Post #776384 by EnchantedTikiGoth on Sun, May 28, 2017 9:33 AM

On 2017-05-27 11:59, paranoid123 wrote:

Obviously my allegory isn't about t-shirts. It's about what we eat. It's what we believe in. It's what we practice. It's how we look. We were shamed and ridiculed for it. But someone else takes it, marginally changes it, and is lauded for it. That is cultural appropriation.

If you still can't identify with this, my friend, you are in a privileged place, and I truly hope you never feel marginalized this way.

Over the span of my life, I have been/still am a farm boy, sci-fi/comic book geek, a Goth, and a "Steampunk." So yes, I am well-acquainted with this phenomenon. Heck, THIS YEAR a local event is running with a Goth/Steampunk theme after kicking out me and my friends for dressing Goth/Steampunk at it about 10 years ago (to make it even better, this is a Western/cowboy heritage festival, so they kicked out a FARM BOY in the process). In Jr. High I would get made fun of for wearing superhero t-shirts and being into video games. I've noticed the irony, but never felt a particular angst over "cultural appropriation."

One of the problems with cultural appropriation theory is that what counts AS cultural appropriation is poorly defined. I did quite a bit of research about this when I wrote my article about whether Tiki is cultural appropriation, and I couldn't get a clear picture of what it is even supposed to be. My suspicion is that it's poorly defined because it's not contingent on an actual activity, but on the class of the people doing it. Cultural appropriation theory is rooted in Marxist dialecticism, which treats society as an arena of conflict between competing dialectic groups defined as either the oppressor or oppressed (as opposed to, say, an arena of negotiation between individuals or social contracts in mass society or any of the other theories of society that exist). Cultural appropriation theory can only really be understood in a framework of WHO is doing something, not WHAT they're doing. Specifically, what a oppressor class of people labelled "white" are doing with the things "belonging" to an oppressed class labelled "people of colour." As noted above, it's even okay to express GENOCIDAL speech so long as you're in an "oppressed" group who are merely "punching up."

After the controversy over the burrito stand in Portland that was shut down, an organization put together a list of "White-Owned Appropriative Restaurants in Portland" and alternatives to them. Yes, Hale Pele and Alibi are on it. What's interesting about the list is that their alternatives to Hale Pele and Alibi are "Hawaiian fusion" restaurants that don't appear to be owned by Native Hawaiians. They begrudgingly admit that their list of "Nearest POC-owned Alternatives" doesn't mean that the person of colour who owns that business is actually of the appropriate ethnicity. I thought about writing them a letter to let them know that by endorsing non-Native Hawaiian owned Hawaiian restaurants, they're probably doing more to tacitly endorse Hawaiian colonization than some silly Tiki bar. Not too long ago, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was showing Claude Monet's painting La Japonaise as part of an exhibit partly funded by the Japanese broadcast network NHK. The painting depicts Monet's wife Camille wearing a formal uchikake kimono and the exhibit (which first toured Japan) included a Japanese-made replica of the kimono which visitors were welcome to wear. This sparked a controversy among a small group of protesters who descended on the MFA with cries of cultural appropriation. They issued a statement saying "The act of non-Japanese museum staff throwing these kimonos on as a 'costume' event is an insult not only to our identities, experiences, and histories as Asian-Americans in America, but affects how society as a whole continues to deny our voices today." Having taken the initiative to speak as "Asian-Americans in America," the protesters quickly found themselves fending off counter-protests from JAPANESE people who didn't have a problem with the kimono but DID have a problem with American protesters acting as cultural gatekeepers. In my research I came across an amusing and telling article in which a young Indian lady, 20-something college student, was complaining about her parents' enthusiasm over "white" people appropriating Indian culture.

So I think it is important when discussing cultural appropriation theory to remember that "cultural appropriation" IS a theory, not a fact, and as a theory it rests on a highly, HIGHLY debatable sociological framework. It's grounded in a certain view of the world that may not actually be true or, in a globalized, multicultural society, even reasonable. The examples I gave above were to show that this kind of Marxist dialecticism doesn't actually work on the ground, when sociological theories in college classrooms brush up against the complexities of lived reality.

Back to my own experience, since you asked me to empathize and accused me of being privileged if I don't (keeping in mind that "privilege theory" is also one of these debatable sociological theories rooted in Marxist dialecticism)... As I said, I noticed the irony of people loving the things that I used to get beaten up, made fun of, and kicked out for in the past. Do I resent it? Not at all. I take roughly the same view as that 20-something Indian lady's parents, nor is it lost on me that her parents and I are probably of the same generation: to me, those are hallmarks of social acceptance that have had the direct proximate BENEFIT of me NOT GETTING BEAT UP as much as I used to, as well as making things I like more readily available and accessible. Sure, it has also increased the amount of shite masquerading as the things I like... most "Steampunk" stuff is hot garbage that totally misses what is cool about Victorian science fiction... but nobody is forcing me to buy the shite either. Yeah, I used to make fun of Hot Topic as being "Mall Goth", but they do have some nice stuff (that I can't wear now that I'm pushing 40). Yes there are lines to draw, like the mocking treatment of someone's deeply held spiritual beliefs or plagiarism or using something to denigrate a culture or using objects that denote a formal rank that someone has to earn (like a headdress or a uniform), but you don't have to adopt cultural appropriation theory to be sensitive to those things either. That's part of why I preference "Fantasy Tiki" (and interest in actual Polynesian cultures) over so-called Tiki purism, and do feel a little bit bad over the Enchanted Tiki Room pre-show. Activist anger under a pretense of cultural appropriation theory is not the only possible response.

[ Edited by: EnchantedTikiGoth 2017-05-28 09:39 ]