It's All Performance Art 50

Gentle Reader, the kneejerk theme of cultural appropriation is an annoyance

 that simply is not going to go away, not any time soon.  And annoying as 

this can be, given some of the anguished extremes

 the guilt-laden of the privileged classes might want to take as they

give themselves chronic motion sickness on this most energetic 

hobby horse, it is still a matter that must be treated with care.  Especially
as we are going through the process of reconciliation with

 the First Nations of our country,  and their concerns have got 

to be considered and respected.  I am particularly thinking here of young idiots

who wear ceremonial feather headdresses at rock concerts, or rather brainless

prime ministers that once went brownface and blackface, before they found 

religion about their dumb privileged behaviour.

Saturday, I heard the guest host on a popular early morning

radio program (he is a young university educated male, not yet

thirty, by the way), wax proundly and solemnly to his guest

 (also university educated, male, not yet thirty, or so  I would guess), that
 the music of Debussy shows profound examples of cultural appropriation, given

the influence of Indonesian gamelan music in some of his piano
compositions.  And his guest solemnly
 agreed (it might have been the other way around), that yes

it is cultural appropriation.  And so another dead white male

composer bites the politically correct dust.   I have heard the same being
said about the influence of African ritual art and masks
on the art of Picasso and other painters of his era.  But
Picasso never intended to appropriate African art in his painting,
and what is really seen are some African influences in his painting,
every bit as  American Jazz and blues owe much to the music
and songs of the black slaves that were brought over from Africa over
 two or three centuries.

What I mean to suggest here is, if we are going to go to such literalist
extremes about cultural appropriation, then maybe we
simply ought to abolish every single innovation in western culture over
the last two hundred years or so, and that, of course,
just ain't gonna happen.

There is of course yet another bee in their postmodernist bonnet,
that says that by being a straight white male, nothing good can come from you,
only if you happen to be a woman, queer, trans, a person
of colour, or perhaps from a different species, but here I digress.  And
I also fully agree that many worthy composers, artists,
writers, scientists and thinkers have been sidelined throughout
history, simply for not being cis binary caucasians that
pee while standing.  I do get it.  But could we please have
done with this lame-ass reductive kind of thinking that assumes
that therefore anything that doesn't come from a person
representing a marginalized minority couldn't possibly be
any good?  JS Bach, anybody?  I mean, as well as Clara Schumann
and Fanny Mendelssohn, both women, and composers every
bit as fine and perhaps even better as their
better known male contemporaries?

I think it's partly because of globalization and the interconnecting of people
from all over the world that is making people in more vulnerable
cultural situations anxious and nervous.  Especially people from
aboriginal or indigenous cultures.  But we also have to accept that cultural
purity is a myth.  That whether or not it is being appropriated by a dominant
colonizing culture or not, cultures are going to seep into
one another.  This is always going to be inevitable, because culture is not
static.  And it never has been static.  It is a living, collective being that changes
 and evolves  and morphs and mutates over time, and this is also going to involve
such an intermingling that it is going to be incredibly
difficult to not confuse it at times with appropriation.
.

I'm thinking of one example of where cultural appropriation can take
 on comic effects (and this discussion could use all the humour it can get!).
 There was the rector of a church I used to be involved with.
He is German.  And loves all things Scottish.  So, he took to wearing a kilt.
Now being German, one would imagine that for him 

lederhosen should be the appropriate garb, but one day, following the service, 

Marcus appeared in the hall downstairs decked out in his finest Scottish kilt.
 I just burst out laughing and shouted, "Nice drag, Marcus!"
You see, I happen to be half Scots and half German, so even though it seemed
 really silly, it was also for me a bit confusing

and weird seeing this German guy parading in a kilt,

 and so I decided that it was simply something
worth making a joke about, but not  really worth taking very seriously.
But it still did creep me out a bit.  

Now, I understand that in a lot of situations, cultural appropriation is no laughing
matter,  and that especially indigenous cultures have every right to expect to
be treated with respect, particularly regarding their symbols and sacred objects.
The question here is, where do we draw the line, and especially, when do we stop
taking ourselves and everything so seriously 

that we end up pushing things to rather risible extremes?

For me, to dress in a way that is culturally appropriate, as a Scots-German Canadian, 

perhaps I would want to wear lederhosen underneath my kilt, along with a toque and

 a lumberjack shirt.  Since I am not really gender conforming, perhaps also I could
wear some lovely open toed high heels.  And pearls.
I would also have to redecorate my apartment, since it is just full of various symbols
of cultural appropriation.  This would mean

 getting rid of my bedspread (Indian cotton print, beautiful and, on my
tight budget, affordable).  I would also have to throw out the beautiful sarape
that I bought in Puebla, as well as the shawl from Chiapas, since they are
 both Mexican, as well as the beautiful cocoa pot

 I bought in Mexico City.  Gone would also be my three peacock feathers
(national bird of India, with a lot of cultural symbolic value) as well as the
white eagle feather I found in Stanley park in 2000.
It is after all as pure an indigenous symbol as there is, and really
what is some random white guy doing displaying in his apartment
a nice sacred symbol like that?

Let's just hope in this ongoing discussion about cultural appropriation,
postmodernism and identity politics that cool heads and sound minds
will ultimately prevail,

with a lot of humour and laughter, and patience, kindness and goodwill as well.