Cultural Appropriation

Is it possible for someone to make a work set in or prominently containing elements of a culture that is not their own without being to some degree exploitative of said culture?

I personally think the idea that it isn't is silly, since it boxes people into only writing about and discussing their own cultures and limiting peoples' contact with other cultures, but I've heard the argument advanced that one can't understand a culture well enough to write about it accurately and respectfully unless one has grown up in it, so I'd be interested in hearing what y'all think.

The main inspiration for making this thread, though, is a friend of mine who won't allow anyone to mention Avatar The Last Airbender without going off on a rant about how it's orientalist imperialist propaganda.

Words cast into the uncaring void of the internet.

While I must admit that it's near impossible to truly reflect a culture's spirit without being within it, I think the attitude to condemn this by principle only alienates the cultures.

A safer approach might be using elements from those cultures within one that the writer is more familiar of. As long as they put enough thought about the mindset and overarcing philosophy of the foreign culture, a character, a holiday or a custom from that culture shouldn't be so problematic. Maybe the step above would be a community of that foreign culture within the framework of the writer's native culture — while it's not truly employing the foreign culture as the setting of a work, it could create a bridge that draws from both foreign and native cultures, making the end product more plausible and acceptable.

"Good year and model, but Vladimir Putin is strangling journalists in the back seat."

I don't know. Or care. "Some degree" encompasses every level of exploitativeness above 0%, so I don't really think some degree of exploitativeness is necessarily a reason to scrap the work entirely. No work is liable to be perfect anyway.

Why is exploiting a culture bad?

Fight smart, not fair.

It's liable to encourage stereotypes. Lately I've been noticing Korean characters showing up as short-tempered shouty people. Having shouty characters is good — they are fun to watch — but even a race traitor such as me think it's not helping the public image.

Also <insert Korean rage on Hetalia here>.

"Good year and model, but Vladimir Putin is strangling journalists in the back seat."

Stereotypes are a symptom of bad writing.

Fight smart, not fair.

More like stereotypes are symptoms of bad social health. And also bad writing, yeah.

"Good year and model, but Vladimir Putin is strangling journalists in the back seat."

>> but I've heard the argument advanced that one can't understand a culture well enough to write about it accurately and respectfully unless one has grown up in it, so I'd be interested in hearing what y'all think.

I've grown up in some cultures but i don't understand it exactly very well or 'respectfully' (maybe i would)/would probably have the same competency - or a BETTER competency in my 'native' cultures if I wasn't born into it as I did not have the shitty personal history/issues with my 'cultures'. So I call SHENANIGANS on whoever said that, people born into a culture could HATE it (e.g. filipinos and normalfaggotry....i mean "pakisama") and understand 'foreign' cultures b4tter

WHASSUP....... ....with lolis!

I think the concept that you must be an expert on a topic to include it in your writing is a flawed one. Not that research can't help.

Ruining everything forever.

In my opinion, if you avoid using things a culture considers sacred, tread carefully in general and are willing to apologise and change things if members of that culture are offended by your portrayal, then it's okay to write works set in or inspired by that culture.

I mean, ultimately I'm an Australian white male, will probably always be one, so if I write something about Korea then it'll always be influenced by Australian culture and how I'm treated as a white man. I can't change that, but I can do the research and think over any Unfortunate Implications (although in my opinion the creativity of an artist in creating a work is about equal to the cubed root of the creativity of an observer poking holes in it, so someone'll notice such implications anyway).

I don't see anything wrong with taking elements from a different culture. Art fusion creates new styles and I think you'd probably see it lot amongst minority communities in various countries.

I mostly disagree with this. Culture is entirely learned behavior how you learned about a culture is irrelevant to whether you understand it not. That and the mere fact that someone was born in a culture does not mean that they are experts on it. Look at all the Christian fundamentalist that say that Jesus said homosexuality is wrong even though homosexuality is never mentioned in the gospels.

I'd say at least try to run it past someone from said culture so they can make sure you don't do anything egregious or mistakenly assume a typical Western idea that doesn't happen to be in place. And, you know, try not to be horribly scathing and offensive about it if that's not the point of the work. A setting is a setting, not a playground.

edited 7th Jan '11 3:19:38 PM by Pykrete

As long as you don't do a bad enough job to distract people from their enjoyment of the work, it doesn't matter.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

like, say documentaries on furries and LAR Ping?

WHASSUP....... ....with lolis!

Nerco?

Any way for once I have to adgree with Deboss. Cultue belongs to everyone and no one. Nickelodeon can draw from what ever the hell it wants.

hashtagsarestupid

If we're doing a necro, I just realised I never asked for why this friend thinks Avatar is "orientalist imperialist propaganda". I'm curious.

Anyway, Avatar is actually very good in terms of appropriating culture. Took what they needed to craft a believable world and then ran with it. A lot of stuff seems to have been westernised but not in any culturally destructive manner but a good fusion of "what-ifs".

I think the problem with Avatar and ethnicity is not that there's cultural appropriation going on and more that there's a lack of black and white people. It's not that the story takes place in a specific corner of the world where they have never hear of them, but rather that there are actually none on the entire planet. Which seems off to me.

Oh, I guess so. I just figured it was set in a mythical far east area where black people would be highly uncommon. I mean there's Tibetans, Koreans, Japanese, Chinese and Inuit in the show, so perhaps there's a subset of stuff that exists on earth but it doesn't strike me as trying to exclude other people. I rather not have a token black character if they don't have a full black character and such a character would have to be a "I'm from faaaaar away!". They also had one Indian in the show, but he was portrayed as from "far away" as is, so black people would be even harder to find.

Avatar does not use a left-justified map. It uses a globe map, with both north and south poles. In real life, the north and south poles were among the last things to be explored. By that time we'd already known about all the other continents, so it seems unlikely that there are actually any others on the planet. As in, that's it. No black or white people.

I am not at all sure how a show made by some American dudes is imperialist oriental propaganda. I think they just wanted to use something that hadn't been done to death in American animation, which is pretty much every Western like setting it's possible to use. So they went with Asian and Inuit cultures.

Also, I'm not quite sure how this is appropriation. It's not taking someone's culture and trying to use it in their daily lives, or to define themselves in any way. They're using it to tell a story, not claiming it as their own culture.

Here's some basic definition for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation

Yeah, I'd have to go with Spade. I think they were just using Asian cultures because they didn't want to use Western ones. It doesn't seem like they were explicitly trying to get rid of non-Asian and non-Inuit cultures.

Bingo, Unfavourable Card.

Heck, just enjoy the story. Both ATLAB and Korra are worth watching simply 'cos they are so good. Start picking apart the gods-know-how-many-other generically bad cartoon tales on real issues in the hopes of making them better, rather than trying hard to find something wrong with what is working.

I am not saying I do not enjoy the story. I was saying that the problem, instead of cultural appropriation, is that there are certain ethnic groups that just plain do not seem to exist in the show. No, I do not think that the idea that "oh there are just areas they haven't discovered yet" is a good excuse because they already know about the north and south poles, which are among the last things to be explored because of the difficulty of doing so.

Any black or white people being from very far away? I don't think that would fly, considering that the Northern and Southern water tribes still have connections to each other, and unless the Avatar globe is a very strange shape, you can't really get much farther than that.

Not every story needs white and black people. I'm just saying that the setting of ALTA very heavily implies that there are none on the entire planet.

Y'know, I keep getting confused about which Avatar we're talking about. I mean, TLA is pretty good, but Cameron's film has racefail out the wazoo.

What's precedent ever done for us?