Well, Halloween is around the
corner again, and the killjoys on the left are busy fretting that someone might
wear the wrong thing and this annoyed me enough to make me want to blog again. Yep, it’s the fear of “cultural appropriation”—the
idea that the only people who can enjoy another culture are people from the
ethnic/racial group that was historically associated with it. So, only Native Americans can wear native
American headdresses, I guess only Italian Americans can eat Pizza, and so on. It’s a unique topic where people claiming they
are opposed to racism regularly prove that they are actually super racist.
See, the first problem is that
for one to “appropriate” a culture—that is, commit theft—you have to believe it
is the exclusive property of... some person or group of people. Which then leads you down all kinds of racist
rabbit holes.
Don’t believe me? Well, let’s look at how Cosmo dealt with
this. I first became aware of their latest
tripe, by seeing this tweet.
Hey Parents: Maybe Don't Dress Your Kid Up As Moana This Halloween https://t.co/F1tppGs47f pic.twitter.com/NOMPW3OOFi— Cosmopolitan (@Cosmopolitan) October 23, 2017
Yep, it’s an article worried
about cultural appropriation. As you
probably know by now, Moana is based on Polynesian folklore and it’s a very
good movie. (Seriously, see it, if you
haven’t. You will thank me later.) Anyway, the Cosmo article confirms that it is
concerned primarily with white girls dressed up as the titular Disney Princess*
with this passage:
Chances are, you
have a child that is enamored with all things Disney and wants to be all of the
princesses. All of them! Especially Moana.
The New York Post
recently highlighted an article on raceconscious.org about how that’s probably
not a good choice if your kid is white, and revealed that “moms are freaking
out” over the culturally appropriative costume.
So, they are really only
concerned with little white girls dressing as Moana. Presumably if you are black, Japanese, South
Asian, Australian Aborigine, Inuit, etc., you’re just peachy dressing as Moana. Maybe.
They are kind of unclear on this.
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Sidebar: And of course, you have to ask “how White does a girl have
to be?” If she is half-white,
half-Polynesian is she unable to dress as Moana? Does it take one drop of white blood to ruin
it? See what I mean about this stuff
making people super-racist?
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And it’s worth circling back to Cosmo’s
tweet again. To quote them: “Hey Parents: Maybe Don’t Dress Your Kid Up
As Moana This Halloween.” Putting that
together with the revelation that they are only concerned about white girls...
aren’t they implicitly assuming that the only people reading this tweet are
people with white daughters? Like doesn’t
any Polynesians read Cosmo?
Actually, if they don’t, good for
them. What a cesspool of a magazine
it is.
Joking aside, the implicit
message to non-white women is “Cosmo is not for you!” Which is pretty racist, when you think about
it, especially for an article that claims to be designed to combat racism. Are you starting to see what I mean about in
the name of opposing racism, they end up being super-racist?
Unfortunately, they go on:
Recognize this:
Moana is a really special character to young girls of Polynesian descent who
have never seen a Disney Princess who looks like them, just like how Tiana from
The Princess and the Frog likely resonated with young Black women who had
waited decades to see themselves represented. White girls have plenty of
princesses to choose from — there’s Belle, Ariel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty …
you get the idea. If your Caucasian son or daughter doesn’t get to be exactly
what they wanted for Halloween, encourage them to take a step back and realize
that they’re awash in privileges that the real Moanas and Tianas of the world
will likely never see[.]
But by that implication, if you
are black or Polynesian... you’re stuck with only one Disney princess. I mean, you wouldn’t want to be culturally
appropriating from, say, the Scots, because you decided to dress up as Merida
from Brave, or culturally
appropriating from the French by dressing as Belle. And, evidently, if you are not white, you
cannot dress up as Wonder Woman.
Oh, except it never actually works
in reverse. Cosmo will never say that
non-whites are not allowed to borrow from white culture. So if Tilda Swinton is cast as a traditionally
Asian character in Dr. Strange, we hear accusations of whitewashing. But on the other hand, casting Idris Elba as
a character in Norse Mythology in the Thor movies, well, you’re just supposed
to roll with that. (And for the record,
I do roll with it.) In fact, if you
object, you
are looked down on as being racist.
Ultimately, one of the most
pernicious forms of racism is the obsessive need to match races. I really wonder what world these Cosmo
editors live in. I count among friends
(and family) people from a multitude of races and ethnicities and I think most
of the people my age do (and certainly kids younger than I do). I remember one time a racist moron asked me
on twitter why I didn’t marry my own “kind” (I am in an interracial
marriage). My retort was something like
this: “I have married a woman who loves sci-fi and fantasy, who used to watch
Stargate SG-1 with me on Fridays and make out during the commercials and
thought going to see Deadpool on Valentine's day is a good idea. I did
marry my own kind.” We may not look
alike, she might speak a few languages I don’t, and she might have some family
traditions I don’t, but beyond all that, we hit that sweet spot of being similar,
but not so much alike that its obnoxious.
When it comes to movie roles, I
think it is equally defensible to 1) cast the best actor regardless of race, or
2) when the role is linked to history (loosely defined), to pick someone who
fits the appropriate ethnic background (or kinda fits it), and 3) find
interesting stories from all cultures. Let
me expand on that.
Most of the time, if you are
talking about, say... a movie that takes place in modern times, or a fantasy
taking place long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, just find the best
actors. Maybe have some light race
matching, so that if someone turns out to be Han Solo’s (biological) son, he
looks like someone who might share some of his genes, but that is the extent of
it.
But to give a practical example,
I grew up seeing Nick Fury show up in various cartoons and comic books. He was always depicted as a cigar-chomping bad
ass. And always white. Like here’s a reasonably representative
example:
But when, at the end of the
original Iron Man, they had that end-credits scene with Samuel L. Jackson
showing up as Nick Fury, my wife and I both exclaimed “cool!” Yes, he didn’t look
like the Nick Fury I grew up with, and I didn’t care even a little because to
be blunt, I couldn’t picture anyone else capturing a similar level of bravado
needed for the part. So, if I am
watching aliens pour out of the sky as a guy in a robot suit, a super-spy, an
archer, a giant green rage machine and so on fight them, yeah, pick the best
actors regardless of race.
(Although the Hulk must be green.)
On the other hand, I think if the
story is historical or linked to history, then you are more justified in
worrying about race-matching, especially if you are depicting a time in history
when people were very racist. Indeed, if the story is significantly about
racism or prejudice, then racial matching is almost mandatory. Like if Stephen Spielberg had cast non-black actors
as the slaves in Amistad, that would
have gone over like a lead balloon. I’m
not saying it is impossible to create a movie about the Holocaust starring an
entirely Japanese cast where the casting choice is justified,** but it’s definitely
a hard sell.
But even then, I think a light
touch is justified—not perfect matching, but close enough that it doesn’t take
you out of the illusion that you are witnessing history. I remember some strange people getting upset
that Sean Connery played Jim Malone in The
Untouchables or getting upset that Liam Neeson starred as Scottish hero Rob Roy. But both of them were great in
their respective roles and it wasn’t that distracting. Ultimately, we are talking about racial or
ethnic discrimination and even when it is really well-justified (such as my Amistad example above) you are limiting
your options. Seriously, Connery won an
Oscar for Malone and deservedly so.
Would you want anyone else playing the role?
Likewise, as an example “linked
to history,” it would have been justifiable to cast a white guy as Heimdall in
the Marvel Thor movies, but I ended
up being fine with it. I mean the theory
behind the Thor movies appears to be
that the Norse Gods were really inter-dimensional aliens who early humans
mistook for deities, so all those myths of Thor et al doing this or that were just the half-remembered history of
these aliens. At least I think that’s
what it is—they’re a little vague. And
in that context, if Heimdall was a black dude, you would tend to think that the
Vikings would have really remembered that, so it creates kind of a plot hole
that he is black. But, on the other
hand, Idris Elba takes that slender role and is completely awesome in it, so
the awesomeness he brings to the table more than justifies the minor plot hole
his presence creates. Besides, nothing in Thor’s world makes very much
sense if you think about it hard enough.
Really, when watching something with that much nonsense, one should follow
the advice of Basil Exposition:
I mean if you are watching a
movie about aliens who are literally millennia old but are simultaneously often
really old immature people, an advanced species that... for some reason uses bows and arrows and
swords to fight, instead of (at least) ray guns... and somehow speaks modern
English, but nonetheless know literally nothing else about our culture... isn’t
a black dude guarding the wormhole device the smallest plothole?
But to the extent that we
race-match, then you have to hit the third point. We have to draw stories from a diverse set of
cultures. And there are interesting
stories in every culture. To circle back
to what started all of this, that’s one of the things I thought was neat about Moana.
The movie is in a lot of ways a throwback to those old-school
mythological adventures—like Clash of the
Titans. It was about a hero going on
a quest to solve a problem (maybe save the world) and interacting with various
mythological beings along the way... If was about an adventure, and to the
extent that there was any romance, it was mainly a motivating factor (“I have
to fight this giant monster to save the one I love!”). Only it wasn’t the mythology I grew up on but
something I never heard of before. When
I was growing up, I always enjoyed those kind of stories, but I always thought
“surely, cultures other than the Greeks and Romans had their own cool stories
like that Hercules or Jason. Where are
they?” Well, again, I have no idea how
true Moana is to the original stories, but at least I got to enjoy a brand new
(to me) story in that vein. So we should
see the stories of many different cultures, and probably in most cases, you
will see race matching, but that avoids creating a situation where there just
aren’t good parts for non-whites.
As for Halloween costumes, if
your little girl isn’t Polynesian and still wants to dress up as a Moana, tell
her to go for it. I believe children are
not “color blind” so much as “color unconcerned,” and isn’t that Martin Luther
King, Jr.’s dream? If your child judges
Moana not by the color of her skin but the content of her character and admires
her enough to want to be her for
Halloween, you shouldn’t discourage that because she is the wrong color. And of course, the proposed cultural
segregation of the “anti-cultural-appropriation” crowd—where everyone is supposed
to stay in their culture, lest they appropriate someone else’s—creates a
separation that is not equal. Saying
“oh, there are plenty of other princesses” to a little girl who likes Moana
best, kind of ignores that there is something different about Moana other than
her ethnicity: she is one of the few Disney “Princesses” who is a pure hero,
without any romantic entanglements. I
said “few” in the last sentence, but honestly, I can’t think of another. Even Frozen,
which isn’t primarily about romance, still has a romantic subplot. In some ways she is a better hero for little
girls to look up to than Wonder Woman precisely because there is nothing
special about Moana, except her determination and her big heart—and any little
girl or boy can choose to give themselves those same kinds of traits. And what could be more utterly subversive of
racism than a bunch of little girls and boys looking up to, and wanting to be
like, heroes and heroines who do not share their ethnic or racial identity?
On Halloween, a large number of
kids decide they want to dress up as someone they think is really cool. And in previous years, I have seen a black
boy dressed as Captain America, a Filipino girl dressed in The Little Mermaid’s Wedding Dress, and I’ll probably see white
girls dressed as Moana this year. Cosmo
and the anti-cultural-appropriation crowd see this as a problem. I see this as pretty cool.
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* In the movie, they actually
debate whether she is a princess, in a humorous way. In a less humorous way, Moana is a girl in a
society organized around hereditary rule who is in the line of succession with
the expectation that someday she will be chief of her village, so... yeah, she
is a princess.
** Here’s how an all-Japanese
movie about the holocaust might be done and be justified. I admit I don’t know everything about
Japanese culture, but I presume that there is prejudice within their culture,
because... well, humans suck and they tend to suck that specific way. So maybe they could do a holocaust drama
where the disliked minority are cast as the “Jews” and the majority is cast as
the “Germans” or at least the “non-Jews” in order to highlight such prejudice
in Japanese society.
Or here’s another
possibility. You might see a movie about
the holocaust where both the Jews and their oppressors are played by a
veritable rainbow of human pigmentation, as a way of highlighting the common
humanity of both the victims and their oppressors and the ultimate stupidity of
prejudice.
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My wife and I lost our jobs due
to the harassment of convicted terrorist (and adjudicated statutory rapist)
Brett Kimberlin, including an attempt to get us killed and to frame me for a
crime carrying a sentence of up to ten years. I know that claim sounds fantastic, but if you
read starting here,
you will see absolute proof of these claims using documentary and video
evidence. If you would like to help in
the fight to hold Mr. Kimberlin accountable, please hit the donation link on
the right. And thank you.
Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for
snark and site updates.
---------------------------------------
Disclaimer:
I have accused some people,
particularly Brett Kimberlin, of reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even criminal. In all cases, the only justice I want is
through the appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system. I do not want to see vigilante violence
against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally
wrong, but it is counter-productive.
In the particular case of Brett
Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed
communication. I say this in part
because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want
that to happen to him.
And for that matter, don’t go on
his property. Don’t sneak around and try
to photograph him. Frankly try not to
even be within his field of vision. Your
behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to
mention trespass and other concerns).
And do not contact his
organizations, either. And most of all,
leave his family alone.
The only exception to all that is
that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with
contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might
report. And even then if he tells you to
stop contacting him, obey that request. That this is a key element in making out a
harassment claim under Maryland law—that a person asks you to stop and you
refuse.
And let me say something else. In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that
any person supporting me has done any of the above. But if any of you have, stop it, and if you
haven’t don’t start.
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