July 6, 2017 • 56 mins
We’ve all heard charges of cultural appropriation in everything from fashion and music to personal world view, but what’s actually at stake here? What is cultural misappropriation, when does it have negative consequences and how does it fit into our historical and scientific understanding of the human experience? Robert and Christian explore.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian
Seger Robert Our. Last episode, we were talking about samurai swords,
and I neglected to bring up one of my favorite
(00:23):
aspects of that historical Japanese culture sort of tied into
samurai swords. Do you remember ever seeing a net suke before.
They're these little carved objects that would be in different
shapes and you would use them. Essentially they had like
a hole through them that you would use to tie
strings like for purses and things like that, that you
(00:44):
would hang from a sash or belt. Yeah. Yeah, I
believe I've seen the Yeah, I've got one that's like
a little cat. It's an anthropomorphic cat that's wearing a
robe and it's supposed to be like a mythical figure
of this sort of like cat creature transforming itself so
it looks like a woman in tricking people. Uh. And
I got this at the pbody ESX Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
(01:05):
They have this amazing uh collection of Asian artifacts but
also just marines stuff. Basically, the gist is that um
sailors who are from the area would bring all of
these things back after their journeys around the world, and
they eventually went into the PVD SX Museum, so you
can see all of this really cool historical material there.
(01:27):
But I had this net suk. It sits on my
desk as I'm working on episodes like this one, and
I kind of wonder, like, is there something inherently weird
about me, you know, uh, fetishizing this and it mind's
not a historical and that's okay. It's like a mass
produced one that you get at the gift shop or whatever.
(01:47):
But there's something kind of odd about me incorporating that
into my I don't know, artistic aesthetic my setup of
my desk, right, you know, it's next to literally a
a plastic sculpture of a Xeno morph that ec Steiner
gave me for my birthday, you know, so it's like
it's not like I'm only into Japanese historical aesthetics. Well,
(02:11):
this this is an interesting question because I mean, obviously
we're talking about the idea of cultural appropriation today and
I think we're more and more, uh, we're we're forced
to ask these questions about our lives and the things
in our lives, the physical objects as well with the ideas.
I like what you said about the sailors enturing out
into the world and returning home with these essentially knickknacks
(02:34):
and uh and and artifacts. And I mean our lives
are kind of like that. We we travel around, we
experience new places, new ideas, and we end up incorporating
those ideas into our own worldview, into our own sense
of self. We end up bringing um artifacts into our home,
(02:56):
and our homes become reflections of our of our interest
and our travels and our experience. Yeah. Yeah, and that's
how I think about it. I don't just like, it's
not like a just collection of random items that I
just throw on my desk or something, you know what
I mean, although you know, obviously there's certain things that
I will that stay on the desk and other things
(03:17):
that go in a box somewhere. But yeah, I don't know.
It's strange. Like the alien for some reason is fine
because that's like American culture, But there's or is it
Swiss culture, right exactly? That's true based on our our
Hans Rudy Geeker episode. There's also I have a statue
of Ganesh on my desk as well of the Hindu
(03:39):
god of removing obstacles. Well, I have I have a
goodesh in my pocket. I forgot about that. I always
always carry a ges with me. So we're kind of
laying out some of the details of our own um, our,
own homes, our own sense of selves self. And I
imagine everyone listening you're probably doing the same thing. You're
thinking about, all right, what what items are on my person,
(04:00):
are in my house and just in my mind? And
from what cultures do those things arise? Yeah, and there's
probably some of you two who are having a reflex
that I think is pretty common in Western culture, which
is like, well, what would be wrong about that? You know,
there's a there's sort of an immediate defensiveness, and we're
gonna talk a little bit about that today as well. Like,
(04:22):
you know, basically, we're looking at cultural appropriation and then
we're gonna look at examples that are positive and negative
of it, but then look at the arguments for and
against it, because there's been plenty, Like, let me tell you,
this is an episode that there was uh no lack
of research. There was plenty of stuff out there to
incorporate into the literature. And at the end of this episode,
(04:44):
we are not going to have This is not one
of those episodes where we're gonna have a you know,
a bullet list of what something is. We're hopefully going
to provide you with some additional tools to evaluate, uh,
your own life, your own sense of culture, to know
what sort of the arguments are on both sides. We
are also not going to do an exhaustive examination of
every form of alleged cultural appropriation out there, because I mean,
(05:09):
you get into say, the music genre, the fashion genre,
and there's so many different examples that pop up, and
many of them are specialized, and they had their their
arguments on both sides in many cases. I can think
of one example off the top of my head that
I came up in a bunch of the articles, but
I didn't include it here. The singer Selena Gomez apparently
wore a bindy at one point like a music video
(05:32):
or maybe a live performance or something like that, and
she was criticized for it. I was just like, I
don't feel like this really fits into the discussion that
Robert and I are going to have. That is probably
for some of you, like one of the first examples
that comes to mind, right like Likewise, I don't think
we're going to talk a whole lot about hip hop
culture and it's uh and and it's and and how
it is treated in an American culture, but that certainly
(05:55):
is a huge area of discussion as well. Now, I
guess the first thing we need to do is just
say what is cultural appropriation? And that really that really
splits into two questions. Here, what what is cultural appropriation?
And then what does it consists of? So the first
question is a little easier broadly, and I mean broadly speaking,
(06:16):
we're talking about the adoption or use of the elements
of one culture by members of another culture. But of
course that that again, that's extremely broad because this sort
of cultural exchange has been going on as long as
human society has experienced a convergence of cultures. Uh, the
cats kind of out of the bag in terms of
keeping most global cultures entirely pure for a variety of reasons. Now,
(06:42):
we'll get on into a lot of this as we progress,
but it should come as no surprise that there are
plenty of vantage of individuals out there who prefer the
term cultural misappropriation. So it's not merely the fact that
one culture is adopting or using elements of another culture.
It's that they're doing so in a way that is
dishonest or harmful, insensitive or crass, or plays on some
(07:04):
some larger inequity. Yeah, there were actually arguments made in
some of the articles that I read for this that
essentially we're like, there's a linguistic problem at hand. Here
are semantics issue that cultural appropriation is the term we're
all using for this thing, but misappropriation might be better. Yeah,
because if you you often hear it just thrown out like, oh,
(07:26):
that's cultural misappropriation, that's like that's a sin stop it,
where whereas there's obviously going to be a lot more
nuance at play. Yeah, if you just look at like
the Salem Encyclopedia, it's entry on cultural appropriation says that
it is quote the lifting of aspects of one culture
or society for use by another culture. Pretty close to
(07:47):
what you just said. This can be anything from art
to music, fashion, etcetera. Sometimes the intermingling creates highly regarded
new pieces of work, though right and regardless, some argue
that the adoption of their culture by outsiders is seen
as disrespectful and offensive, so sometimes it's actually defined as
(08:08):
quote the use of works of indigenous people's by non
indigenous people, so there's a little bit of a distinction there.
The concept actually emerged in academia in the late nineteen
seventies and nineteen eighties, and it was a critique of colonialism,
so you can see why it applies, for instance, to
our Western society, American society, or British colonized society. But
(08:32):
by the nineteen nineties it had a solid place in
academic discourse, and I can say when I studied for
my master's degree between two thousand and six and two thousand,
it was a significant part of the literature for rhetoric,
cultural studies, and communication. I mean every class I was
in there was at least a section on cultural appropriation
and how it fit into the theories and discourse around
(08:53):
those ideas. Now, I think one way to help us
get started here is to keep in mind, what is
culture right? Like that alone is a really hard question
to answer in my mind. When I'm usually just talking
about culture casually or on one of these shows, if
I don't have a lot of research in front of me,
I'm thinking about culture as how people make sense of
(09:15):
the world. There's too much of a cacophony of sensory
information going on for us as human beings to make
sense of There's so much happening our brains literally can't
keep up. So culture is how we understand all of
this stuff. Is basically like a filter, right uh. And
obviously it's way more complicated than that. But some people
(09:37):
will say, well, culture is norms or social behavior, or materialism,
or politics, or customs and traditions. But let's not forget
there's also subcultures as well that exists within larger umbrella ones.
The main one that I always think, well, you just
brought up hip hop. Hip hop is a good example
of the subculture, but I think of punk is a
(09:57):
subculture that exists within what dain culture, right uh. And
then the dictionary says culture is quote the way of life,
especially the general customs and beliefs of a particular group
of people at a particular time. In general, it's used
to refer to our use of symbols to represent our experiences,
(10:19):
but done in a creative way. Yeah, this is one
of those areas where I often come back to this,
this analogy I keep rolling out of lenses and uh.
And while it's it's easy, it's easy to think that
our view of reality is completely unfiltered by by anything.
Or we might think, oh, I'm seeing reality through a
single lens, you know, a single pane of glass that
(10:42):
that comes down over my space helmet. But I feel
that all of us have multiple lenses that are employed, uh,
many at the same time, and then in various combinations.
And and so when you try and yeah, when you
try and boil down what is this culture, you end
up countering not one lens, but several, and some of
(11:02):
them may not be employed at all times. Yeah, that's
a really interesting way to look at it. And I
think too, And I'll get into this, we'll talk a
little bit later about a guy named Gert Hofstad and
his sort of cultural theories. Uh. But I think that
is the best way to keep this in mind, that
your analogy of lenses essentially is that like, different people
have their different lenses on, right, and they're not always
(11:24):
seeing the same thing. They're understanding those symbols through different experiences. Yeah,
and that's important for understanding how we're viewing the world,
but also how another individual is looking at the same topic.
And that's key to this whole entire discussion because it's
there's the aspect of how am I interacting with a
cultural idea or an artifact? But then how was another
(11:45):
person looking at that? And then and then how are
we supposed to have a conversation about it? Yeah, that's
the inherent problem in human communication, is that there's going
to be a misunderstanding no matter what. There's always what's
like referred to as psychological noise is in verbal communication. Right,
we're not telepaths, We're not beaming our thoughts directly into
somebody else's head. But through words and the use of
(12:08):
other symbols, we're trying to convey meaning back and forth
to each other. It's just that our way of understanding
that meaning is vastly different, especially depending on what kind
of culture you were raised in. All Right, we're gonna
take a quick break, and when we come back, we're
gonna jump into some examples of sort of positive cultural appropriation,
definite negative examples of cultural appropriation or cultural misappropriation, as
(12:32):
well as the the ever cantalizing gray areas. Thank Okay,
we're back. So before we get into positive and negative
examples of cultural appropriation here, I actually have one that
I'm concerned about for myself. It's something that I'm working on.
(12:53):
Most of our listeners now that I work on. Well,
both of us do we both do fiction outside of
the podcast. I do comics. You do short fiction. Uh, well,
you've you've written long fiction too, right, Yeah, the short
stuff is the main the main material that is out
there though, and and of course that that means something.
With both of our work, we're talking about multiple characters,
multiple voices, and the characters of varying um ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, etcetera. Yeah,
(13:20):
so I mentioned this actually in the Samurai Saw It episode.
I'm working on this project right now, and basically I
recognize that the diversity of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and
age really needs to improve in modern fiction, especially if
we want our culture these artifacts to represent the world
that we live in. This is kind of tricky for
(13:41):
a straight white, middle aged guy like me. Uh. And
I'm working on a news story that's a sci fi story.
It's set in Trinidad and the majority of the characters
are black. It's also going to incorporate elements of Japanese
culture into it, including the samurai ethos that we're referring
to in that other episoisode. So I'm trying to write
this thing, and I want to address themes of class
(14:04):
and race and violence in it. But I genuinely wonder
am I appropriating somebody else's culture here? Right? Like? This
is a tricky tightrope. Should I stick to only what
I know? Should my characters only be white, an American
and male? Right? Or should I try to improve diversity
leading by example through my storytelling. I don't know. It's
(14:27):
something I like, I genuinely worry about. I've done stuff
in the past, um where I've had characters of diversity
that I've made the focal point of my work, and
other stuff I've written have been from characters who are,
you know, essentially variations of meat. Yeah. I mean, this
is always a quandary as as a writer, as as
a creator, probably of any form, because there certainly are
(14:48):
voices that insist that say, an African American perspective should
not be approached from from a non African American writer.
So is a writer, then, you know, forced to exist
within the confines of their own cold sure? And if so,
how far does it go? Can Stephen King right about
a Southerner. Did did Tennessee raised Coleman McCarthy appropriate the
(15:08):
cultures of Mexico and the American West when he moved
out there and started to write westerns. Uh yeah, this
is this is the kind of way that I think
that the modern writer's mind especially continues to eat away
as yourself. You know, it's like a dog gnawing its
own tail, your second guessing all of your creative choices.
But but I have to I have to say from
(15:29):
my own part, like when when I've written, say, I
wrote about a biracial character in one of my Grave
Stoppers tales and it was a it was a slide
homage to Joe Christmas and Faulkner's Light in August. But
and personally, I always approach a character like that as
an attempt to understand another viewpoint, uh, you know, to
to respectfully understand how they are viewing the world, what
(15:51):
their worldview consists of, and and you know, and putting
in some research as well, like looking at at authentic
voices from those realm is to try and create it.
I mean, that's part of the exercise. What what you
don't want to do in My opinion is to is
to sort of go the the old school pro wrestling,
you know, root where someone is is nothing more than
(16:12):
the archetype. There's nothing more than the stereotype character, and
that's all they are, right. Yeah, that's a really good example.
Um the like sort of wrestling characters from like the eighties.
I'm thinking of like the Iron Cheek here, and that
guy is kind of still performing that personality, Like have
you ever seen the Iron Cheeks Twitter feed? That's pretty wild.
(16:33):
I understand there's some disagreement on to what extent that
is him or people who handle it for him, So
I didn't know that, but I don't know a lot
of detail about about that argument. But to Glow on
Netflix is a is a big right now, and that
that discusses some similar territory. Yeah, And Glow is fascinating
because you see these women come in in the first
couple episodes and they have all of these different backgrounds, right,
(16:56):
but they are essentially coming to the same project, Like
what on earth is this? Like they've all got this
like what we're gonna be female wrestlers? Huh. But then
the characters that are created for them are totally two dimensional.
And kind of grotesque. Um. Yeah, And so like, when
I'm thinking about these projects, I think, well, diversity should
be improved behind the scenes as well. Right, it doesn't
(17:17):
just make up for a lack of diversity to have
white people appropriating culture there. There should be more creators
of diversity given a platform. And I was trying to
think of recent like examples to do like a uh
compare and contrast here, And the two that came up
for me was I just started watching the American Gods
TV show that's based on that Neil game and novel,
(17:38):
and it really attempts to tackle the African American experience.
But at the same time, it's based on a book
by a white Englishman and it's adapted by a white American.
Then I think of a show like Atlanta, which we
talked about in this Ironically we talked about Atlanta in
the in the Samurai storied episode. Uh, that is written
and run by a majority of African Americans. Is one
(18:01):
necessarily better than the other? Is one more authentic than
the other? They both. As I'm watching them, I'm getting
different things out of them, and I'm enjoying the experience
and maybe listeners out there who are engaged in creative
projects to have this floating in the back of their head,
like what am I allowed to engage with? Yeah, alright, well,
let's let's continue to discussion then by discussing some some
(18:25):
some first of all clear positive examples or or what
I'm I'm presenting as a as a positive example. So
one that came to mind instantly is British British singer
of Swiss and Greek heritage, Cat Stevens. He famously converted
to Islam and uh and became use of Islam. Now,
clearly this is a case of an individual entering into
(18:47):
another culture's customs and religious worldview with with clear permission
to do so. As with Christianity and Buddhism, Islam is
a missionary religion with a clear mandate to bring other
people's into the faith. Everyone, it is said, our our
Muslim at birth. So actually, one of the pieces that
I turned to for research on this was in the
(19:08):
Atlantic and it was by an author named Jenny Avans,
and she argued that without cultural appropriation, we wouldn't have
the following things. These are positive examples. New York pizza,
Japanese Denim. I didn't know that was a thing. Uh, yeah,
I didn't either reading what she was talking about. Apparently
it's an older style of denim may democratic discourse. That's interesting.
(19:33):
It makes sense like democratic discourse came from Greece, but
here in America we've sort of assumed that it's like
our thing, right, you know. Uh, and then from the
Atlantic as well. Connor Freedersdorf also had an interesting interview,
and he provided the following examples. Imagine a Korean food
truck owner who puts beef bulgogie in a burrito. Are
(19:56):
they appropriating Mexican culinary culture? Or a malays Asian housewife
who rents a kimono when they're on holiday in Kyoto?
Is that appropriating traditional Japanese dress? Or a Canadian who
writes a novel that's inspired by Cervantes, they're technically appropriating
Spanish literary culture. Or an Irish American who sings opera
(20:17):
for a living they're benefiting from the world's appropriation of
Italian art. So there's a lot of complication here, right.
It's not as easy as just pointing at Selena Gomez
or Miley Cyrus or somebody and saying stop doing that. Yeah,
I mean the culinary example. Um, I'm glad you brought
it that up, because I was I was turning a
number of these around it in my mind, like, oh,
what about the Portuguese influence on Thai cuisine, you know,
(20:40):
the incorporation of of peppers for instance, Or a better,
more clear cut example, I suppose would be the French
influence on Vietnamese cuisine, because there you have an even clearer, uh,
colonial influence. And of course this leads to an important
detail in charges of cultural misappropriation. It's it's usually the
(21:00):
superior power, the colonial force, that is charged with misappropriating something,
and the reasons should be obvious. I mean, for instance,
if you're if you're a population of Africans transposed to
to a Caribbean island, and you incorporate aspects of the
colonial and local culture under your own practices, I mean
that survival that falls in line with a lot of
what we're talking about in our Cargo Cults episode. But
(21:22):
when the colonist appropriates the culture of subjugated people, I mean,
that's that's where it gets a lot ickier or potentially ickier. Right, Okay,
So yeah, I'm seeing that as like definitely like a
hallmark for these cases that are brought up with outrage, right,
is that usually it's if somebody who is from a
(21:43):
colonial culture is appropriate again indigenous versus non indigenous. Um.
One of my favorite books of all time is a
graphic novel called Pride of Baghdad. It's about lions that
escape the zoo after the Americans bomb Baghdad in two
thousand three, and the lions, or of the story, they
essentially become symbols for us to see different versions of
(22:04):
the war through. It's written by Brian K. Vaughan, is
drawn by Nico Henrikin. Neither of them are Iraqi, but
this modern folk tale really made me think about the
Iraqi experience differently. I think about, uh, this is a
non colonial example Japanese post rock bands I like Mono
and the band Boris. Uh. These musicians adapt Western styles
(22:29):
of rock. They come up with something that's totally new
and kind of wonderful in the process. I'd never dream
of referring to Boris as cultural appropriation, right, but arguably
it is. It's just because Japan is not a colonizer
of the United States, we don't really think of it
that way. In fact, part of why I think I
like it so much is the multiculturalism to it. And
(22:50):
I think we'd be remiss if we didn't recognize. One
of the major examples that comes up over and over
again the literature is that white people have been accused
of appropriating rock from African American culture. Uh. And then
you and I were trying to we were talking earlier
before we went on air, like, what's a great positive
example of the sort of colonizer, white vanilla guy really
(23:13):
doing a great job representing another culture, And you said,
David Simon, the guy who created the wire and tremay. Yeah, Yeah,
this has come up a lot and uh, and in
some of the resources we were looking at for this episode.
And I think the reason that it is often brought
up as a good example is because David Simon and
the teams that he as symbols, they tend to approach
(23:36):
these topics with, you know, out of a sense of
wanting to understand a very empathic, uh journalistic mission in mind. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's important. Uh. And as we go through
these examples, it becomes clearer to me that that part
of it is like actually engaging with the culture that
you're influenced by or appropriating, right, like engaging with that
(23:59):
and not just the artifact. Uh. That goes a long way.
Now that being said, I do have to I do
have to throw out there that I know that David
Simon does make an effort to bring in members of
of of cultures that are that are depicted in his shows,
because I remember him talking about The Wire and towards
the end and saying that if they were going to
(24:20):
do another season, they would have to incorporate like another
racial demographic of Baltimore, and if they did not have
anybody uh on the team that had had expertise or
knowledge or or participation in that culture. Yeah, I was
gonna say, I can't remember the character's name. There's like
a preacher on the show, and I want to say,
(24:43):
like the real life version of him is in the
writer's room for that show, or was in the writer's room.
I don't want to call off remember, isn't I'm sure
some Wire fans will point we'll answer that question for us.
So then let's let's look at some really clear negative examples.
And this again maybe where some people sort of react
defensively and say, what how is that how is that negative?
(25:05):
The most people agree the adaptation of Native American garments
in the fashion industry UH isn't seen in a positive light.
UH So in a brief period of time in the
last couple of years, we had Victorious Secret feature a
model wearing a feathered headdress and turquoise jewelry, and a
fashion show that at the same time, Michelle Williams was
(25:25):
criticized for wearing braids and feathers in a magazine photo shoot,
and contestants on Germany's Next Top Model also did a
photo shoot wearing headdresses UH in Native American style clothing
UH and Native American writer Jessica Metcalf actually points out
in The Guardian. She says, quote, our cultures have been
reduced to nothing more than patterns on a shirt. I
(25:47):
think this is a good point. This is again it's
the culture is about understanding the world through these symbols.
But when their symbolic meaning is completely discarded, they're divested
of that power, right, and then the meaning is lost,
and so why engage with it other than just like
I like feathers, or I like turquoise, you know, or
or to what extent is that even are you engaging
(26:08):
with it? Are you are? You're not really engaging with
it at all, if you're just taking it on as
a hollowed out, superficial thing. It's especially viewed as worse
because these artifacts have spiritual and ceremonial significance to them too.
So I think like maybe looking at this example, it
seems that cultural appropriation is quote unquote worse when it's
(26:29):
done for commercial purposes. So we've got sort of two
hallmarks here, the colonial one a commercial one in this sense.
For instance, fashion businessman Oscar mets of it. I think
that's how you say his name. Met sav Hot gave
royalties from his twenties sixteen spring collection to the asha
Nika tribe that these clothes were inspired by. They also
(26:51):
contributed to public awareness about the tribe struggle with illegal loggers.
This was in Brazil, so you know, he's clearly like
trying to uh put out any fires. I guess ahead
of time because he knew like he had a commercial
product essentially and that he could be criticized for it. Now,
if that was a clear negative example, that had some
(27:14):
perhaps some wiggle room for for some people to say, well,
I don't understand you know, I need that explained to
me a little more wine. That's offensive. I feel like
the next one should be pretty pretty clear cut, you
think so, And yet there's so many there's so many
examples of this one still being used. So blackface is
essentially like the big no no. Right. Uh, And this
(27:35):
is where I think he gets important to like, is
that cultural appropriation or is that just making fun of
race or ethnicity? You know, well, yeah, it's I guess
it's It tends to be the the the most unrefined
example of just blatant um mockery. And you have to
ask yourself, to what degree is this energy present in
(27:57):
more deluded amounts in other acts of alleged cultural misappropriation exactly?
I mean, really, any dressed up perpetuation of an ethnic
stereotype is going to be bad here. Don't make fun
of someone else's culture or ethnicity. Don't treat it like
a joke. Right. You remember this from our previous Halloween
episode that we did must be two years ago. Now, Uh,
(28:20):
there's a kind of in clothed performance that happens around
that holiday. Another example of this is, for instance, when
white people think that Dio de los Muertos is Mexican Halloween,
and they wear skull face paint. They don't even consider
sometimes the cultural implications of the actual tradition. And Connor
Friedersdorf again, he has a good quote about this. He says,
(28:40):
a white college student who dons black face is not
engaging with African American culture. He or she is just
caricaturing physical features of another race. The act is offensive
partially because it's reducing people to the color of their skin. Uh.
My example that I came out from this recently, I
meant in this I think in previous episode. I'm rereading
(29:02):
it this summer. Stephen King's in anticipation of the new movie.
I had forgotten how racist some of the characters in
that are. The Richie Tozier character puts on like a
quote black character voice in the book, Uh, and it
completely pulls me out of the story every time it happens.
I don't think Stephen King is racist. I don't think
(29:22):
he was making fun of ethnicity. I think he was
probably trying to critique the era that he grew up
in the nineteen fifties, when something like Amos and Andy
was acceptable. Right. It still feels super culturally weird to
read that today. I can't imagine in that movie the
kid from Stranger Things is playing Richie Tozier. I can't
imagine they're gonna have him repeat those lines when he
(29:43):
plays that character, especially since are they updating the backstory
to the eighties? Yeah, they are. Yeah, They're going to
be in the eighties, and I think the modern version
will be in present day. Yeah. Uh. Jonathan Blanks was
interviewed in the Atlantic and he says there's nothing wrong
with adopting terms like was up as they come into
white pop culture through various media. But there's a difference
(30:04):
between the natural assimilation of language and black imitation as
a caricature. Yeah. Obviously yellow faces another example of this,
and the big the big like just cringe worthy example,
I mean, at least crunch worthy. Is Um Breakfast a
Tiffany's wonderful film, except you have this this horrible character
(30:25):
played by Mickey Rooney, Mickey Rooney playing a Chinese American
and the most stereotypical way possible. Uh, just blatantly offensive
to to to to modern viewers of the film. Uh,
and and some contemporary viewers of the film as well.
If you look back at at some of the reviews.
But again, there's this, there's not an attempt to really
(30:48):
understand this person or to embody this character as anything
other than a mockery. You know, another one that I
had forgotten about from our childhood adolescents Twin Peaks. Yeah,
I had completely forgotten about this. Uh there's a character
who does yellow face and that uh Katherine at one
point pretends to have died. Spoilers for the but I
(31:10):
haven't haven't seen it yet. You've never seen the original
the original Twin Peaks. Oh well, okay, I won't go
too far with it, but as long as you don't
spoil who done it, I'm not fine. Oh yeah, I
won't go there. But there is a character who dresses
up like a Chinese man. Uh. And it's super offensive.
And when you watch it now you realize, like, oh,
this was David Lynch making a commentary on Americans and racism. Right.
(31:34):
It wasn't like David Lynch was being racist, but it
is extraordinarily weird to watch something like that or read
something like it that you know I was consuming when
I was a kid and not really recognizing, oh, hey,
this is this is wrong, not quite right. Here, so
Jenny Avans again in her article she argues that we
shouldn't just engage with the culture on an aesthetic level.
(31:58):
It was put another way actually by an actress named
Amanda Stenberg. She was in the Hunger Games, and she
said in a video that was actually very much criticized,
what would America be like if we loved black people
as much as we love black culture. Nicki Minaj of
all People, actually echoed this. Her point was basically, don't
cherry pick cultural elements without engaging their creators as a
(32:21):
part of a process of understanding the world from a
different perspective than yours. And this is where it gets interesting.
You see a lot of these contrasting viewpoints. In NPR
actually did a story about how young Americans don't identify
hip hop with race. They actually think that that culture
is now possibly seen as global because you can see
(32:45):
it as far away as places like Korea and Russia.
At the same time, others are arguing, well, when you
culturally devalue black people, that subsequently paved the way for
violence against them. Right, and as we're seeing in so
many cases of incidents in which police are shooting young
black men, Okay, so let's talk a little more about
(33:06):
gray area is here, um briefly, So as always, you know,
the gray area is only as gray as the critic
paints it. So if it helps, think of think of
these as less as gray areas, but areas of question,
areas of possibility even as we discussed them, and as
you discussed them and think about them in your own lives. Uh,
places where the charge of cultural appropriation or misappropriation become
(33:26):
less clear. So one example that comes to my mind
a video was making the rounds recently on social media
in which a group of Caucasian women performed at traditional
African dance in presumably traditional costume. Now, it is often
the case with social media content, any context was completely lacking.
Here we didn't we were not told who these women were,
(33:50):
why they were doing it, where they were doing it,
even there was no no, no clue at all, the
messages in the hand of the share and then in
the in the commentator. Now, a number of commentators on
this video, when I was looking at they strongly condemned
the footage, saying that it was, you know, just a
blinding example of cultural misappropriation. A few credit commentators, however,
pointed out that we didn't know to what extent these
(34:11):
women had permission to engage in this dance and really
what the spirit of their performance was. It did not
I mean, they certainly were not wearing black face. It
did not seem to have comedic um aspects to it,
But we just simply don't know. In short, did they
do it to mock anybody? Did they do it to
engage in a surface level experience, or was it part
(34:31):
of a deeper effort to understand is their honor instant
and understanding there is their permission there? Essentially context is
important here. Yeah, I feel like I mean again, it's it.
It kind of depends on the commentator here and who
is making the charge of cultural misappropriation, and they're going
to go to varying extremes in making that charge. Another
(34:54):
example that came to mind Big Trouble in Little China. Yeah,
this one. When you put this in the new It's
immediately like a light bulb went on over my head.
I was like, oh, yeah, Like again a thing from
our childhood never even occurred to me as a kid
that that would be any in any way offensive to somebody. Yeah,
and this is I have to say this is uh,
(35:14):
this has always been one of my my favorite films.
But it's a thing, and it's a you know, film
I've I've always loved, but it is a film by
a group of Western Caucasian filmmakers. Now, it does it
does invoke Chinese martial arts movie stereotypes. But on the
other hand, it does feature a large Chinese American cast.
It plays with its stereotypical stereotypical characters to some degree,
(35:37):
and even counters some stereotypes, uh within key characters. Plus,
while it certainly plays fast and loose um Hollywood style
with Chinese mythology, it does seem to try reasonably hard
to incorporate some key elements there. So in my current
experience of the movie, I'm inclined to appreciate it within
(35:57):
those parameters and see it as a net positive expression.
But I also understand that other individuals might take a
different view. I have a hard time imagining Big Trouble
in Little China getting made the same way today. Now.
I know, like there's been rumors that they're like they're
going to remake it with a rock or something like that,
But I just I can't imagine that it's going to
(36:18):
engage with Chinese culture in the same way, because like
again I'm bringing this up twice in a week Transformers,
uh whatever the whatever number five that I saw this weekend.
Like don't get me wrong, I have a problem and
I go see all those movies in the theater, but
they are really offensive at some points and how they
appropriate culture. And there's like a basically like a Japanese
(36:41):
stereotype Transformer that like dresses like a samurai and has
a katana and has um. I can't remember the actor's name,
but isn't it a Tokyo drift based car transfer might
be Yeah, it's some sports car I don't recognize, but
he it's a Japanese actor performing this character. It's like
super offensive in the same way that like some of
(37:03):
those Star Wars aliens were seen as being like caricatures
as well. Uh. And that they had another one in
this in this recent one that was French, and they're like, oh, yeah,
can Transformers be French? And somebody says, oh, no, he's
not actually French. He just he's just pretending to be French,
like he really likes French culture. And I was like,
(37:23):
this is like, I mean, there's so many things about
those movies that are confounding. But yeah, any statement it
tries to make about ethnicity or culture I wouldn't take
with a whole lot of brain as salt. All Right, well,
let's take another break, and when we come back, let's
get a little more into the case against cultural misappropriation. Alright,
(37:49):
we're back, al right, so let's look at cases against
in cases for this. Now. Bell Hooks actually said about
this topic, and we're talking about cases against here quote
at nicity becomes a spice a seasoning that can liven
up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture. Uh.
In the New York Times Pulse, Agal actually argues that
(38:10):
cultural appropriation is actually about America's original sins, whereas origins
are bound up in quote, theft and colonization. This gets
back to what we were talking about earlier with some
of those negative examples. It really seems like the colonization
aspect in the commercial aspect are the two big no
nos here, right. Uh So if you're if you're combining
(38:31):
the two, it's even worse. Yeah, I mean, we always
come back to the idea of America is a melting pot.
But did everyone want to go into the pot, and
to what extent is the pot proportionally stirred? Right, Yeah,
that's that's a fair question. Connor Friedersdorff actually argues that
the claims of cultural appropriation are actually objectionable if there's
(38:53):
an underlying animous dis or dehumanization to them. That's his words,
not mine. The problem him becomes when this is conflated
with cultural appropriation that's seen as absurd. So for instance,
the example he gives is if a college cafeteria serves sushi,
uh and for starters, Well yeah, I mean you probably
(39:14):
can get sick. But but his example is basically like
somebody could find that as a case of cultural appropriation,
and then somebody else would see that as being absurd,
as being a conflation right off, if you saw that
as cultural appropriation. So this is where you get into
this like sort of battle between whether or not something
is or isn't offensive, and it gets worse when the
(39:36):
conflation backfires. Then all examples are considered absurd. So, for instance,
even when something is malicious like the fraternity party where
everybody's wearing black face for example, right, uh, And I
just realized as I was doing the research for this,
and I had this moment where I was just like, oh, uh,
that you could use this. This is basically cannon fodder
(39:57):
for content creation on the internet, right, for little media
outlets like without engaging with the larger question in any
manner like we're trying to do today. It's basically any
time an incident like this happens, it's just all right,
that's a perfect five word piece that we can just
like spit out there and get people to click on, right,
Like if we feign outrage over something, or we feign
(40:22):
outrage over somebody else's outrage. I mean, you see this everywhere.
It's it's so much of what I think makes a
Facebook probably uh intolerable right now? Yeah, and then commenting
or critiquing another individual's outrage and what degree is that
outrage appropriate? Right? So, I think what we're finding here
is this is essentially a problem with language, right, that
(40:43):
we're not using words accurately to describe the differences between
something like racism and cultural appropriation. And the example I
think of, uh, and when you first brought up this
topic to me it came to mind was Paton Oswald
has this great comedy bit about this on Netflix. The
specials called talking for clapping. He jokes about the difference
between terminology versus listening to someone's heart, on the difference
(41:06):
between their words and their intent, And he does these
these sort of caricature characters. You know, one person is
using all the exact right terms, but they're what they're saying,
the content of what they're saying is offensive, versus like
somebody who doesn't know the exact right terminology, but they meanwhile, um,
and it's probably. This is where I think is a
(41:27):
good point to mention Gert Hofstad and his cultural dimensions theory. Now,
the idea here, we could whole episode on this, but
I'm gonna try to boil it down quickly. He breaks
down cultural factors and communication and how they contribute to
miss communication. And there's five factors that he's pointing us
to here, power, distance, individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty, avoidance, masculinity
(41:52):
versus femininity, and long term versus short term orientation. Now,
I'm not a hundred percent of propos of his theory,
but I recognize I think he's kind of on the
right track here of looking at how different cultures communicate
and understanding one another. Differently, And basically the idea here
is to ensure that the symbols themselves aren't misunderstood. Communicators
(42:15):
need to be cognizant of the factors themselves. Right. The
way he actually does it, he'll he breaks them up
by nation, which I think is probably part of the
problem here, because I don't think one nation necessarily has
a culture per se, right to say, like American culture,
uh doesn't recognize like so many of the subcultures within it,
right Oh yeah too. I think to to to boil
(42:38):
down another nation to a singular, you know, monolithic culture
is generally to betray a very incomplete idea of of
who these people are. Yeah, And so I think that
might be why a lot of the examples we're seeing
in the literature here come from mass media. The communicators
themselves aren't actually targeting like a single audience, so they're
(43:00):
subsequently unintentionally offensive to people that they just forgot about
that would be part of this mass broadcast. Right. Um, yeah,
I mean countless examples. I don't think when Selena Gomez
puts on a bindy or um, what what did Katy
Perry do? Did she have corn rows? I think that
(43:20):
was what people. Uh, I think that was the example.
She was Egyptian. I don't know that dark Horse. The
Egyptian culture is an interesting example too, because what is
we'll get into it will discuss the idea of like
what happens if a culture is not appropriated and it
runs the risk of becoming outdated. It kind of runs
the risk of becoming something like Egyptian culture. Which not
(43:42):
to say that you could not misappropriate ancient Egyptian h
iconography your dress in a way that would offend someone.
But given the distance, given the time, given the fact
that the the ideas of the ancient Egyptians did not
travel well even during their time, much less into modern times, um,
(44:02):
it makes it a little safer for some for sale
pop singer two to utilize. I haven't seen that new
Tom Cruise Mummy movie. I can't imagine that it is
in any way portraying Egyptian culture in a positive I mean,
like I said, it tends to be this this safe zone,
or relatively safe at least, you know, compared to so
(44:23):
many things. I mean, we still have Mommy movies. We
talked before about how kind of weird it is that
we have these tales about Uh, these bodies that were
stolen from from tombs by by colonial powers and they
come to life and start killing people, and and for
the most part, like no serious self examination is conducted. Yeah, yeah,
well right and again, so like I think all of
(44:45):
this comes back to like a matter of semantics and language,
kind of paying attention to what you're saying and what
you're doing, and probably where the term misappropriation needs to
be clarified and used instead of appropriation. Now, another notable
area here or that that the factors into our discussion
concerns American sports teams and the use of Native Americans
(45:08):
stereotypes as mascots. Now, certainly this is a this is
a whole discussion onto itself. But what's interesting here for
the purposes of our discussion is that is that there
was a study that was published in the Journal of
Consumer Psychology by a team of researchers from the University
of Montana, the University of Washington, and Washington State University,
and they set out to empirically test the use of
(45:28):
American Indian brand imagery and how it increases UH stereotype
beliefs in the broader population. And they wanted to see
what kind of impact the brands would have on both
negative and positive stereotypes. So examples here would be Indians
are warlike versus Indians are noble, so it's a noble savage,
right that kind of Yeah. Then the idea that these
(45:50):
are the two private predominant stereotypes and these are the
only two that can exist when you're doing just search
a surface level understanding of another culture. So interestingly enough,
they found that while conservative individuals that they tested, they
did not change their opinion about Native Americans upon seeing
such imagery. Uh. Liberal individuals were far more malleable. Uh,
(46:13):
and they were affected by both positive and negative stereotypes.
And this apparently falls into line with previous studies that
have revealed that that liberal individuals tend to have more
malleable worldviews and are therefore sometimes more sensitive to contextual clues.
So I have a great example of this. We live
in Atlanta, Georgia. Have you ever going to see the
(46:34):
Braves play? No, yeah, it's not my thing, but a
couple of coworkers at a job previous to this took
me to a Braves game. And did you know about this?
The tomahawk chop? Oh yeah, yeah, I'm sir, I'm familiar
enough with it to know that as we chop your arm. Yeah, So,
like there's a certain point during the game where that,
you know, the crowd gets excited in support of the
(46:55):
home team in Atlanta Braves, and they do this tomahawk
chop thing where they like use their arms like the
tomahawks that they're like bringing them down on the skulls
of their opponent. There's actually like a I don't even
know what it is, like a robot like animatronic thing
that kind of comes out and swings the tomahawk and everything.
And I remember the first time I saw that just
being like WHOA, Like, what is happening here? This is
(47:16):
super offensive? Um, But again that might just be like
my predilections, right, Like uh, I just saw it as
being like, Okay, this is the the savage stereotype being
brought out to play here. Now. They had a separate
field study as well, and the researchers also found that
exposure to a quote more negative ethnic logo A significantly
(47:37):
strengthened negative stereotypes among liberal individuals, while exposure to the
less negative logo did not significantly influence negative stereotypes At
any level of political identity. So what what does all
this fit into our conversation here. Well, I think one
of the things that's interesting is that it reveals that
one can interact with such artifacts of cultural appropriation without
(47:58):
necessarily thinking about them, without certainly without engaging with them,
but also not realizing why they could be offensive. And
it also is interesting to see how malleable worldviews can
cut both ways. So the very the very, the very
aspect of your psyche that makes you more willing to
(48:19):
to see the situation from another individual side and to
shift your worldview accordingly. Uh, that can also lead to
the to the less desirable effect that you're influenced than
by bits of negative stereoto typing um and and you know,
negative cultural misappropriation. So this is actually part of the
(48:40):
sort of factor of leading to the whole like is
it absurd? Is it not absurd? Should it be blamed?
Should it not be blamed? So, yeah, there's so many
complex factors here. Now let's look at some of the
cases for cultural appropriation and see if we can get
anything more out of them. Uh. Sometimes it's seen as
being positive when it's seen as appreciation and influence rather
(49:02):
than appropriation. Also when creators seek permission from the person
or culture they're appropriating from, or they're paying homage to
the artistry, then it gets complicated. How do you know
who you're supposed to ask? Like this whole thing gets
into intellectual property. I found so many articles about intellectual
property and ownership of cultural artifacts, and that there's actually
(49:23):
legal precedent for culture being copyrighted in certain cases. To
Um and Jenny Avan's argues in that Atlantic piece, the
cultural appropriation is actually a result of globalization, so subsequently
it's inevitable, but it's also ultimately positive. In her mind,
it's an exchange of ideas, styles, and traditions, and it's
showcasing the joy of living in a multicultural society. Susan
(49:47):
Scaffitti wrote a book that is called Who Owns Culture?
Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, and she says that
culture shouldn't freeze itself in time as if it's like
part of a music e M diorama. She actually argues
cultural appropriation can save cultural products from fading away. And
Pakistani novelist Camilla Shamsi called for more, not less, imaginative
(50:14):
engagement with her country. She says, quote, the moment you
say a male American writer can't write about a female Pakistani,
you are saying, don't tell these stories. And even worse so,
you're saying, as an American male, you can't understand a
Pakistani woman. She is enigmatic, inscrutable, and unknowable. Therefore she's other.
(50:36):
Leave her and her nation to its otherness. Write them
out of your history. I ran across a wonderful article
in Ian magazine. No surprise that they come up pretty
frequently here. Nabilia At jeffre Uh makes some really good
points in the article is Nothing Sacred? And when she discusses,
among other things, the experience of seeing non Sufi Muslims
take up the dervish whirling. Okay, he talks about, you know,
(51:00):
the origins of this custom and then what it's like
to see it, uh, it practiced by by non Muslims
and say, uh, West London, and you know, it's hard
to to see it as anything other than like a
hollowed out portion of someone's culture. But he also points
out that quote religions and cultures, and indeed nations have
survived only by being open to new ways of representing themselves,
(51:22):
and that the survival and spread of a culture's core
values come at a price, and the alternative to paying
that price is sometimes fossilization. Uh, your your culture just
becomes irrevalent. So this is again like plays right into
that whole American Gods thing. Essentially, the thesis of American
Gods as a TV show and a novel is that
these gods are are representations of cultures, and they either
(51:46):
become fossilized and are forgotten and subsequently die, or they
incorporate themselvesselves somehow into these new cultures. Yeah, like belly
dancing comes to mind as a as as a potential,
you know, area to ask questions like this, but one
that so maybe a little more related to to you
and me. Yoga. I think it fits nicely in here
because you have a practice with roots in India, but
(52:07):
a practice that has undergone heavy alteration, alteration by Western
practitioners and continues to undergo alteration as it takes takes
on various forms, sometimes increasingly secular forms, other forms that
reinforce spiritual concepts, concepts that that might uh that that
you might argue or misappropriated as well. But if the
(52:28):
core physical practice improves the human experience, then isn't it
worth the adaptation? That's what I'm asking in, and can't
the same beset of meditation in various spirit spiritual models
as long as there's a you know, an openness there,
and uh, an honesty and its use. So there is
actually an article in the Boston Globe that came up
about this, about yoga specifically and whether it was cultural appropriation.
(52:53):
The tone of this article is a little bit more
confrontational than I'm really willing to engage with here, but
essentially the author was pushing back because there was an
accusation that Western practitioners of yoga were ignoring colonialism and
the oppression of where the practice originated from. Uh. And
his pushback was similar to what you said, which is
essentially like, well, if the practice is beneficial to mankind,
(53:16):
shouldn't we do it anyway? Yeah? I think that at times.
I'm certainly not trying to boil all this down to
this one question, but I think sometimes we have to
ask ourselves is there a legacy of horror here? And
in the answer, no matter where you are in life,
for culture is almost always yes, uh. And again that's
(53:36):
not not too blanketly forgive any cultural transgression, but maybe
it's simply important to on some level acknowledge the legacy
of horror and everything we do. Uh. And I realized
it sounds a bit dark even for us, but but
you know it, it kind of falls in line with
what we've been talking here, like be prepared to, uh,
to slip on the horror lens from time to time,
(53:58):
if only for a moment, if only to ground or
present choices, beliefs and privileges. Uh, you know, in in
a in an appropriate frame of reference. That's my personal
take on it. Anyway. Yeah, so you know we're winding
up here. I think uh that you know, the research
looking at this it helped me a little bit with
my question in terms of like the work that I'm creating,
(54:21):
but also in terms of, you know, what are things
that I should be offended by or or things that
I maybe should question out loud versus other things where
it's sometimes, like I said, there's lots of content created
on the internet about this because it's fuel for the
fire and it gets AD clicks. So you know, is
this worth clicking on? Is this headline worth engaging with?
(54:43):
Or should I just skip right past it. So hopefully
we've provided you with some additional insight here and some
additional tools, uh for you to just figure out where
you stand on all of this and and to understand
where other people are falling on on the topic of
cultural appropriation and cultural appropriation. Yeah, and I have to say,
as a fan of the show before I joined the show,
(55:05):
Robert does a really good job on Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot Com of incorporating a lot of different
cultures into our examination of sciences and philosophy over the
last what is it now, six seven years that the
show has been going on that. Yeah, So if you
visit stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, you're just
gonna find a lot of really interesting insights and that
(55:27):
are connected to what we were talking about here today.
And not only that, we've got all these are from
our blog posts, are podcast episodes, videos that we've done.
And then you've also got links out to all of
our social accounts if you want to interact with us
about this topic. That links to our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
and tumbler on there. That's right. Hey, if you listen
to us on Apple Podcasts dropped by there, give us
(55:51):
a strong review. Help us out there with the algorithm
and if you just want to get in touch with
us directly share your take on this hot topic, then
just email us at blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
(56:15):
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian
Seger Robert Our. Last episode, we were talking about samurai swords,
and I neglected to bring up one of my favorite
(00:23):
aspects of that historical Japanese culture sort of tied into
samurai swords. Do you remember ever seeing a net suke before.
They're these little carved objects that would be in different
shapes and you would use them. Essentially they had like
a hole through them that you would use to tie
strings like for purses and things like that, that you
(00:44):
would hang from a sash or belt. Yeah. Yeah, I
believe I've seen the Yeah, I've got one that's like
a little cat. It's an anthropomorphic cat that's wearing a
robe and it's supposed to be like a mythical figure
of this sort of like cat creature transforming itself so
it looks like a woman in tricking people. Uh. And
I got this at the pbody ESX Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
(01:05):
They have this amazing uh collection of Asian artifacts but
also just marines stuff. Basically, the gist is that um
sailors who are from the area would bring all of
these things back after their journeys around the world, and
they eventually went into the PVD SX Museum, so you
can see all of this really cool historical material there.
(01:27):
But I had this net suk. It sits on my
desk as I'm working on episodes like this one, and
I kind of wonder, like, is there something inherently weird
about me, you know, uh, fetishizing this and it mind's
not a historical and that's okay. It's like a mass
produced one that you get at the gift shop or whatever.
(01:47):
But there's something kind of odd about me incorporating that
into my I don't know, artistic aesthetic my setup of
my desk, right, you know, it's next to literally a
a plastic sculpture of a Xeno morph that ec Steiner
gave me for my birthday, you know, so it's like
it's not like I'm only into Japanese historical aesthetics. Well,
(02:11):
this this is an interesting question because I mean, obviously
we're talking about the idea of cultural appropriation today and
I think we're more and more, uh, we're we're forced
to ask these questions about our lives and the things
in our lives, the physical objects as well with the ideas.
I like what you said about the sailors enturing out
into the world and returning home with these essentially knickknacks
(02:34):
and uh and and artifacts. And I mean our lives
are kind of like that. We we travel around, we
experience new places, new ideas, and we end up incorporating
those ideas into our own worldview, into our own sense
of self. We end up bringing um artifacts into our home,
(02:56):
and our homes become reflections of our of our interest
and our travels and our experience. Yeah. Yeah, and that's
how I think about it. I don't just like, it's
not like a just collection of random items that I
just throw on my desk or something, you know what
I mean, although you know, obviously there's certain things that
I will that stay on the desk and other things
(03:17):
that go in a box somewhere. But yeah, I don't know.
It's strange. Like the alien for some reason is fine
because that's like American culture, But there's or is it
Swiss culture, right exactly? That's true based on our our
Hans Rudy Geeker episode. There's also I have a statue
of Ganesh on my desk as well of the Hindu
(03:39):
god of removing obstacles. Well, I have I have a
goodesh in my pocket. I forgot about that. I always
always carry a ges with me. So we're kind of
laying out some of the details of our own um, our,
own homes, our own sense of selves self. And I
imagine everyone listening you're probably doing the same thing. You're
thinking about, all right, what what items are on my person,
(04:00):
are in my house and just in my mind? And
from what cultures do those things arise? Yeah, and there's
probably some of you two who are having a reflex
that I think is pretty common in Western culture, which
is like, well, what would be wrong about that? You know,
there's a there's sort of an immediate defensiveness, and we're
gonna talk a little bit about that today as well. Like,
(04:22):
you know, basically, we're looking at cultural appropriation and then
we're gonna look at examples that are positive and negative
of it, but then look at the arguments for and
against it, because there's been plenty, Like, let me tell you,
this is an episode that there was uh no lack
of research. There was plenty of stuff out there to
incorporate into the literature. And at the end of this episode,
(04:44):
we are not going to have This is not one
of those episodes where we're gonna have a you know,
a bullet list of what something is. We're hopefully going
to provide you with some additional tools to evaluate, uh,
your own life, your own sense of culture, to know
what sort of the arguments are on both sides. We
are also not going to do an exhaustive examination of
every form of alleged cultural appropriation out there, because I mean,
(05:09):
you get into say, the music genre, the fashion genre,
and there's so many different examples that pop up, and
many of them are specialized, and they had their their
arguments on both sides in many cases. I can think
of one example off the top of my head that
I came up in a bunch of the articles, but
I didn't include it here. The singer Selena Gomez apparently
wore a bindy at one point like a music video
(05:32):
or maybe a live performance or something like that, and
she was criticized for it. I was just like, I
don't feel like this really fits into the discussion that
Robert and I are going to have. That is probably
for some of you, like one of the first examples
that comes to mind, right like Likewise, I don't think
we're going to talk a whole lot about hip hop
culture and it's uh and and it's and and how
it is treated in an American culture, but that certainly
(05:55):
is a huge area of discussion as well. Now, I
guess the first thing we need to do is just
say what is cultural appropriation? And that really that really
splits into two questions. Here, what what is cultural appropriation?
And then what does it consists of? So the first
question is a little easier broadly, and I mean broadly speaking,
(06:16):
we're talking about the adoption or use of the elements
of one culture by members of another culture. But of
course that that again, that's extremely broad because this sort
of cultural exchange has been going on as long as
human society has experienced a convergence of cultures. Uh, the
cats kind of out of the bag in terms of
keeping most global cultures entirely pure for a variety of reasons. Now,
(06:42):
we'll get on into a lot of this as we progress,
but it should come as no surprise that there are
plenty of vantage of individuals out there who prefer the
term cultural misappropriation. So it's not merely the fact that
one culture is adopting or using elements of another culture.
It's that they're doing so in a way that is
dishonest or harmful, insensitive or crass, or plays on some
(07:04):
some larger inequity. Yeah, there were actually arguments made in
some of the articles that I read for this that
essentially we're like, there's a linguistic problem at hand. Here
are semantics issue that cultural appropriation is the term we're
all using for this thing, but misappropriation might be better. Yeah,
because if you you often hear it just thrown out like, oh,
(07:26):
that's cultural misappropriation, that's like that's a sin stop it,
where whereas there's obviously going to be a lot more
nuance at play. Yeah, if you just look at like
the Salem Encyclopedia, it's entry on cultural appropriation says that
it is quote the lifting of aspects of one culture
or society for use by another culture. Pretty close to
(07:47):
what you just said. This can be anything from art
to music, fashion, etcetera. Sometimes the intermingling creates highly regarded
new pieces of work, though right and regardless, some argue
that the adoption of their culture by outsiders is seen
as disrespectful and offensive, so sometimes it's actually defined as
(08:08):
quote the use of works of indigenous people's by non
indigenous people, so there's a little bit of a distinction there.
The concept actually emerged in academia in the late nineteen
seventies and nineteen eighties, and it was a critique of colonialism,
so you can see why it applies, for instance, to
our Western society, American society, or British colonized society. But
(08:32):
by the nineteen nineties it had a solid place in
academic discourse, and I can say when I studied for
my master's degree between two thousand and six and two thousand,
it was a significant part of the literature for rhetoric,
cultural studies, and communication. I mean every class I was
in there was at least a section on cultural appropriation
and how it fit into the theories and discourse around
(08:53):
those ideas. Now, I think one way to help us
get started here is to keep in mind, what is
culture right? Like that alone is a really hard question
to answer in my mind. When I'm usually just talking
about culture casually or on one of these shows, if
I don't have a lot of research in front of me,
I'm thinking about culture as how people make sense of
(09:15):
the world. There's too much of a cacophony of sensory
information going on for us as human beings to make
sense of There's so much happening our brains literally can't
keep up. So culture is how we understand all of
this stuff. Is basically like a filter, right uh. And
obviously it's way more complicated than that. But some people
(09:37):
will say, well, culture is norms or social behavior, or materialism,
or politics, or customs and traditions. But let's not forget
there's also subcultures as well that exists within larger umbrella ones.
The main one that I always think, well, you just
brought up hip hop. Hip hop is a good example
of the subculture, but I think of punk is a
(09:57):
subculture that exists within what dain culture, right uh. And
then the dictionary says culture is quote the way of life,
especially the general customs and beliefs of a particular group
of people at a particular time. In general, it's used
to refer to our use of symbols to represent our experiences,
(10:19):
but done in a creative way. Yeah, this is one
of those areas where I often come back to this,
this analogy I keep rolling out of lenses and uh.
And while it's it's easy, it's easy to think that
our view of reality is completely unfiltered by by anything.
Or we might think, oh, I'm seeing reality through a
single lens, you know, a single pane of glass that
(10:42):
that comes down over my space helmet. But I feel
that all of us have multiple lenses that are employed, uh,
many at the same time, and then in various combinations.
And and so when you try and yeah, when you
try and boil down what is this culture, you end
up countering not one lens, but several, and some of
(11:02):
them may not be employed at all times. Yeah, that's
a really interesting way to look at it. And I
think too, And I'll get into this, we'll talk a
little bit later about a guy named Gert Hofstad and
his sort of cultural theories. Uh. But I think that
is the best way to keep this in mind, that
your analogy of lenses essentially is that like, different people
have their different lenses on, right, and they're not always
(11:24):
seeing the same thing. They're understanding those symbols through different experiences. Yeah,
and that's important for understanding how we're viewing the world,
but also how another individual is looking at the same topic.
And that's key to this whole entire discussion because it's
there's the aspect of how am I interacting with a
cultural idea or an artifact? But then how was another
(11:45):
person looking at that? And then and then how are
we supposed to have a conversation about it? Yeah, that's
the inherent problem in human communication, is that there's going
to be a misunderstanding no matter what. There's always what's
like referred to as psychological noise is in verbal communication. Right,
we're not telepaths, We're not beaming our thoughts directly into
somebody else's head. But through words and the use of
(12:08):
other symbols, we're trying to convey meaning back and forth
to each other. It's just that our way of understanding
that meaning is vastly different, especially depending on what kind
of culture you were raised in. All Right, we're gonna
take a quick break, and when we come back, we're
gonna jump into some examples of sort of positive cultural appropriation,
definite negative examples of cultural appropriation or cultural misappropriation, as
(12:32):
well as the the ever cantalizing gray areas. Thank Okay,
we're back. So before we get into positive and negative
examples of cultural appropriation here, I actually have one that
I'm concerned about for myself. It's something that I'm working on.
(12:53):
Most of our listeners now that I work on. Well,
both of us do we both do fiction outside of
the podcast. I do comics. You do short fiction. Uh, well,
you've you've written long fiction too, right, Yeah, the short
stuff is the main the main material that is out
there though, and and of course that that means something.
With both of our work, we're talking about multiple characters,
multiple voices, and the characters of varying um ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, etcetera. Yeah,
(13:20):
so I mentioned this actually in the Samurai Saw It episode.
I'm working on this project right now, and basically I
recognize that the diversity of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and
age really needs to improve in modern fiction, especially if
we want our culture these artifacts to represent the world
that we live in. This is kind of tricky for
(13:41):
a straight white, middle aged guy like me. Uh. And
I'm working on a news story that's a sci fi story.
It's set in Trinidad and the majority of the characters
are black. It's also going to incorporate elements of Japanese
culture into it, including the samurai ethos that we're referring
to in that other episoisode. So I'm trying to write
this thing, and I want to address themes of class
(14:04):
and race and violence in it. But I genuinely wonder
am I appropriating somebody else's culture here? Right? Like? This
is a tricky tightrope. Should I stick to only what
I know? Should my characters only be white, an American
and male? Right? Or should I try to improve diversity
leading by example through my storytelling. I don't know. It's
(14:27):
something I like, I genuinely worry about. I've done stuff
in the past, um where I've had characters of diversity
that I've made the focal point of my work, and
other stuff I've written have been from characters who are,
you know, essentially variations of meat. Yeah. I mean, this
is always a quandary as as a writer, as as
a creator, probably of any form, because there certainly are
(14:48):
voices that insist that say, an African American perspective should
not be approached from from a non African American writer.
So is a writer, then, you know, forced to exist
within the confines of their own cold sure? And if so,
how far does it go? Can Stephen King right about
a Southerner. Did did Tennessee raised Coleman McCarthy appropriate the
(15:08):
cultures of Mexico and the American West when he moved
out there and started to write westerns. Uh yeah, this
is this is the kind of way that I think
that the modern writer's mind especially continues to eat away
as yourself. You know, it's like a dog gnawing its
own tail, your second guessing all of your creative choices.
But but I have to I have to say from
(15:29):
my own part, like when when I've written, say, I
wrote about a biracial character in one of my Grave
Stoppers tales and it was a it was a slide
homage to Joe Christmas and Faulkner's Light in August. But
and personally, I always approach a character like that as
an attempt to understand another viewpoint, uh, you know, to
to respectfully understand how they are viewing the world, what
(15:51):
their worldview consists of, and and you know, and putting
in some research as well, like looking at at authentic
voices from those realm is to try and create it.
I mean, that's part of the exercise. What what you
don't want to do in My opinion is to is
to sort of go the the old school pro wrestling,
you know, root where someone is is nothing more than
(16:12):
the archetype. There's nothing more than the stereotype character, and
that's all they are, right. Yeah, that's a really good example.
Um the like sort of wrestling characters from like the eighties.
I'm thinking of like the Iron Cheek here, and that
guy is kind of still performing that personality, Like have
you ever seen the Iron Cheeks Twitter feed? That's pretty wild.
(16:33):
I understand there's some disagreement on to what extent that
is him or people who handle it for him, So
I didn't know that, but I don't know a lot
of detail about about that argument. But to Glow on
Netflix is a is a big right now, and that
that discusses some similar territory. Yeah, And Glow is fascinating
because you see these women come in in the first
couple episodes and they have all of these different backgrounds, right,
(16:56):
but they are essentially coming to the same project, Like
what on earth is this? Like they've all got this
like what we're gonna be female wrestlers? Huh. But then
the characters that are created for them are totally two dimensional.
And kind of grotesque. Um. Yeah, And so like, when
I'm thinking about these projects, I think, well, diversity should
be improved behind the scenes as well. Right, it doesn't
(17:17):
just make up for a lack of diversity to have
white people appropriating culture there. There should be more creators
of diversity given a platform. And I was trying to
think of recent like examples to do like a uh
compare and contrast here, And the two that came up
for me was I just started watching the American Gods
TV show that's based on that Neil game and novel,
(17:38):
and it really attempts to tackle the African American experience.
But at the same time, it's based on a book
by a white Englishman and it's adapted by a white American.
Then I think of a show like Atlanta, which we
talked about in this Ironically we talked about Atlanta in
the in the Samurai storied episode. Uh, that is written
and run by a majority of African Americans. Is one
(18:01):
necessarily better than the other? Is one more authentic than
the other? They both. As I'm watching them, I'm getting
different things out of them, and I'm enjoying the experience
and maybe listeners out there who are engaged in creative
projects to have this floating in the back of their head,
like what am I allowed to engage with? Yeah, alright, well,
let's let's continue to discussion then by discussing some some
(18:25):
some first of all clear positive examples or or what
I'm I'm presenting as a as a positive example. So
one that came to mind instantly is British British singer
of Swiss and Greek heritage, Cat Stevens. He famously converted
to Islam and uh and became use of Islam. Now,
clearly this is a case of an individual entering into
(18:47):
another culture's customs and religious worldview with with clear permission
to do so. As with Christianity and Buddhism, Islam is
a missionary religion with a clear mandate to bring other
people's into the faith. Everyone, it is said, our our
Muslim at birth. So actually, one of the pieces that
I turned to for research on this was in the
(19:08):
Atlantic and it was by an author named Jenny Avans,
and she argued that without cultural appropriation, we wouldn't have
the following things. These are positive examples. New York pizza,
Japanese Denim. I didn't know that was a thing. Uh, yeah,
I didn't either reading what she was talking about. Apparently
it's an older style of denim may democratic discourse. That's interesting.
(19:33):
It makes sense like democratic discourse came from Greece, but
here in America we've sort of assumed that it's like
our thing, right, you know. Uh, and then from the
Atlantic as well. Connor Freedersdorf also had an interesting interview,
and he provided the following examples. Imagine a Korean food
truck owner who puts beef bulgogie in a burrito. Are
(19:56):
they appropriating Mexican culinary culture? Or a malays Asian housewife
who rents a kimono when they're on holiday in Kyoto?
Is that appropriating traditional Japanese dress? Or a Canadian who
writes a novel that's inspired by Cervantes, they're technically appropriating
Spanish literary culture. Or an Irish American who sings opera
(20:17):
for a living they're benefiting from the world's appropriation of
Italian art. So there's a lot of complication here, right.
It's not as easy as just pointing at Selena Gomez
or Miley Cyrus or somebody and saying stop doing that. Yeah,
I mean the culinary example. Um, I'm glad you brought
it that up, because I was I was turning a
number of these around it in my mind, like, oh,
what about the Portuguese influence on Thai cuisine, you know,
(20:40):
the incorporation of of peppers for instance, Or a better,
more clear cut example, I suppose would be the French
influence on Vietnamese cuisine, because there you have an even clearer, uh,
colonial influence. And of course this leads to an important
detail in charges of cultural misappropriation. It's it's usually the
(21:00):
superior power, the colonial force, that is charged with misappropriating something,
and the reasons should be obvious. I mean, for instance,
if you're if you're a population of Africans transposed to
to a Caribbean island, and you incorporate aspects of the
colonial and local culture under your own practices, I mean
that survival that falls in line with a lot of
what we're talking about in our Cargo Cults episode. But
(21:22):
when the colonist appropriates the culture of subjugated people, I mean,
that's that's where it gets a lot ickier or potentially ickier. Right, Okay,
So yeah, I'm seeing that as like definitely like a
hallmark for these cases that are brought up with outrage, right,
is that usually it's if somebody who is from a
(21:43):
colonial culture is appropriate again indigenous versus non indigenous. Um.
One of my favorite books of all time is a
graphic novel called Pride of Baghdad. It's about lions that
escape the zoo after the Americans bomb Baghdad in two
thousand three, and the lions, or of the story, they
essentially become symbols for us to see different versions of
(22:04):
the war through. It's written by Brian K. Vaughan, is
drawn by Nico Henrikin. Neither of them are Iraqi, but
this modern folk tale really made me think about the
Iraqi experience differently. I think about, uh, this is a
non colonial example Japanese post rock bands I like Mono
and the band Boris. Uh. These musicians adapt Western styles
(22:29):
of rock. They come up with something that's totally new
and kind of wonderful in the process. I'd never dream
of referring to Boris as cultural appropriation, right, but arguably
it is. It's just because Japan is not a colonizer
of the United States, we don't really think of it
that way. In fact, part of why I think I
like it so much is the multiculturalism to it. And
(22:50):
I think we'd be remiss if we didn't recognize. One
of the major examples that comes up over and over
again the literature is that white people have been accused
of appropriating rock from African American culture. Uh. And then
you and I were trying to we were talking earlier
before we went on air, like, what's a great positive
example of the sort of colonizer, white vanilla guy really
(23:13):
doing a great job representing another culture, And you said,
David Simon, the guy who created the wire and tremay. Yeah, Yeah,
this has come up a lot and uh, and in
some of the resources we were looking at for this episode.
And I think the reason that it is often brought
up as a good example is because David Simon and
the teams that he as symbols, they tend to approach
(23:36):
these topics with, you know, out of a sense of
wanting to understand a very empathic, uh journalistic mission in mind. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's important. Uh. And as we go through
these examples, it becomes clearer to me that that part
of it is like actually engaging with the culture that
you're influenced by or appropriating, right, like engaging with that
(23:59):
and not just the artifact. Uh. That goes a long way.
Now that being said, I do have to I do
have to throw out there that I know that David
Simon does make an effort to bring in members of
of of cultures that are that are depicted in his shows,
because I remember him talking about The Wire and towards
the end and saying that if they were going to
(24:20):
do another season, they would have to incorporate like another
racial demographic of Baltimore, and if they did not have
anybody uh on the team that had had expertise or
knowledge or or participation in that culture. Yeah, I was
gonna say, I can't remember the character's name. There's like
a preacher on the show, and I want to say,
(24:43):
like the real life version of him is in the
writer's room for that show, or was in the writer's room.
I don't want to call off remember, isn't I'm sure
some Wire fans will point we'll answer that question for us.
So then let's let's look at some really clear negative examples.
And this again maybe where some people sort of react
defensively and say, what how is that how is that negative?
(25:05):
The most people agree the adaptation of Native American garments
in the fashion industry UH isn't seen in a positive light.
UH So in a brief period of time in the
last couple of years, we had Victorious Secret feature a
model wearing a feathered headdress and turquoise jewelry, and a
fashion show that at the same time, Michelle Williams was
(25:25):
criticized for wearing braids and feathers in a magazine photo shoot,
and contestants on Germany's Next Top Model also did a
photo shoot wearing headdresses UH in Native American style clothing
UH and Native American writer Jessica Metcalf actually points out
in The Guardian. She says, quote, our cultures have been
reduced to nothing more than patterns on a shirt. I
(25:47):
think this is a good point. This is again it's
the culture is about understanding the world through these symbols.
But when their symbolic meaning is completely discarded, they're divested
of that power, right, and then the meaning is lost,
and so why engage with it other than just like
I like feathers, or I like turquoise, you know, or
or to what extent is that even are you engaging
(26:08):
with it? Are you are? You're not really engaging with
it at all, if you're just taking it on as
a hollowed out, superficial thing. It's especially viewed as worse
because these artifacts have spiritual and ceremonial significance to them too.
So I think like maybe looking at this example, it
seems that cultural appropriation is quote unquote worse when it's
(26:29):
done for commercial purposes. So we've got sort of two
hallmarks here, the colonial one a commercial one in this sense.
For instance, fashion businessman Oscar mets of it. I think
that's how you say his name. Met sav Hot gave
royalties from his twenties sixteen spring collection to the asha
Nika tribe that these clothes were inspired by. They also
(26:51):
contributed to public awareness about the tribe struggle with illegal loggers.
This was in Brazil, so you know, he's clearly like
trying to uh put out any fires. I guess ahead
of time because he knew like he had a commercial
product essentially and that he could be criticized for it. Now,
if that was a clear negative example, that had some
(27:14):
perhaps some wiggle room for for some people to say, well,
I don't understand you know, I need that explained to
me a little more wine. That's offensive. I feel like
the next one should be pretty pretty clear cut, you
think so, And yet there's so many there's so many
examples of this one still being used. So blackface is
essentially like the big no no. Right. Uh, And this
(27:35):
is where I think he gets important to like, is
that cultural appropriation or is that just making fun of
race or ethnicity? You know, well, yeah, it's I guess
it's It tends to be the the the most unrefined
example of just blatant um mockery. And you have to
ask yourself, to what degree is this energy present in
(27:57):
more deluded amounts in other acts of alleged cultural misappropriation exactly?
I mean, really, any dressed up perpetuation of an ethnic
stereotype is going to be bad here. Don't make fun
of someone else's culture or ethnicity. Don't treat it like
a joke. Right. You remember this from our previous Halloween
episode that we did must be two years ago. Now, Uh,
(28:20):
there's a kind of in clothed performance that happens around
that holiday. Another example of this is, for instance, when
white people think that Dio de los Muertos is Mexican Halloween,
and they wear skull face paint. They don't even consider
sometimes the cultural implications of the actual tradition. And Connor
Friedersdorf again, he has a good quote about this. He says,
(28:40):
a white college student who dons black face is not
engaging with African American culture. He or she is just
caricaturing physical features of another race. The act is offensive
partially because it's reducing people to the color of their skin. Uh.
My example that I came out from this recently, I
meant in this I think in previous episode. I'm rereading
(29:02):
it this summer. Stephen King's in anticipation of the new movie.
I had forgotten how racist some of the characters in
that are. The Richie Tozier character puts on like a
quote black character voice in the book, Uh, and it
completely pulls me out of the story every time it happens.
I don't think Stephen King is racist. I don't think
(29:22):
he was making fun of ethnicity. I think he was
probably trying to critique the era that he grew up
in the nineteen fifties, when something like Amos and Andy
was acceptable. Right. It still feels super culturally weird to
read that today. I can't imagine in that movie the
kid from Stranger Things is playing Richie Tozier. I can't
imagine they're gonna have him repeat those lines when he
(29:43):
plays that character, especially since are they updating the backstory
to the eighties? Yeah, they are. Yeah, They're going to
be in the eighties, and I think the modern version
will be in present day. Yeah. Uh. Jonathan Blanks was
interviewed in the Atlantic and he says there's nothing wrong
with adopting terms like was up as they come into
white pop culture through various media. But there's a difference
(30:04):
between the natural assimilation of language and black imitation as
a caricature. Yeah. Obviously yellow faces another example of this,
and the big the big like just cringe worthy example,
I mean, at least crunch worthy. Is Um Breakfast a
Tiffany's wonderful film, except you have this this horrible character
(30:25):
played by Mickey Rooney, Mickey Rooney playing a Chinese American
and the most stereotypical way possible. Uh, just blatantly offensive
to to to to modern viewers of the film. Uh,
and and some contemporary viewers of the film as well.
If you look back at at some of the reviews.
But again, there's this, there's not an attempt to really
(30:48):
understand this person or to embody this character as anything
other than a mockery. You know, another one that I
had forgotten about from our childhood adolescents Twin Peaks. Yeah,
I had completely forgotten about this. Uh there's a character
who does yellow face and that uh Katherine at one
point pretends to have died. Spoilers for the but I
(31:10):
haven't haven't seen it yet. You've never seen the original
the original Twin Peaks. Oh well, okay, I won't go
too far with it, but as long as you don't
spoil who done it, I'm not fine. Oh yeah, I
won't go there. But there is a character who dresses
up like a Chinese man. Uh. And it's super offensive.
And when you watch it now you realize, like, oh,
this was David Lynch making a commentary on Americans and racism. Right.
(31:34):
It wasn't like David Lynch was being racist, but it
is extraordinarily weird to watch something like that or read
something like it that you know I was consuming when
I was a kid and not really recognizing, oh, hey,
this is this is wrong, not quite right. Here, so
Jenny Avans again in her article she argues that we
shouldn't just engage with the culture on an aesthetic level.
(31:58):
It was put another way actually by an actress named
Amanda Stenberg. She was in the Hunger Games, and she
said in a video that was actually very much criticized,
what would America be like if we loved black people
as much as we love black culture. Nicki Minaj of
all People, actually echoed this. Her point was basically, don't
cherry pick cultural elements without engaging their creators as a
(32:21):
part of a process of understanding the world from a
different perspective than yours. And this is where it gets interesting.
You see a lot of these contrasting viewpoints. In NPR
actually did a story about how young Americans don't identify
hip hop with race. They actually think that that culture
is now possibly seen as global because you can see
(32:45):
it as far away as places like Korea and Russia.
At the same time, others are arguing, well, when you
culturally devalue black people, that subsequently paved the way for
violence against them. Right, and as we're seeing in so
many cases of incidents in which police are shooting young
black men, Okay, so let's talk a little more about
(33:06):
gray area is here, um briefly, So as always, you know,
the gray area is only as gray as the critic
paints it. So if it helps, think of think of
these as less as gray areas, but areas of question,
areas of possibility even as we discussed them, and as
you discussed them and think about them in your own lives. Uh,
places where the charge of cultural appropriation or misappropriation become
(33:26):
less clear. So one example that comes to my mind
a video was making the rounds recently on social media
in which a group of Caucasian women performed at traditional
African dance in presumably traditional costume. Now, it is often
the case with social media content, any context was completely lacking.
Here we didn't we were not told who these women were,
(33:50):
why they were doing it, where they were doing it,
even there was no no, no clue at all, the
messages in the hand of the share and then in
the in the commentator. Now, a number of commentators on
this video, when I was looking at they strongly condemned
the footage, saying that it was, you know, just a
blinding example of cultural misappropriation. A few credit commentators, however,
pointed out that we didn't know to what extent these
(34:11):
women had permission to engage in this dance and really
what the spirit of their performance was. It did not
I mean, they certainly were not wearing black face. It
did not seem to have comedic um aspects to it,
But we just simply don't know. In short, did they
do it to mock anybody? Did they do it to
engage in a surface level experience, or was it part
(34:31):
of a deeper effort to understand is their honor instant
and understanding there is their permission there? Essentially context is
important here. Yeah, I feel like I mean again, it's it.
It kind of depends on the commentator here and who
is making the charge of cultural misappropriation, and they're going
to go to varying extremes in making that charge. Another
(34:54):
example that came to mind Big Trouble in Little China. Yeah,
this one. When you put this in the new It's
immediately like a light bulb went on over my head.
I was like, oh, yeah, Like again a thing from
our childhood never even occurred to me as a kid
that that would be any in any way offensive to somebody. Yeah,
and this is I have to say this is uh,
(35:14):
this has always been one of my my favorite films.
But it's a thing, and it's a you know, film
I've I've always loved, but it is a film by
a group of Western Caucasian filmmakers. Now, it does it
does invoke Chinese martial arts movie stereotypes. But on the
other hand, it does feature a large Chinese American cast.
It plays with its stereotypical stereotypical characters to some degree,
(35:37):
and even counters some stereotypes, uh within key characters. Plus,
while it certainly plays fast and loose um Hollywood style
with Chinese mythology, it does seem to try reasonably hard
to incorporate some key elements there. So in my current
experience of the movie, I'm inclined to appreciate it within
(35:57):
those parameters and see it as a net positive expression.
But I also understand that other individuals might take a
different view. I have a hard time imagining Big Trouble
in Little China getting made the same way today. Now.
I know, like there's been rumors that they're like they're
going to remake it with a rock or something like that,
But I just I can't imagine that it's going to
(36:18):
engage with Chinese culture in the same way, because like
again I'm bringing this up twice in a week Transformers,
uh whatever the whatever number five that I saw this weekend.
Like don't get me wrong, I have a problem and
I go see all those movies in the theater, but
they are really offensive at some points and how they
appropriate culture. And there's like a basically like a Japanese
(36:41):
stereotype Transformer that like dresses like a samurai and has
a katana and has um. I can't remember the actor's name,
but isn't it a Tokyo drift based car transfer might
be Yeah, it's some sports car I don't recognize, but
he it's a Japanese actor performing this character. It's like
super offensive in the same way that like some of
(37:03):
those Star Wars aliens were seen as being like caricatures
as well. Uh. And that they had another one in
this in this recent one that was French, and they're like, oh, yeah,
can Transformers be French? And somebody says, oh, no, he's
not actually French. He just he's just pretending to be French,
like he really likes French culture. And I was like,
(37:23):
this is like, I mean, there's so many things about
those movies that are confounding. But yeah, any statement it
tries to make about ethnicity or culture I wouldn't take
with a whole lot of brain as salt. All Right, well,
let's take another break, and when we come back, let's
get a little more into the case against cultural misappropriation. Alright,
(37:49):
we're back, al right, so let's look at cases against
in cases for this. Now. Bell Hooks actually said about
this topic, and we're talking about cases against here quote
at nicity becomes a spice a seasoning that can liven
up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture. Uh.
In the New York Times Pulse, Agal actually argues that
(38:10):
cultural appropriation is actually about America's original sins, whereas origins
are bound up in quote, theft and colonization. This gets
back to what we were talking about earlier with some
of those negative examples. It really seems like the colonization
aspect in the commercial aspect are the two big no
nos here, right. Uh So if you're if you're combining
(38:31):
the two, it's even worse. Yeah, I mean, we always
come back to the idea of America is a melting pot.
But did everyone want to go into the pot, and
to what extent is the pot proportionally stirred? Right, Yeah,
that's that's a fair question. Connor Friedersdorff actually argues that
the claims of cultural appropriation are actually objectionable if there's
(38:53):
an underlying animous dis or dehumanization to them. That's his words,
not mine. The problem him becomes when this is conflated
with cultural appropriation that's seen as absurd. So for instance,
the example he gives is if a college cafeteria serves sushi,
uh and for starters, Well yeah, I mean you probably
(39:14):
can get sick. But but his example is basically like
somebody could find that as a case of cultural appropriation,
and then somebody else would see that as being absurd,
as being a conflation right off, if you saw that
as cultural appropriation. So this is where you get into
this like sort of battle between whether or not something
is or isn't offensive, and it gets worse when the
(39:36):
conflation backfires. Then all examples are considered absurd. So, for instance,
even when something is malicious like the fraternity party where
everybody's wearing black face for example, right, uh, And I
just realized as I was doing the research for this,
and I had this moment where I was just like, oh, uh,
that you could use this. This is basically cannon fodder
(39:57):
for content creation on the internet, right, for little media
outlets like without engaging with the larger question in any
manner like we're trying to do today. It's basically any
time an incident like this happens, it's just all right,
that's a perfect five word piece that we can just
like spit out there and get people to click on, right,
Like if we feign outrage over something, or we feign
(40:22):
outrage over somebody else's outrage. I mean, you see this everywhere.
It's it's so much of what I think makes a
Facebook probably uh intolerable right now? Yeah, and then commenting
or critiquing another individual's outrage and what degree is that
outrage appropriate? Right? So, I think what we're finding here
is this is essentially a problem with language, right, that
(40:43):
we're not using words accurately to describe the differences between
something like racism and cultural appropriation. And the example I
think of, uh, and when you first brought up this
topic to me it came to mind was Paton Oswald
has this great comedy bit about this on Netflix. The
specials called talking for clapping. He jokes about the difference
between terminology versus listening to someone's heart, on the difference
(41:06):
between their words and their intent, And he does these
these sort of caricature characters. You know, one person is
using all the exact right terms, but they're what they're saying,
the content of what they're saying is offensive, versus like
somebody who doesn't know the exact right terminology, but they meanwhile, um,
and it's probably. This is where I think is a
(41:27):
good point to mention Gert Hofstad and his cultural dimensions theory. Now,
the idea here, we could whole episode on this, but
I'm gonna try to boil it down quickly. He breaks
down cultural factors and communication and how they contribute to
miss communication. And there's five factors that he's pointing us
to here, power, distance, individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty, avoidance, masculinity
(41:52):
versus femininity, and long term versus short term orientation. Now,
I'm not a hundred percent of propos of his theory,
but I recognize I think he's kind of on the
right track here of looking at how different cultures communicate
and understanding one another. Differently, And basically the idea here
is to ensure that the symbols themselves aren't misunderstood. Communicators
(42:15):
need to be cognizant of the factors themselves. Right. The
way he actually does it, he'll he breaks them up
by nation, which I think is probably part of the
problem here, because I don't think one nation necessarily has
a culture per se, right to say, like American culture,
uh doesn't recognize like so many of the subcultures within it,
right Oh yeah too. I think to to to boil
(42:38):
down another nation to a singular, you know, monolithic culture
is generally to betray a very incomplete idea of of
who these people are. Yeah, And so I think that
might be why a lot of the examples we're seeing
in the literature here come from mass media. The communicators
themselves aren't actually targeting like a single audience, so they're
(43:00):
subsequently unintentionally offensive to people that they just forgot about
that would be part of this mass broadcast. Right. Um, yeah,
I mean countless examples. I don't think when Selena Gomez
puts on a bindy or um, what what did Katy
Perry do? Did she have corn rows? I think that
(43:20):
was what people. Uh, I think that was the example.
She was Egyptian. I don't know that dark Horse. The
Egyptian culture is an interesting example too, because what is
we'll get into it will discuss the idea of like
what happens if a culture is not appropriated and it
runs the risk of becoming outdated. It kind of runs
the risk of becoming something like Egyptian culture. Which not
(43:42):
to say that you could not misappropriate ancient Egyptian h
iconography your dress in a way that would offend someone.
But given the distance, given the time, given the fact
that the the ideas of the ancient Egyptians did not
travel well even during their time, much less into modern times, um,
(44:02):
it makes it a little safer for some for sale
pop singer two to utilize. I haven't seen that new
Tom Cruise Mummy movie. I can't imagine that it is
in any way portraying Egyptian culture in a positive I mean,
like I said, it tends to be this this safe zone,
or relatively safe at least, you know, compared to so
(44:23):
many things. I mean, we still have Mommy movies. We
talked before about how kind of weird it is that
we have these tales about Uh, these bodies that were
stolen from from tombs by by colonial powers and they
come to life and start killing people, and and for
the most part, like no serious self examination is conducted. Yeah, yeah,
well right and again, so like I think all of
(44:45):
this comes back to like a matter of semantics and language,
kind of paying attention to what you're saying and what
you're doing, and probably where the term misappropriation needs to
be clarified and used instead of appropriation. Now, another notable
area here or that that the factors into our discussion
concerns American sports teams and the use of Native Americans
(45:08):
stereotypes as mascots. Now, certainly this is a this is
a whole discussion onto itself. But what's interesting here for
the purposes of our discussion is that is that there
was a study that was published in the Journal of
Consumer Psychology by a team of researchers from the University
of Montana, the University of Washington, and Washington State University,
and they set out to empirically test the use of
(45:28):
American Indian brand imagery and how it increases UH stereotype
beliefs in the broader population. And they wanted to see
what kind of impact the brands would have on both
negative and positive stereotypes. So examples here would be Indians
are warlike versus Indians are noble, so it's a noble savage,
right that kind of Yeah. Then the idea that these
(45:50):
are the two private predominant stereotypes and these are the
only two that can exist when you're doing just search
a surface level understanding of another culture. So interestingly enough,
they found that while conservative individuals that they tested, they
did not change their opinion about Native Americans upon seeing
such imagery. Uh. Liberal individuals were far more malleable. Uh,
(46:13):
and they were affected by both positive and negative stereotypes.
And this apparently falls into line with previous studies that
have revealed that that liberal individuals tend to have more
malleable worldviews and are therefore sometimes more sensitive to contextual clues.
So I have a great example of this. We live
in Atlanta, Georgia. Have you ever going to see the
(46:34):
Braves play? No, yeah, it's not my thing, but a
couple of coworkers at a job previous to this took
me to a Braves game. And did you know about this?
The tomahawk chop? Oh yeah, yeah, I'm sir, I'm familiar
enough with it to know that as we chop your arm. Yeah, So,
like there's a certain point during the game where that,
you know, the crowd gets excited in support of the
(46:55):
home team in Atlanta Braves, and they do this tomahawk
chop thing where they like use their arms like the
tomahawks that they're like bringing them down on the skulls
of their opponent. There's actually like a I don't even
know what it is, like a robot like animatronic thing
that kind of comes out and swings the tomahawk and everything.
And I remember the first time I saw that just
being like WHOA, Like, what is happening here? This is
(47:16):
super offensive? Um, But again that might just be like
my predilections, right, Like uh, I just saw it as
being like, Okay, this is the the savage stereotype being
brought out to play here. Now. They had a separate
field study as well, and the researchers also found that
exposure to a quote more negative ethnic logo A significantly
(47:37):
strengthened negative stereotypes among liberal individuals, while exposure to the
less negative logo did not significantly influence negative stereotypes At
any level of political identity. So what what does all
this fit into our conversation here. Well, I think one
of the things that's interesting is that it reveals that
one can interact with such artifacts of cultural appropriation without
(47:58):
necessarily thinking about them, without certainly without engaging with them,
but also not realizing why they could be offensive. And
it also is interesting to see how malleable worldviews can
cut both ways. So the very the very, the very
aspect of your psyche that makes you more willing to
(48:19):
to see the situation from another individual side and to
shift your worldview accordingly. Uh, that can also lead to
the to the less desirable effect that you're influenced than
by bits of negative stereoto typing um and and you know,
negative cultural misappropriation. So this is actually part of the
(48:40):
sort of factor of leading to the whole like is
it absurd? Is it not absurd? Should it be blamed?
Should it not be blamed? So, yeah, there's so many
complex factors here. Now let's look at some of the
cases for cultural appropriation and see if we can get
anything more out of them. Uh. Sometimes it's seen as
being positive when it's seen as appreciation and influence rather
(49:02):
than appropriation. Also when creators seek permission from the person
or culture they're appropriating from, or they're paying homage to
the artistry, then it gets complicated. How do you know
who you're supposed to ask? Like this whole thing gets
into intellectual property. I found so many articles about intellectual
property and ownership of cultural artifacts, and that there's actually
(49:23):
legal precedent for culture being copyrighted in certain cases. To
Um and Jenny Avan's argues in that Atlantic piece, the
cultural appropriation is actually a result of globalization, so subsequently
it's inevitable, but it's also ultimately positive. In her mind,
it's an exchange of ideas, styles, and traditions, and it's
showcasing the joy of living in a multicultural society. Susan
(49:47):
Scaffitti wrote a book that is called Who Owns Culture?
Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, and she says that
culture shouldn't freeze itself in time as if it's like
part of a music e M diorama. She actually argues
cultural appropriation can save cultural products from fading away. And
Pakistani novelist Camilla Shamsi called for more, not less, imaginative
(50:14):
engagement with her country. She says, quote, the moment you
say a male American writer can't write about a female Pakistani,
you are saying, don't tell these stories. And even worse so,
you're saying, as an American male, you can't understand a
Pakistani woman. She is enigmatic, inscrutable, and unknowable. Therefore she's other.
(50:36):
Leave her and her nation to its otherness. Write them
out of your history. I ran across a wonderful article
in Ian magazine. No surprise that they come up pretty
frequently here. Nabilia At jeffre Uh makes some really good
points in the article is Nothing Sacred? And when she discusses,
among other things, the experience of seeing non Sufi Muslims
take up the dervish whirling. Okay, he talks about, you know,
(51:00):
the origins of this custom and then what it's like
to see it, uh, it practiced by by non Muslims
and say, uh, West London, and you know, it's hard
to to see it as anything other than like a
hollowed out portion of someone's culture. But he also points
out that quote religions and cultures, and indeed nations have
survived only by being open to new ways of representing themselves,
(51:22):
and that the survival and spread of a culture's core
values come at a price, and the alternative to paying
that price is sometimes fossilization. Uh, your your culture just
becomes irrevalent. So this is again like plays right into
that whole American Gods thing. Essentially, the thesis of American
Gods as a TV show and a novel is that
these gods are are representations of cultures, and they either
(51:46):
become fossilized and are forgotten and subsequently die, or they
incorporate themselvesselves somehow into these new cultures. Yeah, like belly
dancing comes to mind as a as as a potential,
you know, area to ask questions like this, but one
that so maybe a little more related to to you
and me. Yoga. I think it fits nicely in here
because you have a practice with roots in India, but
(52:07):
a practice that has undergone heavy alteration, alteration by Western
practitioners and continues to undergo alteration as it takes takes
on various forms, sometimes increasingly secular forms, other forms that
reinforce spiritual concepts, concepts that that might uh that that
you might argue or misappropriated as well. But if the
(52:28):
core physical practice improves the human experience, then isn't it
worth the adaptation? That's what I'm asking in, and can't
the same beset of meditation in various spirit spiritual models
as long as there's a you know, an openness there,
and uh, an honesty and its use. So there is
actually an article in the Boston Globe that came up
about this, about yoga specifically and whether it was cultural appropriation.
(52:53):
The tone of this article is a little bit more
confrontational than I'm really willing to engage with here, but
essentially the author was pushing back because there was an
accusation that Western practitioners of yoga were ignoring colonialism and
the oppression of where the practice originated from. Uh. And
his pushback was similar to what you said, which is
essentially like, well, if the practice is beneficial to mankind,
(53:16):
shouldn't we do it anyway? Yeah? I think that at times.
I'm certainly not trying to boil all this down to
this one question, but I think sometimes we have to
ask ourselves is there a legacy of horror here? And
in the answer, no matter where you are in life,
for culture is almost always yes, uh. And again that's
(53:36):
not not too blanketly forgive any cultural transgression, but maybe
it's simply important to on some level acknowledge the legacy
of horror and everything we do. Uh. And I realized
it sounds a bit dark even for us, but but
you know it, it kind of falls in line with
what we've been talking here, like be prepared to, uh,
to slip on the horror lens from time to time,
(53:58):
if only for a moment, if only to ground or
present choices, beliefs and privileges. Uh, you know, in in
a in an appropriate frame of reference. That's my personal
take on it. Anyway. Yeah, so you know we're winding
up here. I think uh that you know, the research
looking at this it helped me a little bit with
my question in terms of like the work that I'm creating,
(54:21):
but also in terms of, you know, what are things
that I should be offended by or or things that
I maybe should question out loud versus other things where
it's sometimes, like I said, there's lots of content created
on the internet about this because it's fuel for the
fire and it gets AD clicks. So you know, is
this worth clicking on? Is this headline worth engaging with?
(54:43):
Or should I just skip right past it. So hopefully
we've provided you with some additional insight here and some
additional tools, uh for you to just figure out where
you stand on all of this and and to understand
where other people are falling on on the topic of
cultural appropriation and cultural appropriation. Yeah, and I have to say,
as a fan of the show before I joined the show,
(55:05):
Robert does a really good job on Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot Com of incorporating a lot of different
cultures into our examination of sciences and philosophy over the
last what is it now, six seven years that the
show has been going on that. Yeah, So if you
visit stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, you're just
gonna find a lot of really interesting insights and that
(55:27):
are connected to what we were talking about here today.
And not only that, we've got all these are from
our blog posts, are podcast episodes, videos that we've done.
And then you've also got links out to all of
our social accounts if you want to interact with us
about this topic. That links to our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
and tumbler on there. That's right. Hey, if you listen
to us on Apple Podcasts dropped by there, give us
(55:51):
a strong review. Help us out there with the algorithm
and if you just want to get in touch with
us directly share your take on this hot topic, then
just email us at blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
(56:15):
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.