Lindsay Ellis

Uh...not really? It's a thing. It happens. Acting like "le SJW's" or something have made it a buzzword is total hogwash.

edited 17th Jul '17 4:35:25 PM by AdricDePsycho

"Cultural appropriation is a neutral term"

SJW was once a neutral term.

I've never heard the term used as anything but a derogative, so, yeah, citation needed on that one.

What has happened, though, is that a lot of people treat "cultural appropriation" as being, by definition, bad. Any instance of borrowing from another culture that isn't harmful in their opinion is thus "cultural exchange" instead. Which I find to be an intellectually dishonest way of framing a debate.

...I doubt it?

I mean. However it started, whether it was used by SJWs to celebrate themselves, or by people opposing them to denigrate them. It started as a pretty loaded and emotionally charged one. With the opinion of the speaker baked into it.

Cultural appropriation started as a sociological concept to describe a phenomenon when one culture uses a thing from another.

Like. Pants. In Europe.

"Cultural appropriation is the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of another culture."

Like. Cultural Appropriation is. Like, sort of an inherently boring term? Linguistically. Not like "Social Justice Warrior" all three words of which are somewhat loaded.

edited 17th Jul '17 4:45:14 PM by unnoun

Basically what Unnoun is saying.

To me the term is misleading since it suggests that anyone who fights for societal reform is an SJW no matter what there political affiliation is.

It's a misleading term but not a boring one.

Brings to mind a DND campaign.

It's not boring enough to be neutral.

edited 17th Jul '17 4:47:32 PM by unnoun

But not chaotic neutral. Chaotic neutral is the best.

Most of the time when people act like cultural appropriation isn't a thing (and trust me, there's a lot of people who think it's not a thing, not even in terms of it being bad, good, or neutral but that it literally doesn't exist), it's the far right crowd who sling the term "SJW" around and make fun of political correctness or some shit.

edited 17th Jul '17 4:53:59 PM by AdricDePsycho

^^Nah, chaotic neutral is ruined by players who think it means "I'm not CE, I'm CN I can do anything I want! Trolololoo"

How does that even work? I mean, what's their explanation for a bunch of Irish people praying to a Middle-Eastern religious figure via an organization based out of Italy?

I think and issue of cultural apropiation is a term I coin cultural copyright, since the line is blurry and is define into a line of harmless-hurtfull, it set the idea in how a people percive the idea as objective , creating one stance were "It dont like there is bad" as valid criticism, or that the idea that a cultural thing is son entrench with people that it CANT be shared with anyone which is downright silly, it also on how much respect you have to paid to the other culture that can varie for "just dont screw up" to "you better reach my standars"

Now on the other extreme with have this idea that if someone dosent bother something then is ALRIGHT, some is painfully clear with ghost in shell adaptation: japanise people dosent seen to mind there is NOTHING to mind here, move along.

Okay it took me like twenty seconds to realize you were referring to the Roman Catholic Church and, to answer your question, I don't think they really have an explanation because it requires them to think and not call anybody who disagrees with them "SJW's" or whatever. They just think cultural appropriation is a buzzword made up by people who allegedly are going overboard with "political correctness" and are "censoring" people or whatever.

I can't see how framing something as "cultural exchange" is dishonest rather than just a sign of how the term "cultural appropriation" itself is changing in public perception. It's the whole linguistic treadmill: words and terms pick up meanings over time that they didn't originally have, so people start using other words to denote what they mean. That's just how language changes and evolves in use. Hell, "tyrant" was once a neutral term, but there were enough bad leaders with that title that the term became forever associated with bad things.

And SJW got used so much by the alt right and general critics of the left that a lot of people eventually picked up on the fact that they were using it for literally anyone who voiced any sort of concern about fairness, even in the mildest of terms. Which means it got watered down to mean basically nothing as insult to those it was being thrown at. The words may be loaded, but with it so overused it's lost a lot of its fangs as compared to other insults.

I think it's a bit dodgy to refer to the spread of Christianity as cultural appropriation since that was pretty enthusiastically spread by the original culture's adherents. I do wonder sometimes if you could make a case for the (often wildly inaccurate) use of Greek and Norse mythologies in non-Greek and Nordic western pop cultures as approaching appropriation, though.

edited 18th Jul '17 3:36:06 AM by DrDougsh

ugghhh the ghost in the shell adaptation... I guess we should talk about American adaptations of foreign media... my view is that it's ok as long as the source material isn't tied to the culture it originated from.. for instance a western version of hellsing or full metal alchemist is ok but a western version of akira or inuyasha isn't.

I don't expect Hollywood, especially Disney to represent other cultures accurately, since it can't often represent American culture accurately either. Before the MPAA rating system, the production code regulated heavily what could be shown or even told and then you add Catholic League of Decency in the mix.

If Harakiri, Cruel tales of Bushido or 13 Assassins were made outside of Japan they might be considered politically incorrect, because they don't depict the samurai era in anywhere near as nostalgic or glamorized way as something like The Last Samurai. I understand that it's generally more acceptable to criticize your own culture than a foreign one but that also means you have to limit how you represent foreign countries in movies.

Are we talking about a "faithful" adaptation of Inuyasha where everything is set in Warring States Japan and stuff? I mean, if a Hollywood director made that and had all the filming done outside of Japan with non-Asian actors, that would be bad. But at least insofar as cultural appropriation goes, I wouldn't object to an IY movie filmed in Japan with Asian actors.

I mean, what is your stance on English dubs for "very Japanese" anime like Inuyasha or whatever?

As for this review, I felt vaguely uncomfortable since I am a white person and It gets annoyed walking on eggshells when it comes to subjects like this. Like, I'm not offended by any of this Disney stuff but of course it's not about me.It's just that, while I'm pretty SJW-y about a lot of things, when it comes to cultural stuff, I'm less adamant. When I hear people getting mad at New Age religions for "stealing" Eastern ideas and whatever, I just roll my eyes. Syncretism in religion is one of the best things about religion. (that's also where the Roman Catholic stuff came from earlier. Christianity took a lot of cues from other religions, not just the obvious one of Judaism. There's a lot of Greek Neoplatonism in Christianity)

Like, Contra Points' video on this topic was equally weird for me because, while it is clearly wrong for a white guy to dress up like a Native American "War Chief" for shits and giggles, more complicated situations happen all the time and people try to boil them down to racism or whatever.

I would say the term is neutral but there is no such thing as a neutral term. We always put our biases into the words we use. If anyone uses the term cultural appropriation, I have no doubt they are either absolutely against it or don't believe it's a real thing at all. Perhaps there is some middle-ground somewhere but not the places I frequent.

edited 18th Jul '17 7:54:57 AM by Nikkolas

a film made in Japan with Asian actors would work however something tells me Hollywood would be reluctant do that.

I know akira is being worked on by people who worked on get out and both films deal with secret conspiracies and social commentary so that could work.

edited 18th Jul '17 7:58:33 AM by Thelastwarrior

I too teared up at this movie (though this wasn't the first Marvel movie to make me do so - the first was Winter Soldier).

I fucking lost it and started crying when that Cat Stevens song came on at the end. That song always makes me cry.

James Gunn liked the video.