The Misappropriation of Cultural Appropriation

Allegations of cultural appropriation resurfaced again on the ever-cathartic platform that is Twitter following the 2018 Costume Institute Gala, which was hosted by New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of art. The gala, an annual gathering attended by a pantheon of celebrities, artists and musicians of the highest calibre, never fails to raise upwards of 10 million dollars for the Met. Tickets are priced at around 30 thousand dollars; attendance is selective, and every year the elite group of guests rise to the challenge of creatively interpreting a predetermined theme for their choice of dress.

Unlike what happened during the 2016 Gala, or the infamous Utah school prom that serendipitously transpired just a week earlier, the Met’s guests did not show up in risqué decolletage renditions of a cheongsam. Nor did they don Native American headdresses or walk down the red carpet with their hair in cornrows. What attendees Rihanna, Katy Perry, Lena Waithe and many others did, however, was parade the building in a tapestry from the Cloister Museum, Crusades-era chainmail and a diamond-studded papal tiara flown straight to NYC with a security guard.

You guessed it – Met 2018’s exhibition was titled “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” taking on “religious art” as a fundraising fashion theme. 

#MyReligionIsNotYourCostume

What surprised many Catholics, especially those on the more conservative side of the spectrum, was how the Met not only obtained the approval of this theme, but worked in collaboration with the Vatican for this blasphemous, heretical, “sexualising, commodifying and undermining” of the Christian faith. Many took to media to express their anger and scorn, even calling attention to the fact that if it had been another religion like Islam or Buddhism that was used, “everyone would be up in arms.”

But unless one assumes that secular bourgeois consumerism in and of itself is a dominant culture that steals and oppresses, these arguments, just as those that framed a girl’s prom dress, fast-food burritos and espresso machines as appropriation, entirely miss the point.

Culture cops have recently expanded their scope of attack to anything from Louis Vuitton’s Basotho-inspired scarves to Katy Perry’s music video geisha costume, with the firm belief that the brains behind these capitalistic conglomerates stole other people’s ingenious designs just to make a profit for themselves. Yet what if before creating these artifacts, they had done research and consulted with peoples whose inventions they drew inspiration from?

Ignorance and malintention sometimes seem to be heedlessly thrust upon well-meaning individuals whose motives we make assumptions about, just by dint of their status; are we unconsciously regressing back to a time when ethnic borders confined members of an in-group to live exclusively by the standards of their own people, and practice customs which they grew up with, held sacred and understood well?

If we do not see this scenario as the ideal way for our world to move forward, then we must contend that some degree of cultural borrowing between different peoples should be a thing to be celebrated. So what, exactly, constitutes a culture crime?

I have had many occasions to ponder upon this question. As unbelievable as this may seem, having been born and raised in a largely homogenous country, I initially could not fathom the concept of cultural appropriation. Exonians would casually drop the term in conversations with conviction and indignance, daring anyone to contradict them, but I did not manage to see what the fuss was about.

Even now, I still do fully understand the controversy surrounding Kenza Daum’s cheongsam prom dress; my fellow compatriots and I would be more proud than angry if a foreigner considers our aesthetics inspirational enough to base their designs off of it. What’s the difference between me wearing Western business attire and a white person wearing áo dài, except that the later happens less frequently and thus deserves to be promoted even more?

Of course, maybe I have no right to comment about Daum’s cheongsam, because how can I possibly understand the Chinese-American’s woes when I am simply not Chinese? As far as I know though, many students in mainland China would express the same confusion. “I am very proud to have our culture recognized by people in other countries,” proclaimed a WeChat user by the name of Snail Trail, in a post read by more than 100,000 people. Similarly, Zhou Yijun, a Hong Kong-based cultural commentator, stated in an interview with The New York Times, “It’s ridiculous to criticize this as cultural appropriation [...] From the perspective of a Chinese person, if a foreign woman wears a qipao and thinks she looks pretty, then why shouldn’t she wear it?”

The Cambridge Online Dictionary defines cultural appropriation as “the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture.”

Based on this definition, critics of Daum tweeted the fact that this high school senior took the cheongsam out of context, wore it simply because she thought it looked beautiful and wanted to “stand out”; yet conversely, before googling this fact for my op-ed I also had no knowledge of how white men created the first necktie or dress suit in the olden days of Occidental kings, and what it meant to them. (The modern tie owes its design to the Roman focale, exclusively worn by military personnel as a mark of their bravery and loyalty to a certain emperor that they served). No one has accused me of appropriating Western culture as I go about using items invented in this part of the world. Why is my traditional clothing extra cultural while Western clothing is just everyday garment that anyone can wear?

The true definition, usually overlooked, is that cultural appropriation as a concept can only be applied in the context of colonialism, or when there is a clear imbalance of power. Minstrel shows in the context of a slavery-filled world is cultural appropriation. Displaying exotic churidars stolen from the Indian subcontinent by British colonists in the 19th century is cultural appropriation.

Claims that Rihanna “appropriated” the papal tiara are moot because there is no imbalance of power. Pope Francis supported the Met Gala’s theme, and the entertainer clearly did not take the item from the church by force.

Claims that an American teenager “appropriated” the cheongsam are utterly ridiculous to the Chinese in China, who view it as a long-awaited sign of mutual cultural exchange between the two countries, after decades of unilateral penetration of mainstream US-UK’s memes into the Chinese psyche.

Only in the US is this situation turned upside down by a heritage of institutional minority oppression. Chinese-Americans have experienced, whether firsthand or through family history, the hardships of being outsiders in a discriminatory society; white Americans are thus deemed to be the privileged majority that carries on this legacy in all cross-cultural interactions, no matter what their intentions may be. 

Yet, I sometimes wonder if this tenacious grip on historical power imbalances in fact obstructs America’s progress towards equality. Would it not be more beneficial if minority groups celebrate the people of other races who appreciate their cultural practices enough to adapt them to everyday life, so that one day their ways of life would be seen as normal rather than deviation from the norm?