Sensitivity Writers. AKA: avoiding cultural appropriate in writing

[Ryujin]

"The Lone Ranger" might be a bit of an outlier in that group. IIRC Depp actually sought people out with respect to his portrayal and it seems to have been fairly well received, on balance. A different and reasonable question would be, "Would it have made more sense to use an actual indigenous actor in that role, as they did in the others within the movie?"

Johnny Depp as Tonto: 'The Lone Ranger' and Racism

Just how problematic is the actor's depiction of the Native American character?

entertainment.time.com

 

[Bedrockgames]

And, to be blunt - if there's an adult in the Western World who at this point doesn't understand the basic issue of differing cultural power... they are not paying due attention to the issues around them, and that is itself a fault. There is a point where one becomes responsible for understanding the world, and behaving appropriately. Such people are failing in that responsibility.

I think you are underestimating how much knowledge and power your own natural intelligence and education gives you. And I think equating ignorance (which easily be due to a lack of education, opportunity, intellectual ability, and resources) with being morally flawed is a much more serious problem than someone seeing s piece of clothing they like and incorporating it into an aesthetic for a play, movie, painting etc.

 

[billd91]

I don’t think you understand what you are asking here. Telling musicians or artists to avoid styles that originate from ‘weaker’ cultures is not only going to limit them to dealing with styles from cultures closer to their own, it will lead to locking the weaker culture in place as well. You will stifle cultural exchange. I see nothing wrong whatsoever with taking something as basic as a color pattern, scales, themed, chord progressions etc and using those to make something. Even if you make money off it, it isn’t like you are preventing people from the originating culture from doing so as well. I understand you feel very certain about this. But I have to be honest, to be you sound like you are delivering a sermon and you haven’t really considered the possibility you are wrong

It's less a question of avoidance and more a question of thoughtful participation and working with well-placed informants. Musicians like Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, and David Byrne incorporated various elements of world music not by doing it on their own - they worked with musicians from Africa and the Middle East. Elvis attended services in African-American churches and preferred performing in segregated "coloreds-only" clubs because he liked to participate and appreciate the music with the most-involved and enthusiastic crowds.

But you do have a point - a zealous guarding against cultural appropriation runs right up against cultural exchange - something that can be valuable for everyone. There's no point in jealously, zealously guarding everything, particularly when the significance or the bar for understanding the cultural element is low.

 

[Wiseblood]

We are talking about a cultural phenomenon, not a scientific model.

Pretty much everyone not of Native American descent claiming to have a "spirit animal" is engaging in cultural appropriation. Every drunk non-latino fratboy on Cinco de Mayo is doing so. There's some millions of folks engaging it it right there.

And, in RPG relevance - the folks who wrote about the Romani for White Wolf, and Monte Cook's first pass at a Native American content for The Strange, both engaged in it. Monte Cook did some work to correct his fault, thankfully.

Denial doesn't make it not happening.

The term itself is nonsensical. It’s exactly what I stated. You cite two examples of something you think is disrespectful to the originating culture. You proceeded to expose bias as Cinco De Mayo is a Mexican holiday last time I checked Mexican does not mean Latino. While spirit animals exist in Non-Native American cultures you simply assumed that this is the one because of pop culture.

It’s own Incoherence is why I say it does not exist.

I can’t prove a negative.

I equate it to ghosts. Some people believe in ghosts. What is a a ghost? It depends on who you ask.

“I know it when I see it.” Argument is simply not good enough for me. ( as this is just another obscenity censoring movement with brand new clothes )

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's less a question of avoidance and more a question of thoughtful participation and working with well-placed informants. Musicians like Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, and David Byrne incorporated various elements of world music not by doing it on their own - they worked with musicians from Africa and the Middle East. Elvis attended services in African-American churches and preferred performing in segregated "coloreds-only" clubs because he liked to participate and appreciate the music with the most-involved and enthusiastic crowds.

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Thanks for taking my points seriously and responding to them. I think you raise a lot of good examples. And when I read this I had a lot of thoughts. Hopefully I can remember them all here.

Elvis is probably the best one to start with because it is easy to see how that ties to cultural appropriation. But when he did what he did, cultural appropriation wasn't a concept (I am pretty sure it wasn't even coined till like the mid-70s or 80s---and it didn't take off until quite recently). It is great that he did what he did. But I think that was a product of his natural curiosity and a respect for black culture. I don't think you need cultural appropriation as a concept to do what he did. And lets keep in mind he often is invoked as the example of cultural appropriation. I am no Elvis Scholar, so I will let other people debate how well he conducted himself handling black music. My understanding is he did in fact try to give credit to the artists who inspired him. And what you say about him reflects what I have heard and read. But I don' think it would have improved anything if cultural appropriation had been a concept back then and he had strived to avoid it. If anything it might have resulted in him not popularizing black music. I think the real problem here isn't cultural borrowing or cultural appropriation. It is racism. If you focus on the racism, you are much more likely to defeat the problem than if you focus on something as amorphous and vague as cultural appropriation. I can think of many times where focus on racism as a problem has lead to real tangible advances in society. I am not seeing any tangible strides resulting from focusing on cultural appropriation. I am just seeing a tightening of cultural boundaries.

Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, and David Byrne are all fairly highbrow. I would argue what they did was great if your aim is to accurately capture a musical aesthetic from another culture. But accurately capturing the aesthetic isn't the same as being morally good. I think there is something to be said for someone who just captures traces of a sound, because they have less exposure or maybe just because they don't have the deep dive mindsets of these three examples. I think there is room for people like Paul Simon but also for people who borrow an an interval they heard in Arabic music for example (without understanding that a lot of middle eastern music is built on a 24 tone system rather than a 12 tone system people in most English Speaking countries would be more familiar with). If you understand that 24 tone system you can much more accurately capture the sound of Arabic Music. But you can also emulate it using the 12 tone system. It doesn't make the latter morally worse, and it may even be more interesting sonically. Heck I didn't even realize there were possibilities beyond the 12 tone system until I was well into my twenties.

I took guitar lessons as a kid, and one of the things my teacher did was have me go to the original sources of the music. So that meant listening to a lot of the original blues and jazz musicians. But not everyone gets to take guitar lessons. And even though I took guitar lessons, I never went to Berklee or attended college for music. One of the things you see play out in these kinds of debates about music and appropriation, is people who have that Berklee level education know how to navigate the pitfalls of cultural appropriation much better than those of us who just took guitar lessons. And those had no formal musical training might have even more difficulty. Because music is complicated. And someone from Berklee has deep knowledge of music theory (which is all about emulating aesthetics). You see this for example in youtube channels about music. So again, I think some guy who grew up in poverty, doesn't have access to the resources as a kid from the suburbs, is going to have a much harder time engaging in the diligent levels of research and understanding people like Umbran are asking for. And I don't think those levels of diligence make the music all that much better to be honest. I think a lot of people just have natural talent and can communicate musically. Someone doing that level of diligence would just make for more accurate emulation. To some it might seem more wholesome and ethical. I am not sure at all that it is.

But you do have a point - a zealous guarding against cultural appropriation runs right up against cultural exchange - something that can be valuable for everyone. There's no point in jealously, zealously guarding everything, particularly when the significance or the bar for understanding the cultural element is low

And I think this is how cultural appropriation plays out when it leaves the university. You see this all the time on twitter, on other social media platforms, and whenever someone gets called out for cultural appropriation. Frankly my impression is almost never that the people doing the call out are really worried about the cultural group in question. It just looks like people are happy to have a viable target for their anger.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Arguing that cultural appropriation doesn’t exist is like arguing racism doesn’t exist: it’s a silly argument that relies on intentionally ignoring actual definitions and large swaths of evidence.

Some folks also seem to be confusing appropriation with exchange, and they are different things. I’d suggest reading this, as it explains it well.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Bedrockgames]

Some folks also seem to be confusing appropriation with exchange, and they are different things. I’d suggest reading this, as it explains it well.

We understand the difference. The arguments have been on the internet long enough for people to grasp that there is an argument about power and how the material is handled. But it still sniffles cultural exchange because it places new parameters on it, and it treats certain forms of cultural exchange as worse than others. People can read an article like that one, understand with it, and not agree with it or reject its arguments.

 

[Sacrosanct]

We understand the difference. The arguments have been on the internet long enough for people to grasp that there is an argument about power and how the material is handled. But it still sniffles cultural exchange because it places new parameters on it, and it treats certain forms of cultural exchange as worse than others. People can read an article like that one, understand with it, and not agree with it or reject its arguments.

Looking at some of the posts in this thread, and no. I don’t think everyone does know the difference.

Also, it’s not up to the person belonging to the majority who has a history or oppressing the minority to tell the minority what they can or can’t find offensive, or what is or isn’t cultural appropriation.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Also, it’s not up to the person belonging to the majority who has a history or oppressing the minority to tell the minority what they can or can’t find offensive, or what is or isn’t cultural appropriation.

It is up to everyone to use their mind and think. Obviously the opinions of the people in the minority matter, but not everything said by someone from a minority group is going to be accurate or reasonable. People can still be wrong, can still be upset when they should not be. And I think as the concept of cultural appropriation spreads, where it is embraced it starts predisposing people to taking offense.

You can't abandon your own responsibility to make a judgement about whether a given criticism is sound. And I think focusing on power relationships, in such a simplified way, doesn't really help at all. If anything it is like you are infantilizing cultures. And in some cases you are putting cultures in that box that don't belong there (you included reference to Japanese imagery, but Japan isn't a developing country or insignificant cultural force. Japan is very influential as a culture, and they conquered and colonized huge sections of asia in the first half of the last century.

Further when I actually talk to people from marginalized cultures, I get a much more diverse range of views than is being expressed here. When I talk to people from other countries about things like people wearing their clothing, more often than not, the response is joy at seeing people take an interest in their culture. There often are still lines, but they are not usually the lines that I see being spoken about in this kind of discussion. I have been crossing cultural lines my whole life, and becoming friends with people from other cultures my whole life. I am a lot interested in what those people have to say, than the massive list of rules being promulgated on this thread.