Is It Appropriation or Just Exchange?

Mixed Asian Media - June 9, 2021

By Nathan Liu

So here’s a big, controversial term that’s constantly used on the internet: cultural appropriation. “Oh brother,” you might be wondering, “Why is he writing about this, of all things?” Well, a couple reasons. It’s something that I, as a white-passing, mixed Chinese American have been accused of whenever I write about Asian American issues or history, which is deeply hurtful, since I’d like to be able to discuss my own culture without people saying I have no right to. But more importantly, it’s a phrase that gets tossed around, and I don’t think people fully understand. Just look at the fact that no one online can seemingly agree on what it means.

According to Wikipedia, cultural appropriation is “the adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity.” That doesn’t inherently sound bad. But that’s just one definition. Another definition, taken from Oxford Languages, describes the practice as “the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.” And a third definition, from VeryWellMind.com, states that cultural appropriation is “the use of objects or elements of a non-dominant culture in a way that doesn't respect their original meaning, give credit to their source, or reinforces stereotypes or contributes to oppression.” These are all pretty different definitions, but, for the sake of simplicity, let’s try and isolate their common elements. Those appear to be, one, people of one group adopting elements of another group’s culture, two, that adoption being unacknowledged, and three, the people doing the adopting being of a dominant group. That seems like a good framework to build off of, and appears to not leave much room for positive interpretation. Except, as you’ll see, it kind of does.

We can all conjure up examples of a dominant group taking something from a marginalized community, and never acknowledging their source. Just look at Elvis Presley, who got rich and famous off a cover of the song “Hound Dog,” originally written and performed by Black singer Big Mama Thornton. He never acknowledged her influence, and she never got any royalties from his cover. We can all generally agree that this was cultural appropriation, and that it was bad. Elvis, a white man, a member of the dominant group in America, took something from Big Mama Thornton, a Black woman, a member of a marginalized community in the U.S., and never credited her. But this example is very narrow, very region specific. “A dominant group taking from a marginalized group” only means “white people taking from POC” in regions of the world where white people are a majority, such as Western Europe, Canada, the U.S., and Australia. What we don’t talk about as much when discussing cultural appropriation is when it happens in regions of the world where white people are a minority, like, say, Japan. And let me tell you, it happens there A LOT.

For context, Japan was isolated from the outside world for centuries, only allowing Dutch traders to enter at the port of Nagasaki. Anyone else, anywhere else, would be killed. The thought process behind this isolationist policy was that the Japanese didn’t want to become colonized and forced to convert to Christianity, as was happening in other parts of Asia. This ended in 1853, when U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan, and through a combination of diplomacy and implied threat, opened the nation up to foreign trade. Rather than let themselves be dominated by a Western power, however, the Japanese chose to embrace European and American culture, and Japan rapidly modernized. And believe me when I say that they took everything they could from white people, from their clothing, to their weaponry, to their telephones, railroads, steamships and education system. Even now, over a century later, modern Japan constantly steals from Western culture. Just look at baseball, the American pastime. It’s huge in Japan. Or look at the films of Hayao Miyazaki. They’re thoroughly indebted to Western culture. Laputa, the floating city from Castle in the Sky is a direct reference to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and the architecture on display is Welsh in design. Kiki’s Delivery Service appears to take place in pre-World War I Stockholm, which, no surprise, is what Miyazaki based his designs on. There’s a million other examples of things modern Japan takes from America and Europe, but I think you get the idea.

Now you might be wondering, why did I bring all this up? Well, I wanted to prove a point. Cultural Appropriation only seems to be an issue in certain contexts. People get angry when an American film studio adapts an anime, and doesn’t include any Asian people in it, but don’t seem to mind that said anime was set in a European-style world, and that it didn’t include any European voice actors or animators. Likewise, people got upset when Avatar: The Last Airbender, a cartoon heavily inspired by Miyazaki, Hong Kong martial arts films, and Buddhism, was adapted into a movie with a majority white cast, but didn’t seem to mind, or didn’t acknowledge, that Avatar was created by two white guys, and that the show’s voice cast was majority white. Sensing a pattern here? Now I’m sure someone could argue that places like Japan are very homogenous, so it stands to reason that they wouldn’t go out of their way to find European actors and animators, because those basically don’t exist there. And, by comparison, America is a very diverse country, with communities who want to see themselves represented and tell their own stories. Fine, but that’s still an inconsistency. If we’re willing to hold ourselves to a higher standard of representation, why don’t we do the same for other people? And if certain stories can only be told by certain types of people, what’s to stop that from creating more divisions and tribalism within the artistic community?

Any artist will tell you that the best music, food, films, and literature are inspired by multiple sources. I mentioned Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I loved as a kid and is widely regarded as one of the best shows ever. It was created by two white guys, who were inspired by everything from Chinese Kung Fu, to Tibetan Buddhism, Indian yoga, Japanese anime, and Icelandic landscapes. All these influences made the show better — but, considering that in America, white people are the majority, and the cultures they were drawing from are minorities here, they could (very honestly) be accused of cultural appropriation. But if we #cancel Avatar for that reason, we’d be depriving ourselves of one of the best pieces of TV ever. There are a million other examples like this in music, food, and literature. Wu Tang Clan? They’re not Chinese, so they can’t sample Shaw Brothers movies. Chipotle? It was founded by a white guy from Indiana, so he has no right to sell Mexican style food. The Remains of The Day is considered a quintessential work of British literature, and it was written by a Japanese guy from Nagasaki. Hell, you could probably argue that it’s appropriation whenever we use paper, since it was invented in China, and numbers, because they originated in what is now Iraq. And so on, and so on.

The truth is, the world is, and always has been, interconnected. People do, and always have, exchanged with each other, going all the way back to the time of the Silk Road, when goods like tea and gunpowder, and ideas like calculus and algebra, got traded between East and West. So Japanese people wanting to play baseball and listen to rap music, or Americans wanting to learn karate and eat sushi, is just the latest link in that long-established chain.

Now I’m sure someone’s typing, “It’s not the exchange we mind. It’s the lack of acknowledgement.” And that’s fair. People should be credited for their work. We should know where our music, food, literature, art, and cinema comes from. Especially if it reinforces negative ideas about a particular group. Just look at the Washington Redskins. The team’s name, and its logo, show a very offensive, very inaccurate depiction of Native Americans. A large part of why the name stuck around for so long was the fact that people weren’t really educated as to why the term, which was used by scalp hunters as “proof of Indian kill,” was bad. And, of course, indigenous people weren’t getting royalties or any kind of benefit from the team’s success. This is cultural appropriation in its clearest, most irrefutable incarnation.

The thing is, most instances of “cultural appropriation” aren’t so clear or obvious. It’s rarely as blatant as a white person stealing a black person’s song, or a white business owner profiting off an inaccurate image of indigenous people. In many cases, people cry “cultural appropriation” for much smaller things, like a white person putting chopsticks in their hair, or a Black person wearing a kimono at an anime con. Hell, I myself have been accused of it when I’ve written scripts featuring Chinese women as protagonists. Even after I explained to my critics that I am, in fact, part Chinese, and that the characters are actually based off of women in my own family, they scoff and roll their eyes, as if I’m somehow lying or making excuses. That got me wondering how much of cultural appropriation is actually just cultural exchange, and, just as crucially, if the degree to which people get upset is based on appearance. If, say, I had more of my father’s Chinese genes, would people still tell me that I had no place writing about Chinese women?

Yes, cultural appropriation is a thing. Dominant groups can, and have, stolen music, art, food, and clothing from minorities without crediting or compensating them. And in the West, that stealing has largely been done by white people. But it’s not just limited to them. As I’ve hopefully proven to you, other cultures are just as guilty of taking from Western civilization without asking. And just because someone is inspired by another culture doesn’t mean they’re stealing from it. It doesn’t mean that they want to profit off of others’ work while not acknowledging their sources. Sometimes, most times, it’s just because people want to learn and share. We’ve been doing it since the beginning of time, and doing so has produced some of the best music, food, film and literature out there. I’d truly hate for that exchange to stop. So don’t hesitate to be inspired by other cultures. Don’t feel the need to hide your interests in certain foods, styles of clothing, languages, or cinema. Share with others. Learn from them. And when the time comes, be sure and give them a great big thank you.