Novelist hopes militancy against "cultural appropriation" will pass

[Extollager]

Here's her speech:

Lionel Shriver's full speech: 'I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad'

For which there were reprisals:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/b...opriation-brisbane-writers-festival.html?_r=2

 

[Stuart Suffel]

Was reflecting on this issue a few days ago. Will take a peek at this tomorrow.

 

[MWagner]

Shriver's speech is absolutely on-point. Especially this:

...This same sensibility is coming to a bookstore near you. Because who is the appropriator par excellence, really? Who assumes other people’s voices, accents, patois, and distinctive idioms? Who literally puts words into the mouths of people different from themselves? Who dares to get inside the very heads of strangers, who has the chutzpah to project thoughts and feelings into the minds of others, who steals their very souls? Who is a professional kidnapper? Who swipes every sight, smell, sensation, or overheard conversation like a kid in a candy store, and sometimes take notes the better to purloin whole worlds? Who is the premier pickpocket of the arts?

The fiction writer, that’s who.

This is a disrespectful vocation by its nature – prying, voyeuristic, kleptomaniacal, and presumptuous. And that is fiction writing at its best. When Truman Capote wrote from the perspective of condemned murderers from a lower economic class than his own, he had some gall. But writing fiction takes gall.

As for the culture police’s obsession with “authenticity,” fiction is inherently inauthentic. It’s fake. It’s self-confessedly fake; that is the nature of the form, which is about people who don’t exist and events that didn’t happen. The name of the game is not whether your novel honours reality; it’s all about what you can get away with...​

From what I've seen, none of her critics have addressed this essential defence of fiction. They have only expressed their outrage. All heat, no light. All emotion, no reason. What juvenile times we live in, when a thorough and well-crafted argument provokes only complaints of arrogance. As though it's mean to expect anyone to counter with thorough, well-crafted arguments of their own.

 

[MWagner]

I heard this song on the radio today. An old favourite of mine, by John Prine.

Hello in There

We had an apartment in the city
Me and Loretta liked living there
Well, it'd been years since the kids had grown
A life of their own left us alone
John and Linda live in Omaha
And Joe is somewhere on the road
We lost Davy in the Korean war
And I still don't know what for, don't matter anymore

Ya' know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder ev'ry day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello"

Me and Loretta, we don't talk much more
She sits and stares through the back door screen
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen
Someday I'll go and call up Rudy
We worked together at the factory
But what could I say if asks "What's new?"
"Nothing, what's with you? Nothing much to do"

Ya' know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder ev'ry day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello"

Prine was 24 years old when he wrote it. How indecent of him to appropriate the voice and experiences of an old married couple three times his age. Clearly, this sort of thing has to be stopped.

 

[Brian G Turner]

you’re not supposed to try on other people’s hats

...

any tradition, any experience, any costume, any way of doing and saying things, that is associated with a minority or disadvantaged group is ring-fenced: look-but-don’t-touch.

Lionel Shriver appears to not understand the argument, and instead seeks to demean it by redefining it as a petty concern.

Cultural appropriation - in writing at least - is better defined no more than this: writing badly and thoughtlessly about people and culture beyond the author's experience is no longer acceptable.

I'm not sure why that should be so contentious.

 

[millymollymo]

Cultural appropriation - in writing at least - is better defined no more than this: writing badly and thoughtlessly about people and culture beyond the author's experience is no longer acceptable.

I'm not sure why that should be so contentious.

So what therefore constitutes 'considered thought' in this context? Reading a few non-fiction books for research? Gaining an understanding of the time or situation which is outside the author's personal experience? Holiday-ing in the relevant country?

 

[Brian G Turner]

So what therefore constitutes 'considered thought' in this context?

Presumably anything that avoids lazy stereotypes.

Kind of like the literary equivalent of method acting - immersing yourself in the world and experiences of the people you are writing about, to try and deliver the better performance.

 

[Nick B]

Cultural appropriation - in writing at least - is better defined no more than this: writing badly and thoughtlessly about people and culture beyond the author's experience is no longer acceptable.

I'm not sure why that should be so contentious.

The problem, Brian, is that the people who love outrage for its own sake, are not using that definition. They are shouting down everyone they consider 'the privelaged' who dares to write about anything that isn't within that 'privelaged' persons world.

So, the next time a non-ginger person writes about a ginger character, I'm going out there with my sword of social justice held high, to smite the ignorant down, because for sure, they have no idea what it was like growing up with ginger hair.

 

[HareBrain]

Cultural appropriation - in writing at least - is better defined no more than this: writing badly and thoughtlessly about people and culture beyond the author's experience is no longer acceptable.

It seems to have gone beyond that. At its more extreme margins, it says that privileged writers shouldn't try to tell the stories of the marginalised -- however well-researched -- because it [somehow] prevents their own voices being heard. There might be a fair point in there about marginalisation itself, but that's a bigger issue.

And you sometimes get the feeling that the acceptable bar for "research" is to get the prior sign-off of every member of the group the character belongs to.

 

[Brian G Turner]

the people who love outrage for its own sake, are not using that definition.

As in another thread, no writer will please all readers. But most of the discussion I've seen on cultural appropriation is effectively about writers showing a lack of awareness about what they are actually writing about.

And you do raise a really good point - I would presume a lot of writers will designate a secondary character as having ginger hair, for no other reason than to add colour to the cast. Same happens with adding black people to a white cast, etc. Wouldn't it be better if such writers put a little more thought behind such decisions, and attempted to make such characters real, rather than fulfil a superficial need?

At its more extreme margins, it says that privileged writers shouldn't try to tell the stories of the marginalised -- however well-researched

IMO the issue of context is important here. If a studio decided to produce a film about a woman's struggles against sex discrimination, but passed over an award-winning woman writer who has tackled similar issues in order to commission a male writer who is expected to research it, then wouldn't that decision in itself seem like discrimination - and therefore an extension of the very topic supposedly being tackled?

That isn't a spurious example - I keep encountering general items in the news like this.

 

[Old_Man_Steve2016]

It seems like "cultural appropriation" is more of an issue in fashion than it is writing, where it seems we writers get a greater license than most fields.
I'm thinking of the 'daishiki debate' and the 'dreadlocks debate'. Long story short, you're gonna get dinged if you appropriate extremely distinctive things from cultures without acknowledging where they came from (and use them properly).

There's also the issue when people of a minority culture (usually someone of a darker skin) have a particular style or practice and they can't follow it without getting dinged/expelled from school/fired, but when a person of a majority culture (Usually but not always, straight white male) appropriates a cultural style or practice of the minority culture, they're seen as unique/edgy/trendy/better looking than before/such and such. It becomes the 'in' thing, but the people who developed and innovated it (usually of a darker skin, but not always) don't see the benefits of their cultural style or practice becoming appropriated; not right away, in most cases.

It's complicated, so I'm providing a helpful article by an law professor on the issue. TLDR: don't appropriate something that someone can sue you for. Cultural Appropriation: When 'Borrowing' Becomes Exploitation | Huffington Post

 

[Nick B]

I honestly believed that multicultural would mean sharing of cultures. I appear to be wrong.

So, will we be ensuring future episodes of The Musketteers will all have white, french males playing them? And of course Vikings. we'll have to replace a great many of the actors with actors from nordic countries.

It's going to be a bit rough in the film industry.

Or, we could all grow up instead.

 

[Ursa major]

Lionel Shriver appears to not understand the argument, and instead seeks to demean it by redefining it as a petty concern.

Cultural appropriation - in writing at least - is better defined no more than this: writing badly and thoughtlessly about people and culture beyond the author's experience is no longer acceptable.

If it ever was this, it's an odd name to give it. How is bad writing by an author about people who aren't like the author "cultural appropriation"? It's bad writing, and should be criticised for being just that. Such writing is usually seen as bad because it uses stereotypes and produces cardboard cut-out characters, whose presence in a story can often be described as "token" when it isn't reinforcing the stereotype(s). That isn't appropriation; it's (bad) substitution.

Note the example Shriver gives: the complaint from someone who hadn't -- who refuses to -- read her book inspired by the treatment Shriver's own brother received because of his weight problems. (He died, to quote Shriver's speech, "from the complications of morbid obesity.") How can one criticise bad writing, or stereotyping, when one has not read any of it? Easy: declare it to be "not your experience". (I'm assuming -- I haven't read it either -- that Shriver's novel was not about being the sister of someone who is morbidly obese, but of being someone who is morbidly obese.)

So this isn't about bad writing, but about people who want to control what other people say, not necessarily only about them personally, but about people who might be less 'Privileged' than the author.

It isn't as if those in the same silo are necessarily going to do a good job: there are lots of people who, at first glance, would fit in the same silo as me (white, male, adult, British-born). Only some of them** would do a good job of writing a character that would fit in that silo. And unless the only characters in the book fit in the silo, what are we to make of the other characters in the book who might be -- brace yourselves -- women, children, not white, born outside the UK? What if only one character in the book ticks all the "cultural" boxes that the author does? Scandalous!

And to use reduction ad absurdum: how long will it be -- given that radicals in other political spheres are known for their fissiparousness (hence all the left-wing and right-wing fringe groups and parties) -- before we're facing a mirror image of the infamous "one-drop" rule: the "all-drop" rule, which declares that the author must have each and every attribute of the character (there can only be one, obviously) in their book?


** - Someone who doesn't fit in the same silo as me might do a better job than anyone who is in that silo.

 

[Ursa major]

they have no idea what it was like growing up with ginger hair.

How dare you assume that your hair was exactly the same shade of red as mine, you cultural appropriator, you!

​

​

 

[Brian G Turner]

I honestly believed that multicultural would mean sharing of cultures.

It means exactly that - sharing, not simply taking then dismissing the concerns of those involved.

So, will we be ensuring future episodes of The Musketteers will all have white, french males playing them? And of course Vikings. we'll have to replace a great many of the actors with actors from nordic countries.

Well, Alexander Dumas was black, and I pity the audience watching Vikings played by actors with broad Australian accents.

How is bad writing by an author about people who aren't like the author "cultural appropriation"?

Because this is being argued in context with the historical and contemporary issues of prejudice and discrimination that can make such issues especially sensitive.

the complaint from someone who hadn't -- who refuses to -- read her book

You're always going to get political extremes in socio-political issues - but IMO it's a mistake to define Conservatives by the actions of the Far Right, and Liberals by the actions of the Militant Left.

 

[Toby Frost]

Shriver was on Newsnight a couple of days ago, having a debate along these lines with another author. I didn’t see all of it and I’ve not been able to find it on the BBC’s Youtube channel, although it should be on their website. One of the points that the other author raised was that this cultural appropriation led to the same story always being told about X group of people: a story about a woman in Saudi Arabia will always be about her being oppressed, etc. I would say that yes, the oppression will always be there, the same way that a story about life in Poland or Manchuria during World War Two would always be set against a backdrop of oppression. Not to include that, at least as background, is to deny the truth, like writing a novel where the sun doesn’t set or gravity only happens half the time.But a lot can be said within that honest background.

Shriver seems to be saying “Write about what you want, just do a good job”, which makes sense to me. But are her critics saying “You mustn’t write about X at all”? If so, that just seems absurd. The more I think about this, the less sure I am that they actually know for sure what they want except to express a sense of righteousness.

I think if we are going to get anywhere on this topic, and not just stake out the same out territory over and again, we need to be sterner about where these claims are coming from. If they are coming from experts, fine, they may well be worth hearing. But self-righteous students with zero experience of the real world, who are presumably wealthy to begin with, have no right to expect people to listen to their posturing. In fact, using their own weapons against them, how dare these pampered zealots cast judgment on people who have actually had to live outside the intense comfort of a campus? The same goes for internet pundits and “performance” bloggers, many of whom appear to be either attention-seekers (seek therapy please) or half-crazy (ditto). And writers who comment on other writers are, really, just uttering an opinion. Their sense of offence, or their own background, isn’t a card that can be played to trump the argument of whether the book in question is any good.

It is also important to start distinguishing between writers and publishers. This really seems to be beyond some critics, as if the moment the writer stops typing, the book appears in the shops. The business of what words end up on the page is (largely) the writer’s business. The business of who gets into print (and whatever is done to promote them, etc) is the publisher’s. The complaint may be similar, but the person it is being addressed to it entirely different. Presumably the critics are so overcome with righteous fury that they can’t tell the difference.

Unfortunately, a lot of this is about growing up. More specifically, it’s about fighting against this shrill, bloodthirsty attitude that seems to be on the rise everywhere at the moment: not so much “Help, help, I’m being oppressed” as “This might be bad - let's make someone suffer for it”.

 

[Ursa major]

You're always going to get political extremes in socio-political issues - but IMO it's a mistake to define Conservatives by the actions of the Far Right, and Liberals by the actions of the Militant Left.

One can only make that mistake when it isn't only the "extremists" who are up in arms.

Given that the "victims" of "cultural appropriation" would, by its own definition, include most of the population of the world (not all of whom are unable to get their views across to the rest of the world), one would have thought that if "cultural appropriation" was "mainstream", rather than being merely the province of a very small number of advocates, we'd have heard a lot more about it (at least in the Grauniad...).

And one would have thought that it would be very much based in the wider world (both physically and metaphorically) rather than what seems to be places that could be seen as easily defined by their educational "elitism" and/or their location in the richest countries on the planet (i.e. by their high Privilege)....

 

[Nick B]

The problem isn't the relatively small number of people who are genuinely distressed by it, it is the mass of attention seeking internet warriors who will take up arms just so they can be suitably aggrieved by every possible action.
No, we should not be taking peoples culture in vain, we should not misrepresent any culture. We should however, also not be segregating those cultures further, by crying racism every time someone writes a story/film or whatever that may have characters or events from a culture different from their own

 

[Ursa major]

it is the mass of attention seeking internet warriors who will take up arms just so they can be suitably aggrieved by every possible action

Are even this (wider) group really a mass? Or are their numbers simply assumed to be large because, as attention seekers, they are noisy.

Even in the internet world (i.e. ignoring all those who don't or can't access the internet), a million people is not a mass. And I don't think there are anywhere near a million internet warriors (unless one counts those who "like" the utterances of the warriors as being warriors themselves, assuming that there are a million of these... er... like-minded people).


Regarding the results the noisiest achieve.... Are they due to force of numbers? Or are they the consequences of those who actually take the decisions -- internet warriors rarely have real power (if they did, they would be wielding it, not seeking attention on the internet) -- prefering to have a quiet life (which means doing at least some of what the loudest voices keep demanding)? If it's the latter, they are being very foolish: the more people realising that being irritatingly noisy gets results, the more people who'll become irritatingly noisy.

 

[MWagner]

You're always going to get political extremes in socio-political issues - but IMO it's a mistake to define Conservatives by the actions of the Far Right, and Liberals by the actions of the Militant Left.

But it's the extremists who are controlling the agenda. Not necessarily because all, or even most on the Left agree with them (judging by the comments in the Guardian article, even most of the left find militant identity politics appalling and illiberal). But because they're terrified of being regarded as oppressors. So the most egregious nonsense uttered by any deemed oppressed goes unchallenged, while truthful and important arguments such as those made by Shriver provoke censure by those in authority at a book convention or any other broadly left organization.

Shriver seems to be saying “Write about what you want, just do a good job”, which makes sense to me. But are her critics saying “You mustn’t write about X at all”? If so, that just seems absurd. The more I think about this, the less sure I am that they actually know for sure what they want except to express a sense of righteousness.

That is exactly what they want - to express righteousness. Or rather, to acquire recognition and status by expressing righteousness. Our cultural sensibilities have overcorrected for an era of conformity and oppression by not only recognizing those who historically had low status, but by inverting the old hierarchy and giving them more status, more legitimacy, than those who were on top before, while enforcing a new conformity. But of course, humans are status-seeking animals. Once any behaviour earns status we've incentivized that behaviour, and can expect to see more of it. When Yassmin Abdel-Magied theatrically walked out of Shriver's speech in Brisbane, she earned status and recognition for it. Got a column in the Guardian to express her outrage. Shriver's speech was posted only once the Guardian saw the popular critcism against Abdel-Magied's column.

I was heartened by the reader comments in response to Shriver's article. They suggest we might be turning the corner in this sorry cultural trend. But only because writers like Shriver are bold enough to openly denounce what many others have privately held misgivings about.