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Feb. 8th, 2010 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
megwritesThis 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.
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.
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.
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Date: 2010-02-09 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-09 08:34 am (UTC)(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)
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Date: 2010-02-09 02:57 pm (UTC)In a nutshell, yes.
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Date: 2010-02-09 03:58 pm (UTC)This is why I am still searching for the Perfect Vampire Novel, because we need something better than that crap to put into people's hands. Or at least something least appropriational and skanky.
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Date: 2010-02-09 04:23 pm (UTC)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
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.
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Date: 2010-02-10 12:02 am (UTC)*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.
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Date: 2010-02-10 01:28 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2010-02-10 02:22 am (UTC)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."
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Date: 2010-02-10 03:04 am (UTC)