One of my favorites is that the racial composition of the backing studio musicians at Muscle Shoals for several classic quintessentially 'black' albums was primarily white. Also: how would 80s hip hop have changed if there was no Rick Rubin?
It all makes sense once you accept that these sour midwits hate music, art, food, and culture in general.
The impending motte and bailey is as inevitable as the dawn: "cultural appropriation isn't actually all forms of cultural mixing and exchange! Cultural exchange is good. The term 'cultural appropriation' actually means [very narrow definition, involving genuinely offensive/problematic behavior]."
I should know, I used to be the one making that argument! Except, such narrow, thoughtful definitions were never the ones applied in reality. And besides, it was perfectly possible to describe why such behaviors were toxic without invoking "cultural appropriation", those magic words that flatten the world rather than reveal its complexities.
I wrote my thesis on Strange Fruit. It was written by a Jewish man and performed by his wife before Ella Fitzgerald collaborated with him. I often think of that when I see woke people adamantly "standing with Palestine." When it comes to jazz production in early 20th century, Jewish people and Black people share credit.
A while back I was losing hair and looking for ways to conceal it. My Nigerian American friend told me to watch some videos to learn the traditional Nigerian head wrapping. I guess she didn't know that's not allowed. Reminds me of an article I read where someone was worried about letting their kid wear an Asian cultural garment gifted to them by close friends of that culture. Is this really what its come to?
I'm sad that cultural appropriation is now open to widespread ridicule. I was planning to spend my retirement, after selling my current business, attacking high school girls on Twitter for wearing cheongsams to the prom. What other avocation could possibility be as satisfying? My only regret until now was that my parents hadn't lived long enough to see me engaging in this important work, which would have made them tremendously proud.
And now this. It's all going away? I guess I'll have to get into model railroading after all.
I always think of these lines from Fisher's exiting the Vampire's Castle:
"The first law of the Vampires’ Castle is: individualise and privatise everything. While in theory it claims to be in favour of structural critique, in practice it never focuses on anything except individual behaviour... Remember: condemning individuals is always more important than paying attention to impersonal structures."
There might be some "legitimate" version of cultural appropriation. One that has material harm that could be fixed with policy. However, in progress, it's just scolding individuals.
Does anyone remember the backlash to the movie La La Land? Was definitely cultural appropriation related. Something about how the main protagonist is super into jazz, but he's white. Was truly a stupid time.
I mean, it was also clear how utterly mercenary these accusations were once people looked through her timeline and saw that it was full of her posting tweets "filipino food is fucking disgusting".
the "Cadillac Car" bit in Dreamgirls remains the best articulation of what the general angst abt cultural appropriation is really all about. it's not just "the white version of this song sucks," but rather "the white boys made the song worse and then somehow made way more money off the song." the resentment is really, deeply about the money.
i think the angst abt cultural appropriation is sensible when reduced to its narrowest, moderate terms: cultural exchange is great and (in any case) inevitable, it just sucks to see the commercial rewards for cultural appropriation, at the level of media personalities, flow so deterministically toward the proverbial Alison Roman. ppl agonizing abt authenticity are kidding themselves. but if the commercial rewards flowed differently, i think we'd be having a different conversation.
I can imagine someone telling my Polish mother in law that she appropriated dumplings and noodles. She'd smack them with her rolling pin until they apologized.
The cosseted academics are the ones profiting from this stuff, but you can’t make money if there’s no market for your product. I suspect calling out so-called cultural appropriation is especially popular among the kind of overeducated, but by no means elite, white progressives who think they’re worldly because they read NYT or whatever but are eager to reframe their quiet discomfort with people who don’t look or act like them as a virtue. By invoking cultural appropriation, Talusan is appropriating one of the worst aspects of white American culture.
So I agree with the core idea of cultural appropriation as "nonsensical, unrealistic to the point of absurdity, contradicted by all of human history" but I think you might be oversimplifying things when you say "invoked 100% of the time as a way to play petty dominance politics over others."
I think most of the people making cultural appropriation claims are people who've constructed their identity on being sources of knowledge on a certain thing. And if white people can be noodle experts, you're taking something away from the Asian American noodle experts, since we can't all be experts right? It's a zero sum game. You can call that dominance politics, but I think it's probably a little more innocuous and more of a defensive stance than a dominant one.
I forget where I originally saw this posted, somewhere on twitter I think, but the contrast between Asian Americans calling Panda Express poison and their Asian born parents saying "this is pretty good" tells a great story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo59LlkTDe4 . People born in Asia don't have any self-doubts about their expertise of Asian culture and they don't have to play any dumb "authenticity" games, they can just say if they like something or not.
One of my favorites is that the racial composition of the backing studio musicians at Muscle Shoals for several classic quintessentially 'black' albums was primarily white. Also: how would 80s hip hop have changed if there was no Rick Rubin?
It all makes sense once you accept that these sour midwits hate music, art, food, and culture in general.
I thought you were off Twitter.
It’s fine if you’re back but try and keep in mind that Twitter isn’t reality.
The impending motte and bailey is as inevitable as the dawn: "cultural appropriation isn't actually all forms of cultural mixing and exchange! Cultural exchange is good. The term 'cultural appropriation' actually means [very narrow definition, involving genuinely offensive/problematic behavior]."
I should know, I used to be the one making that argument! Except, such narrow, thoughtful definitions were never the ones applied in reality. And besides, it was perfectly possible to describe why such behaviors were toxic without invoking "cultural appropriation", those magic words that flatten the world rather than reveal its complexities.
I wrote my thesis on Strange Fruit. It was written by a Jewish man and performed by his wife before Ella Fitzgerald collaborated with him. I often think of that when I see woke people adamantly "standing with Palestine." When it comes to jazz production in early 20th century, Jewish people and Black people share credit.
A while back I was losing hair and looking for ways to conceal it. My Nigerian American friend told me to watch some videos to learn the traditional Nigerian head wrapping. I guess she didn't know that's not allowed. Reminds me of an article I read where someone was worried about letting their kid wear an Asian cultural garment gifted to them by close friends of that culture. Is this really what its come to?
I'm sad that cultural appropriation is now open to widespread ridicule. I was planning to spend my retirement, after selling my current business, attacking high school girls on Twitter for wearing cheongsams to the prom. What other avocation could possibility be as satisfying? My only regret until now was that my parents hadn't lived long enough to see me engaging in this important work, which would have made them tremendously proud.
And now this. It's all going away? I guess I'll have to get into model railroading after all.
Cultural appropriation - I guess I'll stop eating tempura.
From Wikipedia: "The dish was introduced by the Portuguese residing in Nagasaki through the fritter-cooking techniques in the 16th century."
The shock of kimono makers in Japan desperately trying to keep their craft alive, forced to scream out "APPROPRIATE OUR CULTURE PLEASE!"
https://uk.fashionnetwork.com/news/Japanese-kimono-makers-seek-to-revive-declining-industry,974601.html
"Roslyn Talusan is a Filipina Canadian anti-rape activist and feminist culture writer..."
Now there is someone with their finger on the pulse of the nation.
I always think of these lines from Fisher's exiting the Vampire's Castle:
"The first law of the Vampires’ Castle is: individualise and privatise everything. While in theory it claims to be in favour of structural critique, in practice it never focuses on anything except individual behaviour... Remember: condemning individuals is always more important than paying attention to impersonal structures."
There might be some "legitimate" version of cultural appropriation. One that has material harm that could be fixed with policy. However, in progress, it's just scolding individuals.
Does anyone remember the backlash to the movie La La Land? Was definitely cultural appropriation related. Something about how the main protagonist is super into jazz, but he's white. Was truly a stupid time.
I mean, it was also clear how utterly mercenary these accusations were once people looked through her timeline and saw that it was full of her posting tweets "filipino food is fucking disgusting".
the "Cadillac Car" bit in Dreamgirls remains the best articulation of what the general angst abt cultural appropriation is really all about. it's not just "the white version of this song sucks," but rather "the white boys made the song worse and then somehow made way more money off the song." the resentment is really, deeply about the money.
i think the angst abt cultural appropriation is sensible when reduced to its narrowest, moderate terms: cultural exchange is great and (in any case) inevitable, it just sucks to see the commercial rewards for cultural appropriation, at the level of media personalities, flow so deterministically toward the proverbial Alison Roman. ppl agonizing abt authenticity are kidding themselves. but if the commercial rewards flowed differently, i think we'd be having a different conversation.
I can imagine someone telling my Polish mother in law that she appropriated dumplings and noodles. She'd smack them with her rolling pin until they apologized.
The cosseted academics are the ones profiting from this stuff, but you can’t make money if there’s no market for your product. I suspect calling out so-called cultural appropriation is especially popular among the kind of overeducated, but by no means elite, white progressives who think they’re worldly because they read NYT or whatever but are eager to reframe their quiet discomfort with people who don’t look or act like them as a virtue. By invoking cultural appropriation, Talusan is appropriating one of the worst aspects of white American culture.
So I agree with the core idea of cultural appropriation as "nonsensical, unrealistic to the point of absurdity, contradicted by all of human history" but I think you might be oversimplifying things when you say "invoked 100% of the time as a way to play petty dominance politics over others."
I think most of the people making cultural appropriation claims are people who've constructed their identity on being sources of knowledge on a certain thing. And if white people can be noodle experts, you're taking something away from the Asian American noodle experts, since we can't all be experts right? It's a zero sum game. You can call that dominance politics, but I think it's probably a little more innocuous and more of a defensive stance than a dominant one.
I forget where I originally saw this posted, somewhere on twitter I think, but the contrast between Asian Americans calling Panda Express poison and their Asian born parents saying "this is pretty good" tells a great story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo59LlkTDe4 . People born in Asia don't have any self-doubts about their expertise of Asian culture and they don't have to play any dumb "authenticity" games, they can just say if they like something or not.
Yes!