Bad
Words; Bad Art; Bad, Bad, Bad
by
Jules Older
Paula Morris is,
after all, a New Zealander, and a half-Maori one at that. Trendy But Casual is told from the point of view of an all-American
girl living in New York.
That’s cultural
appropriation. Instead of basking in the glow of a book well-written (and
awards well-won), Ms Morris should be deeply, deeply ashamed.
If that sounds
insane, consider this. In November, 2005, New Zealand artist Lyn Bergquist was
shown the door. The Warkworth artist’s work, intended to be displayed at an
Auckland gallery, was rejected by the gallery owner because… because it
depicted Maori flags.
Oedipus Rex Gallery
director Jennifer Buckley told Radio New Zealand, “Flags are symbols and
emblems of a very specific culture. And these are Maori flags. I would have the
same issue with a Maori artist using my MacKenzie tartan.”
Flags or tartans, art
or literature, the issue is cultural appropriation. Of all the dumb ideas to
come out of academia, cultural appropriation is just about my least favourite.
Why? Oh, let me count
the ways.
But first, a quick
review.
Here's how New York
Times reviewer Richard Eder described E. Annie Proulx’s novel, Close Range: “She knows…extraordinarily
much about males: their bodies (who else writes of them with such lyrical
respect?), the roughness and wary companionship of a raw macho society and a
sporadic, startling sweetness.”
I felt the same about
Julian Barnes’ description of the experience of a young girl in his novel, England, England. It had a ring of truth
as clear as a pure crystal goblet.
The literary and film
worlds have both been enriched Memoirs of
a Geisha by Arthur S. Golden and Remains
of the Day, a spelunk deep into the mind of a traditional English butler,
by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Yet, all these books
would be banned, or at least derided, if the cultural appropriation school of artistic criticism had its way.
For they all suffer from the same “flaw” — their main characters are not of the
same gender and/or ethnicity as the author. The author is therefore
“appropriating”, an academic term for stealing from another culture or poaching
into a province that is not his own.
I say “his” own
because the finger of appropriation is most often aimed at males, and white
males in particular. William Styron got it in spades for writing The Confessions of Nat Turner. In New
Zealand, remember how author Michael King caught it for writing on Maori
leaders? Despite his intent “to make Maori preoccupations more intelligible to
some non-Maori New Zealanders”, both Te
Puea and Whina caught heavy flak
for cultural appropriation.
As a writer, the very
notion of appropriation drives me crazy. The first and worst thing about it is
this: the notion of appropriation strikes at the very heart of what artists —
painters and sculptors, composers and lyricists, novelists and playwrights —
do. We make things up. We make people up. We make up cultures and countries and
tartans and flags. And the only limit we want applied to our characters is the
limit of our imaginations. I'm writing a book with three main characters: a
Jewish boy from New York, a Montana boy in trouble with the law and a Black
girl who’s the catcher on a baseball team. If I took appropriation seriously,
two of ‘em would have to go.
Second, I firmly believe
the world is a better place for “appropriation.” If Annie Proulx hadn't written
about Newfoundland because she was an American, Shipping News would never have won all those awards. If Ted Dawe
hadn’t written about living rough because he’s
not a street kid, a member of the young urban tribe, K. Road would never have been published. And, really, if Paula
Morris hadn't written Trendy But Causal,
I wouldn’t have spent half an hour rolling around in bed, laughing my socks
off.
All three books
reveal the world, perhaps all the better because the authors viewed the place
they were writing about with the fresh eyes of someone from a distance.
Third, if
appropriation is damaging to writers, it’s just as damaging to other arts.
Would the world be as rich, would women be better served, if Reubens didn’t
paint their likeness? If Picasso had limited his art to white European males?
If Titian, if Rodin, if most of the visual artists of our millennium hadn't
followed their own admiring vision?
Fourth, and for now,
finally, when academic voices call for an end to appropriation as a protection
of minority culture, they pose the greatest danger to… minority artists. Why
should Black artists be limited to painting Black subjects? Jewish women to
writing about Jewish women? Ngai Tahu writing poems about Ngai Tahu and not
Ngati Mahuta, Ngai Wai, or white settlers from Dalmatia? Would New Zealand
really be better off in Hone Tuwhare only wrote from a Maori perspective, and
only about Maori subjects?
My answer is… well,
my first answer is “Duh.” I mean, how dumb does a concept have to be before it
gets dumped on the slagheap of stupidity? Where are the intellectual Darwin
Awards when we need them?
But my longer answer
is the world is better for “appropriation,” that artists are better for
appropriation and that minority artists would be in a tight and narrow place
without appropriation.
What’s derided as
appropriation, I celebrate as imagination. Deep in my heart, I do believe that
no artist should be limited by anything other than imagination.
Jules Older’s first book was The
Pakeha Papers. His latest is PIG.
After many years in Dunedin, he now lives in San Francisco.
Where are the intellectual
Darwin Awards when we need them?
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