{"id":324,"date":"2014-03-17T19:19:42","date_gmt":"2014-03-18T02:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/?p=324"},"modified":"2014-03-17T19:46:06","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T02:46:06","slug":"on-the-judgment-of-appropriators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/2014\/03\/on-the-judgment-of-appropriators.html","title":{"rendered":"On the Judgment of Appropriators"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Photo:<\/a>Melissa Hillman, who writes Bitter Gertrude<\/a>, recently asked her friends on Facebook to help define the parameters of inappropriate cultural appropriation.\u00a0 Hillman has (among many others) been an outspoken critic of both the casting of white people in non-white roles (see Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily<\/a> in the new movie version of Peter Pan) and the integration of non-white cultural signifiers and traditions in shows and circumstances that she feels are inappropriate (see The Wooster Group\u2019s Native American-themed Cry, Trojans<\/i><\/a> and Lantern Theater Company\u2019s Japanese (and, a little bit, Chinese)-infused Julius Caesar<\/i><\/a>).\u00a0 If you\u2019ve read Bitter Gertrude, you know Melissa is both extremely articulate and extremely blunt, and in her frustrated posts about these issues, as well as in the reactions of many others across the web to these examples, I have somewhat unexpectedly found myself reacting with a finger upraised and an attitude of, \u201cWhoa whoa whoa.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have previously referenced a set of essays by Eula Biss compiled into the amazing collection Notes from No Man\u2019s Land<\/i><\/a>, but I\u2019m now going to do it again, this time a different essay.\u00a0 In it, Biss examines the time before \u201cwhite\u201d was all whites (if it is today)\u2014in particular, the time when immigrant populations of Italians and Irish were viewed hierarchically as lower than other white folks, and were each treated as a minority.\u00a0 In her essay, Biss explores how those two populations eventually integrated into white society on the backs of African-Americans, but in the process, she also nods toward the appropriation and integration of Irish and Italian traditions, cultural experiences, food, etc, into the overarching culture.\u00a0 With an appropriate asterisk that that particular story relies on the disadvantaging of another group, which I hope need not always be the case, I have found myself continually fascinated by what that particular story of assimilation (as opposed to integration\u2014and here, we should be having a discussion about whether \u201cassimilation\u201d is the pursuit, but let\u2019s table that for a second) says about the necessity of allowing your cultural identity to become, essentially, open source.<\/p>\n

Today is St. Patrick\u2019s Day, the celebration of the arrival of Christianity to Ireland, a staunchly Irish holiday.\u00a0 It is, arguably, one of the most beloved holidays in the United States, raucous and butch, and is viewed, even as it is quintessentially Irish, as also quintessentially American.\u00a0 Anyone and everyone is encouraged to wear green, to celebrate.\u00a0 Mardi Gras, a historically French Christian celebration (of which there are a variety of other variants in other cultures) has migrated far from its roots and been embraced as a larger cultural indicator.<\/p>\n

The privileged culture that we are all currently so preoccupied with, the one wrapped up in the short phrase \u201cwhite, rich, educated,\u201d is an amalgam of a vast set of cultures, many of which came to that single signifier of \u201cwhite\u201d through a long, argumentative, and bigoted set of treatments following immigration.\u00a0 Appropriation (and many, many other factors) led to a broadening of the boundaries of that singular group.\u00a0 Which I find fascinating.<\/p>\n

This is not, of course, to say that such is the same (or the goal) for the cultural traditions of folks who currently sit outside of the \u201cwhite privilege\u201d sphere.\u00a0 And in that statement, I mean to bundle up a whole lot of caveats, and to recognize that this is extraordinarily complex and touchy.\u00a0 But while my initial reaction to the Native American Cry, Trojans<\/i> and the Asian Julius Caesar<\/i> was similarly annoyed to Hillman\u2019s and others, I find myself more and more preoccupied with the idea that bluntly stating that one culture\u2019s traditions should not be appropriated by another set of people is a difficult and slippery slope.<\/p>\n

When Hillman posted about Tiger Lily (on Facebook, in case you go hunting on her blog), one commenter posited that perhaps there was some sort of logic in the choice\u2014that Wendy, being upper-class British, might naturally gravitate towards, and populate her fantasies with, the type of white women with whom she surely had more engagement.\u00a0 This theory was dismissed, the railing against the Hollywood machine commenced, and the truth is that that nuanced and interesting dissection of cultural appropriation through <\/i>cultural appropriation is probably not the reason\u2014the reason is likely that Rooney Mara, the girl with the dragon tattoo herself, has a bigger name than someone else who is Native American.\u00a0 Johnny Depp certainly wasn\u2019t cast as Tonto to make any larger or more complex argument about cultural appropriation.\u00a0 And I take all of that\u2014and yet I\u2019d like to leave the gate open just a bit for the moment when someone does<\/i> want to engage that type of nuance, that there be room for that.\u00a0 That people judge things, at least a bit, after<\/i> and not before.<\/p>\n

To the connected, but different, issue of arts experiences appropriating other cultural traditions utilizing scripts, people, etc of inappropriate cultural backgrounds, I really have to say I\u2019m worried about the lack of nuance with which many in the field are approaching the conversation.\u00a0 Importantly, I am not saying that either Wooster Group or Lantern\u2019s productions were not<\/i> racially insensitive\u2014I\u2019m saying that the simple sampling of other cultural traditions alone cannot make them so.\u00a0 Paula Vogel has done that.\u00a0 Cirque du Soleil has done that.\u00a0 Lion King<\/i> did that.\u00a0 Jose Rivera does that.\u00a0 Jay Z does that.\u00a0 Kurosawa did that.\u00a0 Ai Weiwei does that.<\/p>\n

In his open letter to the Lantern staff and production team<\/a>, artist Makoto Hirano lists many issues that he feels devalue the actual Japanese cultural touchstones that the Lantern production appropriated.\u00a0 He calls them out for having a fully non-Japanese cast, and then for having those non-Japanese people perform traditional Japanese things including bowing to each other, traditional kneeling, utilize Japanese instruments, etc.\u00a0 He closes out with an admonition to consult an expert when doing something like this\u2014a very important, and I think correct, admonition, although he says it more in the spirit of \u201cso they can tell you you shouldn\u2019t do it\u201d and less in the spirit of \u201cso they can work with you to do such appropriation with respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

He calls them out for having Brutus use a Chinese sword while everyone else has Japanese swords.<\/p>\n

He calls them out for having all the white folks attack and kill the \u201conly black person on stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in those two bullets, when I first read the letter, I paused.\u00a0 Because I sensed, in them, a whole lot of assumptions on Hirano\u2019s part that might or might not be true.\u00a0 Perhaps the directors and designers didn\u2019t understand the significance of giving Brutus a Chinese sword.\u00a0 Perhaps they did\u2014perhaps they were making a statement about his status as the betrayer of Julius Caesar, an uncomfortable man in a play of characters who, by and large, pick an angle and pursue it to its logical conclusion, someone who instead acts differently, doesn\u2019t quite understand all that is going on around him, is a bit of an alien in the landscape. \u00a0Indeed, if you read Hillman’s post on the Lantern production, she both highlights the artistic leads’ more complex comments on why they chose to do what they did, and dismisses them because they, in her words, “see these cultures as visual art available for their use, not as an inextricable part of the heritage of real, living people”–a statement that I think reads a whole lot of motivation into a few quotes, but again, I haven’t seen \u00a0the show.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the directors weren\u2019t cognizant of the image they would be making on stage, of everyone white ganging up on and murdering the only black man on stage.\u00a0 Given, however, that that black man was the guy playing Julius Caesar and that Philadelphia is an extremely black\/white racially charged environment, I would instead guess that that image was meant to be uncomfortable, to make people question, in that moment, the unjustness of murdering a man who you don\u2019t understand, who is different than\u00a0 you.\u00a0 Again, having not seen it, the set up reminds me of nothing so much as Amiri Baraka\u2019s The Dutchman<\/i>, where that exact discomfort was exactly the point.<\/p>\n

I think where I get caught up is in the sort of starting assumption that this type of crafting, unless done one very particular way, is immediately and without exception wrong and racist. \u00a0Hillman calls out the fact that the use of the signifiers in the Lantern production is “using artifacts of other cultures \u2013 both groups currently marginalized in the US \u2013 while shutting out the people of\u00a0those cultures from the artistic process because they believe their artistic vision is MORE IMPORTANT.” \u00a0And in \u00a0reading those statements, which I’ve seen a whole lot across the web about these and other issues of appropriation, I feel a frustration in me start to rise.<\/p>\n

Appropriation comes with all sorts of hang ups.\u00a0 The sampling of other cultures for the purpose of easy symbolism, exoticism and\/or profit (and boy is there a lot<\/em> of that, and it’s all mortifying)\u00a0can sit so close to the sampling of other cultures for the purpose of true homage, celebration, and exploration.\u00a0 To put a blanket embargo on such engagement, without nuance, seems to me to be short-sighted and reactionary\u2014particular<\/i>ly, actually, when I hear such judgment from white people.<\/p>\n

My daughter went to a Purim party a few days ago.\u00a0 She (not a Jew) dressed, as many of the Jewish girls did, as a princess to celebrate Queen Esther, a woman whose heroism she and I both knew nothing about until a week ago.\u00a0 My host told me the whole tale of Queen Esther and her heroism, of the evil advisor Hamen, of the salvation of the Jews\u2014and then told me that this story was a lot like all of the Jewish stories, starting with the Jews being in peril and ending with them being saved, but that this one, this one was different, was his favorite, because it didn\u2019t involve a miracle.\u00a0 He told me he liked it because it involved no parting of seas, just simply the intelligence of a woman who wished to save her people, and who was able to explain her culture to someone who was not like her at least enough that he didn\u2019t consider them so different as to warrant persecution anymore.<\/p>\n

I have watched a Hispanic male soprano sing the female parts of an Italian opera on the platform of a Metro station after work in a full suit and been brought to tears.\u00a0 I have seen white sorority sisters step with pride and without irony, and be applauded.\u00a0 I have watched a black woman perform a sun salutation followed by a set of Tai Chi poses with such exactitude and reverence that there was no doubt in my mind she was celebrating two cultures, not making fun of them. \u00a0I just heard two white musicians talking about how their music has been revolutionized because of their incorporation of 808-style drums into their music. \u00a0I have seen reverential appropriation and, of course, I have seen a whole lot of facile, racist crap.<\/p>\n

I also understand that assimilation, Borg-like, isn’t perhaps the best way for all of this to go down. \u00a0But I equally think that fragmentation, the clutching to one’s chest of what is one’s alone, is problematic.<\/p>\n

There is a bravery required in giving your culture a bit of a long leash. \u00a0There is a trust that is often broken, but that sometimes isn’t. \u00a0There is a constant fear that is occasionally met with generosity. \u00a0The point, I guess, is that I\u2019ve seen both appreciation and advantage-taking, and so, I would imagine, have you.\u00a0 And that I think the world gets better when we are able to grapple with our understandings and misunderstandings\u2014that we are better when we are afforded opportunities to experience and engage with new things\u2014that we should allow ourselves to at least start from a place of believing in the intelligent grappling with complex ideas rather than that blind, insensitive taking of something sacred.\u00a0 We have so many problems to actually tackle, I just want to make sure that, where we can, we also see the light and celebrate it, even when it is clumsy, even when it is not perfect, rather than simply snuff it out, and turn our faces back into the darkness shouting about how we\u2019re better than that person we\u2019ve not bothered to engage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melissa Hillman, who writes Bitter Gertrude, recently asked her friends on Facebook to help define the parameters of inappropriate cultural appropriation.\u00a0 Hillman has (among many others) been an outspoken critic of both the casting of white people in non-white roles (see Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in the new movie version of Peter Pan) and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-change","8":"category-main","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}