Cultural Appropriation

Overthink

Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What do Gwen Stefani, Iggy Azalea, and Camille Monet have in common? They are all blonde women who are probably guilty of cultural appropriation. In episode 73 of Overthink, Ellie and David tackle cultural appropriation, starting with the kerfuffle over Claude Monet’s painting La Japonaise at The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Pulling from their own experiences of cultural appropriation and from academic explorations of the topic, they consider whether individuals should even be called out for cultural appropriation. They talk about Nguyen and Strohl’s concept of “group intimacy” and debate whether we can ever draw a clear line between insiders and outsiders in a particular cultural group.

Works Discussed

Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture

Jesa Marie Calaor, “Gwen Stefani: “I Said, ‘My God, I’m Japanese’”

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures

Erich Hatala Matthes, “Cultural Appropriation Without Cultural Essentialism?”

C. Thi Nguyen and Matthew Strohl, “Cultural Appropriation and the Intimacy of Groups”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Overthink.
0:13.7	The podcast, where two philosophers converse with one another about ideas, concepts, and the world.
0:20.2	We're your co-hosts, Ellie Anderson.
0:22.4	And David Pena Guzman.
0:24.2	Ellie shit hit the fan in 2015 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
0:31.3	The museum had Claude Monet's 1876 painting La Japonese, which is French for Japanese lady or Japanese woman, it's just
0:39.6	the feminine of Japanese in French, on display as part of a larger kimono art exhibit.
0:47.5	And as a way of creating audience engagement, they created this event called Kimono Wednesdays
0:53.3	in which museum goers were basically encouraged to play event called Kimono Wednesdays. Yeesh.
1:01.3	In which museum goers were basically encouraged to put on a kimono that was available on site and to take selfies in front of La Japonese.
1:07.6	There's so much to say about this, but I just quickly want to interject unrelated to our episode
1:11.8	topic that this is such a classic symptom of the way our society experiences art right now.
1:18.2	Oh, we have this famous old painting.
1:20.7	Why don't you engage with it by taking a selfie in the same outfit?
1:25.4	The selfieification of contemporary art engagement.
1:29.8	Yeah, and the mirroring of the person in front of the painter as the subject in front of
1:35.6	the iPhone camera.
1:37.4	And also the point that in order for you to appreciate art, you essentially have to wear
1:41.4	it as if you're like wrapping yourself with the canvas of the Monet
1:44.3	painting in the form of a kimono. But as you can expect, this led to a major controversy with
1:49.8	various people protesting the exhibit and accusing the museum of participating in cultural appropriation
1:56.9	and performing a kind of aesthetic yellow face.
	...

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