Cultural Appreciation Without Appropriation?
Today I was teaching my students ‘A Passage To India’ — where teaching and seething become one intersecting activity — when one of my student’s cracked. He asked me if it was ever possible to have a cultural exchange, where a Bigger, Dominant,
WhiterUniversal Culture does not appropriate the native, hued audience. My first instinct was to lie and say, “Of course it happens all the time!” and move on to dis-sect the extent of pity/exotic fascination the author felt with my culture. And then, remembering the same lie my professor told me when I was his age, I truthfully explained that more often than not, The Bigger Culture engages with Natives only if it can box and have a simplified, decoded version of the culture it seeks to ‘appreciate’. For example, India is only seen through a lens of poverty, nationalism and an exotic locale to attain some kind of spirituality. It takes a lot of control (?) on the part of the Bigger Culture to not appropriate indigenous cultures, because let’s face it, if you saw a horde of people constantly squatting in the mud, it becomes a tad difficult to not homogenise the entire culture, no?By this time, the tenor of the class had gone down visibly and thankfully I remembered the wonderful Nina Paley and her movie Sita Sings The Blues, which manages to never once exoticise, romanticise or patronise Indian culture. Does it make India look shiny as a glazed floor? No, instead the movie focuses on little cultural differences — and for once differences aren’t bad things, they just are — and little moments of cultural sameness. She even manages to give the intensely patriarchal Ramayana a feminist spin, by keeping Sita’s story the central point of the narrative. So this is one woman, one film that manages to not stoop to petty appropriation. Next class, I want to give them more examples. Help me, nice people of the interwebes, please?
I loveee this post :) And Sita Sings The Blues is one of my favorite movies :)
There is a book I started reading a long time ago (and I can’t for the life of me remember its name) about the Western world’s psychological fascination with India. How so many people from Western countries, throughout history, went to India to find something in themselves, to fill some spiritual or psychological or social void through the means of objectification, mystification, dehumanization, exotification, and other tools of ‘othering’. Going to a country, expecting it to fulfill you or to justify you and your own culture/nation’s existence (or for that matter to be able to point to problems in your own society/culture/nation) is problematic, in and of itself. It assumes that people and their lives are there for your own benefit, your own gratification, there for your own book and movie deal, there for your own documentary on the slum children (of which there have been hundreds before you and hundreds will follow). And I remember a conversation with a wise friend from South India who told me once that people from India are not considered worthwhile or human beings unless they are very rich, very poor, or very religious, or can somehow otherwise teach a white audience something about themselves. She resents this role thrust upon her and her country. She told me once that it robs her nation of any role it might have for itself, because it’s constantly being defined by what it gives to other people.
And I think this is partially why I am so hesitant to buy into Western-made media culture surrounding India, especially in TV and film, because I always wonder what caricature of India it’s going to feed into and what that’s supposed to make us feel about ourselves. I remember the discussions about Eat Pray Love, a book I will most likely never read because I have such a hard time accepting the blithely entitled attitude of people that believe they can waltz around the world (which already makes them more privileged than most people), take from different countries exotic(!) bits and pieces, and write a book about their own soul’s fulfillment at the expense of other cultures. And they make money off of this! Lots of it too. I can’t get beyond that. I don’t think I ever will. Sitcoms on TV show South Asian actors, but in one-dimensional comical roles. Who is this being aired for? Perhaps I’m oversensitive and think too much, but I’m not really into the whole concept of finding myself at the expense of trivializing, tokenizing, and reducing a nation of 1.2 billion into one aspect or one idea. Again, no thanks. (And I promise you all here and now, no books will ever be written about my stay in India)
Long story short, the appropriation of countries like India has been going back for hundreds of years and in such a deep way that goes far beyond a style of dress, a type of music or food, and religious practices (though I believe the appropriation of these things is also problematic and am not trying to diminish this). I believe that it goes back to a psychological need to find oneself by retreating to countries one inherently believes to be so far beyond human norms that they will unlock some fundamental truth in the person weary of Western society. How fucked up is that?
If one wants to truly appreciate a country or culture, I’d like to see more of them appreciate the history, the politics, the economics, the national consciousness and the collective memory, the foreign relations, the role of that country in the world, instead of expecting it to fulfill them, enhance them, justify them, or religiously inspire them. I feel like if one truly wishes to appreciate a culture, one should understand and appreciate the factors that created it, the people and events that shaped it. Not just show up in Delhi and be like, Hello! I’m here! What do you have for me?
In short, I believe that cultural appreciation takes too much work. Appropriation is far easier and has a historical precedent behind it.
