Cultural Appropriation — advanced seminar for extra credit.

[catsidhe]

Definition: It is Cultural Appropriation when one culture takes characters and stories from another culture and

1. use them ignorantly and insultingly in different contexts, or
2. retell those stories, in such a way as to ignore, negate, or even reverse the understanding of their meaning

This is made even more insulting when the appropriating culture (or representative; i.e., the author) turns around and lectures the original culture that that culture had it wrong all along, and the reinterpretation is, in fact, the correct and authoritative version. Or that the appropriation was done without knowledge of any any adverse interpretation, and therefore as an act without deliberate insult, it is therefore not insulting, just shut up and stop whingeing about it, if it's not important to me then it shouldn't be important to you, can't you see your accusations of insensitivity are hurtful to me?

Thesis: most classic Western movies are examples of Cultural Appropriation, in that they take the very concept of the Native American and contextualise them as The Other, barbarians and natural forces to be survived, conquered or annihilated; individually interchangeable.

Thesis: the Disney film Pocahontas is an example of Cultural Appropriation. (White Anglo America telling Native Americans about the history of early English/Native American Interaction, and the Native American rôle in it.)

Thesis: the Disney film The Little Mermaid is an example of Cultural Appropriation. (Taking a Danish fairy story, removing it from context, and then giving it a happy ending and sequels, which negating the point and moral of the original story.)

Thesis: the Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an example of Cultural Appropriation. (Taking a classic French novel of romance and tragedy, and giving it not only comic relief, but a happy ending (!) and sequels (!!), implicitly telling lovers of the Hugo original, ‘it's OK, but it could be better if we just change the ending completely and undo most of the tragedy, and add talking gargoyles clowns.’)



Discuss.

Comments

Exasperation and the Dissenting Opinion (or Welcome to the PoMo Dome)

[usuakari.livejournal.com]

It's no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a pest
It's no secret ambition bites the nails of success
Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief
All kill their inspiration and sing about their grief

(The Fly, U2)

Catsidhe, take a deep breath and relax. You're right in that Disney (and sundry others) mangle stories from other times and places. So do your favourite authors. Is it just possible that you don't mention them because you liketheir stuff, and are not so much a fan of Disney's?

Without the ability to change and blend ideas and stories do you think we would have new ones? Or simply endless, and very respectful, retellings of the same old ones over and over again? I think we need both myself. I also think we have both. In abundance.

Oh, and I can live with Disney ending the first Fantasia with Ave Maria, just as I can live with them ending the second with The Firebird Suite. The balance works fine. Arguably, the first Fantasia is a product of it's time and place, much as the legends of the TDD where for our ancestors or the exploits of the Monkey King where for Asia. In a century or less others will be appropriating images and concepts from Fantasia, taking them out of their original context and still others will be gritting teeth all over again.

Re: Exasperation and the Dissenting Opinion (or Welcome to the PoMo Dome)

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm not upset over this issue, I'm interested. Especially in what other people think about it.

I have seen, on other members of my flist, the fall out from various dramas on the topic of appropriation, whether white people telling black people what their stories mean, or white women telling transgenders what they really want, and things of that sort. And the problem is usually, from what I've seen, not the perceived appropriation alone, but when people point out “I'm offended by that,” the response is along the lines of “no you're not”, or “you are wrong about your own stories”, or similar statements of arrogance and wilful ignorance.

I had a moment of lucidity at 3:00am the other night, and thought that if a white SciFi author can insult black people by presuming to tell a story from their viewpoint, then Disney has done this fairly consistently over the decades, only instead of a privileged white person appropriating black culture, it was a quintessentially American corporation appropriating native-american culture, or Danish, or French, or English. At what point does the use of another culture in fiction become appropriation? What makes something appropriation, and when is it pastiche, or a creative pov, or a deliberate re-contextualisation? Is it necessarily appropriation if the source culture don't like it? What if it's true?

I personally love Fantasia, in all its incarnations. I wish there were more of them. It is something that is unique to Disney, and praiseworthy for any number of reasons. The Ave Maria is just as valid as the Firebird, and I wouldn't miss either of them (personally, I prefer the Firebird, but that's just my taste).

I just wanted to see where people drew the line. And my issues with things like what Disney did to Hunchback, or Aladdin, or the Little Mermaid, is the violence done to the stories rather than the insult to the culture from which they come. The existence of a sequel to the Hunchback of Notre Dame is an insult to Victor Hugo, but not necessarily to France.