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[megwrites]

This article from the NYTimes Op-Ed "Sucking the Quileute Dry" about how the Quileute people have been affected by the popularity of the Twilight series of books and movies.

To millions of “Twilight” fans, the Quileute are Indians whose (fictional) ancient treaty transforms young males of the tribe into vampire-fighting wolves. To the nearly 700 remaining Quileute Indians, “Twilight” is the reason they are suddenly drawing extraordinary attention from the outside — while they themselves remain largely excluded from the vampire series’ vast commercial empire.

I find it so saddening that Meyers has made such a profit from appropriating the Quileute, and that this is neither an isolated nor especially egregious case (given other cases) of non-native authors, creators, and entrepreneurs making profits hand over fist by taking the cultural property of others as though the beliefs, names, history, and heritage of other peoples are up for grabs because they are not copyrighted or patented under law.

Appropriation has real consequences, especially for the appropriated who often lack the numbers or resources to fight back, to balance the uneven, unresearched, unethical portrayals of themselves in larger media outlets.

Or: as if I needed another reason to dislike the Twilight phenomena entirely.

Comments

[lilacfield.livejournal.com]

Where do the boundaries of "appropriation" lie? This is something I've been asking myself. For instance, I've been thinking of and am starting to write an outline for a story where children with special powers live during the Ming Dynasty in China. Would that be appropriation or simply historical fantasy? Is it called appropriation when it's someone else's culture and we don't bother to do proper research?
(I'm being completely honest in asking the above, because racefail, while nothing very new to me, has been presented on my fpage in a far more personal way since Racefail 09)

[handyhunter.livejournal.com]

Is it called appropriation when it's someone else's culture and we don't bother to do proper research?

In a nutshell, yes.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

I've taken a long while to think about your question, and in some ways I'm the wrong person to ask. I, as a white, Western, educated American am usually the appropriator, not the appropriated. Thus, I come to it with a sort of half-ignorance that I'm trying still to overcome and make sure I'm checking in my own work and actions.

That said, I think proper research is a big component, for whatever your values of "proper" are concerning the individual culture/thing being appropriated. But I don't think it's just about making sure you get nitpicky details right without understand some of the larger context and issues.

However, proper research isn't everything in my view. And honestly, the person who has said some of the wisest words on that topic is deepad over here in her "I Didn't Dream of Dragons" post (http://deepad.dreamwidth.org/29371.html).

Two pertinent bits (you really really REALLY! should read the entire thing several times over if you haven't already):

Also--this research what you write about blitheness annoys me because the costs of research are skewed towards the First World economies. It's not just a question of Neil Gaiman going to China or Naomi Novik going on a research safari to South Africa; even Harlequin romance writers can afford to go on a cruise and write about a Latin lover

And:

You know why I flinch? It’s because the assumptions flatten the problem. A poorly written book has cardboard cut-out characters, and a well-written book has thoughtful, nuanced characterisation. But I have spent a lifetime reading well-written books with nuanced characters that hurt me by erasing or misrepresenting me.

The reason I quote these passages is because I think that many writers want to believe that if they lay down the right academic/historical research that they have done their due diligence and after RaceFail and reading so many of the eloquently furious and furiously eloquent things people like Deepa D. have written? I now disagree that it is enough just to research.

I definitely disagreed after reading Novik's Temeraire book set in China. While well researched, I think there was something fundamentally lacking in Novik's portrayal of the Chinese and of China itself. I can't put my thumb on it, but it boils down to feeling like she portrayed the Chinese not as real people being seen through foreign eyes but as though they really WERE the way the British of the 18th century would have seen them.

I think research is a function of respect, and the humility of an Outside writer toward their subjects and their own limitations. I think that it isn't just about research, but making sure that all your research doesn't come from only other Outside sources (ie, books about the Ming Dynasty written just by European/American academics) or just from that one Chinese friend you may have (I say "you" in the broad, universal sense - not to you specifically).

I think Outside writers who do a good job acknowledge their sources, acknowledge that they are not experts, credit the cultures they borrow from, and do not present themselves as more authentic or authoritative than people who are Insiders. They make sure to respect sacred spaces, and sometimes to leave those alone.

I have been an appropriator, unconsciously, most of my life. My culture scoops up the words and philosophies and sacred practices of others though they're items at a yard sale going on the cheap. People around me practice yoga and probably have little or no understand of where their practices come from or what yoga means to those from whom we in the West took it. Rich (idiotic) white Americans pay to sit in a sweat lodge without understanding what the practice was originally intended for or why it is not for them.

I'm glad you asked, but I feel so completely inadequate to answer this question.

[handyhunter.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Maybe it's not just research, but research + some sort of...empathy*? for one's characters (who are of a different race/culture). I mean, if we can have well-portrayed vampires and Vulcans, etc, we should be able to write people that way too.

*ETA: Or respect, I suppose. But that also runs into the problem of what respect means to different people. It's almost like, for some, POC should be grateful they show up in stories at all, never mind how they're portrayed.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

It's almost like, for some, POC should be grateful they show up in stories at all, never mind how they're portrayed.

This, exactly this. I've read a lot of books where the research was good, but it was misinterpreted or misconstrued and the author seemed to just want to be rewarded for even including and researching that other inferior culture at all and including it in their book.

I also think maybe being able to de-center one's own experiences and views (to the extent that ANY human being can do this) is part of it, because if a writer can try not to privilege their own views about something and their own cultural experiences above that of others they stand a better chance of actually writing something good, something that doesn't add to other people's oppression and misrepresentation.

[lilacfield.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for your reply.

Before Racefail 09, I usually saw racefail and appropriation in an academic context - in class, in novels I read. In novels set in Indonesia, it seems to me that authors tend to highlight aspects that interest them most/are most visible to them as foreigners. Which may not be wrong, per se (they can't possibly know, understand, or be familiar with each and every aspect of Indonesia - even I am not), but it does leave me thinking, "Indonesia is more than this" or "This is not always the case here."

[lilacfield.livejournal.com]

And, funnily enough, not long after I posted the above comment, I ran across this (http://mikandra.livejournal.com/313829.html).