Culture Appropriation

"And her ability to bring that tricked-out mix of characters to life has made for some eyebrow-raising, highly orchestrated stage shows. Curious to man is Winehouse's use of black male backup dancers and singers... Putting this "coolness" in the service of backing up a "ruint" white retro femme figure seems laughable in one sense and egregariously patronizing in another. In either case this sight-gag gimmick is perhaps the key to the obsessions of Back to Black." --Amy Winehouse and the (Black) Art of Appropriation

   The idea of borrowing from alternate cultures from that of the white hegemonic culture predominate in the United States goes on in almost every aspect of the media. The article quoted above explores a white singer and her search for success based on "borrowing" from other cultures of her own. Whatever "new" material Amy Winehouse puts forth for society and labels "hip-hop" or "jazz" will have a returning influence in those musical styles and cultures that go with those musical styles. The danger becomes evident in Winehouse's obvious lack of African American roots. She has not lived within the same cultural spheres or had the same experiences that first inspired "hip hop" and "jazz." Thus, we must question the authenticity of her music as being "black" and how it will change the perceptions of what those cultures consist of. It seems to me that white people notice the credibility minorities gain when drawing upon their different and intriguing experiences in order to produce art. Those who are left out are the artists who must draw on a culture that is already the hegemony, the white culture. Realistically, white culture is nothing "new," nothing "rebellious," nothing "spicy." Appropriations happens when white people crave being "individual" or "different" just like a minority. Winehouse can have all the benefits of a black person by drawing on "jazz" and "hip-hop" but at the end of the day doesn't have to worry about actually going through any sort of white struggle. People who appropriate another culture can pick and choose the experience and then walk away at the end of the day not realizing their own corruption of the formerly untainted culture.

   This not only occurs with ethnicities but with religions too. As with the Native Americans and their resent for the New Age reinterpretation of their old religious traditions, Native Americans resent the resulting opinions of the hegemonic culture on their religions when the representations of their religion that they are seeing and basing their negative opinions off of are those of people who are simply appropriating it without accuracy. One example of religious appropriation I have noticed in the past ten years is that of the Wicca religion. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the very peaceful nature-oriented Wicca religion of modern day good witches, the purport to base their religious rituals off of those of the ancient Celtic Pagans. Many of their beliefs are based on the incorrect historical assumptions made by Margaret Murray on her research of why the European Witch Trials spread like wildfire. These Wiccans however do not actually have very little knowledge of what the Pagans were actually like, what they actually believed. I know this primarily because no historian has been able to come to a solid and detailed summation of what the ancient Pagan rituals actually consisted when they lived in an era of very little remaining record. The harm comes when the main hegemonic groups base their knowledge of these ethnicities, religions, and cultures off of what these non-experts assume and perhaps wrongly practice. If we continue to "ignore the details" we will continue to corrupt the cultures of these peoples and consistently lose the knowledge and understanding of them that we should be focusing on.