Some more cultural appropriation links

[sholio]

Forgive my linkspammage; this is something that I feel is important, and people are pouring their hearts and souls into these posts, this debate. This is far from the first time that debates like this have gone around; in the past, I've watched, and read a lot, and learned a lot. This time around, I'd like to help.

rydra_wong has excellent roundup link posts: 1, 2, 3, 4. There is also a comprehensive roundup at Aqueduct Press.

The Remyth Project looks completely awesome. In yeloson's words:

The Remyth project is this: You, as a person of color, as a person whose myths have been sidelined, removed, changed, altered, turned into movies, popularized and sold, you as a participant of your heritage (even divorced by many generations)...

You write up, draw, or ramble in whatever way befits you about a myth you can claim ownership to. You take back that myth. You tell us what you think it is. Reinterpret, reconstruct, or even revise- give it a rebirth, as you would.

It's a beautiful and powerful project. Please tread carefully and respectfully.

Something that I found particularly relevant (for me) is nojojojo's post We worry about it too. From the intro to that post:

So the great cultural appropriation debate returns, and one thing in particular has been bugging me. A lot of the people talking in all these comment threads -- clarification; a lot of the white people talking in these threads -- keep complaining that all this scary appropriation stuff means they're damned if they do and damned if they don't, they can never write people of color to the satisfaction of PoC so they're not going to bother, I guess this means white men should only write white men, o woe, o melodrama. That this is a false woe motivated in most cases by narcissism, spite, and no genuine interest in change is a given. But a few of the people voicing this complaint are sincere, because for various reasons they haven't yet realized something very basic: that racism infects the thinking of everyone, in a racist society. Everyone, including PoC themselves. White people are the most frequent perpetrators of stereotyping and "inappropriate appropriation", largely due to history and the power structure of Western society. But it's never been solely a unidirectional thing, however it might seem to those poor, confuzzled, put-upon white men (and others who think like them). PoC can stereotype and inappropriately appropriate other PoC. Hell, PoC can stereotype and inappropriately appropriate themselves. This is not some kind of intellectual-property race war, nor is it a game with winners and losers. It never has been, and the sooner everybody realizes that and gets on the same page, the sooner we can make some progress.

My writer/artist friend Jane is currently facing up to cultural appropriation issues in her own graphic novel. (“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” --Samuel Beckett)

Finally, I would really be remiss in my linkspamming if I didn't also link to another, slightly older, justifiably widely-linked article: Pam Noles' essay on the whitewashing of Earthsea, Shame, and her follow-up response to a clueless trolling idiot who is, as some of you know, me. (Glacierdust is the online pseudonym that I used to use for personal stuff, as opposed to Sholio/Friendshipper for fan stuff; I've since switched my personal blog to my real name, mostly because switching between all the different pseudonyms once I started spending a lot of time on the fan blog was confusing for me and probably everyone else as well.) Noles addresses many of the issues that have come up in this current round of debate in her essay. And she was also much more kind and gracious than a clueless white chick deserved, three years ago, when said white chick emailed her a mortified apology -- and then proceeded to argue with her via email. *headdesk x infinity*

I'm not posting this for self-flagellation purposes, but rather to point out that a) it's a fantastic essay, and everyone should read it, and b) you may be wondering, if you've been following these links, whether the sort of clueless stupidity that you've been seeing over the last few days is fixable, and I really hope that it is, because I think I've learned a lot over the last couple of years and become much less of an idiot than I used to be. If you've been participating in these (or similar) discussions and feeling like you're beating your head against the wall in these debates, wondering why you're taking the time to explain the same thing fifty times to people who Just Don't Get It, sometimes those words do fall on receptive ground ... eventually. I fucked up, and the fact that this particular fuck-up kicked me onto a personal journey of self-discovery doesn't make up for having, through my own ignorance, insulted and knocked down another human being. I can't make up for that; I can, however, move forward and try very hard to do better, and that's what I've been trying to do -- reading a lot, educating myself, and eventually getting myself to the point where I feel able to participate in these discussions in a constructive way, rather than being part of the problem. I don't want to do that to someone else again.

Also, I think that was the point where the complete interconnectedness of the Internet really hit home for me. The idea that Noles or anyone who knew her would read my selfish blitherings about her essay had honestly never occurred to me, and I still remember very vividly my mortified horror when I realized that this was not true. Yes, you do have to answer for everything you say online, and if you don't want to stand behind it or at least be willing to fix your own mess, don't say it in the first place. WORDS TO LIVE BY, PEOPLE.

Comments

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree with you about the "special interest" vs. white mainstream dilemma -- there are a few people, like Kyle Baker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_baker), who are successful enough to do both ... write the mainstream, mostly white superheroes, and also work on their own projects or work on inserting more awareness of PoC issues into the mainstream comics that they write. I think it's a false fear on the part of corporate execs that white fans wouldn't be able to empathize with non-white characters, and it's also very dismissive of the not-at-all-inconsiderable numbers of fans who aren't white and are out there spending their cash on comics and movies and tie-in products too -- white fans are not the only customer base.

Reading that "Shame" essay, it seems to me like the most heartbreaking thing about it is seeing a fan who is excluded from universes she loves

That's it exactly. That's what I didn't get for a long time, and one of the main reasons why I didn't get it is because I never really felt it as a woman -- if that makes any sense. I never felt excluded from male-dominated casts and shows; I never have had trouble inserting myself into male characters (er, so to speak) and I couldn't seem to get past seeing everything through that lens until I made an ass of myself to Pam Noles and, then, started getting it ... first of all, that it wasn't the same, and second of all, that I'd been unfairly dismissive of women who had that problem on the basis of gender, too. Because everybody out there isn't me, and a lot of people have had (are having) experiences and problems that I can't begin to understand unless I close my mouth and listen to what they're saying.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

and one of the main reasons why I didn't get it is because I never really felt it as a woman -- if that makes any sense. I never felt excluded from male-dominated casts and shows;

Ahh, see, and that is what spoke to me. I didn't exactly feel excluded from the shows (then again, the stuff I watched, like Star Trek & Wars, at least give lip-service to male-female equality. Though it was still an annoying revelation to me the day I realized that as awesome as Princess Leia was, there were no female X-wing pilots...) But I know when I decided I wanted to be a scifi writer, I wondered how easy it would be, when pretty much none of the scifi I was reading was written by women. And that was my upbringing, probably, same as with Pam Noles; I know I had conversations with my parents about it, that they very much encouraged me to seek out female SF authors - not instead of men, but in addition, to get the full range, to make sure I knew this was a field open to me, too.

...It persists now; I know there are plenty of female SF novelists, but when it comes to writing for American SF TV it's only in the last few years that there's been any real female presence there (I still do get excited when I see female writers/directors), and it is disappointing to watch SGA and know that I probably never could've gotten a job in that writer's room, because I've got boobs.

(That was one of the strange things about manga/anime, to me - it was the first time that I was seriously fanning on fiction created by women. *All* the shows and movies I'd seriously fanned on prior to anime were created by men...)

--Umm, and I've gotten off-track here. But, yes. With those associations, I found Pam Noles's points made perfect sense, but I can see how you, not having the same associations, would've had a harder time understanding. If you've always felt yourself to be in the majority, it can be really difficult to see where the minority is coming from...