Tatau, BBC Cultural Appropriation and creative licence

[Tonguez]

Tatau is a British drama television series that premiered on BBC Three in April. Its a supernatural thriller set on a Polynesian Island, vaguely reminiscent of Rarotonga. I've only watched the first couple of episodes but generally its quite painful.

Tatau follows a pair of young travellers from London who, after one of them gets a traditional Maori tattoo, become caught up in a murder mystery within a supernatural world of Maori mythology.

Interestingly, one of the actors is Temuera Morrison, best known for taking Maori to space as Jango Fett- a well known New Zealand Maori (Polynesian) - has come out with some of his concerns about the production stating:

"But sometimes I'm not quite sure if our directors understand the balance between creative and cultural license," ..."The thing is, they actually take our culture and they don't understand it, they just draw the marks on their bodies not really understanding what they mean,"

..."On one side it's lovely to bring some of our cultural elements to the fore but we'll just see how our people react to it."

So if you have seen it what did you think? (no spoilers please)

But more broadly what do you think about Temuera's reservations concerning Cultural appropriation and Creative licence. Should 'storytellers' be allowed to take elements of cultures they don't belong to or understand - and in particular 'spiritual elements' - and tell stories of that culture? How much flexibility is fair? does the presence of cultural advisors change the principle?

(Mazer Rackham of Enders Game features a Maori Ta Moko (facial Tattoo) but its generally low key enough to not be an issue)

Also was it hypocritical for Tem to make the movie and raise his concerns afterwards?

and finally given the Aloha Movie and the upcoming Disneys Moana, is Polynesia making a comeback as the new exotic....

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainmen...muera-morrison-worried-about-bbc-series-tatau

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatau_(TV_series)

 

[Janx]

didn't we have this topic before, a few years back?

movies, books are chock full of cultures being misrepresented.

I don't think the errors are on purpose or even meant to be offensive, but the writers see some elements of a culture. They think it is cool, so they put it in their work.

Next thing you know, some expert or native is mad because they got it wrong.

 

[MarkB]

Probably better steer clear of Far Cry 3, then - that game has the protagonist acquire a magical Tatau that fills itself in in greater detail as he learns new things, to represent the game's skill tree.

It also features a pseudo-Polynesian indigenous culture with a truly screwed-up religion.

I suppose the question is, is it particularly a problem when TV shows or other media do this with foreign cultures? It's not like they do any better when tackling any particular modern subculture, or scientific or technological specialisation, or indeed anything which lies outside the narrow boundaries of the writers' and producers' personal knowledge.

Pretty much any time a show or a film tackles any specialised subject, anyone in the audience who is well-acquainted with that subject will find some seriously cringe-worthy misconceptions and misrepresentations when they watch it. Does that mean that shows shouldn't look at such subjects, or should be obliged to do more research? On the one hand, the majority of the audience will probably just enjoy the episode and neither notice nor care about the inaccuracies. On the other hand, they may also take some of those misconceptions with them when they leave, which can be rather unhelpful.

 

[Morrus]

I haven't seen (or heard of) the example in question.

Cultural appropriation happens to large Western cultures, too. Just taking my own (which I fully recognise is hardly a defenseless culture under threat in any way, but it's just the one I'm familiar with) how many times has Hollywood appropriated English culture to make a Robin Hood movie or the like? Portrayed the sterotypical effete Englishman? Or made up nonsense about Russians? And the Japanese stereotypes?

The difference, I think, is that these cultures can represent themselves well enough, while numerically smaller cultures cannot. Other than that, it's a subject that's far enough outside my knowledge base that I don't feel comfortable offering an opinion on it. I'm sure being a member of a misrepresented culture feels different to being a member of a major Western culture, and it's easy for us to say it doesn't matter.

 

[Kramodlog]

Cultural appropriation happens when a dominant culture takes cultural elements from a dominated/minority culture and passes it as it own. A good example is poutine. It is a Québec culinary invention tied with our national identity like baguette, ham and cheese are to France or boiled steak to Great-Britain. 20 years ago it was just the butt of jokes of Canadians. Now it is seen as a Canadian dish and Québec is never mentioned.

Beloved poutine, you will be avenged! *sniff*

Anyway, I haven't seen that show, so I do not know if it is Brits trying to pass as Maori culture as their own or they misrepresent it to the point it is insulting.

I do think there is a limit to claiming cultural appropriation. Words, ideas and practices have always circulated between cultures. Saying only one ethnicity can use certain concepts is, ironically, a bit racist. Having Westerners do yoga isn't an insult to Indians. It is cultural emulation. Saying yoga is a Western thing would be cultural appropriate.

Of course, what is the time limit something can still be considered exclusively associated to one culture? Take the word "algorithm", it has Arabic origines. But after all this time, can it still be considered exclusively Arabic? If so, how do you correct such a slight?

 

[Umbran]

I view the issues of cultural appropriation through the lens of intellectual property law.

If you (whether "you" are an individual or a group) have a good idea, and someone else wants to use it, you should gain some benefit from that use. It is only fair.

However, your license on the idea should not be perpetual. Nor are you well-served if you make it too difficult or expensive for others to use your idea - if you do, they'll shrug, and find some other idea, and your idea will not get disseminated, and will die, forgotten and alone.

I'd prefer to see folks use the ideas of others... kind of in the way Weird Al Yankovic uses songs: with some respect to the originator. Weird Al *asks* if he can parody a song, even though he does not legally have to. Now, you cannot ask permission of an entire culture, but, you can take some effort to show respect to the idea and the people. Learn about it, use it appropriately if you are doing a serious piece, and poke fun of legitimate foibles (instead of false-stereotype ones) if you're doing comedy.

The result of respectful use typically produces sufficient benefit - interest in the culture from which the idea comes. It leads people to learn more - and the more people learn about your culture, the more your culture survives and spreads.

 

[billd91]

I think the complaint about cultural appropriation is usually overblown. Cultures borrow and steal from each other all the time, it's a significant way cultures change. And yes, meanings change (I might say a new synthesis evolves) too - like they always have. I'm a bit more concerned when cultures are portrayed in the media but the content is wrong because they haven't done their homework, but I don't see that as cultural appropriation - that's cultural misrepresentation.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think the complaint about cultural appropriation is usually overblown. Cultures borrow and steal from each other all the time, it's a significant way cultures change. And yes, meanings change (I might say a new synthesis evolves) too - like they always have. I'm a bit more concerned when cultures are portrayed in the media but the content is wrong because they haven't done their homework, but I don't see that as cultural appropriation - that's cultural misrepresentation.

Where do you live?

Because cultural appropriation as I see it basically exists in two tiers.

The first is exoticism, which is really annoying. It's basically a case of people not doing their homework and getting things wrong. Clumsy and annoying storytelling, and deserves to get called out as such. That, I believe, is what is going on here (and as a rule the real version of things are always deeper than the fictional ones).

The second is when it is an additional insult in part of an existing power relationship between cultures. The obvious case here is the way white American culture frequently strip-mines black American culture. This can be simply annoying, it can result in erasure ("Muddy waters - where's that?"), and there are frequent gratuitous digs in there - anywhere from the Washington Redskins (OK, so that's the other comparable issue with American culture) to Iggy Azelea not just rapping but rapping about being a "runaway slave... master" to Miley Cyrus wanting a black sound while not caring about the background (and then that performance which I'm not linking).

In case 1 the message is "We want to use you as background but don't care enough to do it right." Annoying, but it's mostly thoughtlessness. In case 2 when it happens as a part of ongoing cultural oppression the message is "We can do whatever we want, and on the rare occasions you do something we want we'll take it ... and write you out of the picture. Again. And there's nothing you can do about it."

 

[Kramodlog]

I think the complaint about cultural appropriation is usually overblown. Cultures borrow and steal from each other all the time, it's a significant way cultures change.

Not that I'm completely in disagreement with you, but this stance brushes off the power dynamics there can be between cultures.

 

[Alzrius]

Should 'storytellers' be allowed to take elements of cultures they don't belong to or understand - and in particular 'spiritual elements' - and tell stories of that culture?

Should they be "allowed" to do so? Just out of curiosity, who will they have to answer to - and what powers to alter/censor the work in question will that person or organization have - if the answer to that question is "no"?

(I suspect that most people will say that the answer is "the public," but if that's the case then it's no different than the status quo, which means that no changes or alterations to the current dynamic are needed.)

I believe in that cultural appropriation is a thing, but I think that - as with many aspects of identity politics/outrage culture - it's currently being vastly overused. When a twelve year-old girl box braids her hair, that is not cultural appropriation, for example.

Insofar as the OP is concerned, I'm of the opinion that this is another one of those cases. The TV show is fiction, and I don't believe that fiction has any sort of moral responsibility that it needs to adhere to...that's how you get people claiming that various books/movies/music/games are terrible and need to be removed from society - whether by government action or a campaign of public shaming - for the good of everybody/demographic X.

To paraphrase one of my favorite TV/movie writers, "an artist's job is not to tell the truth; it's to capture your attention for as long as we're supposed to capture it. If we stumble into truth, we've gotten lucky."