(1) VALUE OF SPECIAL THEME ISSUES. Neil Clarke has written a blog post, “Specials”, to discuss what he learned from a discussion he launched yesterday on Twitter.
So yesterday I took to Twitter to get an answer to a question I had about the value of special theme issues as a tool in addressing representation. It was driven in part by an incomplete editorial sitting on my desktop for a couple of months now…..
Here’s where I made a few mistakes:
- Assuming that the primary goal for these projects was long-term (as in taking a long time) or that there ever was just one. In fact, it appears as though in many of these cases, a goal was to spotlight a specific community or provide a safe entry point, not necessarily to focus on altering the landscape for the field or attract a permanent change in the slush pile for the magazine. Yes, some of these already had existing policies in place to monitor and maintain that specific branch of diversity. They were a celebration rather than a corrective measure, but hasn’t been the norm across the years….
What I learned:
-
That there is a serious and demonstrable benefit to the theme projects, but not necessarily in direct service of the results I hoped for. I heard from a wide variety of people who had career-changing moments from their involvement in projects as ranging from anthologies, to Helix, to Escape Artists, and Lightspeed’s Destroy series. A common refrain was that it encouraged them to try, gave them a confidence boost when they needed it, made them feel like they belonged, and served as a stepping stone. That last one is a long-term thing. It might not be to the big scale of the long-term goal I was talking about, but it was certainly step in the right direction. There is something to be said to the qualitative safety element of these projects even if it doesn’t specifically raise to the level of changing the playing field on a bigger scale….
(2) VERBOSE VERISIMILITUDE. After these introductory paragraphs I found her stylistic demonstration to be deeply intriguing – Sarah A. Hoyt’s “The Quality of Description Should not be Strained” at Mad Genius Club. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
The Quality of Description Should not be Strained, a Dialogue with Bill and Mike.
“Hey there buddy,” Mike said, as he came into the office, slamming the door behind him and making for the coffee maker like it was on fire and he had the only firehose on the planet. “Why so glum?”
Bill blinked from where he sat at his desk, looking across him at the red spires dotting the desert landscape outside the office window. “My writer’s group said I needed more description and sense of place,” he said. “But then when I put in description, they told me I had stopped the action and given them indigestible infodumps.”
(3) INTERNET ANTIQUITY. While rhapsodizing yesterday about the 10-year anniversary of bacon cat and the 18th anniversary of Whatever, John Scalzi said:
It’s an interesting time to be doing a blog, still, because I think it’s safe to declare the Age of Blogging well and truly over, inasmuch as personal blogging as been superseded in nearly every way by social media, including Twitter (my favorite), Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat and so on and so forth. I’m not planning on mourning blogs in general — as a phenomenon they had their moment and it was a relatively good one — but it is interesting to watch the blog tide recede, with just a few die-hards left to do them old-school, like I do.
Reading that, I thought no wonder I’ve really been in the swing of blogging this past year. I’m one of the great late-adopters, and seem to have timed my entry into the field perfectly. Had I waited a few moments longer blogs would have been extinct…
(4) OF COURSE NOBODY’S HAPPY. Aaron has penned a long and thoughtful post about slates and this year’s Hugos in “Biased Opinion: 2016 Hugo Awards Post-Mortem” at Dreaming of Other Worlds. This includes a category-by-category breakdown of the results. Filers actually started discussing this yesterday. I want to point even more people at it by including the link in today’s Scroll.
But why have the Pups erupted in paroxysms of rage when their candidates generally did so well in the final Hugo voting? The first reason is that, despite their claims that they were merely nominating and supporting what they felt were the “best” works, it seems that what they really wanted was for their political allies and personal cronies to win. The Puppy picks that won in 2016 were Nnedi Okorafor, Hao Jingfang, Neil Gaiman, Andy Weir, Abigail Larson, Mike Glyer, none of whom are beholden to the Pups in any way. In fact, one of the things that seems to have enraged the Pups is that Gaiman was insufficiently grateful to them for their support, calling them out on their bad behavior over the last couple of years with his acceptance speech. If supporting quality works was the primary goal of the Pups, then Gaiman’s stance wouldn’t matter to them one way or the other – they would be extolling the victory of The Sandman: Overture as a triumph of what they regard as good work.
(5) NEW BUNDLE. Now’s the time to pick up the New StoryBundle: Extreme Sci-Fi:
For three weeks only, from September 14 through October 6, you can get five or ten DRM-free ebooks (your choice) ready for loading on any e-reading device you like. You decide what you want to pay. After that, this bundle will disappear forever.
The initial titles in the Extreme Sci-Fi Bundle (minimum $5 to purchase) are:
- The Me and Elsie Chronicles by M. L. Buchman
- Climbing Olympus by Kevin J. Anderson
- Orphan – Giant Robot Planetary Competition: Book 1 by J.R. Murdock
- Suave Rob’s Double-X Derring Do by J. Daniel Sawyer
- Star Fall by Dean Wesley Smith
If you pay more than the bonus price of just $15, you get all five of the regular titles, plus five more:
- Away Games by Mike Resnick
- Extremes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
- Hadrian’s Flight by J. Daniel Sawyer
- Risk Takers by Fiction River
- Fairchild by Blaze Ward
We’ve got a classics, best-sellers, and four brand new books written especially for this bundle celebrating the human spirit. Inside, you’ll find dark tales of murder and intrigue, high-comic farce, young adult adventure, awe and wonder, rapture and redemption.
(6) JACK VANCE. Paul Weimer analyzes one of Jack Vance’s richly inventive fictional worlds in “Robinson Crusoe of Tschai: Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure Tetralogy”, posted at Tor.com.
Strange customs and societies, a hallmark of Vance’s fiction, populate (and almost overcrowd) the world. What is near-mandatory in one region of Tschai will get you killed in another. Anyone who despairs of planets in SF which feature all the same terrain and the same people have never visited Tschai. This variety and diversity is such that most people who encounter Reith and hear his story just think he’s from some corner of Tschai that they are unaware of, and probably crazy to boot.
(7) PASSENGER. NPR reports what it’s like to ride along in a self-driving Uber car.
Fourteen self-driving Ford Fusions idle in front of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh.
On each vehicle, dozens of stationary and spinning cameras collect 1.4 million distance measurements per second, guiding the car on its journey.
Beginning Wednesday, the cars will be deployed on Pittsburgh’s streets in a striking experiment by Uber to introduce self-driving technology to its passengers.
“For me this is really important,” says Anthony Levandowski, the head of Uber’s self-driving car team, “because I really believe that the most important things that computers are going to do in the next 10 years is drive cars.”
(8) LICENSE TO WRITE. Larry Correia says don’t be bullied: “Writers should be Cultural Appropriating all the Awesome Stuff”.
I’ve talked about Cultural Appropriation before, and why it is one of the most appallingly stupid ideas every foisted on the gullible in general, and even worse when used as a bludgeon against fiction authors.
First off, what is “Cultural Appropriation”? From the linked talk:
The author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University who for the record is white, defines cultural appropriation as “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorised use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.”
The part that got left out of that definition is that engaging in Cultural Appropriation is a grievous mortal sin that self-righteous busy bodies can then use to shame anyone they don’t like.
Look at that definition. Basically anything you use that comes from another culture is stealing. That is so patently absurd right out the gate that it is laughable. Anybody who has two working brain cells to rub together, who hasn’t been fully indoctrinated in the cult of social justice immediately realizes that sounds like utter bullshit.
If you know anything about the history of the world, you would know that it has been one long session of borrowing and stealing ideas from other people, going back to the dawn of civilization. Man, that cuneiform thing is pretty sweet. I’m going to steal writing. NOT OKAY! CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!
Everything was invented by somebody, and if it was awesome, it got used by somebody else. At some point in time thousands of years ago some sharp dude got sick of girding up his loins and invented pants. We’re all stealing from that guy. Damn you racists and your slacks.
In his customary swashbuckling style, he treats anyone’s concern about this issue as an absurd failure to comprehend how culture and the sharing of ideas works. That tone naturally makes people want to fire back on the same terms – whereas I wonder what everyone might say if he had expressed the same views in a persuasive structured argument.
One of Correia’s commenters implied that would look like Moshe Feder’s recent comment on Facebook.
MOSHE FEDER: I’ve always found “cultural appropriation” a weird concept. To me, it’s usually a progressive step toward a future in which humanity realizes that from a galactic point of view, we all share ONE culture — albeit a complex and varied one — the planetary culture developed by homo sapiens over tens of thousands of years. It was by this very so-called “appropriation” that fire, animal husbandry, agriculture, the wheel, and other crucial advances were spread to the benefit of all. Of course, there _are_ cases where CA is rude or inappropriate, as when you use it to mock or misrepresent other groups, and people of good will try to avoid those. But even those uses are protected by our free speech rights. (As are the protestations of those who resent such uses.) But all too often, complaints about cultural appropriation are another example of political correctness carried to the point of absurdity, the point at which it gives unscrupulous demagogues like Trump something they can look sensible for complaining about.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born September 14, 1914 — Clayton Moore, TV’s The Lone Ranger.
- Born September 14, 1936 — Walter Koenig (age 80). He was 31 when he started Star Trek.
(10) SQUARE DEAL FOR NUMBER ONE FAN. Although the neighbors didn’t succeed in having Forry Ackerman’s last home designated a cultural landmark, the city may agree to name a Los Feliz neighborhood intersection in his honor. The Los Feliz Ledger has the story:
“Sci-Fi” Square: Beloved Local, Ackerman, Up for Honor.
The intersection of Franklin and Vermont avenues may soon be known as “Forrest J Ackerman Square,” thanks to an August motion by Los Angeles City Councilmember David Ryu (CD 4).
The square would honor Ackerman, a lifetime Angeleno best known for coining the term “sci-fi.”….
The notion of honoring Ackerman with a city square was first brought up at a March meeting of the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission, where a group called “Concerned Citizens of Los Feliz” tried and failed to gain historic status for a bungalow on Russell Avenue, which Ackerman called home for the final six years of his life.
Ackerman referred to the bungalow as his “Acker-Mini-Mansion,” in reference to the “Ackermansion,” his former home on Glendower Avenue in the Hollywood Hills.
(11) GEAR. Vox Day is thinking of doing some Dread Ilk merchandise. Here are the initial ideas.
I’m interested in knowing which designs are of most interest to the Ilk. So, here are a few random ideas; let me know which would be of the most interest to you, assuming that the designs are well-executed. Or if you have any other ideas, feel free to throw them out.
- Evil Legion of Evil (member’s edition)
- Evil Legion of Evil (Red Meat cartoon)
- Vile Faceless Minion
- Dread Ilk
- Rabid Puppies 2015
- Rabid Puppies 2016
- Vox Day Che
- Just Say N20 (Psykosonik lyrics on back)
- Spacebunny (cartoon logo)
- Supreme Dark Lord (Altar of Hate mask logo)
- SJWAL cover
- Cuckservative cover with 1790 law quote
- That Red Dot On Your Chest Means My Daddy Is Watching
- Castalia House logo “Restoring Science Fiction Since 2014”
- There Will Be War
- The Missionaries
(12) GAME SHOW. Steven H Silver is back with another stfnal Jeopardy! question:
A daily double in Awards. She bet $2400 and got it right on a total guess.
I’m sure all you Filers would have cashed that in.
(13) THE HONOR OF THE THING. John Scalzi confessed on Twitter:
Someone on Facebook is asking pals if she should name a new gecko after me or Douglas Adams and I've never felt more competitive in my life.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) September 14, 2016
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Steven H Silver, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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(7) As a counterpoint, here’s a summary of a talk on navigation challenges that Google’s self-driving cars face, with some details of how the software processes what it “sees”. TL;DR: AI is hard.
(2) IMHO, the all-time champion in this area is Jo Clayton. She’s brilliant at describing the thumb so that you think you’ve seen the whole hand, as the saying goes. If there needs to be an infodump, there will be an infodump, but not one moment sooner or later than it needs to happen.
Here’s a thing that I still find odd many years later.
One of the many people who came to Noreascon 3 in 1989 was a New Zealander woman whom I wound up spending a little time with, post-con.
She was very, very concerned about American cultural imperialism. Okay, sure. One example she cited was a shampoo, made in NZ, for NZers, featuring in its name and packaging American cowboy iconography. I thought the use of that iconography was extremely silly, but I really couldn’t see how something done in New Zealand, by and for New Zealanders, could be American cultural imperialism. She was adamant, though.
A drugstore was handy, so I took her in, went to the shampoo aisle, and showed her a shampoo made in the US for the American market, featuring a kangaroo. I asked her if that was Australian cultural imperialism.
No, of course not. That was American cultural imperialism, too.
The thing is, that claim made some sense to me even though both examples struck me as more very silly marketing than anyone being culturally imperialist. The kangaroo on a shampoo made by and for Americans really was Americans using Australian iconographic imagery.
But the cowboy iconography on the New Zealand shampoo for New Zealanders wasn’t Americans doing anything for or to anyone. In that, we weren’t guilty of anything except existing and having a history that produced imagery other people found striking.
So in the end, I was baffled and annoyed. Just by existing, I was Guilty.
And yeah, I know, cry me a river. There’s a lot of real cultural appropriation going on, in ways that are genuinely disrespectful and inappropriate. And Americans just don’t suffer much from that, even when we’re the targets.
But all these years later, I remember that cowboy shampoo in New Zealand, and not with the mild amusement that would have seemed natural to me for both that and the kangaroo shampoo. They’re ridiculous images for shampoo. But what I remember is that Americans are to blame even for things we have zero involvement with.
And that makes me a bit sad, more than anything else.
[3] File 770 is an actual Web Log, which is why it works, but a web log depends on the breadth and quality of the links it showcases, and Mike is good at selecting material of interest to his readers
What people call blogs in the degenerate era generally aren’t web logs but personal journals, which depend on the individuals writing them to be of interest to their readers – which usually isn’t all that much
So I’ve just discovered a manga about post-apocalyptic doughnut cats…
@Lis Carey – the perspective is, I think, one of dominance. US culture is considered to be world dominant and thus ‘privileged’.
I think that some of this is ridiculous: the sombrero wearing at a party. Hypersensitivity.
But the hypersensitivity is, I am sure in many cases, owing to a feeling that one is drowning in stereotypes of the culture an individual belongs to.
I don’t recall seeing any natives trying to get the guards at Buckingham Palace to crack a smile – but I’ve seen tons of american tourists, both for real and in film, trying to do it.
So, like many, I do think that some reactions are overblown, but I also understand (I think) why that is so.
Here’s a complete transcript of the speech mentioned earlier.
>>Also, emus are amazing and dumb and wonderful.
>
>And they have a funny name!
Some people are easily amused. I never found Electric Multiple Units all that interesting in themselves.
(well, the class 223 are brilliant, but I would say that)
Lis Carey re cultural imperialism:
One might conjecture that cultural imperialism consists not merely of taking the things of value from other cultures without respect or acknowledgement, but also the imposition of one’s cultural values on “inferior” cultures.
Especially when done by the inferiors themselves, as would normally be the case.
Gods talk!
(did I parse that wrong?)
@Lis Carey
I find it is a challenge simply because, as a writer, stealing other concepts and ideas is the basis of the craft. The lies we tell are supposed to convince the reader that we can get inside and explore the mind and habits and culture of every thing from a grocery clerk to a serial killer. And most writers I know are kleptic hoarders of trivial bits of information, ready to weave in tiny details and threads where they seem cool.
However, the other end of the spectrum I can easily see, when someone is putting in things in a way that is obviously glaringly wrong or worse, completely counter to their original meaning into a story. Malinda Lo mentioned it in her article talking about when she hits someone trying to incorporate Chinese culture or people into their stories and getting them wrong jolts her completely out of the story. For all of Shriver’s call of cultural misappropriation, the core issue with the Mandibles was that the only PoC character was shown as being married solely for approval by the ‘cultural elite’ and later is mentally disabled and led around by a leash.
I personally look at it the same way I look at any approach to writing. Lazy, stereotypical and ill-researched concepts are bad, and when you’re dealing with elements that resonate personally with a group of people, can be as offensive as outright intentional racism. If you’re going to do your research and you feel like any element you’ve included is a justified part of the story, then it isn’t for you. Other people may feel different, but with the lack of an objective standard, it is up to the writer to make that call for themselves.
These issues of representation and cultural appropriation are extremely important in children’s and YA lit. When most of the images some children see of their culture are stereotypes written by authors rooted in a majority white culture, and when culturally accurate representations are less available because majority culture’s inaccurate appropriations are the norm in publishing, it can do harm. I highly recommend reading some of Rudine Sims Bishop’s work.
For those who like numbers, the CCBC does great work in this regard. https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp
A gecko named Scalzi. Hmm…..
[followbox cheekily checked]
@RedWombat
Have you read Anthony Bourdain’s description of attending a pig slaughter in Portugal in ‘A Cook’s Tour’? You might enjoy it.
What on earth or off of it do you mean?
I’m talking about electronic greeting cards featuring cartoon cows. E-Moos
Cultural Appropriation: The English Language.
Here’s the always interesting Language Log talking about first contact communication issues in general and Ted Chiang’s story “Stories of Your Life” in specific, because apparently the story has been made into a movie coming out this fall called “Arrival” and a journalist sent Mark Lieberman questions about the subject. He got stuck on the first one and shares his answer with us.
@Matthew Johnson,
@Steve Davidson: Marvelous! Thank you. 🙂
@Hampus: Gaiman is, if I’m following correctly, the heir of the good folk of the Kingdom of Wessex and therefore well-positioned to expose the Norse as the imperialistic boogerheads they were.
@Lois: I know very few people who claim to keep web logs. I know substantially more who say they keep blogs, and who do keep them. This is one of those cases where I think the neologism goes hand in hand with a change in emphasis and priorities. Some bloggers do web logging; some don’t.
@Paul: MJ-12 Inception looks like wonderful entertainment reading. Thank you!
Coming out of lurking to say @Matthew Johnson, that poem is great! Another thank you for sharing.
And someone has to explain to me how Eastern Michigan University chose the eagle as their mascot and not the more obvious emu. I don’t even want to imagine how many colleges have the eagle as their mascot. You go with emu and you’re in rarified climes.
@Jack Lint: maybe because there are no emus naturally in eastern Michigan? Myself, I am always more pleased when the mascot is a local thing. So for where I live I prefer squids to tigers, slugs to cardinals, etc.
@Matthew Johnson: That was brilliant.
Since I’m in the camp that thinks terms like “cultural appropriation” and “race/gender are cultural constructs” are both ridiculous and damaging, let me take a moment to argue the opposite: that they’re important ideas that are worded very badly.
“Cultural appropriation” is a fine term to use for writing a story with elements from one culture or another and getting it all wrong. However, I think “cultural *misappropriation* would have been clearer. As others here have said, it really comes down to just showing respect.
“Race is a cultural construct.” Taken literally this is absurd because the children of immigrants don’t change color, no matter how assimilated the kids are, and babies have color long before they have any culture. However, it *is* true that racial *discrimination* is a cultural construct. That is, we discriminate against cultures, not a skin colors.
So is it right to expect assimilation as the price of equality? It’s not an easy question. (If you disagree, do you believe we should accept female genital mutilation as being part of some cultures? If not, then at least *some* assimilation is expected.)
“Gender is a cultural construct.” Same as with race, gender is evident in infants, so it can’t have anything to do with culture. Or, if you use gender to mean “the sex your brain thinks you’re supposed to be” (so a pre-op transsexual woman would have male sex but female gender), then it’s actually anti-trans to claim that it’s something changeable. Otherwise the trans people would be pretty dumb to get surgery for something they could fix with a little culture. In fact, it makes gay people look pretty dumb too. (A girl with the right culture is all we need.) And it’s even anti-intersex because although intersexed people have gender that is *not* obvious at birth, 99+% of them are quite sure what their gender is.
But if you take it to mean “effeminacy is a cultural construct,” then you’ve got something worth exploring. Most cultures have a definition of effeminacy, and it’s something they usually look down on or belittle. A woman can be successful in America “by being a man,” but is that how it ought to be?
Anyway, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Larry and Moshe are both right that, taken literally, these are terms that make Donald Trump sound reasonable. The key is not to take them literally.
When talking about cultural appropriation people seem to be covering a number of issues:
1) Misrepresentation – getting the facts wrong. This doesn’t really apply in our genre since its a made up world anyway. If there are vampires in early NY, why not sushi-eating Pilgrims?
2) Disrespect. I don’t have a problem with anyone intentionally disrespecting another group, eg the draw Muhammed people. But writers should be careful not to do it unintentionally, do research, use beta-readers etc.
3) Money. Some people seem to think that groups have an exclusive right to profit from art etc. involving their traditions. Which is ridiculous.
4) Politics. Who should have the power to talk about, portray, decide how to represent a group? Some people want the power for themselves, excluding both outsiders and differing views from within the group. We shouldn’t let them have it, even if they only intend to use the power for Good.
Greg Hullender:
Not really. The problem with your quote is that you want to restrict the word “Gender” to only the biological meaning. Which is not the only way it is used. It is also used for gender roles and gender placement in social hierarchies. When you say “badly worded” it is mostly because you won’t accept that the word has several different usages.
And well, “race” is a social construct also. Italians and greek didn’t use to be white 30-40 years ago in Sweden. They are now.
@Jack Lint: But Emus are an Australian animal. Chosing one as a mascot would be American imperialism!
(SCNR)
Hampus, I’ve seen Jewish people described as “white” several times and it always startles me a little. I know it’s very complicated, though.
Actually, that’s probably my mental summary of the cultural appropriation discussion as well. I was lying in bed last night thinking about colonialism and forced assimilation etc. but it’s messy and there are no simple answers. Other than my personal touchstone of trying to treat people with respect.
Unrelated, I discovered Dragons and Beasties yesterday and so adorbs!!! The art style reminds me a little of Oor Wombat.
Depends on the nature of money. If there is a finite amount of money then struggling Nigerian writers should get a first shot at stories set there, rather than Harry Potter and the Lion of Lagos taking the lot.
If HPatLoL demonstrates that there is a market for stories involving wizards in Africa and therefore the African writers all find publishers beating a path to their doors, then indeed, ridiculous.
As ever, I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Reading the text by Lionel Shriver and she’s a bit of an idiot, isn’t she?
Well, I’m part of the BDSM-community, I guess that could be likened to being gay for some people, and it is absolutely part of my identity. It is a common ground and we have our own meetups and munches where we can relax and not be in a minority. Relax and be with like minded. Relax and now that we can talk much more freely than we can at other places.
Who the hell is Shriver to say what is allowed to be part of other peoples identities? Unless she says that no one at all has any identity. Well, that’s privilige for you, wanting to decide who others shouldn’t identify themselves with.
She had many good points, but that one pissed me off.
In his customary swashbuckling style, he treats anyone’s concern about this issue as an absurd failure to comprehend how culture and the sharing of ideas works. That tone naturally makes people want to fire back on the same terms – whereas I wonder what everyone might say if he had expressed the same views in a persuasive structured argument.
Was exactly how I took Aaron’s pup-splaining screed. Some good points mixed with a lot of “treating anyone’s concern about this issue” “as an absurd failure to comprehend.”
(4) OF COURSE NOBODY’S HAPPY. Aaron has penned a long and thoughtful post about slates and this year’s Hugos in “Biased Opinion: 2016 Hugo Awards Post-Mortem” at Dreaming of Other Worlds. This includes a category-by-category breakdown of the results. Filers actually started discussing this yesterday. I want to point even more people at it by including the link in today’s Scroll.
… Which is also how you could explain Larry’s over the top skewering of cultural appropriation.
Thanks Mike!! This was unintentionally funny and made my day. Keep up the good work!
The University of Akron uses Zippy the Kangaroo as a mascot. Akron’s teams are known as Zips which is short for Zippers which itself was from a brand of goulashes made by BF Goodrich which was based in Akron. That’s the most convoluted bit of cultural appropriation I can think of.
The best mascot is of course the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slug (No Known Predator) made famous at the end of Pulp Fiction.
I’m looking forward to Christoper Guest’s Mascots. Think Best of Show or A Mighty Wind with mascots.
@airboy
Your post might be better if you used quote marks to indicate when someone other than you is talking/writing and indeed who you are quoting.
I though Aaron’s post was excellent. If you disagree, why do you think some puppies were so angry about the victories of items them recommended (sads) or slated (rabids)?
@Steve Davidson-
That’s rude and obnoxious behavior, the behavior of people who shouldn’t be out of their houses without a keeper.
Takamaru Misako–
But if the use of a kangaroo on an American product for Americans is deemed objectionable, I can refuse to buy the product. If it’s considered significant enough, I can write letters, and refuse to buy other products from the same company. The cowboy on a New Zealand product for New Zealanders, though, I can’t “refuse” to buy it, because it’s not on sale here. Nor is there anything else for me to boycott, nor does the company have any reason to care about my negative opinion of them doing so.
So when I’m told the cowboy on the shampoo made by a New Zealand company in New Zealand for New Zealanders is “American cultural imperialism,” I’m left feeling that words have no meaning anymore. There’s nothing I or any other American can do to stop or change that. This is something only New Zealanders can do something about.
Misuse of New Zealander and Australian wildlife in the US, or of Maori or Aboriginal cultural tropes and traditions, in American literature or other American cultural or commercial products, that I can make choices and decisions about. I can take responsibility for what I do in reaction to that.
But there’s nothing I can do about that cowboy on New Zealand shampoo. It has literally nothing to do with me, and had I been to New Zealand and seen it for myself, I would have thought it was strange and ridiculous, but also that it was no business of mine if New Zealanders liked it and wanted to use it. A weird choice, but theirs, not mine, to make.
All that said, while cultural appropriation is a relatively new term to me (not, that is, one I grew up with), it quite clearly does exist. It’s natural that Native American mythology has had an impact on American storytelling, but what Rowling did with skinwalkers is just disrespectful and wrong. So is much of the use of “Native American” imagery in American sports. Occasionally, in discussion of this, someone brings up the drunken leprechaun used by the Boston Celtics, and asks how that’s different. Well, it wouldn’t be different—if it were being used on some city where the culturally dominant ethnic group were German, or Scandinavian, or for that matter English without the substantial Irish presence. As it is,, though, it’s always been the Boston Irish making fun of ourselves and what our not very distant ancestors experienced. Give it a few more generations, along with continuing immigration, and a population with much larger percentages of Latinos, (Asian) Indians, Pakistanis, etc., might start to feel either puzzled or queasy about it.
When African tropes and themes get used, I often have to do some research before I can have any confidence whether what’s being used is being used appropriately and respectfully.
There’s nothing I can do about the cowboy in New Zealand.
What leaves me torn between laughter and being pissed off is what the Japanese have done with Christmas, but in the final analysis that’s not my problem, either. Cultures getting stepped on this way more regularly might likely feel differently about it, but that’s not the position I’m in as an American.
The position I’m in as an American is being held responsible for that damn cowboy on the shampoo in New Zealand (at least, as of a quarter century ago. By one person. New Zealander annoyance may well have killed it off by now.)
I don’t think I’ve said everything I meant to say, but on the other hand, I don’t know if I’m even making sense to anyone but myself, so I’ll stop for now.
Current read: Venus of Dreams
Current listen: Greenwitch (Dark is Rising book 3)
I wish I could keep my eyes open long enough to contribute properly to this C(M)A debate…! But alas sleep is here.
Emus though. Think about it.
Lis Carey:
I’m more pissed off with what Christmas has done with Yuletide. 😉
On Japan, this is my favourite Cultural Appropriation.
Was exactly how I took Aaron’s pup-splaining screed. Some good points mixed with a lot of “treating anyone’s concern about this issue” “as an absurd failure to comprehend.”
Based on this sentence, I’m pretty sure you don’t know what “-splaining” or “screed” mean.
Leaving that aside, what parts do you think “treated anyone’s concern about this issue as an absurd failure to comprehend”? For that matter, what part do you think is “pup-splaining”? Be specific. Vague hand-waving isn’t helpful or convincing.
From The Guardian about race as a social construct:
@PhilRML: Thanks! I couldn’t duplicate the original rhyme scheme but otherwise I thought it turned out pretty well.
@Dawn Incgnito: I’ve seen Jewish people described as “white” several times and it always startles me a little. I know it’s very complicated, though.
I’m Jewish by ancestry and I consider myself white because I’m uncomplicatedly accepted as such here in the US. In this country few people are able to distinguish different pale-skinned ethnicities by eye, though my sister-in-law who grew up in Ukraine says that people there can, and her family has experienced prejudice on that account. It’s a matter of context. I would be hypocritical to try to claim that I don’t have white privilege! Americans see me as white and treat me that way. So yeah race is a cultural construct because the very same face belongs to different races in defferent settings!
As is standard for these sorts of things (seriously, do some googling whenever someone picks an example of political correctness run amok and the great majority of the time it turns out there’s additional context that makes it clear that nobody’s running amok and this is a reasonable reaction), turns out there’s more to it:
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I would have wanted the administrators at my college to have started cracking down on that sort of thing to break the pattern of behavior
http://www.pressherald.com/2016/03/04/bowdoin-student-government-to-hold-impeachment-hearings-agaist-two-members/
What has Japan done wrong with Christmas?
@Matthew Johnson,
*applause*
That was delightful!
The daily offering from Early Bird Books has David Lindsay’s A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS for free today, along with discounts for a John Brunner novel and others.
The Lindsay novel is regarded as an influential classic, mixing fantasy, SF and philosophy. (Disclosure: I’ve had a copy of the 1968 Ballantine paperback edition for umpty-ump years, but have never quite gotten around to reading it.)
Other discounted ebooks being offered today by others include LINCOLN’S BODYGUARD, a Lincoln-is-saved alternate history that sounds like an interesting mix of AH and thriller. (Although if you like your alternate-Lincolns to be skewed towards the far end of the WTF scale, there’s ABE LINCOLN: PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1, where Lincoln comes out of suspended animation in the 1930’s and ends up joining John Dillinger’s gang.)
@Robert Whitaker Sirignano–
Yup! And proud of it! 😉
@Hampus Eckerman–
That seems fair.
@Robert Adam Gilmour–
It’s a very sex-oriented romantic Hollywood. Valentine’s Day on steroids might almost capture it.
I’ve also had the Ballantine Voyage To Arcturus forever without having read it. Maybe that’s not uncommon.
:: timidly raises hand :: I’ve got a copy of A Voyage to Arcturus and I’ve actually read it. Several times. It’s a great book for making me feel thick, because although it’s obviously allegorical, I’m still not entirely sure I’ve got all the allegories straight in my head.
I suspect it’s a bit of a Marmite book – you either love it or hate it. Personally, I would recommend it… at the very least, people should read it and make up their own minds about it.
(I might add that one bit of it seemed to make more sense to me after I’d read a different Lindsay book, The Haunted Woman, and spotted what I think is a common theme. I’m not sure, though. Like I said, it’s a good book for making me feel thick.)
Jonathan Edelstein’s post finally nudged my circling around this set of topics into what I think is a useful groove: “cultural appropriation” is a metaphor, and we need to be careful what metaphors we apply to a situation. When cultural materials (a metaphor again) are exploited for economic gain, the language-of-property metaphors can be useful. Maybe also when the “gain” is some kind of social “currency” (artistic reputation, cool factor).
But in the making of art, observing, depicting, borrowing, copying, mimicking, being-influenced-by, and the rest of the range of metaphorical takings seems to be inevitable and arguably necessary as part of (metaphorical) inter- and intra-cultural discussion. I know that musicians are inveterate coppers and copiers, and most of the music that’s worth making or listening to is the result of the kind of cross-breeding that would do a city dogpack proud.
I’ve spent a good bit of the last couple decades getting to know Hawaiian musicians–inheritors of a tradition that is itself eclectic and multicultural as all get-out. I have found them welcoming and generous to those of us who would like to join in and play along, while also willing to point out when we get too far from the elastic borders of Hawaiian-ness. (And I suspect they are not all that fond of tiki bars and wiki-wacki-woo. But on the third hand, “hapa haole” is not necessarily a term of opprobrium, either.) Steve Davidson’s comment on showing respect–“doing [one’s] research and attempting to ‘get it right'”–is right on the money.
I confess that in my innocence what some folk call “cultural appropriation” I tend to call “bad art.”
Re: Arcturus.
Listened to it in audiobook for a SFF Audio podcast episode. I think you are right, Steve, a “marmite book” is a good way to describe it.
Black Gate writes about one of my favourite movies: To Cast A Deadly Spell.
To me the story of how cultural appropriation becomes rude is like this.
There’s a group, a culture, that experiences prejudice and erasure of its cultural ways as an expression of the prejudice. People of that group are discriminated against in various ways for their expression of the culture. Some of the cultural ways are so valued by the group that they preserve them despite the cost exacted by the prejudice triggered thereby.
Eventually, that prejudice becomes deprecated as the overall society changes and no longer holds as much animus for that group as it previously did. As this happens, the cultural ways that were preserved by sacrifices of members of the group are noticed, and the culture ways themselves become markers with positive value (at least to some non-group-members) – courage and perseverance, perhaps, or defiance of overall society norms, or some other association that the preserved culture ways never had in their original existence or to their originating group.
So non-group members appropriate the culture way for this new purpose. The group members who preserved the culture way resent this new use. They are offended that people are using their thing to mean something it doesn’t mean. They are resentful that their sacrifice in preserving the culture way is now seeming to benefit the very people who made it so hard to do in the first place.
Seriously folks, don’t do this.
The Guards regiments are not solely ceremonial, they’ve got battle honours up the wazoo. They’re really armed and London is a prime terrorist target and has been for decades before 9/11.