It is a huge problem of course. John Edwin Mason wrote on it for National Geographic a few years ago, commissioned by National Geographic as part of what seemed like some soul searching on its part. But of course it's more difficult to change a way of seeing and thinking overnight, especially if the will really isn't there and a particular way of seeing is embedded in every form of photography, including those that are apparently seeking new ways of seeing.
It's interesting to see ideas of cultural appropriation developing in fashion or literature. In literature in particular, it seems there are attempts to make the debate and the language manageable and workable, identifying what it really is that makes a story work or not work in narrative terms.
Last week in the Guardian, Nesrine Malik wrote about American Dirt - a book with Mexican protagonists written by a non-Mexican author that got a huge advance and huge controversy centred around the idea of cultural appropriation and the idea that the story is not the author's to tell..
According to Malik, the problem with American Dirt’s is bad writing, not just cultural appropriation.
'Because here’s the real issue. Once one cuts through the noise and actually reads the book, what becomes clear is that the problem isn’t that Cummins wrote a story that wasn’t hers to tell, but that she told it poorly – in all the classic ways a story is badly told. Two-dimensional characters, tortured sentences, an attempt to cover the saga of a migrant without even addressing the wider context of migration or inequality. No wonder the book was so popular with publishers.'
Sound familiar? And here the problem of the bad story is not one that is limited to culturally appropriating authors. It is one that applies to all writers, including those who are not culturally appropriating. Partly this is due to the fact that most stories written are bad stories. Most writers are bad writers, most books are not great (20,000 were published in the UK last year. They're not all hits). But partly it's due to the fact that simplistic stories are what get commissioned. Publishers and editors love a bad story, especially if it's about something that is other to them.
'Despite the claims that white authors are savaged by philistines who cry cultural appropriation at every juncture, the reality is that non-white authors are the primary victims of the publishing world’s habit of catering to cliched taste, forcing them into topical ghettoes. In 2015 the Writing the Future report found that the “best chance of publication” for a black, Asian or minority ethnic writer was down the route of literary fiction that confirms the stereotype on themes such as “racism, colonialism or post-colonialism, as if these were the primary concerns of all BAME people”, said report editor Danuta Kean.
The idea here is that buzzword-ticking projects, however well-intentioned, might be limiting in voice, in story, in world view. Just because you stick post-colonialism in the blurb does not make it a good story. In fact it problem makes it a bad story for all kinds of reasons. It's the same in photography where you get stories about identity, gender, or space - that challenge, interrogate, and question - but don't.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't address these issues, not at all. The questioin is how do you address them. In her book We Need New Stories, Malik writes that one does need to face up to one's present and past history, and that one cannot gloss over one's past. In Britain, the glossing over the past comes with a wallowing in colonial history. AThis wallowing is “an exercise in mass consensual dishonesty... By glossing over the detail and omitting the legacy of imperialism, the British approach towards history is defensive, therefore inevitably dishonest and, ultimately, delusional… reduced to national hagiography...'
The idea here is that things need to be recognised but in a three-dimensional manner that recognises the emotional, the personal, the creative sides of life, and goes beyond the limited didactic voice.
The current issue of Mslexia has a feature on cultural appropriation by Debbie Taylor. It quotes the problem as exemplified by Kit de Waal, as one where "When one culture, the dominant one, uses stuff that belongs to a minority culture, that minority culture can feel a sense of loss of injustice."
It also looks at #ownvoices as a guide to what might count in your own voice, and also includes this considered diversity check list developed by MOGAI writers.
For Bran Lindy Ayres of MOGAI Writers, the real question is one of laziness. Stereotypical portrayals are the product of laziness, 'whatever our identity, whatever character we are creating.' Research is central to creating rounded cahracters. 'It doesn't need to be a political issue. It shouldn't be about ticking a box for diversity. It's just about being a better writer.
Taylor recognises the need for stories to have research, to be three-dimensional and addresses the problem of what you can write about (it uses Girl by Edna O'Brien book as an example) and the potential blind alleyways you can get stuck in. If you can't write about anything other than what you are and the world you inhabit, then very little would get written.
Kit de Waal echoes this point with her belief that 'We want the freedom to write the book we choose, to inhabit other lives and explore the full range of our imagination and ability.'
Zadie Smith agreed, writing that she has been many things in her fictions, she has had many voices that are not her own, and recognizes that writing about others can either be a containment (ie a negative form of control through stereotyping - as with Mammy in Gone With the Wind) or something that can expand our understanding - and possibly compassion. 'I sometimes wonder,' she writes, 'if our preferred verbal container for the phenomenon of writing about others was not “cultural appropriation” but rather “interpersonal voyeurism” or “profound-other-fascination” or even “cross-epidermal reanimation”? Our discussions would still be vibrant, perhaps even still furious—but I’m certain they would not be the same.'
There are people working in the same ideas in photography, but I sometimes wonder if the language of empowerment, compassion, or engagement (to take just a few terms used) is a kind of cultural appropriation deflector shield, if all the recognition and respect and involvement doesn't create more 'interpersonal voyeurism' and 'profound-other-fascination' that is two-dimensional and flat, or just visually uninteresting. If writing's not interesting, you try not to read it. The same goes for photography.
Or maybe interpersonal voyeurism is part of the point of photography? I often think it is, and if so, how does that play out. Can something like the #ownvoices roadmap featured above even begin to be applied, and if so where and how?
I'll be writing about this so this is a little mapping out of some thoughts and joining a few dots with a few readings I've stumbled across over the last few days.
In the meantime, congratulations to The Parasite for winning the Best Film Oscar. Here's the appropriation or #ownvoices snippet for that film from the South China Morning Post. I still enjoyed it though but I think there are hidden depths that aren't quite as visible to non-Koreans as they are to Koreans. Maybe it's not just about who makes it, but who watches it. And what they say...
“I don’t think Parasite makes any pretence that social mobility is a possibility,” said Im Seo-hee, an assistant professor of English at Hanyang University, adding that the film “suggests that the poor are poor for a reason; they make bad plans”.
“The film’s comedy laughs not with the poor but at the poor, the way the poor get immediately lax and disorganised as soon as the owners leave the house, the way they fight each other when they should be working together,” Im said.
