Abstract
This anthropological project will delve into the indigenous and marginalized appropriation of Western and non-marginalized culture. One connection this brings to light is the way that cultures change when exposed to one another outside of colonial power dynamics. Appropriation has been employed within spaces of entertainment and identity, leading to a merging of cultures once thought entirely separate. However, many of the colonial practices appropriated by marginalized groups still hold complicated emotions regarding discrimination and assimilation. Additionally, with increased engagement in Western economic spheres, the idea of self-commodification shows how some of these transcultural interactions cause deeper internal problems for marginalized cultures and people. The transcultural process of appropriation becoming less Western reveals the invalidity of dualistic ideas that Western and indigenous culture are massively separate and reveals deeper truths of how society will continue to grow.
Intro
Arturo Escobar’s work in “In the Background of Our Culture: Rationalism, Ontological Dualism, and Relationality” explores several fundamental qualities of anthropology, specifically the idea of ontological dualisms. Escobar asserts that dualisms themselves are not inherently restrictive and negative, but that cultural prejudice and misinterpretation affords a power hierarchy to the dualisms in place (Escobar 94). This power hierarchy is mirrored in the colonial divide present within the dualism of us vs them, attributing a perceived superiority to the Western “us” and an inferiority to the unknown “them”. However, the appropriation of Western and non-marginalized culture by marginalized groups challenges the rationality of these dualisms.
Indigenous Appropriation: Flipping the Power Dynamic
Through the appropriation of Western cultural conventions, indigenous cultures refute the strictness of societal understanding of dualism. The balls in Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning have a category within their judging where the performers attempt to dress as caricatures of straight Americans. This piece of the show is described as a competition for realness, as the gay men try to “look as much as you can like your straight counterparts” (Livingston 00:18:20-00:18:30). The vernacular used to describe the event comes from a place of seeing the straight world as an entirely separate entity from the gay experience. This perspective wouldn’t exist without the preexisting separation offered by dualistic thinking and Western ideas of “realness.” However, the adoption of straight culture into gay culture, especially into a cultural practice that is now so intimately tied to gay pride, shows the artificiality of that separation. Additionally, removing the verbal descriptions, the presentation and visual embodiment of these costumes present an appropriation of the non-marginalized culture to create a safe space for the marginalized culture.
Figure 1 and 2: Scenes from Livingston’s Paris is Burning of the realness category in a ball
The role of these realness contests in the New York gay community questions how assimilation and appropriation, two seemingly incompatible ideas, can exist in the same space. The whole category comes from a desire to conform and a yearning to succeed in straight society, but due to the discriminatory structures in place, this is seen as an impossibility. There is a wish to assimilate, but a social barrier that disallows it. The appropriation of straight culture through performance allows gay identity to shirk normative expectations and adopt these qualities into gay cultural practice. While the power dynamics remain present, appropriation allows the LGBTQ+ community to turn feelings of exclusion into pride when practices once thought to be incompatible with their culture are placed at the heart of its celebration. This affirms the relational connection between assimilation and appropriation as both can act as a transcultural process and can exist within the same space when targeted at embracing non-marginalized culture in a way that reinvents marginalized representation.
Similarly, Jeffrey Himpele’s “Packaging Indigenous Media: An Interview with Ivan Sanjinés and Jesús Tapia” looks at two Bolivian filmmakers who make use of Western film practices to change the ways their culture is depicted in modern media. Sanjinés and Tapia retool and appropriate an art form that has historically generalized their culture to create a platform for its enrichment (Himpele 357). This combination of culture shows how the historically colonial practice of appropriation can be used to invert power dynamics and empower marginalized groups. During the interview, Sanjinés shares his perspective on appropriation; “Appropriation is not only about the object that you film. You do give it your own sense. You won’t discover something that has already been discovered. Cinema has emerged over a long time, so we use the forms that are there. The question is, what sense do you give it?” (Himpele 361). This statement indirectly confirms the innate relationality of appropriation and its connections to the world and preexisting understandings.
Figure 3: Victor Ndula’s “Race and Class”
African artist Victor Ndula makes use of the Western political cartoon to comment on issues of structural injustice with his piece “Race and Class.” This cartoon puts a lens to the similarities of those marginalized by racism and classism in Kenya through visualization (Figure 3). This art form has historically been used as a racist tool of dehumanization and while this cultural context is not explicit in the cartoon, its repurposing as a tool for social justice subverts its original purpose in relation to that context. Non-marginalized appropriation of Western culture can be directly connected to its colonial origin and power dynamic, but the constant presence of cultural context regardless of who engages with the practice shows the thinness of the line between us vs them and the transitivity of culture through borrowed practices.
Self-Commodification and the Complications of Appropriation
Self-commodification within indigenous culture is an example of appropriating one’s own culture in order to manipulate Western bias to your advantage. Victor Maseyesva’s Imagining Indians tackles this idea in its discussion of Native American actors playing stereotypical roles in order to support their families. As Western media appropriates indigenous traditions and ceremonies, members of the native community express feeling responsible for keeping their culture sacred and that they’re involvement in the filmmaking process is an action to control their depiction (Maseyesva 33:00-34:06). Their self-commodification is motivated by a desire to resist power dynamics and establish a barrier limiting Western access to native culture. In the attempt to deepen the divide established by colonial division, the native “them” becomes more entwined with the Western “us” by taking part in film practices and the economy. The film explicitly focuses on the divide between the marginalized and the non-marginalized, but the visual cross-cultural involvement communicates a different message. This, possibly unintentional, joining of communities shows that to create a separation, there must first exist a connection.
This phenomenon is expanded upon in Michael Beckham’s film Disappearing World: The Kayapo, Indians of the Brazilian Rain Forest. An indigenous community in Brazil called the Kayapo struggles to maintain cultural identity while engaging with the Western economic world. One Kayapo tribe in Kapot questions the Gorotire tribe’s status as authentic as their culture evolves through relations with the Brazilian government (27:20-28:27). This distinction between authentic and inauthentic is a dualism manufactured by Western bias and expectations of indigenous culture and has influenced the way indigenous communities view themselves. While the Kapot Kayapo emphasize the importance of culture remaining insular, the Gorotire trade and make use of Western cultural practices to enrich their community. The chiefs of the Gorotire see Western video recordings as a tool of preserving culture through advancement and by making use of the mines present on their land, are combatting historical power dynamics (41:23-41:53). Similar to Sanjinés and Tapia, the appropriation of Western media practices helps empower the people.
Figure 4: Scene from Beckham’s Disappearing World: The Kayapo, Indians of the Brazilian Rain Forest of the Kayapo utilization of Western practices
This appropriation occurs alongside the community conforming to the expectations of the wider Western world and playing into their indigeneity for political sway. Terence Turner addresses this in his piece “Representation, Politics, and Cultural Imagination in Indigenous Video: General Points and Kayapo Examples,” where in order to give their community agency, the Gorotire alter their external self-representation and dramatize their culture (Turner 84). This form of self-commodification affords the Kayapo power and acts as an invisible appropriation of the Western philosophy. Disregarding any cultural changes brought about by the transcultural evolution of indigenous culture alongside Western culture, the people have begun to weaponize the economy and social expectation in a very Western way. This further shows the needless polarization of dualisms, as the established “us” and “them” can begin to meld together through diversified perspective.
However, the self-objectification and alienation brought about by these practices cannot be ignored. Through self-commodification, marginalized communities complicate their relationship with cultural identity, as they become complicit to the stereotypes and biases they wish to shirk. A limited cultural understanding within traditional colonial practices such as appropriation and commodification presents a danger as it can serve as a form of erasure rather than empowerment.
While appropriation can bridge together cultures, we shouldn’t dismiss its innate invasiveness. Both of these aforementioned indigenous communities engaging with self-objectification feel a discomfort with appropriation in either direction because the taking from culture can remove so much of its character and meaning. In her piece “Fighting Invasive Infrastructures: Indigenous Relations against Pipelines,” Anne Spice states “We can challenge the inevitability of settler colonial invasion by returning to the networks that have sustained us for tens of thousands of years on our territories and by living into better relations with each other and our other-than-human kin” (Spice 52). This outlook can be directly applied to the importance of a relational perspective to the marginalized appropriation of the non-marginalized. The only way to remove the invasive quality of colonial practices is to fully understand the cultural practices being appropriated, calling for a less divided and more relational perspective.
Conclusion
In Paris is Burning, the ball culture reveals how caricatures of straight America are laced into the LGBTQ+ experience in New York; that relationship allows for conversations of identity with how pride can exist within the same spaces as assimilation and shame. Himpele’s interview with Jesús Tapia and Ivan Sanjinés reveals how the indigenization of pop culture and Western filmmaking styles have been adopted by indigenous filmmakers to advocate for better representations of their own culture. This combination of culture shows how historically colonial practices and dualisms have inherent dimensions of relationality. Escobar states that “Dualism is itself a form of relationality but one that, as we have seen, assumes the preexistence of distinct entities whose respective essences are not seen as fundamentally dependent on their relation to other entities—they exist in and of themselves” (Escobar 101). However, I question the necessity of distinction within the relationality of dualisms, as its removal from transcultural processes blurs the lines of dualistic separation, but the connection remains. These cultural changes are complicated by the perspective offered by Imagining Indians and Disappearing World: The Kayapo, Indians of the Brazilian Rain Forest and the self-objectification and self-commodification involved with interactions with the Western world. These films discuss the indigenous desire to keep tradition completely separate from external parties and the invasive quality of appropriation, but in doing so, further invalidate dualistic thinking and affirm that relationality can ameliorate the division sewed by the rational understanding of dualistic distinctions. As appropriative practices continue through interaction, these distinctions are proven to be a human construct that fails to accurately represent the nuance of cultural relationality.
Works Cited
Disappearing World: The Kayapo, Indians of the Brazilian Rain Forest. Directed by Michael Beckham, Granada Television, 1994.
Escobar, Arturo. “In the Background of Our Culture: Rationalism, Ontological Dualism, and Relationality.” Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2017, pp. 79–104.
Himpele, Jeff. “Packaging Indigenous Media: An Interview with Ivan Sanjinés and Jesús Tapia”. American Anthropologist, vol. 106, no. 2, June 2004, pp. 354–363.
Imagining Indians. Directed by Victor Masayesva, Documentary Educational Resources (DER), 1992.
Ndula, Victor. “Race and Class.” The Guardian.
Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston, Off White Productions, 1990.
Spice, Anne. “Fighting Invasive Infrastructures: Indigenous Relations against Pipelines.” Indigenous Resurgence, 11 Mar. 2022.
Turner, Terence. “Representation, Politics, and Cultural Imagination in Indigenous Video: General Points and Kayapo Examples.” Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010, pp. 75-89.
