Author: Scott D. Strader

I just read the article The evils of Cultural Appropriation recommended from Arts & Letters Daily. This was the same day that Scarlett Johansson quit her future role in a move where she would have played a transgender man.

The appropriation article–very good, by the way–brought up the history of sumptuary laws which, dating back to BCE civilizations, describe a social convention of restricting clothing based on social class. No dressing like royals; no dressing above your caste; no specific colors that represent the ruling class. It then went on to discuss the current issue where voices defending equality condemn instances when a group in power (whites) adopt the culture of those not. I remember when we visited Thailand that we were warned not to pose in front of a Buddha and mimic his pose. Our guide said it would be like if someone were to go to a church and pose as Christ in front of representations of him on the cross. Similarly, the article pointed out that the idea of cultural appropriation came from the adoption of others’ religious symbols for profit or, in general, in any way that disrespects it.

Originally derived from sociologists writing in the 1990s, its usage appears to have first been adopted by indigenous peoples of nations tainted by histories of colonization, such as Canada, Australia and the United States. Understandably, indigenous communities have been protective of their sacred objects and cultural artifacts, not wishing the experience of exploitation to be repeated generation after generation.

Again, an act of the powerful over the less so.

The label cisgender came about with the intent of not not labelling hetero males and females and thus treating them as the normal, thus others as abnormal. Cis is a non-chosen type just as gay or lesbian or bi or trans. The cis vs. LGBT+ can be seen as power vs. less so.

Scarlett Johansson has been at the center of two orthogonal issues of cultural appropriation and power dynamics. First, her casting in the role of Motoko Kusanagi in last year’s live action Ghost in the Shell remake (of which I had an opinion). Quite simply, she’s an American/white actress playing the role that was originally a Japanese cyborg, and many had issue with not casting a Japanese actress in the role. Now, she was to play a transgender man from the 70s and many LGBT+ groups were angry. I once saw a play where the same actors, in different acts, swapped characters of sometimes different genders (e.g. a male played Joe and a female Jenny in the first act, then opposite in the second). In that play, an actors’ genders were a meta part of the story (coincidentally, IIRC, about colonial whites in South Africa). Men or women playing ambiguously gendered characters of opposite sex by birth or by reassignment is not like the swapping of roles in that play. Neither is it an example of the power dynamics of Renaissance males-playing-females or, ugh, blackface.

Maybe it’s more like the healthy playing the ill or crippled. Or–to get closer to our discomfort–the mentally abled playing those with disabilities [ed. perhaps I have used crude labels?]. We’re uncomfortable with these situations in a way that we’re not with a non-doctor playing a doctor.

The appropriation article brings up a speech that the author Lionel Shriver gave regarding freedom in fiction for any writer to write any character. I had an epiphany once when a writer (who?) explained the value of novels. They said that in life we only know with certainty what we ourselves think. Others of varied histories are opaque to us. In novels, we get a window into others’ impulses and intention and thus may understand the surface differences we see in real life. This seemed an important point, and possibly why us book folk can be a bit arrogant: by creating greater empathy, there is a greater value as a member of society to read than to not.

The label of “politically correct” has become a pejorative denoting a sort of debilitating consideration toward the different. Conservatives use it as a shorthand for liberal deference to blacks, gays, hispanics, southeast asians, and any with a different culture or social history. It’s an issue of those in power and those or those-historically not. With consternation the use of these polite terms, some conservatives express, in a sort of paradox, that they are victims of political correctness and that they are labeled as shameful based on arbitrary and Victorian-like mores. When is a racist not a racist? When they no longer have power.

One concerning quote that comes later in the appropriation article is about responsibility:

The notion that a person can be held as responsible for actions that he or she did not commit strikes at the very heart of our conception of human rights and justice.

Should there be civil rights laws offsetting a previous imbalance? Should there be reconciliation commissions to ameliorate racial or ethnic violence? Should there be protection laws forcing all citizens to pay taxes for curb ramps and elevators? Should Japan, post World War II, have been barred from having an army?

Transitional periods can be those of caution and conflict. The norm of sensitivity towards those that had less, often considerably less, power in the past is not a weakness, but there is no definitive point where that power has equalized.