as a geisha at the American Music Awards in November 2013, she described it as an homage to Asian culture. Asian Americans disagreed with this assessment, declaring her performance �yellowface.� The Wall Street Journal�s Jeff Yang said that her performance did not celebrate Asian culture but misrepresented it entirely. He found it particularly problematic that Perry dressed as a geisha to perform the song �Unconditonally� about a woman who pledges to love her man no matter what.

�The thing is, while a bucket of toner can strip the geisha makeup off of Perry�s face, nothing can remove the demeaning and harmful iconography of the lotus blossom from the West�s perception of Asian women � a stereotype that presents them as servile, passive,� Yang wrote, �and as Perry would have it, �unconditional� worshippers of their men, willing to pay any price and weather any kind of abuse in order to keep him happy.�

Palash Ghosh posted:

In recent years, buoyed by the popularity of Bollywood films and the rising profile of India in the global economy, a number of female celebrities in the West have taken to wearing saris, the traditional garment of Indian women, in public appearances.

...

While these women are not intentionally seeking to do any �harm� (and in many cases are exhibiting their fondness for Indian culture), to me, as a person of Indian descent, I find the whole spectacle rather patronizing and yet another effort to both �trivialize� and unnecessarily �exoticize� Indian women and their lifestyles.

In short, Western women look ridiculous wearing saris and most of them likely know nothing about Indian culture.

For one thing, while these women probably think they are being �open-minded� and �multi-cultural� by donning the clothes of a far-away land that they have only a superficial knowledge of, the sari was originally intended to keep teenaged girls and women both comfortable in the heat and to look �modest.�

...

Moreover, from a purely personal perspective, when I see an American or British woman clad in a sari at some glamorous function, I feel like I am watching some deep-pocketed trick-or-treaters on Halloween. It�s a �game� for them, a time to play �dress-up.� Today, it�s the Indian sari, next week it might be the Japanese kimono, next month, it could be a Moroccan fez (whatever is �hot� and �trendy� at the moment).

My mother wears a sari because it is her culture and she grew up with it (she could not imagine ever wearing anything else, and she has lived in the West for decades).

However, ironically, as saris become an increasingly popular �fashion item� in the West, increasing numbers of Indian women living among the Diaspora are abandoning the sari in droves.
They might wear the sari at some unusual special function like a wedding, but for the most part, young Indian ladies in London, Toronto, New York and Los Angeles wear �western� clothes on a daily basis, when they are at work or play or out on the town.

...

A blogger calling herself �Gori Girl� (which translates into �white girl) would strongly disagree with me.

She once wrote: �When I read that a Westerner in a sari is committing the sin of cultural appropriation, I got more than a little offended. Isn�t the intent more important than outside opinion? .. How is my admiration and love of the sari an insult to anyone? How is something so positive turned by some people into a negative?�

To answer Gori Girl, my response would be: �You can wear the sari only if you are willing to fully embrace Indian culture, even the parts that you as a white Westerner would normally find offensive or even appalling. But by wearing a sari while having no real links to India, you come across as very superficial.�

There is definitely an argument about white people taking the credit for art that is based partly or largely on 'exotic' influences that otherwise go culturally unnoticed. And I can appreciate that when white people adopt the customs of other cultures, it's often more visible to other white people than the original customs themselves - which can result in skewed perceptions of that culture, bordering on caricature. But these seem like specific, far-flung consequences of a very extreme type of 'borrowing', while there is a much greater history of mutual cultural exchange and mixing for thousands of years that has produced every single cultural group today. Inclusive appropriation is an integral part of the history of human civilisation, and so it confuses me that people are so opposed to the idea of borrowed customs.

People from outside the West are increasingly adopting Western customs, ideals and modes of dress, which I doubt bothers anybody at all. But the difference is supposedly about a history of colonial imperialism - white European culture has historically spread and overwhelmed much of the world, and the cultural practices of other peoples have been marginalised and derided. So non-Western people appropriating Western culture is understable, while the reverse is disrespectful:

Tami posted:

A Japanese teen wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a big American company is not the same as Madonna sporting a bindi as part of her latest reinvention. The difference is history and power. Colonization has made Western Anglo culture supreme�powerful and coveted. It is understood in its diversity and nuance as other cultures can only hope to be. Ignorance of culture that is a burden to Asians, African and indigenous peoples, is unknown to most European descendants or at least lacks the same negative impact.

It matters who is doing the appropriating. If a dominant culture fancies some random element (a mode of dress, a manner of speaking, a style of music) of my culture interesting or exotic, but otherwise disdains my being and seeks to marginalize me, it is surely an insult.

I understand the sentiment. But telling someone "You can't do this" or "You can't wear that" based on the actions of their ancestors that they had no control over doesn't make sense to me. If a history of colonial marginalisation is the problem, then surely the healthy thing to do is to reverse that and allow people to embrace as wide a range of other cultures as possible. If the original colonial oppressors had done this, wouldn't that have been much better? Rather than being protective of one's cultural heritage in the face of white imperialism and saying "This is ours", it seems that it'd be more inclusive to share and mutually appreciate customs from all types of background.

I'm a white man who was born in Russia and lives in England so I can't really relate to the colonial oppression angle, and I find the concept of 'cultural theft' a little ludicrous, but I'm aware that I'm speaking from a position of privilege on this. The reason I don't get peeved when I see someone wearing an ushanka or eating borscht is probably because there's no historical marginalisation to contextualise it. I'm willing to admit that, though I find much of the written articles on this to be overblown, that there are situations in which blindly adopting the aesthetics of another culture can be insensitive. But in the majority of cases it ranges from harmless to progressive. Is it disrespectful for me to cook Indian food without appreciating the context in which it is usually served? Is it cultural appropriation for me to play traditional Irish folk music without knowing what it historically means?

It seems to me that what should bother people isn't cultural appropriation itself, but something more specific, and the offended people are talking about all forms of cultural exchange as a whole rather than focusing on the aspects that constitute blatant disrespect. I can't quite pin it down, but it reminds me of attempts to universally demonise the porn industry for its bad practices and treatment of women, even though that's nothing that's specific to the porn industry, there's nothing in principle stopping porn from being healthy and ethical, and there are similarly bad practices (or worse) in almost every industry imaginable.

Is cultural appropriation a real problem? Or is it an overreaction to what should be considered normal, healthy cultural exchange?

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 13:50

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 09:25

Boing: Jul 12, 2005; trapped in custom title factory, send help

I agree. So where is the line? What is it specifically that makes an instance of cultural 'borrowing' disrespectful?

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 14:04

Boing: Jul 12, 2005; trapped in custom title factory, send help

DarklyDreaming posted:

To me the easiest way to know if something is cultural appropriation or not is to ask a simple question: Did you earn it?

The best example of this I can think of off the top of my head are "Tribal" tattoos, most people get them because they look cool but amongst the indigenous Pacific Islanders that invented the style they are earned, each drop of ink is an expression of the wearer's achievements and lifestyle that is practically its own language.

If there's any aspect of the thing that requires earning it, say performing a rite of passage or doing a religious ceremony, and then someone from another culture tosses it on because it looks cool it's appropriation in my book. Otherwise go nuts, just try to be respectful.

It's hard for me to think of 'reversed' examples of this because secular British people don't really hold anything sacred or important to the extent that other cultures might. The closest I can think of is something like if easterners saw David Beckham wearing his OBE medal and didn't know the context of it and thought it was just some trendy fashion thing, and started wearing cheap OBE knockoffs all the time everywhere.

Which would be more absurd than offensive (partly because a lot of people would scoff at Beckham 'earning' it), I think, but it's a more useful way to think of it than Indian people wearing jeans or anything like that. Replace OBE with whatever American (or your relevant culture) medal of high honour is appropriate.

e: Here is a scene from the Sopranos that loosely relates to this thread

Boing fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Mar 24, 2015

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 18:07

Boing: Jul 12, 2005; trapped in custom title factory, send help

This just in from UKMT:

Boing fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Mar 26, 2015

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 13:33

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