the other side of appropriation
21 Mar 2011 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouI recall that when Sita Sings the Blues came out, there were some rumblings (might've been louder, but I only noticed rumblings) about the issue of appropriation. The story retells Sita's story, contrasting it with a Westerner/American's story of heartbreak, and mixes it up with songs from a now-less-known blues singer. The story doesn't entirely cast Sita as a feminist -- I don't think you can do that without really butchering the original -- but it does call out the assumptions that Rama is such a great guy, seeing the way he treats the alleged love of his life (and the mother of his children). To me, what saves the story from being complete appropriation is that the bulk of the narration is provided by three Indian expats discussing the legend, the characters, the stories around them, colored by their own take on things, sort of like a gentle critique within a critique.
But still, for a non-Hindu to take the story of Rama and Sita and use it as the framework for her own travails and self-discovery... on one hand, you could argue that this demonstrates the universality of Sita's story. Or maybe we might put it: that Sita's story, despite being a thousand (or more?) years old, still speaks to women, regardless of their cultural background. But on the other hand, you could also see it as one more case of a Westerner adopting a marginalized culture's story to serve the Western purposes.
It's been long enough that I can say I will probably always remain ambivalent -- just to head you off at the pass if you're about to argue one way or the other. My privilege lets me see both sides, and I think the question is complicated by the fact that (to me) there's a certain amount of cultural payment going on (by the Western storyteller) in that she sought not just to stick to the original legend, but to involve speakers for the culture. She could've trimmed down their rambling (if hugely entertaining) discourse, but she didn't. In a way, that means we who watch the story are also granting time to more than just the simplest version, and getting the messy complex version instead.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems that appropriation is lessened when you get the messy version. At the very least, you're avoiding the risks of the Single Story.
An alternate case of appropriation is one that took me a little longer to tease out the logic, but I think it's illustrative of how appropriation -- like with Sita -- might also sometimes be a good thing. In which case, maybe we need to call it something else. Cross-cultural critique, perhaps?
The second case in point is from the manga, D.Gray-man, where the bad guys are called Noahs. As in, the family of Noah, from the Pentateuch/Old Testament. Except these are the bad guys, and within the Judeo-Christian framework, Noah is definitely one of the patriarchs. After all, when the rest of the world (or at least the corner ruled by Yahweh) had gone totally bad, Noah and his family were saved because they were supposed to be the only remaining upstanding, good, people.
Following along with the manga, eventually one of the Noahs (and I think "Noah" is being treated as a surname, or a class, by the mangaka) explains why they're determined to overthrow Yahweh/god. It's because they loathe him -- for using them as examples, for destroying everything else. I guess a bit of survivor's guilt, mixed in with what -- taken from that perspective -- looks like a rather justified anger. To be circled out as the Only Good People and to watch the entire rest of your world be destroyed, and then to spend days on end stuck on a big boat with no idea if land will ever come back... It's Job on a larger scale, but the mangaka grants the Noahs the retaliatory anger that Job never shows.
I honestly never would've thought, not in a lifetime of lifetimes, of seeing Noah's family as survivors of a great catastrophe bearing the same scars and seething resentment as any other lone survivors. "Why me? Why was I the only one saved? Why couldn't you save all the other people I know? Is this just a cosmic joke to you?"
My Judeo-Christian upbringing never once raised the question of such an aftermath, and frankly, I don't spend a lot of time doing self-examinations on those religious stories I learned as a kid. In this way, I probably am not that much different from people who continue to believe, who continue to get the reinforcement of Noah and his group being The Only Good People Worth Saving.
For a Japanese mangaka to take the Judeo-Christian story and see it from a different perspective... some might say this is distortion of the original [perspective]. I'd say it's a reflection, because the bones of the original story are still there. The mangaka -- like the animator who made Sita -- just took the story beyond its accepted ending, to its true logical conclusion. The outsider's lack of pre-existing assumptions (or childhood indoctrination) allowed the mangaka to question in a way that an insider probably wouldn't.
This is not to say the two instances are completely equal; the particulars of the Hindi traditions aren't that well-known in the West, so there could be a risk of people misunderstanding or misinterpreting Sita's original story when their only exposure is the animated socio-cultural critique. In contrast, the Judeo-Christian religion/s are pretty solidly entrenched in the West, so I doubt anyone's going to be changing their mind based on a Japanese manga. For that matter, I have my doubts as to whether it'd really change that many minds or influence that many people within Japan, either.
Given the tendency in Japanese animanga to royally butcher the entire Catholic faith and traditions for the sake of pomp and intricacy with major conspiracy theories thrown in, I'd be willing to bet that most readers (West or East) write off the Noah plotline as one more instance of a non-Christian/Japanese just not getting it right, or adopting/adapting with no regard for the original. Except that in this case, the mangaka clearly adapted with regard for the original, because you only realize the potential truth in that reverse if you know the original. (That is to say, it's only in knowing that Noah is supposed to be a "good guy" that the poignancy of the survivor's anger has any weight, because it's coupled with the knowledge that the world continues to see Noah as a good guy... thus erasing/dismissing or just not even caring to consider the Noah anger. The Noahs are propaganda used against their own intentions, and it makes for a neat piece of free will questioning, too.)
Or perhaps this is why Sita Sings the Blues requires having a Greek (Indian?) chorus to give the messy multiple sides to the original legend: the appropriation must be offset by the edification that the picture is not just a simple boy meets girl, boy dumps girl, girl dies by leaping into the arms of mother earth. Meanwhile, the prevalence of at least a basic grasp of Judeo-Christian myths means that the mangaka doesn't need to give any of the messiness, but can instead flip the perspective and we can follow without a need for roadsigns.
I'm sure there must be other examples, especially of non-Western cultures using Western stories to critique, or of adapting Western myths/religions with a different perspective to interrogate the original. Anyone?
But still, for a non-Hindu to take the story of Rama and Sita and use it as the framework for her own travails and self-discovery... on one hand, you could argue that this demonstrates the universality of Sita's story. Or maybe we might put it: that Sita's story, despite being a thousand (or more?) years old, still speaks to women, regardless of their cultural background. But on the other hand, you could also see it as one more case of a Westerner adopting a marginalized culture's story to serve the Western purposes.
It's been long enough that I can say I will probably always remain ambivalent -- just to head you off at the pass if you're about to argue one way or the other. My privilege lets me see both sides, and I think the question is complicated by the fact that (to me) there's a certain amount of cultural payment going on (by the Western storyteller) in that she sought not just to stick to the original legend, but to involve speakers for the culture. She could've trimmed down their rambling (if hugely entertaining) discourse, but she didn't. In a way, that means we who watch the story are also granting time to more than just the simplest version, and getting the messy complex version instead.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems that appropriation is lessened when you get the messy version. At the very least, you're avoiding the risks of the Single Story.
An alternate case of appropriation is one that took me a little longer to tease out the logic, but I think it's illustrative of how appropriation -- like with Sita -- might also sometimes be a good thing. In which case, maybe we need to call it something else. Cross-cultural critique, perhaps?
The second case in point is from the manga, D.Gray-man, where the bad guys are called Noahs. As in, the family of Noah, from the Pentateuch/Old Testament. Except these are the bad guys, and within the Judeo-Christian framework, Noah is definitely one of the patriarchs. After all, when the rest of the world (or at least the corner ruled by Yahweh) had gone totally bad, Noah and his family were saved because they were supposed to be the only remaining upstanding, good, people.
Following along with the manga, eventually one of the Noahs (and I think "Noah" is being treated as a surname, or a class, by the mangaka) explains why they're determined to overthrow Yahweh/god. It's because they loathe him -- for using them as examples, for destroying everything else. I guess a bit of survivor's guilt, mixed in with what -- taken from that perspective -- looks like a rather justified anger. To be circled out as the Only Good People and to watch the entire rest of your world be destroyed, and then to spend days on end stuck on a big boat with no idea if land will ever come back... It's Job on a larger scale, but the mangaka grants the Noahs the retaliatory anger that Job never shows.
I honestly never would've thought, not in a lifetime of lifetimes, of seeing Noah's family as survivors of a great catastrophe bearing the same scars and seething resentment as any other lone survivors. "Why me? Why was I the only one saved? Why couldn't you save all the other people I know? Is this just a cosmic joke to you?"
My Judeo-Christian upbringing never once raised the question of such an aftermath, and frankly, I don't spend a lot of time doing self-examinations on those religious stories I learned as a kid. In this way, I probably am not that much different from people who continue to believe, who continue to get the reinforcement of Noah and his group being The Only Good People Worth Saving.
For a Japanese mangaka to take the Judeo-Christian story and see it from a different perspective... some might say this is distortion of the original [perspective]. I'd say it's a reflection, because the bones of the original story are still there. The mangaka -- like the animator who made Sita -- just took the story beyond its accepted ending, to its true logical conclusion. The outsider's lack of pre-existing assumptions (or childhood indoctrination) allowed the mangaka to question in a way that an insider probably wouldn't.
This is not to say the two instances are completely equal; the particulars of the Hindi traditions aren't that well-known in the West, so there could be a risk of people misunderstanding or misinterpreting Sita's original story when their only exposure is the animated socio-cultural critique. In contrast, the Judeo-Christian religion/s are pretty solidly entrenched in the West, so I doubt anyone's going to be changing their mind based on a Japanese manga. For that matter, I have my doubts as to whether it'd really change that many minds or influence that many people within Japan, either.
Given the tendency in Japanese animanga to royally butcher the entire Catholic faith and traditions for the sake of pomp and intricacy with major conspiracy theories thrown in, I'd be willing to bet that most readers (West or East) write off the Noah plotline as one more instance of a non-Christian/Japanese just not getting it right, or adopting/adapting with no regard for the original. Except that in this case, the mangaka clearly adapted with regard for the original, because you only realize the potential truth in that reverse if you know the original. (That is to say, it's only in knowing that Noah is supposed to be a "good guy" that the poignancy of the survivor's anger has any weight, because it's coupled with the knowledge that the world continues to see Noah as a good guy... thus erasing/dismissing or just not even caring to consider the Noah anger. The Noahs are propaganda used against their own intentions, and it makes for a neat piece of free will questioning, too.)
Or perhaps this is why Sita Sings the Blues requires having a Greek (Indian?) chorus to give the messy multiple sides to the original legend: the appropriation must be offset by the edification that the picture is not just a simple boy meets girl, boy dumps girl, girl dies by leaping into the arms of mother earth. Meanwhile, the prevalence of at least a basic grasp of Judeo-Christian myths means that the mangaka doesn't need to give any of the messiness, but can instead flip the perspective and we can follow without a need for roadsigns.
I'm sure there must be other examples, especially of non-Western cultures using Western stories to critique, or of adapting Western myths/religions with a different perspective to interrogate the original. Anyone?
no subject
Date: 22 Mar 2011 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 Mar 2011 04:28 am (UTC)In other words, part of the Judeo-Christian aspect of the Western world is that Judeo-Christian beliefs are taken by many as default: so coming across a re-interpretation can be dismissed out of hand as ignorance, instead of acknowledging that the default can also be questioned. (Not to say that you or I or most thinking people would dismiss willfully, only that it seems to be a blindspot created by extended time in that Judeo-Christian environment.)
no subject
Date: 22 Mar 2011 05:37 am (UTC)And, as an additional note, Vassalord is a manga that doesn't just borrow visuals and such for the sake of cool. This is the manga where one of the main characters is a cyborg-vampire vampire hunter, but as far as I can remember Charley's faith is seriously as a part of his character and as a complicating factor in his feelings for/about the vampire who turned him. There might be more interesting things about the way Christian beliefs are incorporated into the story and the manga's particular vampire mythology, but the scanlations are far behind the raws (and my own knowledge of Christian beliefs is very incomplete) so all I know of that is second-hand scraps. Still, they are some very tasty scraps.
no subject
Date: 22 Mar 2011 12:48 am (UTC)Looking at the particular examples you gave, I would say both versions sound more interesting then problematical. And I also agree that more care should be taken when dealing with a tale unfamiliar to the audience.
But I'm a bit concerned.
Why is the influence of the Japanese version of the Noah story on the [i]Japanese[/i] understanding discussed only after dismissing that version's influence on the basis that we Westerners have our version firmly entrenched in our culture while the possible influence of the Western version of Sita on Indian culture isn't even discussed? [I would think that it's sufficently engrained in Indian culture that a Western version wouldn't have an influence BTW]
I don't think that Western culture is sufficiently privileged that we need not care about other cultures' understanding. I also have a hard time seeing India as particularly marginalized culture- it's had a continuously literate culture for a very long time, has a substantial percentage of the world's population- there seems little danger of it being overwhelmed and losing it's own customs and stories.
If our understanding of a Hindu tale is important regardless of the likely effect on Hindu culture (and I agree that it should be) then there needs to be more reason to dismiss another culture's alternative version of a Christian tale then 'it won't influence us'.
I'd accept the argument that Western missionaries have ensured that Bibical tales are world-wide and thus there is little danger of any one version being considered the true story in the way a particular version of an Eastern tale could be misinterpreted.
Kat
no subject
Date: 22 Mar 2011 01:39 am (UTC)2. I've never read an article so forthright in the author's belief that it's fine if we do it but those others have no right.
Oh, that kind of thing is all over the place. Usually authors do a bit more tap-dancing, though, so it's not blatantly obvious. But it's usually still there.
3. I was mostly thinking in terms of "another culture's stories represented in this [US] culture" -- where India would definitely be marginalized within the scope of Western perception (as, to a lesser degree, is Japan). So think of it like a flip: in one, it's the Westerner appropriating a less-known, less-powerful cultural story -- and in the second instance, it's the reverse. The fact that you and I and probably most of my flist are a bit more savvy about non-Western stories makes us outliers, and far from the mainstream, so it's hard to judge by what we know, I think. And the fact that there have been complaints voiced by Indian readers/writers online about the dominance of Western culture -- do a search for "I didn't dream of dragons", I think it's called -- tells me that even within India, as in other places (I'm told), the Western (especially US/Hollywood) media dominates. If a Western story gets traction, the sheer juggernaut of our media could potentially overcome the local, original, or cultural version.
I don't think it's wise to underestimate the dominance of the Western/US media (movies, television, books). It's insidious, and pervasive. I would very much like each culture's products to be equivalent, but that's just not the way it is.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't dismiss another culture's version of Western/our stories... I'm saying that the privilege of being the dominant media force means we are able to dismiss the re-version, if we so choose. The Western bullhorn is, frankly, the biggest honking bullhorn. If someone tells an adaptation that distorts, we have the option of drowning it out (assuming it could ever come close to the volume of the Western media in the first place). Privilege, plain and simple, lets you ignore things. Compared to Western media (and religion), I don't see Japan or India has having quite the same worldwide bullhorn as does the West.
That makes it an intriguing comparison. Is in one case it's not okay (Westerner retelling Indian) and in another case, any Westerner trying to raise an issue deserves no sympathy (marginal to dominant)? Or could the two instances (and any others that could be raised) give us guidelines for what makes a thoughtful or respectful cross-cultural adaptation versus outright imperial appropriation? Or is it always appropriation if the using force is also the greater of the two media bullhorns?
no subject
Date: 22 Mar 2011 03:07 am (UTC)They warned me that they had been to a conference where it was screened, early on, and they saw firsthand how Hindi visitors and immigrants to the US were pretty offended by it, and by the filmmaker's own stubbornness. At the time, this was partly caused by the context that the production came wrapped in as well as issues with the film's plot structure and attitudes. It was getting attention and grants funding where other deserving producers and directors were being ignored, for instance.
I just think it's sad that all that inventiveness got wrapped round the axle for reasons that perhaps could have been avoided. It's like a giant flashing sign to those of us who dance along the edge of appropriation whenever we try to write characters from cultures (and in the case of LGBTG etc., subcultures) where we haven't felt the restrictions and difficulties personally. I know some folks take it to the extreme that if you aren't a woman, you can't write truly about women characters; or if you aren't yourself a member of an ethnic group, you can't be fair when writing about them; and as a reader, why not spend that effort instead on a writer or filmmaker or artist who really knows what they're talking about?
Obviously I don't agree with the completely extreme view, since that makes many kinds of speculative fiction impossible. In some readers, dislike of the genre may be (rightfully) provoked by the reactionary politics of many science fiction and fantasy writers and readers. But honesty compels me to say that, under the severe interpretation, building worlds is an act of appropriation. Fictions about six-wheeled inflatable natives of a gas giant world do not come from a writer who knows that life by living it personally.
I really like the viewpoint reversal you note there--a really nice mental flipover, how the Japanese script honors the survivor's anger of the Noahs in ways that a Westerner would never recognize in the Biblical story. Not having seen the piece, I don't know if it is as startling and "in yer face" to the Christian West as Sita apparently was to Indian Hindus.
no subject
Date: 22 Mar 2011 04:17 am (UTC)It probably did not help that the creator didn't clear the copyright issues before distribution (although I believe that's because she was under the impression the works were now in the public domain, and discovered the error only when the family contacted her, or something). Having a work halted because you can't pay the royalties for the songs used is definitely one way to get publicity (not that I'm saying this was intentional, only that it would garner attention if this were seen as the one thing holding up legal distribution of an otherwise inventive and creative work), plus the creator had connections via big bullhorns like Roger Ebert, IIRC.
If she were just one of twenty people, all with similar-themed/origin stories, and there hadn't been the debacle concerning copyright... then maybe that might've alleviated things. But I can definitely see how a white woman is going to get more attention (again, privilege being something that often operates independently of what may be otherwise good intentions) because of the, well, for lack of a better way to put it: the novelty. Partly because it's a white creator working with stories of non-Anglo/Western origin and partly because the white culture tends to only give credibility to members of its own group. That is, if you want credibility for a story that involves non-whites, or non-white origins, then you need a white person at the helm to make it legitimate, somehow. (See also Gaiman, Neal, and his various adaptations, compared to similar attempts at adaptations by people Who Are Not White and how much buzz they got.)
Or should I say: AtLA got as much press as it did, I suspect, not just because it was an awesome story... but because it was an awesome story written by two middle-class white guys.
Which in itself is incredibly patronizing (that it's such a shocker that a white person might, gasp, write about non-Western/Anglo stories/characters), but that's barely a footnote compared to the anger many must feel at not being given any credibility when an outsider can stroll in and be accoladed for something that doesn't even delve very deep (and critiques, to boot). But that's sort of what I mean by the issue at heart: if it had been, say, an Indian woman using, I don't know, early 20th cen qawwali to accompany an animated critique of, say, the story of Florence Nightingale... One, it wouldn't be appropriation because it's from low(dominance) to high(dominance), and two, we probably never would've heard about it, unless we had really savvy flists who made sure to get the links passed along... and even then, I doubt Roger Ebert would've written a column about it, let alone pushed to get it included in a competition even with the copyright issues. No, I don't like acknowledging that, but realistically, that's what I'd expect to see happen. It sucks.
Not having seen the piece, I don't know if it is as startling and "in yer face" to the Christian West as Sita apparently was to Indian Hindus.
Actually... it is, but the Christian Westerner has the option of not letting it be so.
Or maybe I should say: being raised in a predominantly xtian culture, one can choose to not see the in-yer-face quality of the mangaka's reverse-read. It seems more likely that when one is used to an unexamined assumption/interpretation of a story, and of being the dominant cultural force (which most Americans, for better or worse, do assume, even if they don't put it in quite so many words), then even such a radical dis-reading of the text can be dismissed.
When I stopped and thought over the logic behind the mangaka's interpretation -- which she even has at least two of the characters spell out, in solid detail! -- I realized just how much privilege I retained, when it comes to a Judeo-christian upbringing. That I could dismiss a legitimate and logical interpretation (even for the purposes of entertainment, the interpretation is still legitimate because it's grounded in the original text), because my culture's interpretation was in no wise threatened by some comics-illustrator in Japan.
But if my culture were not dominant, would I be more likely to examine someone's differing interpretation? Is that because the less dominant one's culture, the more one must suffer external interpretation and external examination? To the point that perhaps acceptance of this outside examination becomes a kind of internalization (that when people of X culture mangle or critique or just re-cast a story, that their credibility means you must give their take more than the time of day)?
no subject
Date: 22 Mar 2011 04:51 am (UTC)Yes, exactly this. Which means blowing time on taking apart stuff you dislike. A minority person may be forced in self-defense (sometimes for your own safety) to study the dominant culture's assumptions, critiques, and re-readings of texts that came from your culture.
Or they mistakenly assume it did.
In some horrifying cases, it has nothing to do with your culture, but *they* don't know that--viz., comments about Osama Bin Laden or radical Saudi or Iranian clerics, spoken in hostility to somebody whose parents were Sikhs from northern India.
As a member of the currently dominant law-setting culture, where I live now I can feel safe wasting my time doing other trivial things besides sitting for 14 hours at a stretch in the local Church of Power and Money Extraction, and ignoring their proselytizers, but this is not the case in all parts of this country.