So, I am someone who spends a lot of my time studying things like cultural appropriation. As a person of colour, a critical consumer of media and a budding teacher, I think it is important for me to understand how and why our culture is the way it is. I think I need to use this information to do what I can to make the world a better place. Or, at the very least, try my best.
So, I think this is a case where we need to understand cultural appropriation a little bit better. A lot of well-meaning activists seem to put everything in black and white – pardon the rather crass idiom there. In reality, it’s not as simple as “thing bad”. The world is a complex place. That’s why you have topics like intersectionality on the rise. Nothing is simple.
So, pretending or convincing yourself that cultural appropriation is a simple thing to define or understand is like trying to explain science to a child. You can give them the basic outline in primary/grade school, but it needs to get more complex as people age and understand the issues more. If not, they’ll get left behind and understand nothing useful. That’s not good.
When it comes to cultural appropriation, there is a lot that we need to understand. I love the beginning of this video to explain it:
The most important thing to take from this video if you didn’t watch it is that cultural appropriation is a neutral term. It is simply the adoption of aspects of one culture by another culture. That’s not always a bad thing. Cultural exchange and cultural appreciation are types of cultural appropriation, but they’re just objectively positive rather than neutral. Cultural assimilation is also neutral. It really depends if the person is being pressured to adopt this culture or not.
I love the fact that Lindsay Ellis uses the example from one of my favourite Bollywood films to show how appropriation by Americans feels to people of colour. The simplification of American culture into people singing in a choir and dancing in front of a flag? It shows how much a culture is often reduced to stereotypes when it is appropriated in media.
But she asks the question: what makes some appropriation ok and some bad? Well, her answer is that if it’s a colonised people appropriating aspects of the colonisers, it’s ok. If it’s the other way around, it’s not.
I think it’s a lot more complex than that. I think it’s all about survival, legitimacy consent.
You see, an Indian person living in New York as they do in the Bollywood film need to survive. They blend in and fit in to survive. In fact, it’s a whole subplot in the story that the Indians need to also embrace their roots (when they start a cafe) because the Americans would enjoy appreciating Indian culture on the Indian people’s terms. The Indians share their culture and consent to the Americans participating in it.
The Indians embrace American culture for legitimacy. They do it so that people won’t see them as too foreign, different or alien. They do it so that they can be treated as normal people in the country where they live.
Lindsay Ellis uses another example of Mexicans using German music as appropriation, which is also true (don’t try to do a “no true Scotsman” fallacy and claim that it’s not appropriation, it’s actually one of these more positive things like cultural exchange. Cultural appropriation doesn’t have those negative ideas built into its definiton. That’s something people have put on it because it suits their agenda). Here, it’s ok as well, so what’s up with that?
Well, again, it’s about legitimacy. No culture is being mocked. A group of people who were historically forced to adopt the culture of their colonisers to survive is using the culture of the colonisers and turning it into something liberating for them – something free and fun.
White cultures like American, British, French, Spanish, etc have been forced on POCs for a long time – up until now. Think of how people in the West treat other cultures. Most of the people in the West see their culture as superior, often trying to get other people to buy into it. They might not physically force it, but they might go to another country and get annoyed that people don’t speak English. Or, they might imply that things are better in their home because they have a better way of life. Or, they might mock or laugh at other cultures. Or fetishise them. However, even today, there is a level of othering that the West does to other cultures – seeing them as inferior. Look at the way so many people talk about Arab countries and their gender laws! They expect those countries to become “normal” or “more civilised” like the West.
On the other hand, when the white artists Ellis mentions take less dominant cultures for their own, it is not about legitimacy. There is no consent. The cultures aren’t being used to establish legitimacy or to fit in. They’re being used to make someone seem unusual and exotic. They’re used and then discarded as a fun, eccentric thing to do. Someone else’s culture is being treated as a costume or an act without their consent. There’s no legitimacy in that. Just performativity.
Appropriation that is performative in nature is bad.
