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