Further Commentary on "Sita Sings the Blues"

[eredien]

Thanks, greylander and capsicumanuum, for posting this link to a critique by Zooeylive of the film "Sita Sings the Blues." (Which I posted about earlier for those of you catching up with this post in your friends-lists tonight). Note: I have not yet seen the film in question, which is by Nina Paley.

--
It was in Trivandrum I encountered the Indian epic, The Ramayana, for the first time. Like many westerners, I initially considered the Ramayana little more than misogynist propaganda. - Paley
)Maybe Paley should better familiarize herself with the “Western” epics first—Iliad, Bible, etc. etc.—I seem to recall that they are all a little misogynist to begin with. And if you ask me, I would say the story outline of Iliad and Ramayana are very similar. Why? Precisely because they are both about wars being fought by men upon the bodies of women! So I am not sure how am I supposed to explain Paley’s encountering epic-misogyny for the first time in India. A deadly combination of American arrogance and ignorance perhaps? - Zoeylive

Looking at the text of the quote, I don't read it as Paley saying that she encountered mysogny for the first time in the Ramayana, or in India. To me, it reads that she encountered the Ramayana for the first time in India. The fact that she thought it misogynistic before she had read it is problematic, but not because she thought the epic itself was misogynistic. As Zooeylive points out, a lot of--most?--epics are misogynistic. The Iliad, or the Bible, or a lot of current writing anywhere, is probably misogynistic: most epics are, at least in part, trying to convince people that war is/was full of glory and power instead of probable death, and pillaging by the local army, and rape if you were unlucky (or just there).
I think it was safe for Paley to assume that the epic was probably misogynistic. It wasn't safe or accurate for Paley to assume that because it was Indian it was misogynistic, any more than it would be safe to assume that something written today in Chicago wouldn't be. If Paley wasn't trying to conflate those two viewpoints, she needed to make that clearer by restructuring her sentence. If she was conflating them, then she deserves to be taken to task.

I also agree with Zooeylive that there are plenty of places in the USA or Europe (*cough* 'Western World' *cough*) where it's not safe for a person to walk alone at night or for women to have identities separate from their husbands. I feel like maybe if Paley spent some time in various parts of the USA she wouldn't be so sure that these empowered feminist women she speaks about are running around everywhere she thinks they are. That's a problem. I think it's a problem everywhere. I think the more places people start to notice that problem anywhere, the more can be done to make individual women feel more powerful and have more agency.

So while Paley as a reader is free to read Ramayana as a “parable of human suffering,” there is no way we can think that her readings are free from who she is--a white woman from United States of America--a white woman who has probably internalized the racist and colonialist philosophies of her society. - Zooeylive

I feel like one of the points of this film might be that it is about just that--how this film is a reading that is not free from who she is, explicitly within the text of the film. I think that makes it more interesting, problematic, incendiary. I think that's also part of what makes it worth seeing.

I've heard from more than one Hindu American woman that Sita Sings the Blues is the first Ramayana retelling that offers them a real connection to Sita. My retelling is also humorous, which some people interpret as irreverent, and therefore an affront. - Paley
If you read this passage and you are not familiar with the multiple traditions of the Ramayana already, you would think that she is the first one ever to provide any feminist interpretation of the damn epic! And it is exactly this lack of pertinent research and arrogance that pisses me off. - Zooeylive

I feel like Zooeylive is the one who thinks that Paley thinks that it's the first time there's been some kind of humorous feminist interpretation of the Ramayana. Paley didn't say "this is the first feminist retelling of this epic. This is the first humorous retelling of this epic." That would be a lie. The small excerpts I've read of the Ramayana and other epic poetry
I've read (in particular the Iliad) have convinced me that much epic poetry is humorous in its own right. I feel that because of her own personal biases, Zooeylive interprets Paley as making claims that she is literally not making.

I am excited to read all the works listed in Zooeylive's list. I feel that education in the USA, especially of white English-speaking children, is woefully lacking in the literary or artistic works of non-white non-English speaking cultures, unless they're historical (I always wondered why I never heard anything about Babylon after 500 ad until I figured it out on my own; the continuity never gets thoroughly explained), or a few carefully selected non-white-European people to "round out" the curriculum (usually they still speak English, though). We don't ever get exposed to this stuff, and I am trying to make up for the failures of our system as best I personally can. It's not enough and probably will never be enough, but my other option is to live in willful ignorance--unacceptable.

"I hope to show how the genius of the Ramayana transcends societies and generations, and is as relevant today as it was 3,000 years ago. - Paley

Well, I am not sure that we need you to tell us about the epic’s relevance!"- Zooeylive

I feel like maybe Paley is trying to reach out to more people than Indian people or people of Indian heritage. She isn't saying, "I'm trying to tell Indians about the Ramayana." I think she's trying to reach out to people in Duluth and make them interested in reading the Ramayana for themselves. Is that wrong?

a) If you are working on a cultural or literary tradition, please make sure that you know about it in all its possible complexities before you begin to work on it or pass authoritative judgements on it. - Zooeylive

Does this entail 10 years of studying all interpretations of the Ramayana? Does this entail learning Sanskrit because translations don't do it justice? I feel like "all its possible complexities" encompasses a too-broad range. People would never get anything done if they had to learn everything about anything they wanted to work on. If anyone has any suggestions, I would like to hear them, as I am currently working on a novel that contains a synthesis of Russian and English folktale cultural elements and I do not have time to read all books.

b) Learn to give other cultures their proper rights of ownership. - Zooeylive

I don't see how Paley is taking away ownership of the "Ramayana" from its culture. It's not like she is saying, "The Ramayana isn't Indian" or "I don't believe this epic has a cultural, linguistic or historical context." I feel that Paley's trying to incorporate what research she did into the work. Can someone show me why Zooeylive, or others, might think that she's not?

c)Please remember that we do not need a clueless white woman like you to prove the relevance of our literary works or to provide their feminist re-interpretations. We have already accomplished those tasks ourselves. - Zooeylive

I feel that this is an interpretation based on Zooeylive's biases, as I've stated above.

Moreover, I feel l like Zooeylive's comment points to some problems I've been feeling lately as a woman trying to look at how people in cultures and from traditions not my own live their lives. This isn't just about "Sita Sings the Blues;" this is deeper:

1.) As a white woman, I feel that I am being discouraged from a deeper understanding of other cultures' creative works by people from the very cultures those works are from. Hence, I feel discouraged from cultivating an ability to appreciate the works and/or relate to them in the (limited) ways that I might be able to. As an artist, I worry that I will be be pilloried if I attempt to think about or create works based on things that my culture didn't create. I feel that this can only lead to a narrowing of the mind and spirit, especially for a creative work:

- First, where might this narrowing end? Can I only read and comment on what I can fully understand? Reading only books and critical theory on other white lesbian women currently living in Boston and struggling with gender issues would be really boring after a (short) while. Can others read and comment only on what they can fully understand? Would only Chinese people be considered to have a 'true' understanding of "Journey to the West," and so on? I think that's a facet of Orientalism, in that it romanticizes the Other and suggests that only people of a certain culture/background are capable of understanding the 'true meaning' of traditions and/or cultural artifacts.

- Where would such a narrowing stop? What constitutes that full understanding, even within a cultural homogeny? If I do a reinterpretation of the Iliad, would people complain that I do not know Ancient Greek or that I didn't live during the Trojan War or had never been to Athens?

2.) Some comments on the comments in Zooeylive's post:
...you need to be careful of this long history of cultural and material violation and interrogate them in your work. - zooeylive
It is, rather - should be, part of your obligation as a European American to note not only the power dynamics of the story, but also of your retelling and its distribution. - sarah

I feel it's really hard, artistically, to cram all of this--power dynamics, retelling, the retelling's distribution, critical interrogation of a film's intent--into a work itself, especially one animated film. I would like to see a documentary or "making-of" about it. I think Paley gives it a good shot with some commentary by her Indian friends, incorporated into the film itself. She needs to acknowledge her sources more prominently, I think; that is one common critique of this film that I have seen over and over and thought about myself that bears a lot of weight.

Does anyone of any skin color have a personal obligation to anyone else of a different skin color, based simply on the color of the skin and its associated historical/cultural/linguistic heritage/baggage?

3.) I feel like it's important--maybe even paramount--to keep the fact that this is one white woman artist's personal interpretation of another culture's epic in mind when watching it, and to keep my own reaction to that interpretation up to criticism. I would like to watch it before I have made up my mind about it. There are good points in Zooeylive's article which I will take into my viewing with me, and readings which she has suggested which I hope I will get from the library in time to further inform my criticism, but I am not convinced that I shouldn't watch the movie based on the personal or cultural background of the artist, or the fact that she is reinterpreting something from a different culture.

Comments

[rax.livejournal.com]

I was working on comments on the previous post, but then Eredien made this new one, so I'm going to put my comments here. Whee!

Personally --- after reading zooeylive's article (which I appreciated) and mulling it over for a while, I don't think I can say much without seeing it and knowing what is actually in the film. A couple places in Paley's notes make me wince, and zooeylive and their commenters point out those places and others, but I think what matters most to me is how the film itself deals with the issues of colonialism and "eating the other" in its creation. Reading about it and looking at a couple of bits on YouTube, it seems like the many-voiced commentary over the top as part of the storytelling has the potential to open up interesting conversation about the process of working with the story and the potential harm for presenting it in an American market as many people's (mine included) first awareness of the Ramayana. On the other hand, maybe it doesn't at al. I don't feel qualified to say from the trailers or the text, even after reading the critique and Paley's blog, whether I find the film problematic or not, and whether the problems with it might outweigh or be outweighed by any artistic merit it might have. I don't take either zooeylive or the gushing fan letters as authoritative.

I do think that the fact that my first awareness of the Ramayana --- I'd seriously never heard about this before --- comes from a white woman retelling the story in terms of her own life is a problem and a symptom of colonialism. I am not convinced that Paley's discovering that story and working with it and through it is wrong. To say, for example, "if she found the story moving she could have distributed this other telling by a different author instead" feels a little hollow to me: Paley is an author/artist, not a publisher/distributor (although apparently she's taken some of that role on in order to display her art). They're really very different skillsets, and different drives, although they can also be intertwined. I also think "she should have gone and used the Iliad instead" is hollow: the story that hit her and that she researched (though perhaps not enough --- of course, who gets to set these metrics? ) is the story she wrote.

Thinking about this made me return to bell hooks's Art on My Mind: visual politics, specifically the pieces on Alison Saar; the details of Saar's work and why this is related are outside the scope of this LiveJournal comment, but worth reading about, in my opinion. (They were already dogeared, so apparently this isn't my first time coming back here.) hooks offers these thoughts not just about Saar but about appropriation in general:

"In the essay 'Minimal Selves,' the black British cultural critic Stuart Hall affirms this: 'It may be true that the self is always, in a sense, a fiction, just as the kind of "closures" which are required to create communities of identification --- nation, ethnic group, families, sexualities, etc. --- are arbitrary closures; and the forms of political action, whether movements, or parties, those too are temporary, partial, arbitrary. It is an immensely important gain when one recognizes that all identity is constructed across difference.' Given this reality, acts of appropriation are part of the process by which we make ourselves. Appropriating --- taking something for one's own use --- need not be synonymous with exploitation. This is especially true of cultural appropriation. The "use" one makes of what is appropriated is the crucial factor.

"These days is is often assumed that any act of appropriation wherein one ethnic group draws on experiences of an ethnic group to which they do not belong is suspect. Issues of authenticity are raised to devalue work that emerges from cultural borrowings. For a more expansive understanding of cultural appropriation to emerge in this society, critical thinkers would need to construct both a revised ontology and radically different theories of knowledge." (11-12)

--more--

[rax.livejournal.com]

(eredien, I'd recommend you read this whole essay and the interview with Saar if you're interested in more about appropriation; I've read them a few times now and am still getting stuff out of them. We have the book in the library, except right now it's on the dining room table. The whole book is good, but not all as germane to this discussion.)

What's important here for defending Paley is the idea (echoed later by hooks) that artistic vision and creation is important outside of the context of appropriation; the critic should criticize the art, not just the artist. However, also important for challenging her decision to publish/distribute and her decisions for how to do so is "the crucial factor" of "use." I don't know where this film falls, and I think there's room for disagreement. I can absolutely respect someone's desire to avoid the movie because they believe it will fall short of their expectations, or because they have criticisms of the artist. I think zooeylive's criticisms are valid but those criticisms of the artist aren't enough for me to avoid the art. That certainly may have something to do with what I bring to the table as a white woman in academia with an interest in DIY art projects.

Personally, I think there is also room for criticism based on Paley's choice to use music that's under copyright here in the US. While I'm not a huge fan of punitive copyright fees, the attitude she takes on her blog when it comes to copyright and licensing rubs me the wrong way. I'm of two minds about the film and filmmaker, and personally, I want to see the film to have more information. Even then, I'll be making a value judgement that could be (and maybe should be) torn down. Was she driven by her own life toward this story, originally foreign to her, that she then worked with and let work with her, producing something that could not have existed without either her or the story and telling the new story of their entanglement? Or did she just see something that, in her frustration with her own life, she could deform and recast as her own story? Could two people look at the same thing and each see one of those?

The more I go back and reread zooeylive and Paley, the more I am frustrated with both of them. Perhaps that means it is time to go to bed and approach this with a fresh eye tomorrow morning or the next. :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The copyright issue is more complex than "Paley decided to use stuff that was under copyright"; the recordings she used are apparently PD - but the sheet music of these songs has turned out to not be, and is in fact in the hands of several Big Media conglomerates. And by the time this became apparent she was way too deep into the project to abandon it, and just plowed into the Great Work, hoping that it would sort itself out by the time she finished. An attitude I can understand, as an artist obsessive enough to have been in animation!

[rax.livejournal.com]

...the sheet music being under copyright prevents her from using the recordings? Really? *boggle*

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Musical copyright law is downright byzantine.

[rax.livejournal.com]

And I thought print copyright was bad...

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

the critic should criticize the art, not just the artist.

This is a really good point, and I agree! And I also agree that I would like to see the actual film before making a clear judgment on it.

It raises a question, though, which is: in order for me to see the work in order to decide whether or not I support it, I need to support it by seeing it. The reason eredien started this conversation is that she has no access to the film unless she brings it to a local theater, to be seen by many other people. Which, if it turns out to be exploitative, would be a mistake. But she can't know whether or not it is exploitative until she forks over the money to the creator to see it. And there's enough debate among the critics, as seen above, that she can't just trust their judgment.

So what to do?

[rax.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to support it by seeing it because I'm curious about it for
other reasons: its production, its juxtapositions, its animation style.
I'm also willing to support it by seeing it because there isn't really
any way for me to see it other than paying to see it in a theater ---
unless it actually gets posted for free online, in which case I may just
wait and download it. I've made a value judgement here, that it's worth
being part of the audience to make my own decisions about it, for a few
reasons:

* People with more lived experience and "authenticity" than me are on
both sides of the debate. At least one person I consider a good friend
is against it (as a crude simplification, anyway: "against" doesn't
really contain complexity), which makes me nervous, but I want to see
it for myself for the other reasons.

* If it is problematic, I think seeing it will help me understand how and
why in a way that I can remember better than a LiveJournal conversation
about a hypothetical film.

* Even if it is problematic in its appropriation/exploitation, as someone
who wants to do DIY media, the ability to produce a feature film
~singlehandedly is really exciting to me, and seeing the techniques
she used could be very helpful. It's particularly exciting to me at
this moment because I spent a bunch of yesterday hand-binding books and
so I have a lot of "Yeah! Make stuff!" energy.

* If it's good, it may read really excitingly alongside Anita Desai's
_Journey to Ithaca_.

I'm not going to donate to the film without seeing it or purchase its
merchandise, probably even if I do see it and think it's OK. To me,
that would also be making a judgement beforehand, and in the opposite
direction. It's anyone's perogative to do that if they want, but not
something I'm going to do. Personally, were I Eredien, I'd hop in a
bus and go see it somewhere else; that's not the ideal solution to this
debate but it's how I would dodge the bullet. If she and others bring it
to my city, I'll see it there. There's art all over the place I don't have
access to; only rarely do I go out of my way to get access to something.
If it were just me, I wouldn't bother going to see it in New York, but
if a bunch of my friends are going, then there's a whole host of other
reasons to go, like "Dude! Let's all go to New York and see this movie
and play chess in a park and eat at a nice vegan place!"

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I never realized how multicultural my education was. I read a good chunk of the Ramayana in high school.

I didn't enjoy it, of course, because it was something I had to read for school. I should try to find a decent translation* and read it again sometime. But I say that about a bunch of half-remembered myth cycles; someday I should find a good rendition of the Eddas to expand upon the book of Norse myth I had as a kid; someday I should sit down and read Homer for myself...

* something akin to Seamus Heany's rolling, flowing, and nicely-footnoted version of Beowulf would be ideal

[eredien]

I haven't thought cultural imperialism was a made-up concept since I watched a terrifiying documentary on the lives of white South African homeowners and their South African household servants (wish I could remember the name, but it's 1:30 am here). "Cultural Imperalism" is a created term, as many cultural studies terms and/or critical terms are by necessity, but it's important to be precise about the term vs. the concept, which I think(?) you are speaking of here.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

It's something that isn't particularly useful as no offense is meant.

It makes sense to be upset when someone's angry at you for something you didn't know was wrong-- after all, you didn't mean to hurt them, and it feels bad knowing you could have prevented someone being hurt and didn't. But I think that the thing to do is:

1) try to figure out whether you accidentally did something that it makes sense to be upset about. And if so, stop doing it.
2) When you figure out why they're upset, if it's something that you're not willing to stop doing, then accept that people will be angry at you. Which is their right, and doesn't do you any real harm.

I think it's important not to skip straight to step two, if that makes sense.

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

Just because no offense is meant doesn't mean none is given/taken.
For example. One of my good friends was in the habit of occasionally using the word "gyp." The word is a slur against Sinti and Roma (aka Gypsies). When I pointed that out to her, her response was that she didn't think of the word in that way and would continue to use it because it didn't mean that to her. OK, fine, when she uses that word she's not intentionally implying that an incredibly marginalized ethnic group in Europe are all cheats/liars/crooks. But she is implying it anyway, because that's the history of the word. And a person hearing her say it has no way of knowing whether or not she's familiar with the word's history or how she intends it.

There is a difference between something like anime, which is a commercial product as well as an artistic one and one that is shipped to the West and a non-commercial religious product like the Ramayana (or the Illiad or the stories of the Dreamtime, or whatever). When you buy an anime DVD, the artists are compensated. When you act as though you are the discoverer of some great new story that is part of someone's thousand-year-old civilization, it's another story.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Once I spent time in Japan, I realized that they are just as guilty of claiming Western culture as we are of claiming Japanese culture- probably more so.

There's a key difference between other cultures taking on Western traits, and Westerners taking other cultures'. It's that during the reign of the British Empire and other European colonialism, pretty much the entire rest of the world was forced to do things in Western ways. What you're seeing in Japan is not the result of two equally powerful cultures trading ideas; it's the result of a small country which had to desperately change its entire structure and image in less than a century to avoid being overwhelmed by foreign firepower. The fact that Japan managed to do that is, in my opinion, damn impressive. However, it's not something they did out of free choice-- it's something they did to keep from being destroyed as an independent people. That's very different from Westerners, now that we've learned we can't actually rule the entire planet without repercussion and been forced to gain some respect for other cultures, looking at elements of them and saying, "Hey, cool! I want that!"

I wrote about this pretty extensively in my journal a few years ago-- see what you think!

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, our current emerging youth culture celebrates the remix, the mash-up, and the appropriation. On the other hand, if you pick up something and recontextualize it enough to make it your own, you will offend someone in the process.

But on the gripping hand, recontextualization is a large part of where new art comes from, and what keeps old stories alive. All the "fairy tales" us Americans are familiar with come from a set of folk stories a few European ethnologists wrote down and edited to their moral standards; later, a man crazy enough to want to make feature-length cartoons had his crew create new versions of them that have largely replaced the textual versions in American culture.

I figure, if one person loves a myth enough to spend five years of her life making a feature-length cartoon based on it, she's going to have found some interesting things to say about it - some highly respectful. Nobody spends that kind of unpaid creative effort on something they completely disrespect. But I, too, am a middle-class white woman. A lucky one, as the Muse hasn't come down and smacked me on the head with another culture's Great Epic. Yet. Everything I'm ripping off in my art is made by dead male European honkies, and I am a Euro-descended honky, so nobody can call me a cultural imperialist when I rip off Winsdor McCay.

I also suspect that as the world continues to shrink thanks to information technology, this is only going to get worse.

Who owns a Great Cultural Epic?

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

I think the real difference is one of power. It's true that retelling is what keeps stories alive. But on the other hand, when members of one group which has already made enormous profit of another group through violence and theft then make more profit off of the latter group's stories, that's different from just retelling the stories of the group that has power in a new way. No?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

As a generalization, yes. Beating someone down and stealing their ideas is not at all good.

But to be specific to this case... is Paley, as an American child of the late 20th century, a part of the group that benefited from the British colonialism that trod heavily on Indian culture? America is not free of colonial stains by any means, but must she be responsible for the other places Brittania ground beneath her heels at the same time as her own country was being born?

Does Paley's utter lack of profit, to the point that she's grasping at straws just to get the film able to be seen without legal action, never mind making back what she spent on it, change anything?

[rax.livejournal.com]

She is not personally, directly responsible for Britain's colonialism,
but in all likelihood (if you look at how the American and Indian
economies are intertwined) she does benefit from it. I know I benefit
from it. Whether and how that translates to responsibility is a matter
on which many people disagree. I think that in this case she does have
some responsibility.

(This is not to disagree that ownership of epics is thorny in this case
and others.)

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

I think when we talk about the heritage of imperialism it's important to distinguish between "responsibility" and fault/blame. I am not to blame for the actions of my English ancestors/distant kin. I was naught but a twinkle in my great^N-grandfather's eye when the English conquered India.
But I am responsible, in the sense that I have to choose how I relate to that history and what I do to set right those wrongs.

[greylander.livejournal.com]

If you have issues with the particulars of Zooeylive's post, I suggest you take them up with her, at her blog, rather than here, where you can muster your white friends to back up your feelings of injured entitlement.

As a white woman, I feel that I am being discouraged from a deeper understanding of other cultures' creative works by people from the very cultures those works are from. Hence, I feel discouraged from cultivating an ability to appreciate the works and/or relate to them in the (limited) ways that I might be able to.

So "understanding" requires appropriation? I.e. an entitlement to exploit and benefit from the use of those works according to your own wishes.

And I think your anxieties are a product of your rather extensive personal biases.

The rest of that passage is a meditation on your own anxieties about having your sense of entitlement curtailed. Those aren't the responsibility of people of colour, they're your responsibility. I find it perplexing that your thoughts about the issue are so self-involved as to completely exclude any consideration of the needs of people whose work you would be appropriating.

Many people, both white and poc, have answered those anxieties, as a quick Google search about "white privilege and cultural appropriation" would reveal a wealth of relevant, up-to-date, and comprehensive material about the issues. It's not my job to educate you about your whiteness and your privilege. If you spent half the energy you've just spent expounding your racial anxieties on actually listening to anti-racist critique, you might figure something out.

Look, your feelings are not new or special:
http://www.vectormagazine.co.uk/article.asp?articleID=29
http://www.crsi.mq.edu.au/people/staff/documents/Gaynesh-PostcolonialStudies.pdf
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SydLRev/1997/30.html
http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10087
http://www.writingtheother.com/

Does anyone of any skin color have a personal obligation to anyone else of a different skin color, based simply on the color of the skin and its associated historical/cultural/linguistic heritage/baggage?

It's called anti-racism. And it's not about skin.

I feel like it's important--maybe even paramount--to keep the fact that this is one white woman artist's personal interpretation of another culture's epic in mind when watching it

You were not only advocating watching it, but organising a screening of it. Are you prepared to take responsibility for how each and every person who walks into the cinema sees it, acts upon it, and treats the people of colour (particularly South Asian people) in their lives? Are you prepared to redistribute the rewards (both material and psychic) of this act of appropriation towards eradicating the inequalities which make it so problematic? Are you aware that the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house?

Yes, that's hard work. But Empire wasn't built in a day, and dismantling it will probably take longer.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Dude. I agree with your positions*, and after I finish this comment I'm going to go make them in my own comment/response to other people's comments. But your assumption that this is a post about eredien's "anxieties," rather than an honest request for opinions and advice, is insulting. eredien knows perfectly well that there are people on her flist, like you and me and raxvulpine and a number of others who are likely to show up soon, who think a lot about race, class, culture and imperialism. I believe that when she asked for other opinions (e.g. "If anyone has any suggestions, I would like to hear them," "I feel that Paley's trying to incorporate what research she did into the work. Can someone show me why Zooeylive, or others, might think that she's not?"), she meant it.

Maybe I'm making assumptions-- maybe you and she have the kind of relationship where you jump on each other's logic all the time and it's fine, and if so, my apologies. But otherwise... it would have killed you to just answer her questions?

--R



*with the exception of So "understanding" requires appropriation?. Because frankly, yes-- when a writer wants to really understand something, anything, she writes about it. That's how writers understand the world. That doesn't mean she doesn't have an obligation to do so in a respectful way, but still-- you're never going to get the same level of understanding of something until you've written it and gotten guts-deep. One can argue that white/Western writers don't have the right to that kind of understanding of colonized cultures, but that's a different argument.

[rax.livejournal.com]

The writer who writes to understand does not need to publish and market.
(Though I don't think doing so is always wrong.) I've certainly written
things as part of my own understanding process, for this and other issues,
that I would not publish because I would find doing so to be problematic in
related ways.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Good point.

[greylander.livejournal.com]

This is what I was talking about. Mustering white friends to defend eredien from the mean women of colour.

I'm so deeply insulted by this exchange that I don't even have words to describe how I feel.

Let me be clear: I will respond to this once and that's it.

As an Indian, and a Hindu, it's my culture and my life that people are talking about cutting up and turning into animated shorts for white peoples' entertainment. I expressed quite succinctly how that affects me in my original comment in the previous thread. Instead of addressing my feelings or exploring what experiences led me to react this way to the concept of a white woman retelling a Hindu epic with a lens of "female suffering", eredien posted a long series of nit-picks with a blog post I linked to, and then wrote extensively about how scared she is of being criticised for being white and appropriating from subjugated cultures.
I'd rather have a relationship with someone where we "jump on each other's logic all the time" than a relationship in which my feelings and experiences get erased so often, and where it's okay to derail a discussion about the ethics of exploitation to speak extensively about one party's personal anxieties. But then, I'm finding that such relationships are rare with white people.

Secondly, I don't respond to tone arguments. Especially when they insinuate that white people are better at speaking about these issues than someone who experiences them personally, and with a backhanded compliment about your agreement, to boot. I did read raxvulpine's comments, but I don't trust white people to speak for me, especially not those inclined to making tone arguments and setting the (narrow) conditions by which they will and will not support people of colour.
Eredien has had ample opportunity to engage with them in the past, given how much I've written about them over the years, and yet this post made it abundantly clear that she wasn't listening. Yet I'm the one who gets challenged about how I conduct my friendships? What a demeaning double-standard.

I've seen all these questions before. They come from a space of white, Western privilege and assume its boundaries. I was challenging her assumptions with a sly rejoinder about "personal biases" (a phrase which Eredien used extensively to discredit Zooeylive's criticisms of Nina Paley) -- because the questions themselves are not based on a robust understanding of the cultural implications of (neo)imperialism. I'm pretty put out that Eredien addressed them to her overwhelmingly white friends list instead of trying to find the answers for herself, presuming that there aren't any and that her thoughts and feelings are wholly original and new. As I said, it's not my job to educate.

Considering how insulting this whole exchange has been, I think I've been pretty bloody restrained.


Eredien, I'm sorry for directing this at you obliquely through gaudior, but hir comments directed at how I conduct my friendships made me feel that I had to defend myself publicly.

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

Lady, you type too fast for me to keep up. eredien I know I ought to address a longer comment to you, but really, greylander has said the majority of what I was thinking while I've been busy with the day job today (including yet another link that I would have duplicated -- the one to the ABW post on the privilege of politeness).

[greylander.livejournal.com]

Well, I have holidays right now so I can type away to my heart's content!

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

greylander

I apologize. I was hypocritical to accuse you of being rude by doing something rude myself (using a tone argument). That was wrong on my part; that was me being more of a jerk than I was saying you were being.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Also: good links! The Wright one (review of the Ziff and Rao book) is particularly straightforward and useful. Thank-you!

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

And Nisi Shawl writes really well in the IROSF one. Cool!

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

I was going to write something, but greylander got most of it covered.

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

It's funny how rarely we realize that we're living in the master's house until we start trying to take it down and the ceiling falls on our heads.

[rax.livejournal.com]

"I also agree with Zooeylive that there are plenty of places in the USA
or Europe (*cough* 'Western World' *cough*) where it's not safe for a
person to walk alone at night or for women to have identities separate
from their husbands. I feel like maybe if Paley spent some time in various
parts of the USA she wouldn't be so sure that these empowered feminist
women she speaks about are running around everywhere she thinks they
are. That's a problem. I think it's a problem everywhere. I think the
more places people start to notice that problem anywhere, the more can
be done to make individual women feel more powerful and have more agency."

The argument against this kind of universalist approach to activism that
has most resonated with me is the essay about the history of domestic
violence activism in _Nobody Passes_; I forget the author, and can't go
check the shelf since I'm at work. I'll have to go back to it myself,
but I think reading it might be the best counterargument to "the more
places people start to notice [a] problem anywhere, the more can be done
to help individual women..." Community and cultural context is important,
and "universalist" approaches often try to apply the community and
cultural contexts of the people in charge (in the situation discussed
in the essay, middle-class white femininst heterosexuals) to everyone,
which wind up not being so universal after all.

oh, and also

[rax.livejournal.com]

This archived mailing list conversation is interesting when taken with greylander's reference to the master's tools. (I had to go remember where I remembered it from, and in the process ran into that, which sidetracked me before work this morning, but I wasn't able to retrieve until I got home. :)

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

What you're dealing with here is a complicated question that isn't going to be completely answered within the context of a Livejournal post, if in fact it can be answered at all. I will state, for the record, that I am a cisgendered white woman of Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage, and that I am not familiar with the source material, so I am speaking in a general way, not specific to this particular text.

So, at my job, race is a fundamental fact of life. Working where I do, I have been forced to personally confront my own white privilege and occasionally racist assumptions. None of us likes to think that we're racists, because we're good people, but I am personally of the opinion that most white people (esp. white people from our background, which while not entirely white-washed, was not exactly the most diverse) carry with them unconscious racist assumptions. This is part of what it means to have white privilege.

And I would argue that I, as a white person, have an obligation to educate myself on matters of racism and cultural imperialism/appropriation and to actively listen when PoC tell me about their experiences. And when I listen? I get angry. Because racism and discrimination are real and the are stupid and they make me angry.
Do I ask my black coworkers questions sometimes? Yes. But I try to phrase them in ways that indicate that I know one black woman does not speak for all black women and that I am open to the answer. We do not progress along the road to understanding by sticking our fingers in our ears when we don't like what we hear. Criticism cannot be constructive if we refuse to acknowledge its validity and instead leap immediately to our own defense.
It does not matter if a person means to give offense, it matters that offense was given. I will forgive people for saying/doing things I don't like, but I do expect that once they know I don't like something, they will endeavor to avoid that behavior. So when white people ignorantly and mostly innocently do things that offend people of color, it behooves them to actively listen to how and why offense was taken. This is how we make progress.
Racism frequently exists in places where white people do not see it, in fact, that is how it persists, in subtle, nearly invisible ways, just as sexism does. And just as it is frustrating for a woman to see glaring sexism where a man sees nothing wrong, it is frustrating for people of color to experience racism where white people see nothing wrong.

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

But I also understand where you're coming from. The line between appreciation and appropriation, between fascination and fetishization can be very thin and very gray. And while no one wants to accidentally cross that line, it becomes very frustrating (esp in our increasingly globalized world) to be told that the products of cultures other than our own are off limits.
If I decide I want to tell a trickster story, am I only allowed to find inspiration in the stories of Jack and Loki, or may I also look to Anansi and Coyote? Am I, as a white non-Christian, allowed to like Gospel music? Sing it? I find Rumi's poetry inspiring, even though I'm not a Muslim. Am I allowed to use it as a jumping-off point for my own poetry? Can I write a retelling of the story of Passover? I know the story very well, but I don't know what it's like to grow up Jewish, to search the house for leaven, to ask the Four Questions, to be connected to that heritage. I feel obligated as an artist to acknowledge what my sources of inspiration are and my own viewpoint in interpretation, but there's also a point at which that becomes intrusive (the metaphor that occurs to me is the way in which continuously seeking active consent disrupts the natural flow of sex, which I just realized opens up all sorts of unfortunate rape metaphors).

From an educational standpoint- if I am only allowed to talk about my own culture, then my students and my children will only ever learn Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Hawthorne, Wollstonecraft. Shouldn't they also read the Ramayana and Maya Angelou and Soyinka? Of course they should, for exposure to art is one of the ways in which we learn about our world and the people in it. But of course, being familiar with the work of another culture is not the same as being a product of that same culture.

And turn the tables for a minute. What if someone who was from a Hindu background decided to retell the Crucifixion? What if they assumed that the Bible was misogynistic before reading it (it is, in lots of places, but that's not the point).

[velvet-tipping.livejournal.com]

eredien, I hope you'll forgive me for commenting here, as I'm not on your flist.

lotus_biosm, the difference between someone like me (Indian, of Hindu heritage), retelling the Crucifixion story, and someone like Nina Paley retelling the Ramayana, is one of power. Christianity was used as a colonial tool in India by the Portuguese and the British, and even now to some extent by Westerners. The reverse cannot be said. We always need to keep in mind the power differential when discussing these issues because otherwise we miss a crucial part of the puzzle.

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely the power differential is an important part of the issue, and I thank you for pointing that out.
But my point was to try to find a culturally/religiously meaningful story that someone might not want retold by an "outsider." It isn't the same thing for a minority to retell the stories of the majority (and in this case I'm using minority in terms of power, not numbers) as it is for the majority to retell the stories of the minority, and I understand that. I was simply trying to get people to imagine at least part of what their visceral response would be to seeing it happen to something they felt they owned and that was meaningful to them.

[eredien]

Hi, Lucullean. It's fine to comment here even though you're not on my friends-list. Thanks for the commentary.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Cultural appropriation is something I'm still trying to find my footing on as well. I think right now there are two key points for me that i'm thinking about.

First is that most people when confronted with evidence of their own racism or sexism or privilege or whatever tend to react very defensively and get wrapped up in feeling like a terrible person instead of looking at the actual issue and trying to learn something. I think that's frustrating for people who are trying to teach someone to look at things in a different way, because it feels like the message isn't getting through - instead, the person you're talking to turns inward and starts feeling like a horrible person instead of looking forward to try to learn what they could do differently to be a better person. I guess it's hard to be told you're racist or sexist or offensive or privileged when you grow up being taught that you have to be better than that. When a moral value is tolerance and acceptance, being told that you're failing doesn't make anyone feel good. But I guess it's the same thing as when you feel dumb at school - no one likes to feel like an idiot, but a lot of times you feel dumb because you just learned something, and that has a lot of value. I've been trying to focus on that instead of castigating myself for not being smarter.

The second thing is about cultural appropriation itself. I don't really know what the right answer is either and I'm still trying to figure it out. But this is my current theory: I think if you approach something unknown and unusual with an attitude that you're trying to learn something, to understand the culture, then that's fine. Like if you see something that you don't understand, and you approach it without any assumptions and you're just like "oh, that looks interesting! what is it? teach me about it!" It seems hard to be offended by someone asking you to teach them something they didn't know, if they seriously ask you and are seriously interested in learning and understanding it. And I guess part of that is also having the understanding, "well, I'm certainly not going to understand all the nuances, but my current understanding is such-and-such". Like, you're not going to try to explain black holes when Stephen Hawking is standing right behind you. You're going to ask him to explain it. But if he's not there then you might be like "well, you should ask Steve, but my limited understanding is ...etc."

The appropriation bit comes in when you can show up and say, "oh, that looks pretty. hey, that matches my kitchen! It would look great there." without any interest at understanding. And especially if the "pretty" thing is a religious icon or a cultural tradition...it's going to be pretty offensive.

Another problem would be approaching things as if a short amount of study can make you just as knowledgable or even more knowledgeable than someone who has been studying it all their life. I certainly think that a white woman might know more about chinese history than I do - it depends on her background and how much time she put into studying it and such. She could be a professor of asian studies. But the problem comes about when people *assume* that they know a lot when they really have just read the cliff notes. And there can always be more to learn - a professor of east asian studies might not know the specific culture *I* grew up in, for example. But I think this sort of offense happens in more than just race or sex...like if someone tries to explain the details of lasers because they saw a TV show on lasers to me, and here I am with a phd in lasers - I'm going to be pretty offended.

Anyway, I guess this is just a really long-winded way of saying that I don't think the issue is about *what* you know or don't know, but rather *how* you approach the stuff you know or don't know about a culture. And, also, caveat, I'm still trying to figure this all out anyway, so if you ask me in a month I might be like, "wow, I was SO DUMB then!" *grin*

[anarcissie.livejournal.com]

I am somewhat mystified by the notion of cultural appropriation. As far as I know, nonmaterial cultural artifacts have historically (and probably pre-historically) passed through community boundaries almost universally in both or all directions whenever two or more communities have been in any kind of contact with one another, even through interfaces where there was very considerable hostility, or a steep power, status or wealth differential. I don't know whether this can properly be called appropriation or exploitation given that (at least prior to intellectual-property laws) the originators of these artistic, technological or other materials remained in full enjoyment of them to whatever extent they desired. In the case under discussion, Paley's version of the Ramayana takes nothing away from any of the dozens or hundreds of previous realizations of it, nor, as far as I can see, from those for whom it is part of their mother culture -- it's simply one more thing which they may find interesting or not, as they choose. We do not have a case like the Elgin Marbles, which were materially stolen from Greece by the British.

What I can't help thinking here is that the corporate project of extending intellectual property law into every nook and cranny where a dollar can be extracted by state force has now invaded the field of cultural criticism and that rather disparate and even questionable categories of people -- "races", nations, ethnic groups -- are being reified into entities that own and control things, have interests and intentions, and so on, while actual living persons and communities are being set aside. This program in general has been significantly detrimental to precisely the groups people here are concerned about, as when the same people who discovered the use of a medicinal plant are legally deprived from using it because Monsanto or the like has copyrighted its molecules.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

I don't really have a good explanation myself as I am trying to figure out how to navigate serious power differentials myself with grace and respect, but I think it's a lot simpler than the path you're going down. This particular case may have something to do with copyright, but I have no knowledge of the specific case and was trying to talk about cultural appropriation in general. I currently think that "cultural appropriation" has nothing to do with ownership - I think it's more about respect than ownership or payment or anything like that.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Oops, I take that back. I read some links up there and I guess a lot of people do think that copyright violations are an integral component to cultural appropriation.

[anarcissie.livejournal.com]

Copyright (and thus copyright violation) and other concepts of intellectual property are fairly recent, historically speaking. Until the last half of the 20th century they were rather limited even in the places of their appearance. Since they are a set of laws enforced by government, their advantages generally go to the party with the most lawyers, the most political influence, or the most power in general, as in the case of the patented molecules I mentioned; whereas what people are calling cultural appropriation has been going on since prehistory and is not generally limited by power and status differentials. However as and if culture becomes more deeply propertized that may change.