{"id":32944,"date":"2015-10-01T03:00:49","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T07:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32944"},"modified":"2017-04-23T09:00:24","modified_gmt":"2017-04-23T13:00:24","slug":"welcome-to-the-new-war-on-cultural-appropriation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/10\/01\/welcome-to-the-new-war-on-cultural-appropriation\/","title":{"rendered":"“Welcome to the new war on cultural appropriation”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cathy Young<\/a> trips over cultural appropriation everywhere<\/em>:<\/p>\n

A few months ago, I read The Orphan\u2019s Tales<\/em> by Catherynne Valente. The fantasy novel draws on myths and folklore from many cultures, including, to my delight, fairy tales from my Russian childhood. Curious about the author, I looked her up online and was startled to find several social-media discussions bashing her for \u201ccultural appropriation.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a post sneering at \u201chow she totally gets a pass to write about Slavic cultures because her husband is Russian,\u201d with a response noting that her spouse isn\u2019t even a proper Russian, because he has lived in the United States since age 10. In another thread, Valente was denounced for her Japanese-style LiveJournal<\/em> username, yuki-onna, adopted while she lived in Japan as a military wife. In response to such criticism, a browbeaten Valente eventually dropped the \u201cproblematic\u201d moniker.<\/p>\n

Welcome to the new war on cultural appropriation. At one time, such critiques were leveled against truly offensive art \u2014 work that trafficked in demeaning caricatures, such as blackface, 19th-century minstrel shows or ethnological expositions, which literally put indigenous people on display, often in cages. But these accusations have become a common attack against any artist or artwork that incorporates ideas from another culture, no matter how thoughtfully or positively. A work can reinvent the material or even serve as a tribute, but no matter. If artists dabble outside their own cultural experiences, they\u2019ve committed a creative sin.<\/p>\n

To take just a few recent examples: After the 2013 American Music Awards, Katy Perry was criticized for dressing like a geisha while performing her hit single \u201cUnconditionally.\u201d Last year, Arab-American writer Randa Jarrar accused Caucasian women who practice belly dancing of \u201cwhite appropriation of Eastern dance.\u201d Daily Beast<\/em> entertainment writer Amy Zimmerman wrote that pop star Iggy Azalea perpetrated \u201ccultural crimes\u201d by imitating African American rap styles.<\/p>\n

And this summer, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has been dogged by charges of cultural insensitivity and racism for its \u201cKimono Wednesdays.\u201d At the event, visitors were invited to try on a replica of the kimono worn by Claude Monet\u2019s wife, Camille, in the painting \u201cLa Japonaise.\u201d The historically accurate kimonos were made in Japan for this very purpose. Still, Asian American activists and their supporters besieged the exhibit with signs like \u201cTry on the kimono: Learn what it\u2019s like to be a racist imperialist today!\u201d Others railed against \u201cYellow-Face @ the MFA\u201d on Facebook. The museum eventually apologized and changed the program so that the kimonos were available for viewing only. Still, activists complained that the display invited a \u201ccreepy Orientalist gaze.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cathy Young trips over cultural appropriation everywhere: A few months ago, I read The Orphan\u2019s Tales by Catherynne Valente. The fantasy novel draws on myths and folklore from many cultures, including, to my delight, fairy tales from my Russian childhood. Curious about the author, I looked her up online and was startled to find several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,13],"tags":[1126,262,651,238,351,997],"class_list":["post-32944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-culturalappropriation","tag-culture","tag-multiculturalism","tag-offensensitivity","tag-politicalcorrectness","tag-socialjustice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8zm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32945,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32944\/revisions\/32945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}