Appropriate appreciation

Ever heard of “cultural appropriation”?  That seems to be the buzz nowadays. So many offended cultural proprietors lashing out at offenders, shaming them for the purpose of who knows what exactly. Reformation? Education? To extract some measure of satisfaction?

There was that black girl lambasting the part-Pinoy Bruno Mars, because the non-black singer supposedly appropriated black culture.  There was the backlash at Wes Anderson for his cartoon the Isle of Dogs, for appropriating Japanese culture.  And would you believe it, even my sister began regaling the dinner table with stories of how a local teleserye appropriated a native tribe somewhere in the hinterlands of Mindanao.

And I don’t even know what “cultural appropriation” is! In pursuit of enlightenment and perhaps, to avoid similar accusations of misappropriation, scholarly research via the method of scrolling through web articles commenced. That led to more confusion, to tell the truth.

If one were to analyze the Entertainment Weekly article that came out, chronicling the Wes Anderson Isle of Dogs controversy, one comes out still uncertain about where the inappropriate appropriation occurred. Sure, there seemed to be valid critiques about racial stereotyping, marginalization, and Western racial superiority vis-a-vis the East, but how does that equate to appropriation, exactly?

Stereotyping is universally accepted as bad, but if one were to typecast races, that isn’t about taking another culture and making it one’s own. Stereotyping at its worst is forwarding one’s own bigoted views about a race.  There is no taking involved. So that doesn’t exactly fit the bill. Likewise, racial superiority and inferiority isn’t about stealing another culture, it’s the stamping of dominance by one culture over another.

Bruno Mars, on the other hand, grew up in America and presumably imbibed American culture, which by the way includes African-Americans. So what exactly was wrong with him making and creating Afro-American sounding music? He grew up hearing the blues and jazz and other forms of music. He’s not free to develop other original works from those? It’s not as if he committed copyright infringement.

Reading the vociferous online critique, what seems so bad is that the appropriators made money from appropriating the culture of another. It’s as if profiteering from indigenous culture is exclusively reserved for the culture originators, and no one else can benefit from it. But if that were the case, what happens to inspiration? What happens to enrichment from exposure to other races and beliefs? When does one cross the line from cultural appreciation to cultural appropriation?

Such a confusing world it is. If one were to judge, the entire Philippines could be indicted for cultural appropriation violations, having taken to its heart and soul, whether wittingly or unwittingly, Hollywood in its entirety.

But then a Filipino television show is criticized for misappropriating a Filipino indigenous people’s culture. But isn’t that where Filipino writers and creators should spring from? And where were the critics when The Black Panther movie showed costumes that were five percent inspired by the Filipino Ifugao tribe? All that we heard were paeans of praise for the minuscule contribution. Is there some sort of threshold where the taking of culture crosses the line and becomes unacceptable?

Here is a student of society, eager to learn its rules.  But tackling cultural appropriation? Might be best not to obsess about it too much in the meantime. Might just be a passing fad.