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Art does justice to where it lends its influences from, which is completely different than the derivative drivel we have nowadays (especially the meme stuff). It's easy, folks, just become puritans in every facet of every (sub)culture you explore and you'll be fine!
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On July 01 2020 21:58 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2020 21:32 iamthedave wrote:On July 01 2020 08:14 Danglars wrote:On July 01 2020 07:11 IgnE wrote:
Here is my take on the most defensible version of what cultural appropriation is and why is it bad.
When white people reap the monetary spoils of some artistic or cultural form that they took from a non-white context to present before white taste-makers, marketers, and capital this is a bad thing. You might liken it to rent collection on the property of white privilege: this cultural form has been reproduced in relative obscurity under non-white aesthetic regimes and then when it finally gets (white) popular acclaim the proceeds go to white people. Cultural appropriation is bad because it replicates an already unjust, racist distribution of wealth, upholding white supremacy.
One can imagine more egregious and less egregious examples. It’s entirely a material analysis that (strategically) hypostasizes race in an effort to work towards social justice (within a mostly unquestioned capitalist framework). There is no generalizable universal concept that can be derived from its political analysis of material conditions. It’s always limited to a particular situation and relies upon the identification of an aggrieved party in order to structure any coherent form of redress. The examples I know are in the past. Elvis stealing from black artists in Memphis. You got any more modern examples, say mostly uncontested examples, in the past 20 years? The rise of hip hop/rap, I would say is pretty modern. While there are many prominent black artists in these fields, its white people who make the most money and who made the art form mainstream. It's even a recurrent theme in Eminem's songs that he's well aware he'd have made half the money he has if he was a black man. Iggy Azalea got into it with a black artist not so long ago about this very subject. The issue isn't that white people are hip hop artists, its the outsized presence they have despite (especially in Azalea's case) significantly less talent than their peers of colour (Eminem's not so much a good discussion point because he's undeniably very good). Someone else here probably can get deeper into that than I can as I'm not a music buff, but I've seen that particular discussion come and go a few times. Hip-hop, specifically that which punches through to the mainstream has changed considerably over the years to the extent the modern stuff almost isn’t recognisable. In its nascent years as a new black art form it was obviously very black led, not especially political although it was there in the ‘old school’ days. Of course gangsta rap was extremely, extremely political and talking to a sort of lived experience you kind of had to have been a poor black (generally man) to have authority to rap about. Eminem I remember quite clearly exciting my young peers and listening to his records with them. Aside from his actual chops his appeal was in the poor white guy’s experience but crucially he dealt a lot in angst that teen boys especially just lap up, so I feel he was doing something different that appealed to a different niche (one that happened to be huge). Specifically his early content to me shares more in common with say Korn’s early records, or other bands like Limp Bizkit in lyrical subjects than his peers of the time in hip hop. Nowadays I don’t really know, what stuff I do tend to overhear in bars or at parties is just party music, there’s not a huge amount of interest being said. As my exposure is somewhat limited can’t really talk much to that. If that is the state of play now though, I could absolutely see the generic party stuff being marketed around white faces more so than black ones.
I think the variable that has had the biggest effect on who can keep the money in the end is the technological advances that have allowed for decentralized production and distribution of music. big record companies are no longer required in order to get the music to the masses.
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On July 01 2020 22:00 Sbrubbles wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2020 21:40 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
It's anything a particular culture prides itself on and then is used by "non-cultural" members to make profit off of, without giving due credit or compensation. It's easy to find it in fashion, arts, beauty, etc. It's a bit more difficult to find it on a person to person level. The appreciation aspect is probably the best way to describe music for the most part in the modern sense. It was definitely appropriated before the 80's because of reasons already mentioned by other posters.
Say, the way I speak my terrible, broken or Japanese and just add some black American slang to it and it gets popular for whatever reason."Ohayo-wasgood!" takes off and people not familiar with Ohayo think it's pretty funky, but Japanese people are looking "WTF man?" I would say in my defense "It's just a word. It doesn't mean anything."
It's a crude by quick example. I appropriated language from a culture and passed it off as my own creation/mix without giving credit for the origin. Adapting, mixing and recreating existing art is a great deal of what art is about. You should be proud of your new created expression "Ohayo-wasgood!".
I thought it was pretty clever ^_^.
The point I was making is that it is okay to appreciate a culture and want to show said appreciation. But when you just take it and don't acknowledge where it came from, then you are appropriating it in a capitalistic and assholery way. There's a reason why there's rap all over the world once it got the exposure. It's a way for people to express themselves in a different manner than what was standard fare at the time. Even the Beastie Boys who came out in the early days of Hip Hop took the sound and remixed it with rock to make their own niche. No one that I know disparages them at all for that. Same with Justin Timberlake and Eminem. Talent helps to keep certain ravenous wolves at bay.
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Weird, Israel and the USA are currently occupying, dismantling and displacing the inhabitants of a nation which is borderline a genocide like the indians and no one bats an eye.
That's pretty ironic considering how everyone was super eager of doing "justice" one month ago.
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On July 01 2020 23:01 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2020 22:00 Sbrubbles wrote:On July 01 2020 21:40 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
It's anything a particular culture prides itself on and then is used by "non-cultural" members to make profit off of, without giving due credit or compensation. It's easy to find it in fashion, arts, beauty, etc. It's a bit more difficult to find it on a person to person level. The appreciation aspect is probably the best way to describe music for the most part in the modern sense. It was definitely appropriated before the 80's because of reasons already mentioned by other posters.
Say, the way I speak my terrible, broken or Japanese and just add some black American slang to it and it gets popular for whatever reason."Ohayo-wasgood!" takes off and people not familiar with Ohayo think it's pretty funky, but Japanese people are looking "WTF man?" I would say in my defense "It's just a word. It doesn't mean anything."
It's a crude by quick example. I appropriated language from a culture and passed it off as my own creation/mix without giving credit for the origin. Adapting, mixing and recreating existing art is a great deal of what art is about. You should be proud of your new created expression "Ohayo-wasgood!". I thought it was pretty clever ^_^. The point I was making is that it is okay to appreciate a culture and want to show said appreciation. But when you just take it and don't acknowledge where it came from, then you are appropriating it in a capitalistic and assholery way. There's a reason why there's rap all over the world once it got the exposure. It's a way for people to express themselves in a different manner than what was standard fare at the time. Even the Beastie Boys who came out in the early days of Hip Hop took the sound and remixed it with rock to make their own niche. No one that I know disparages them at all for that. Same with Justin Timberlake and Eminem. Talent helps to keep certain ravenous wolves at bay.
Your example imho just didn't show any kind of cultural. Apropriation, let alone a harmfull one?
Language is soooo fluid and you in the anglosphere and moreso the US often seem to miss this due to english being so dominant (+some spanish). In Europe you would get dizzy analyzing speak trying to find from what lanuage which word/slang comes.
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On July 01 2020 22:18 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2020 21:58 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 01 2020 21:32 iamthedave wrote:On July 01 2020 08:14 Danglars wrote:On July 01 2020 07:11 IgnE wrote:
Here is my take on the most defensible version of what cultural appropriation is and why is it bad.
When white people reap the monetary spoils of some artistic or cultural form that they took from a non-white context to present before white taste-makers, marketers, and capital this is a bad thing. You might liken it to rent collection on the property of white privilege: this cultural form has been reproduced in relative obscurity under non-white aesthetic regimes and then when it finally gets (white) popular acclaim the proceeds go to white people. Cultural appropriation is bad because it replicates an already unjust, racist distribution of wealth, upholding white supremacy.
One can imagine more egregious and less egregious examples. It’s entirely a material analysis that (strategically) hypostasizes race in an effort to work towards social justice (within a mostly unquestioned capitalist framework). There is no generalizable universal concept that can be derived from its political analysis of material conditions. It’s always limited to a particular situation and relies upon the identification of an aggrieved party in order to structure any coherent form of redress. The examples I know are in the past. Elvis stealing from black artists in Memphis. You got any more modern examples, say mostly uncontested examples, in the past 20 years? The rise of hip hop/rap, I would say is pretty modern. While there are many prominent black artists in these fields, its white people who make the most money and who made the art form mainstream. It's even a recurrent theme in Eminem's songs that he's well aware he'd have made half the money he has if he was a black man. Iggy Azalea got into it with a black artist not so long ago about this very subject. The issue isn't that white people are hip hop artists, its the outsized presence they have despite (especially in Azalea's case) significantly less talent than their peers of colour (Eminem's not so much a good discussion point because he's undeniably very good). Someone else here probably can get deeper into that than I can as I'm not a music buff, but I've seen that particular discussion come and go a few times. Hip-hop, specifically that which punches through to the mainstream has changed considerably over the years to the extent the modern stuff almost isn’t recognisable. In its nascent years as a new black art form it was obviously very black led, not especially political although it was there in the ‘old school’ days. Of course gangsta rap was extremely, extremely political and talking to a sort of lived experience you kind of had to have been a poor black (generally man) to have authority to rap about. Eminem I remember quite clearly exciting my young peers and listening to his records with them. Aside from his actual chops his appeal was in the poor white guy’s experience but crucially he dealt a lot in angst that teen boys especially just lap up, so I feel he was doing something different that appealed to a different niche (one that happened to be huge). Specifically his early content to me shares more in common with say Korn’s early records, or other bands like Limp Bizkit in lyrical subjects than his peers of the time in hip hop. Nowadays I don’t really know, what stuff I do tend to overhear in bars or at parties is just party music, there’s not a huge amount of interest being said. As my exposure is somewhat limited can’t really talk much to that. If that is the state of play now though, I could absolutely see the generic party stuff being marketed around white faces more so than black ones. Eminem also mad Dr Dre a shit ton of money, he is one of the main reasons why Dre is a billionaire now. It was a bit of a swap in roles with a black producer getting rich off a white artist. Eminem is also a extremely good rapper. Now Vanilla Ice was a better example since he was a terrible rapper, but his success basically funded Death row records which brought us snoop, dre, so on. TLDR because it is probably not the place to discuss rap history, but for the most part even the white rapper made black people lots of money and it going main stream has created generational wealth for many black artists. Unlike early rock and roll where the money flowed to white artists, producers and record execs.
While Vanilla Ice may have been ripping off black hip hop artists' "style", he was blatantly ripping off the very white artists' chorus. Can you really claim Vanilla Ice is a bad example of cultural appropriation when the most famous bit of his song was stolen from other white people? I think we can just agree that Vanilla Ice was a fraud and leave it at that?
As for the rest of the discussion in the case of music, I would say that it is in general super hard to properly attribute art. Hell, some of it is even subconscious. You'd hope someone in a record company would figure out that the main melody or key lyrics had been done before. I leave you with an article in the Guardian about the copyright in music and how damned hard it is to figure out what has been done before and by whom: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/mar/26/a-hit-a-writ-why-music-is-the-food-of-plagiarism-lawsuits
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On July 02 2020 00:02 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2020 23:01 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On July 01 2020 22:00 Sbrubbles wrote:On July 01 2020 21:40 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
It's anything a particular culture prides itself on and then is used by "non-cultural" members to make profit off of, without giving due credit or compensation. It's easy to find it in fashion, arts, beauty, etc. It's a bit more difficult to find it on a person to person level. The appreciation aspect is probably the best way to describe music for the most part in the modern sense. It was definitely appropriated before the 80's because of reasons already mentioned by other posters.
Say, the way I speak my terrible, broken or Japanese and just add some black American slang to it and it gets popular for whatever reason."Ohayo-wasgood!" takes off and people not familiar with Ohayo think it's pretty funky, but Japanese people are looking "WTF man?" I would say in my defense "It's just a word. It doesn't mean anything."
It's a crude by quick example. I appropriated language from a culture and passed it off as my own creation/mix without giving credit for the origin. Adapting, mixing and recreating existing art is a great deal of what art is about. You should be proud of your new created expression "Ohayo-wasgood!". I thought it was pretty clever ^_^. The point I was making is that it is okay to appreciate a culture and want to show said appreciation. But when you just take it and don't acknowledge where it came from, then you are appropriating it in a capitalistic and assholery way. There's a reason why there's rap all over the world once it got the exposure. It's a way for people to express themselves in a different manner than what was standard fare at the time. Even the Beastie Boys who came out in the early days of Hip Hop took the sound and remixed it with rock to make their own niche. No one that I know disparages them at all for that. Same with Justin Timberlake and Eminem. Talent helps to keep certain ravenous wolves at bay. Your example imho just didn't show any kind of cultural. Apropriation, let alone a harmfull one? Language is soooo fluid and you in the anglosphere and moreso the US often seem to miss this due to english being so dominant (+some spanish). In Europe you would get dizzy analyzing speak trying to find from what lanuage which word/slang comes.
That's the thing. And I think IgnE or someone else made it clearer. Cultural Appropriation is a case by case. It isn't something that can generalized en masse.
A better example, from a black male perspective, is bantu knots. Or you can look at the music that was referenced earlier. Or any fashion/cultural statement a POC has "invented" and co-opted by white people. There are myriad examples of appropriation if you look at it deep enough and with scrutiny.
My example was a crude one stating that I took a language wholly not my own, knowing what the words meant and where they came from, and bastardized/commercialized it without appropriate credit.
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So your issue is mostly monetary ? You'd all be happy with cultural exchanges as long as white people dont get the money ?
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Cultural appropriation is a tough subject. I totally get how if someone is really flagrant with it that it can be hard to stomach. I liked the post above that equated this to plagarism which I think is a better way to put it than appropriation. If its not outright plagarism I think its fair game. One can easily see how if we keep harping on appropriation it allows people to be pidgeon holed into little boxes. You are this etnnicity so you must like this music, this sport, this food, etc.
On the other discussion regarding hip hop/rap, white americans buy the majority of hip hop music. This is just a fact of the population and wealth makeup in the US. With this information, its not unusual for someone like Eminem to sell more records or be famous than other black artists because a lot of people, from all ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds, are more engaged when the artist/person looks like them. This especially holds true if that persons race/ethnicity is an anomoly in that genre of music/sport. Its just basic facts.
Is it wrong? I would say no unless they are outright dismissing other people based on their ethnicity/background. Frequently when white americans do this its a bit of a touchy subject, (IE: White rappers, basketball players, running backs, corner backs, etc) but we see it frequently with other ethnicities/socio economic classes and its not really an issue ( IE a significant number of people rooting for boxers/fighters primarily based on ethnicity)
I think its a touchy subject in the US especially with the history of white supremacy in the background but it also helps to be honest about it.
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On July 02 2020 02:04 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2020 01:24 Erasme wrote:
So your issue is mostly monetary ? You'd all be happy with cultural exchanges as long as white people dont get the money ? who me? I was pointing out that Eminem and most white hip hop artists would fall under the appreciation umbrella and that it benefited African Americans. I wouldnt consider it a bad thing. Back when white people were lifting black rock and blues music and only whites were benefiting that is a problem. I think there is a lot of nuance in what makes it appropriation vs appreciation and would not want be the arbiter of when something crosses the line. For food I think it almost can't because there is a constant evolution and cross culture cooking is generally called fusion and celebrated.
I've seen multiples posts talking about the whites executives making most of the money, and how that was a cultural appropriation issue. I'd argue that it is more of an artist's rights issue since it doesn't matter your skin color, you're probably going to get less money than them.
I remember talking about Vermeer's hat to point out that cultural "appropriation" is in the middle of the process of cultural exchange. Aka taking back chineses pottery and herbs changed drastically the european culture for the better. In the same way, Japan was very isolated until the US forced them to open themselves, and quickly became the #1 asian country to beat a western nation.
As long as you're not trying to erase the culture, then do w.e you feel like.
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On July 02 2020 02:20 Erasme wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2020 02:04 JimmiC wrote:On July 02 2020 01:24 Erasme wrote:
So your issue is mostly monetary ? You'd all be happy with cultural exchanges as long as white people dont get the money ? who me? I was pointing out that Eminem and most white hip hop artists would fall under the appreciation umbrella and that it benefited African Americans. I wouldnt consider it a bad thing. Back when white people were lifting black rock and blues music and only whites were benefiting that is a problem. I think there is a lot of nuance in what makes it appropriation vs appreciation and would not want be the arbiter of when something crosses the line. For food I think it almost can't because there is a constant evolution and cross culture cooking is generally called fusion and celebrated. I've seen multiples posts talking about the whites executives making most of the money, and how that was a cultural appropriation issue. I'd argue that it is more of an artist's rights issue since it doesn't matter your skin color, you're probably going to get less money than them. I remember talking about Vermeer's hat to point out that cultural "appropriation" is in the middle of the process of cultural exchange. Aka taking back chineses pottery and herbs changed drastically the european culture for the better. In the same way, Japan was very isolated until the US forced them to open themselves, and quickly became the #1 asian country to beat a western nation. As long as you're not trying to erase the culture, then do w.e you feel like.
If you're only looking at the modern context of JC's post, then yes. But the historical is factually cultural appropriation. In this modernity, it is tough to call something appropriated vs appreciated. I'd say just give credit where/when it is due. List your influences and point people to their work and help them gain notoriety as well.
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I've pointed out historical examples that you would consider "bad", like buying pottery in cn for silver when silver was abundant in eu and selling them for a lot of profit back in europe, that actually profoundly culturally enriched Europe. Cultural exchange is good, cultural genocide is bad. Plagiarism happens regardless of ethnicity.
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On July 01 2020 15:51 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2020 15:30 IgnE wrote:On July 01 2020 15:03 ChristianS wrote:On July 01 2020 14:49 IgnE wrote:On July 01 2020 14:40 ChristianS wrote:On July 01 2020 14:14 IgnE wrote:
Yes we can point to a style he stole. We can point to songs he stole. He ripped off black artists who couldn't get the time of day from the music industry and brought their style and songs to white America for immense profit. A trouble that comes up a lot in these systemic issues: who, exactly, is this a criticism of? Racist Elvis, performing the songs for White audiences and making a bunch of money instead of leaving that demand unsatisfied? Racist record executives who will put out those songs with a white performer but not a black one? Racist audiences who will buy a record with a white man on the sleeve but not a black one? Put another way: what should a hypothetical “woke Elvis” have done instead? Not pursue a music career at all, since success would be on the backs of uncompensated black artists? Go on stage, but try to use the platform to combat the systemic injustices that made him rich? Modify the source material enough to feel like it’s “his,” then proceed like normal? Donate all his profits to the artists who would have gotten it instead in a less racist system? I think my biggest objection is to rooting the injustice solely in wealth acquisition and stolen profit. I’d argue that even if we lived in a society where all musicians were compensated equally regardless of acclaim or merit, there’d still be something fucked up about Elvis attaining fame, status, and influence off of it. The money’s not irrelevant, but it’s not the whole thing, either. He should have "uplifted" the black musicians he admired. That's the twitter answer anyway. The entertainment business is ruthless. I don't have any easy answers. I don't know what you really mean by your second paragraph. I assume that if they had lived in a society where Otis Blackwell got his music out to a large, non-racist audience first that Elvis would have sounded like an impersonator and copycat. I don't see anything so fucked up about that situation. It seems about right to me. Sorry, didn’t explain the hypothetical clearly: if we somehow divorce the financial gain from the story, for instance by imagining a society songwriting and record selling and performing didn’t result in any significant financial gain, Elvis stealing songs and getting fame, influence, and legacy from it still seems unjust. Even aside from his own interests, it changes society’s relationship to the art itself. Whiteness was falsely centered in the creation myth of rock and roll because nearly all of the recognized founders are white; that offends me quite a bit more than who did or didn’t get rich. I can't adequately imagine a hypothetical world where singing and songwriting doesn't result in any significant financial gain yet rock and roll still matters like it does now so I can't really entertain your question. Money is power and power is money in this world. The more intuitive counterfactual is the one I presented where Otis simply goes on to claim the legacy himself by virtue of having access to the moneyed machinery of the music business. I guess I’m mostly trying to think about how to extend the concept in a useful way. I’ve heard it argued that a lot of gangster rappers were successful primarily because white producers thought a certain kind of narrative about black culture would sell well with white audiences. In the minstrelsy days whites wanted to hear black voices sing about how happy and carefree the slave life was; now they wanted to hear them rap about selling drugs and shooting people. As a historical account I don’t know if that narrative is accurate. But as a hypothetical at least, is it a similar kind of problem? Whites are taking Black culture, plucking it out of context, bending it how they see fit, and then mass producing it for obscene wealth. In this case the black performers *do* get rich off of it. Does that address the problem? To me it seems like there are deeper issues that matter more than who gets rich.
I do hope IgnE picks this back up. One aspect easily lost in all this is the differences between people that are talking about cultural appropriation from a perspective of "capitalism unfairly excluded us (them), (they)we want in" vs "capitalism unfairly excluded us, we want socialism/communism.
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On July 02 2020 03:06 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2020 15:51 ChristianS wrote:On July 01 2020 15:30 IgnE wrote:On July 01 2020 15:03 ChristianS wrote:On July 01 2020 14:49 IgnE wrote:On July 01 2020 14:40 ChristianS wrote:On July 01 2020 14:14 IgnE wrote:
Yes we can point to a style he stole. We can point to songs he stole. He ripped off black artists who couldn't get the time of day from the music industry and brought their style and songs to white America for immense profit. A trouble that comes up a lot in these systemic issues: who, exactly, is this a criticism of? Racist Elvis, performing the songs for White audiences and making a bunch of money instead of leaving that demand unsatisfied? Racist record executives who will put out those songs with a white performer but not a black one? Racist audiences who will buy a record with a white man on the sleeve but not a black one? Put another way: what should a hypothetical “woke Elvis” have done instead? Not pursue a music career at all, since success would be on the backs of uncompensated black artists? Go on stage, but try to use the platform to combat the systemic injustices that made him rich? Modify the source material enough to feel like it’s “his,” then proceed like normal? Donate all his profits to the artists who would have gotten it instead in a less racist system? I think my biggest objection is to rooting the injustice solely in wealth acquisition and stolen profit. I’d argue that even if we lived in a society where all musicians were compensated equally regardless of acclaim or merit, there’d still be something fucked up about Elvis attaining fame, status, and influence off of it. The money’s not irrelevant, but it’s not the whole thing, either. He should have "uplifted" the black musicians he admired. That's the twitter answer anyway. The entertainment business is ruthless. I don't have any easy answers. I don't know what you really mean by your second paragraph. I assume that if they had lived in a society where Otis Blackwell got his music out to a large, non-racist audience first that Elvis would have sounded like an impersonator and copycat. I don't see anything so fucked up about that situation. It seems about right to me. Sorry, didn’t explain the hypothetical clearly: if we somehow divorce the financial gain from the story, for instance by imagining a society songwriting and record selling and performing didn’t result in any significant financial gain, Elvis stealing songs and getting fame, influence, and legacy from it still seems unjust. Even aside from his own interests, it changes society’s relationship to the art itself. Whiteness was falsely centered in the creation myth of rock and roll because nearly all of the recognized founders are white; that offends me quite a bit more than who did or didn’t get rich. I can't adequately imagine a hypothetical world where singing and songwriting doesn't result in any significant financial gain yet rock and roll still matters like it does now so I can't really entertain your question. Money is power and power is money in this world. The more intuitive counterfactual is the one I presented where Otis simply goes on to claim the legacy himself by virtue of having access to the moneyed machinery of the music business. I guess I’m mostly trying to think about how to extend the concept in a useful way. I’ve heard it argued that a lot of gangster rappers were successful primarily because white producers thought a certain kind of narrative about black culture would sell well with white audiences. In the minstrelsy days whites wanted to hear black voices sing about how happy and carefree the slave life was; now they wanted to hear them rap about selling drugs and shooting people. As a historical account I don’t know if that narrative is accurate. But as a hypothetical at least, is it a similar kind of problem? Whites are taking Black culture, plucking it out of context, bending it how they see fit, and then mass producing it for obscene wealth. In this case the black performers *do* get rich off of it. Does that address the problem? To me it seems like there are deeper issues that matter more than who gets rich. I do hope IgnE picks this back up. One aspect easily lost in all this is the differences between people that are talking about cultural appropriation from a perspective of "capitalism unfairly excluded us (them), (they)we want in" vs "capitalism unfairly excluded us, we want socialism/communism.
A lot of people have commented in ways that are similar (but only similar) to critiques that I also have about the notion of cultural appropriation. I could go on laying out the best case for cultural appropriation, the reasons cultural appropriation is a useful and valid concept, and the best reasons for objecting to particular applications of cultural appropriation as a concept, or why it feels inadequate when applied to concrete situations, but then it starts to feel like I am talking to myself. If ChristianS wants to formulate an alternative working description of the concept that more closely aligns with his moral intuitions then I'd be happy to hear it.
More generally I think that thinking seriously about this topic requires that one have an open mind. One should keep in mind both the individual level (specific plagiarism, specific exploitation, deception, power imbalances, motivations) and the systemic level (relationships between e.g. the white artist and his audience, distribution channels, positionality with respect to capital and social networks). One should dialectically think through these two levels when trying to do moral calculations about where blame should be assigned (did Elvis do anything wrong or should we blame the record execs? or was it the audience who is at fault? or was it their forebears?), what redress is morally required (is money all that matters? what can historiography do to repair the harm? what role does narrative play? what should a white person do when borrowing from a culture that is historically excluded from popular culture, financial remuneration, positions of cultural power, ownership?). Dismissing one or the other side will inevitably lead only to the partial truth that is symptomatic of ideological blockage.
It might also be that no particular person is doing anything wrong and yet we, collectively, are getting morally repugnant outcomes. It would be akin to a collective prisoner's dilemma. If we have a structure that replicates racially disparate outcomes when every individual actor is working within the bounds of moral decency, we would have to start thinking about cultural appropriation along different lines.
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On July 02 2020 03:50 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2020 03:06 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 01 2020 15:51 ChristianS wrote:On July 01 2020 15:30 IgnE wrote:On July 01 2020 15:03 ChristianS wrote:On July 01 2020 14:49 IgnE wrote:On July 01 2020 14:40 ChristianS wrote:On July 01 2020 14:14 IgnE wrote:
Yes we can point to a style he stole. We can point to songs he stole. He ripped off black artists who couldn't get the time of day from the music industry and brought their style and songs to white America for immense profit. A trouble that comes up a lot in these systemic issues: who, exactly, is this a criticism of? Racist Elvis, performing the songs for White audiences and making a bunch of money instead of leaving that demand unsatisfied? Racist record executives who will put out those songs with a white performer but not a black one? Racist audiences who will buy a record with a white man on the sleeve but not a black one? Put another way: what should a hypothetical “woke Elvis” have done instead? Not pursue a music career at all, since success would be on the backs of uncompensated black artists? Go on stage, but try to use the platform to combat the systemic injustices that made him rich? Modify the source material enough to feel like it’s “his,” then proceed like normal? Donate all his profits to the artists who would have gotten it instead in a less racist system? I think my biggest objection is to rooting the injustice solely in wealth acquisition and stolen profit. I’d argue that even if we lived in a society where all musicians were compensated equally regardless of acclaim or merit, there’d still be something fucked up about Elvis attaining fame, status, and influence off of it. The money’s not irrelevant, but it’s not the whole thing, either. He should have "uplifted" the black musicians he admired. That's the twitter answer anyway. The entertainment business is ruthless. I don't have any easy answers. I don't know what you really mean by your second paragraph. I assume that if they had lived in a society where Otis Blackwell got his music out to a large, non-racist audience first that Elvis would have sounded like an impersonator and copycat. I don't see anything so fucked up about that situation. It seems about right to me. Sorry, didn’t explain the hypothetical clearly: if we somehow divorce the financial gain from the story, for instance by imagining a society songwriting and record selling and performing didn’t result in any significant financial gain, Elvis stealing songs and getting fame, influence, and legacy from it still seems unjust. Even aside from his own interests, it changes society’s relationship to the art itself. Whiteness was falsely centered in the creation myth of rock and roll because nearly all of the recognized founders are white; that offends me quite a bit more than who did or didn’t get rich. I can't adequately imagine a hypothetical world where singing and songwriting doesn't result in any significant financial gain yet rock and roll still matters like it does now so I can't really entertain your question. Money is power and power is money in this world. The more intuitive counterfactual is the one I presented where Otis simply goes on to claim the legacy himself by virtue of having access to the moneyed machinery of the music business. I guess I’m mostly trying to think about how to extend the concept in a useful way. I’ve heard it argued that a lot of gangster rappers were successful primarily because white producers thought a certain kind of narrative about black culture would sell well with white audiences. In the minstrelsy days whites wanted to hear black voices sing about how happy and carefree the slave life was; now they wanted to hear them rap about selling drugs and shooting people. As a historical account I don’t know if that narrative is accurate. But as a hypothetical at least, is it a similar kind of problem? Whites are taking Black culture, plucking it out of context, bending it how they see fit, and then mass producing it for obscene wealth. In this case the black performers *do* get rich off of it. Does that address the problem? To me it seems like there are deeper issues that matter more than who gets rich. I do hope IgnE picks this back up. One aspect easily lost in all this is the differences between people that are talking about cultural appropriation from a perspective of "capitalism unfairly excluded us (them), (they)we want in" vs "capitalism unfairly excluded us, we want socialism/communism. A lot of people have commented in ways that are similar (but only similar) to critiques that I also have about the notion of cultural appropriation. I could go on laying out the best case for cultural appropriation, the reasons cultural appropriation is a useful and valid concept, and the best reasons for objecting to particular applications of cultural appropriation as a concept, or why it feels inadequate when applied to concrete situations, but then it starts to feel like I am talking to myself. If ChristianS wants to formulate an alternative working description of the concept that more closely aligns with his moral intuitions then I'd be happy to hear it. More generally I think that thinking seriously about this topic requires that one have an open mind. One should keep in mind both the individual level (specific plagiarism, specific exploitation, deception, power imbalances, motivations) and the systemic level (relationships between e.g. the white artist and his audience, distribution channels, positionality with respect to capital and social networks). One should dialectically think through these two levels when trying to do moral calculations about where blame should be assigned (did Elvis do anything wrong or should we blame the record execs? or was it the audience who is at fault? or was it their forebears?), what redress is morally required (is money all that matters? what can historiography do to repair the harm? what role does narrative play? what should a white person do when borrowing from a culture that is historically excluded from popular culture, financial remuneration, positions of cultural power, ownership?). Dismissing one or the other side will inevitably lead only to the partial truth that is symptomatic of ideological blockage. It might also be that no particular person is doing anything wrong and yet we, collectively, are getting morally repugnant outcomes. It would be akin to a collective prisoner's dilemma. If we have a structure that replicates racially disparate outcomes when every individual actor is working within the bounds of moral decency, we would have to start thinking about cultural appropriation along different lines.
If you can get people to accept the moral bankruptcy of the capitalist underpinnings I would happily pick it up from there to discuss the importance of identity within our material conditions. I just don't have the patience to do both.
EDIT: For everyone, basically the idea is to go from where we are, to what Neb advocates, to what I advocate, to what Igne advocates vs the people that don't want that.
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