Dear Lana Del Rey: You Are Not a Latina Gangsta Girl, So Cut the Shit

[tifa]

Comments

[djinndustries]

At what point does cultural appropriation become cultural appropriation exactly? If a cholo dressed like a rockabilly white guy is that cultural appropriation? If he did, would anyone give a shit? Are you trying to tell me that poor Mexican gangsters are proud of their cultural heritage and we should somehow respect the crime and violence associated with it?

I think her whole "woe is me" schtick is bullshit; I don't need to wave cultural appropriation all over it to make that a fact.

[bleed_peroxide]

I think that cultural and racial theorist, George Lipsitz, described it best: "The calculated use of a cultural form, outside of your own, to define yourself or your group. [...] When the majority culture attempts to strategically anti-essentialize themselves by appropriating a minority culture, they must take great care to recognize the specific socio-historical circumstances and significance of these cultural forms so as not to perpetuate the already existing, majority vs. minority, unequal power relations

[djinndustries]

This is an intelligent response and I appreciate it, though it wobbled a bit at the end.

That said, I don't think donning the garb of "Latino gangsters" (I apologise for the paraphrasing to poor Mexican gangsters, the Mexicans were mentioned later in the article) can be equated with wearing a war bonnet or a medal of honour. Unless you consider teardrop tattoos to be a badge of honour. For the people that get Chinese tattoos without knowing the meaning, I shake my head and pray for natural selection to take its course, but I don't see the point in getting bent all out of whack because some idiot decided that he would get a tattoo of "greed" and it ended up looking like "poor". Same thing here.

Lana is an idiot, but I'm not sure she's committing a cultural sin.

What about all those people that wore keffiyehs after we started wars abroad? Are they making a huge cultural faux pas or is this how cultures get brought together and ultimately integrated, fashion, then music and art, the religion and so on?

[oystermato]

Cultural appropriation is annoying because it is basically taking a small facet of a different people's culture and using it as a costume or some form of temporary entertainment, as if that small facet is representative of the whole culture. These seemingly harmless, "it's all in good fun!" acts are not how cultures get brought together, as you pose. This is how stereotypes are created and perpetuated. This is how sexualized geishas might be at the forefront of people's minds when they think Japanese culture (see: Katy Perry). Then comes around the fetishization of Asian women as quiet and demure and submissive. This is how teardrop tattoos, dressing in a certain way and hanging out in a certain kind of neighborhood becomes associated with Latinos. Then comes the criminalization of Latinos, which you should know is a real thing

[bleed_peroxide]

I was going to go into a long explanation, but you explained the point far better than I could. A+

[tifa]

Aces.

[fishphile]

This was really good.

[meadowphoenix]

Anything that amounts to exploitation or selling of a minority culture by someone in the majority culture is probably cultural appropriation. Essentially though, the difference in power and the ability of the majority culture to force the minority culture to assimilate, while refusing to see value in the minority culture except to titillate that makes cultural appropriation obvious.

There's also a question about posterity (how others in the future will see ownership of an aspect of the culture) and the ability of the minority culture to direct their own narrative.

How France and Britain shared culture when both were superpowers: not appropriation. How the Romans effectively erased the cultures they overtook by assimilating their symbols into their pantheon: appropriation (although context and how posterity now view this is what matters here).