I think the language is showing its limitations (or I'm showing my exhaustion after two long days in the workshop). I don't mean "own" as in something you can buy or sell. I don't mean "invested" as in "I spent money on this". I mean "own" as in, "if you were to ask me what stories shaped me as a child, this would be among the collection." And I mean "invested" as in "this is part of my identity as a person, that I know/retell/enjoy these stories".
The story never corrupts the original, and anytime the two come in contact the first one has the weight of verifiable fact. There was a historical time when this was not so, but this is no longer the case.
I would argue, sadly, that this is still not yet so. There are still too many people who believe what they see on the big screen (or the little one), no matter how maladapted, and whose privilege gives them the blinders to decide that this mainstream-inflected, distorted version is therefore the right one. And with privilege comes a really big bullhorn -- or at least the unquestioned assumption that one deserves a really big bullhorn.
That's how you get the average non-native USian quite convinced that "being Indian" means you live in a teepee and wear eagle feathers. Oh, sure, the original story -- of being Cherokee, or Navajo, or some other non-teepee-living type, like the Indians I know who live in condos -- isn't technically corrupted. It's just erased. Or simply drowned out by the new version.
I don't have a problem with someone adapting my cultural stories. I rather like it when people tell me they've begun reading things like the Brer Rabbit stories, because they're showing an openness to something that matters a lot to me. What I have a problem with is when someone with significantly more privilege adapts -- or to use your term, which I find very telling, 'mutilates' -- a different culture's stories. Lesser privilege means never getting a big enough bullhorn to right such wrongs or even to present an alternate version, and no, most people won't go look it up, or learn more.
But they will correct me, down the road, and speak to me as though their distorted version is the 'right' one, and all others -- including the original cultural version -- are aberrations. But when the original story is one that has significant cultural import to a people, then... it's most definitely not an issue of "so what".
And lastly, if one does not consider oneself invested, in any level, in a story -- if one is most likely to shrug and say, 'so what' -- then I personally think it's best one step back from the fray, having no irons in there. Let those to whom it is a significant emotional matter be the ones whose voices carry.
no subject
Date: 20 Mar 2011 04:30 am (UTC)The story never corrupts the original, and anytime the two come in contact the first one has the weight of verifiable fact. There was a historical time when this was not so, but this is no longer the case.
I would argue, sadly, that this is still not yet so. There are still too many people who believe what they see on the big screen (or the little one), no matter how maladapted, and whose privilege gives them the blinders to decide that this mainstream-inflected, distorted version is therefore the right one. And with privilege comes a really big bullhorn -- or at least the unquestioned assumption that one deserves a really big bullhorn.
That's how you get the average non-native USian quite convinced that "being Indian" means you live in a teepee and wear eagle feathers. Oh, sure, the original story -- of being Cherokee, or Navajo, or some other non-teepee-living type, like the Indians I know who live in condos -- isn't technically corrupted. It's just erased. Or simply drowned out by the new version.
I don't have a problem with someone adapting my cultural stories. I rather like it when people tell me they've begun reading things like the Brer Rabbit stories, because they're showing an openness to something that matters a lot to me. What I have a problem with is when someone with significantly more privilege adapts -- or to use your term, which I find very telling, 'mutilates' -- a different culture's stories. Lesser privilege means never getting a big enough bullhorn to right such wrongs or even to present an alternate version, and no, most people won't go look it up, or learn more.
But they will correct me, down the road, and speak to me as though their distorted version is the 'right' one, and all others -- including the original cultural version -- are aberrations. But when the original story is one that has significant cultural import to a people, then... it's most definitely not an issue of "so what".
And lastly, if one does not consider oneself invested, in any level, in a story -- if one is most likely to shrug and say, 'so what' -- then I personally think it's best one step back from the fray, having no irons in there. Let those to whom it is a significant emotional matter be the ones whose voices carry.