I want to stress the fact that Beyonce’s participation in the video was utterly and absolutely exploitative. The video reduced India’s beautiful and complex culture to a stereotype. I do not want that to be overshadowed by the conversation about appropriation. Whether or not the video was disrespectful is not up for debate– it was.
5 comments:
I applaud this author for clarifying the difference between participation and appropriation by those from the dominant/white culture. This article does a good job of articulating how minority groups being open to dominant ones and sharing their culture can be taken advantage of, and how when cultural elements are taken out of the group from which they originated, appropriation can occur. People often mistake appropriation as a one step process, but that is not the case. I think this stems from the fact that we often only see the second step, we see someone from the dominant group presenting another culture without giving proper consideration for the group from which it originated.
I think this situation with Beyonce and her use of Indian culture forms a challenging question. Beyonce’s agency as an American seems to place her into a dominant-group, while the fact that she is African American takes her out of it. I think the author is correct in saying that Beyonce’s actions are in no way the same as if a white American had done it, but I think the author does not properly acknowledge Beyonce’s position as a global superstar, backed by plenty of white management employees/etc. I’m not sure where that places Beyonce in this situation.
Okay while I don’t understand why this article is ignoring Coldplay, since it’s Coldplay’s song, I will say I am disappointed in my idol.
Disappointed instead of angry just because I know she knows how to do this the right way. There is a difference between sharing a culture and stealing it. On Beyoncé’s last album, she featured numerous countries and their people. But she did not treat their clothing like a costume, or paint herself to be an idol in their world. Instead she filmed these people living, playing games, playing sports, at the market, kids hiding behind their parents from the camera men etc. And when they were doing their traditional dance it showed Beyoncé learning it, and teaching them her own dance moves. Bam, the intertwining of culture. She gave these people a platform, and didn’t take elements from them that she thought were visually appealing.
This is my answer to where is the line of cultural appropriation. And yes I think it was crossed here.
This is one of the first articles I have ever read on cultural appropriation that actually seeks to give a concrete definition of what cultural appropriation is. It is one of those terms we throw around so much but sometimes don’t actually have a solid understanding of what it means. That being said, there are things I like and things I dislike about this author’s definition. I really appreciate their differentiating between cultural appropriation and participation by an outsider in a minority’s culture. One of my best friends in high school was an Indian-American girl named Jharna. Every year she was part of the group that would host a Diwali festival at our school. Her group was friends (most of whom were white) would join her in learning dances for the festival and then we would dress in traditional Indian clothes provided by her extended family and friends and perform at the festival. Nothing about this ever felt wrong to me, because we were not claiming the culture as our own but rather getting the chance to learn about and appreciate her culture with her. One of part of this definition I disagree with was the implication that only white people can culturally appropriate. They are definitely the group that does it the most. But even going by this article’s definition of the more powerful group or person, which I tentatively agree with, Beyonce is an incredibly strong and powerful icon in our society and I think the line of cultural appropriation was crossed with her participation in this song.
As a white person, I don't exactly have the authority to determine what is and what isn't cultural appropriation of Indian culture - and no one does, unless they are Indian. Same goes for any culture, a person who is from that culture always has the prominent say in an issue, because it's their lives that are being erased. I find a huge problem with this article when the author, not and Indian woman, talks about how many Indian people felt understandably upset with the video. She acknowledges the feelings of the real people this is affecting and then says, "But it's okay, because she is not white."
This is less of a black culture vs. Indian culture fight as it is a Western vs. Eastern fight. Western culture has appropriated, mocked, and sexualized Eastern cultures for centuries, and this is simply another example of the "sexy Indian belly dancer" trope, though this time commercialized by a white band (Coldplay) and black woman. Once this kind of stereotyping and "harmless costuming" stops, the real underlying issues of cultural differences can be addressed.
I'm sort of indifferent about this article, but it is one of the most interesting ones I have ever read on the blog. I think it does a really wonderful job at laying out the definition of cultural appropriation an stating that there is a way to be assimilated into another persons culture without appropriating it. There has been a lot of talk about that most recent Beyonce video, and it is not the first time that pop stars (normally female) have gotten some backlash for the way that they integrate other cultures into their work. Katy Perry used to get torn apart for the way she used the asian American culture in her videos, and the media in her concerts. While I did think that that was pretty damn close to appropriation, if not standing on it, I don't think it hurt her in asian countries. When it comes to this specific article, I think the writer doesn't really know what she is trying to say. First she starts with the fact that Beyonce is appropriating because she doesn't belong to the culture she is presenting in her music video. Then she goes on to say that Beyonce is less at fault because she isn't white. While I agree that white people have a history of doing absolutely horrible and violent things to other cultures, I don't think the fact that African Americans, and Indians, have both been suppressed by white people makes the appropriation of one of the cultures by the other any more or less appropriate. Beyonce is a black women, but she is also from Houston, and she is just as much a part of the American culture as I am regardless of skin color. Beside that she has the ear of millions of people, especially young girls, and she should not be teaching them that it okay to take someones culture and melt it down to something so simple it can be in a 3 minute music video. I love Beyonce, and I will continue to do so, but I think this is a step in the wrong direction for her, and her career, and a step back in the way Americans treat other cultures.
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