Episode Transcript
Speaker 1:
Roots, Race, and Culture is made possible in part by the contributions to PBS Utah, from listeners like you. Thank you.
Danor Gerald:
Hey everybody, you're listening to roots, race and culture, a new podcast from PBS Utah. If you like what you hear, we hope you'll subscribe, leave us a review, and share with your friends. All right, now let's get this thing started.
Lonzo Liggins:
Hey everyone. And welcome to Roots, Race and culture, a new show on PBS Utah, where we bring you into candid conversations about shared cultural experiences. My name is Lonzo Liggins.
Danor Gerald:
Hello, I'm Danor Gerald. According to Dr. Mia Moody-Ramirez, in a recent issue of Health Magazine, cultural appropriation is the practice of using or taking something from another culture without giving proper recognition or respect to that culture. And quite often, cultural appropriation gets confused with cultural appreciation. To help us navigate these murky waters, we've invited a couple of experts in the field.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yes, indeed we have. We have two lovely guests here. Erika George, to my left, could you introduce yourself?
Erika George:
Good evening. I'm Erica George. I'm the Samuel D. Thurman professor of law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, and I also have the honor of directing the Tanner Humanities Center. In that capacity, we do a lot of work with culture, with appreciating it, with having conversations about how it's appropriated, but mostly exposing people to different forms of art, literature, cultural forms in different contexts, so that we can better appreciate.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah. And you the first African American law professor there, right?
Erika George:
I am, in fact. Yes.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yes.
Danor Gerald:
Okay.
Lonzo Liggins:
That's awesome.
Erika George:
Thank you. Thank you.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah, that is great. And to my right, we have Paisley. I'm I'm not going to say- I'm going to say this right.
Paisley Rekdal:
Say my name.
Lonzo Liggins:
Paisley Rekdal, right?
Paisley Rekdal:
That's correct.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yes.
Paisley Rekdal:
Thank you very much. I'm Norwegian. I'm half Chinese and half Norwegian, that's how I got the last name. It's a little tough.
I'm Paisley Rekdal. I'm a distinguished professor at the University of Utah, I'm Utah's poet Laureate, and I actually wrote a book called Appropriate or Appropriate: A Provocation.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yes.
Paisley Rekdal:
So it's all about cultural appropriation, and literature and the arts, and what are the various practices that go into appropriation?
Lonzo Liggins:
This is a great book, actually. I had a chance to read it, and I'm going to love getting into the discussion about the book. You know, it's funny, this definition of cultural appropriation, for me and Moody-Ramirez. How do you two stand on that? Is that pretty accurate, as far as that's concerned? I'll start with you.
Paisley Rekdal:
What do you mean by accurate exactly? The ways in which you opened the show? I think that is accurate, in the sense that we have so many different kinds and types of activities that fall under the category of appropriation.
Lonzo Liggins:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paisley Rekdal:
Some we accept, and in fact we encourage each other to do, and others we really revile and are angry by when we see them. So the question is why do we accept some practices of appropriation and why do we reject others? The line between appreciation and appropriation is, sometimes, almost individual by individual. The kind of ethics that we have to develop as artists, and as consumers in the world, mean that there is no hard line, consistent ways of defining what is harmful appropriation for a lot of people. But that said, there's two issues in appropriation. One is, can you do it? And the other is, should you do it?
Lonzo Liggins:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paisley Rekdal:
Because of course we're thinking about a very long history, in which lots of cultures have gone in, colonized, and taken cultural and sacred artifacts from other cultures, and made money off of it, and displaying it in their museums, or in their artists, reproducing these as motifs and subjects in their own art. Those are harmful when we think about the long legacy of colonialism and racism as it still affects us all.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right. Absolutely. What about you, Erika? What were your thoughts on that?
Erika George:
I actually appreciated the divide, though we understand there's some blur between. There is appreciation, and with that we are connoting some form of respect for a culture.
Lonzo Liggins:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Erika George:
Versus appropriation, which just feels and is much more extractive. It's about enriching oneself or enriching one culture, at perhaps the expense of another; not crediting and undermining. There are ways in which the appropriative aspect of things is quite connected to how am I drawing benefit economically, status wise, something that is in vogue or cache; cashing in on the creativity of another.
The other hat I wear as a lawyer. There's a regime of intellectual property protection, because we value the intangible property of creativity.
Lonzo Liggins:
Absolutely.
Erika George:
We want to encourage it.
Danor Gerald:
Yes.
Erika George:
But we also don't want to say you cannot use. We also have things like fair use.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Erika George:
Are we sampling music? If so, are we maybe introducing that music to new audiences that may not have ever known what a Miles jam, Miles Davis horn riff would be?
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah, yeah.
Erika George:
So navigating that, what I appreciate about Paisley's work, is that she asked nuanced questions. Should you do it? Can you do it? Of course you can do anything, but why are you doing this, and is it the right thing to do?
Lonzo Liggins:
And what's the impact?
Paisley Rekdal:
Yeah.
Lonzo Liggins:
You know, it's funny, because Danor and I, we both have our- We've had lengthy chats about cultural appropriation, and I see it as more of a music thing, he sees as more of a clothing and hairstyle thing.
Paisley Rekdal:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lonzo Liggins:
Like with me, when I think of cultural appropriation, I think of music. Like I think of old rhythm and blues.
Paisley Rekdal:
Right.
Lonzo Liggins:
People, when they think of rock and roll, they think of Elvis Presley, they think of the Rolling Stones, they think of the Beatles, but there's another element to that. I used to study the history of rock and roll, and there's these other artists. For example, I'm going to show you a picture of some artists right now that most people don't really know.
Erika George:
Oh.
Lonzo Liggins:
See, to the left, there's Big Mama Thornton, and there's Louis Jordan.
Paisley Rekdal:
Yup.
Lonzo Liggins:
A lot of people don't know who they are. But Big Mama Thornton, she was the person who made this song Hound Dog really popular. Louis Jordan is the one who helped to fuse jazz, and blues and bring that together. Now, Elvis Presley.
Paisley Rekdal:
Right.
Lonzo Liggins:
The Beatles, Rolling Stones, they didn't know exactly who those guys were.
Danor Gerald:
Right, right.
Lonzo Liggins:
But we don't know who they are. So the credit has kind of been stripped. Those guys didn't make as much money, they were kind of left in the cold-
Danor Gerald:
Exactly, right.
Lonzo Liggins:
When it came to the actual wealth of the music. So to me it's-And look, I'm not bagging Elvis Presley. I'm not bagging the Rolling Stones. They, I think, were appreciating the culture. It was the record labels that were kind of just knocking the other old black artists off to the side.
Paisley Rekdal:
Yeah.
Lonzo Liggins:
But the problem with it, is that regardless, those artists got left out in the cold. And I think when it comes to cultural appropriation, that can be the ultimate damage of it.
Paisley Rekdal:
That's one of them. That's definitely one of them, because there's always that economic argument and that economic issue. One of the things, going back to something Erika said, is that we're all encouraged to appropriate. We think there are certain people who are appropriating, and other people who are appropriated, but the reality is that we're all doing it. When we're talking about like the loss of Big Mama Thornton's economic power in that market, which is terrible, there's a sort of flip side to it, which is that there's a younger artist who's also sampling and using other people, like the Rolling Stones, and turning it into their own art.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
So one of the things that we're risking-
Lonzo Liggins:
In case of hip-hop.
Paisley Rekdal:
In the case of hip-hop, exactly. So one of the risks that we have of saying appropriation is always wrong, is that we don't understand that you can also appropriate the appropriators, and you can turn something that usually was maybe a colonial art form or something that absolutely took advantage of certain communities. You can turn that into a powerful critique back. And to a certain extent, that's kind of what you want to have in that openness. This sort of, if one person appropriates negatively, one person can appropriate positively, and actually open up and widen that conversation even globally.
Hip-hop, for example, is not just an American art form, though of course it was born and raised in America. There are global hip-hop artists who see some of their own racial, or ethnic, or political struggles as aligned with American hip-hop artists.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
And have taken those art forms and said, "We're part of this too. We're part of this conversation." So you lose something economically, for sure. But you also gain something politically, trans-nationally and trans-communally.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Erika George:
Yeah. I wanted to ask, so K-pop?
Paisley Rekdal:
Yes.
Erika George:
In relation to hip-hop [crosstalk 00:08:28].
Lonzo Liggins:
Yes, yes, yes.
Erika George:
Which has been this powerful, cultural and political movement.
Paisley Rekdal:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Erika George:
I think it was K-pop fans that bought the tickets or booked up tickets for a particular political event, in order to alter what the composition of that audience was, or whether there was an audience. So there is something about- I wonder if that, is that cultural appropriation, or is that recreation and sharing and solidarity work?
Paisley Rekdal:
That's solidarity work, and I think that's a great distinction to make. Again, sometimes we just lump all of these different activities under the same name.
Going back to Korea for a moment. I used to live in Korea, and it was in the nineties and K-pop was sort of coming to its feet. One of the things that I found really disturbing was a lot of these young bands were trying to take on American styles.
Erika George:
Yeah.
Lonzo Liggins:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paisley Rekdal:
And there were a couple of bands that actually dressed up as if they were African American. It was like a minstrel show.
Erika George:
With blackface?
Paisley Rekdal:
With blackface.
Erika George:
Oh.
Paisley Rekdal:
Right? And that's a perfect example of cultural appropriation in it's worst, most negative form. This isn't about solidarity work. This isn't about expanding or having a global conversation. This is about performing ideas of race. Oftentimes, when we're thinking about what turns something from appreciation to appropriation, it's this collapse of the racial identity means something as a kind of performative act itself. This is what it means to be black. This is what it means to be Asian.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
So for instance, when Katy Perry gets up and she decides to sing one of her big songs, Unconditionally, dressed as a geisha, there's no reason for her to do that except to sort of plug into this stereotype of Asian women as subservient, docile, and suicidal lovers of white men.
Lonzo Liggins:
Wow.
Paisley Rekdal:
Right? And so it's this collapse of race means this particular kind of thing. They're not just playing the music, they're playing the race and a stereotype of the race.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Danor Gerald:
Wow. And you know, I think there's another side of it. Not everyone's an artist, right?
Paisley Rekdal:
Right.
Danor Gerald:
Not everyone has that. But, for example, what you wear, your hairstyle, that sort of thing, and even down to like the kind of car you drive, can be associated with those sort of...
Paisley Rekdal:
Exactly.
Danor Gerald:
But I was having a conversation with someone the other day, and they said they were in Africa, this blonde lady from America, and someone had gifted her- It wasn't a sari, but it was-
Paisley Rekdal:
Like a kente cloth?
Danor Gerald:
Yeah, yeah. Actually it was from India.
Paisley Rekdal:
Oh, okay. Oh, sorry.
Erika George:
Still [inaudible 00:10:57] probably.
Danor Gerald:
Yes.
Paisley Rekdal:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Danor Gerald:
Yes, yes. And so when she wore it, people were saying, "Well, what are you doing with that?" But I'm sitting here thinking, well, it was a gift.
Erika George:
Where was she wearing it though? In the U.S. or...
Danor Gerald:
Probably when she was back in the United States.
Erika George:
Oh, okay.
Paisley Rekdal:
Right.
Erika George:
Because I spent a lot of time in India, and I actually felt out of place if I didn't wear salwar kameez.
Danor Gerald:
Exactly.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yes.
Erika George:
It was inappropriate not to. If I go into a mosque, it would be inappropriate not to cover my head.
Paisley Rekdal:
Exactly.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right, right.
Erika George:
Though I'm not culturally appreciating, I don't even know if I'm assimilating. It's a gesture towards respect.
Paisley Rekdal:
Exactly.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yes.
Erika George:
In that cultural context.
Danor Gerald:
And they appreciate that [crosstalk 00:11:30].
Erika George:
But I also [crosstalk 00:11:32].
Danor Gerald:
[crosstalk 00:11:32] their economy as well, right?
Erika George:
Yeah.
Danor Gerald:
Because if you're not buying their stuff, then that's not helping them out.
Lonzo Liggins:
That's a big part of tourism, right?
Erika George:
Right.
Lonzo Liggins:
It's a big part of tourism. If you start saying I want to buy this because you know, it's culturally appropriate, and then it becomes a situation where you're damaging them as opposed to helping them.
Paisley Rekdal:
There's a complete difference between somebody offering their goods, and gifts for sale for wearing. Just sort of saying this would be, you know. We want you to do this, versus sneaking around and maybe going into a sacred ceremony, and then taking pictures of it or trying to wear something like that. I think that's really important, because when we're thinking about, again, the idea of performing a race, there's nothing that requires me, if I put on- And I've lived in Japan. I've worn yukatas and kimonos. There's nothing that makes you have to perform being an idea of Japanese. You can wear the clothing without actually burlesquing the culture.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right, right.
Paisley Rekdal:
And I think that's what a lot of people forget, and so people think, "Oh, I'm just going to wear this cheongsam, and now it makes me an Asian woman. That's not what happens. You just want to wear a dress.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
Right?
Danor Gerald:
You know, one of the biggest mistakes that I regret in my life, when I worked at Disney World, Epcot Center has all of these different shops from around the world. I saw the flyest silk suit there. I put it on and I felt like a million bucks, and I was like, "Oh, I'll come back and get it later," but I could never find it again.
Paisley Rekdal:
Oh no.
Danor Gerald:
I was so sad. But we also have a video. You want to introduce the video?
Lonzo Liggins:
That's a funny aside. Anyway, so there's a quote from your book that I wanted to read because I want to show you guys a video. It's from an Apache woman who is now a student at Utah State University. But I think this quote in the book will segue perfectly into it. The quote is, "It's one thing to buy and display a Berber basket purchase during a trip to Morocco, that's a form of cultural appreciation for an object that the Berbers gave explicit permission to sell. It's another thing entirely to secretly photograph a sacred Hopi ritual and publish it in a book of photos under your own name. This is no longer cultural influence or admiration, but theft. And this theft also returns us to the problem of how certain artists and institutions have materially profited from the cultural products of other communities." I think this is a perfect segue into this, because it also does some emotional and cultural damage to some of the people who are, in particular, on these reservations. So can we play that video?
Shelby James:
[foreign language 00:13:54], Shelby James, [foreign language 00:13:55]. Hello, my name is Shelby James, and I'm from the San Carlos Apache tribe in San Carlos, Arizona. I am currently a student here at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah.
I grew up my entire life on my reservation, and it wasn't until I left home to come to school, that I realized that I was no longer part of a majority, but I was part of a very small minority. The native people here have a small representation, and I feel like throughout America, most people see native American culture only from what's being portrayed in the media. With that, comes along with my exposure of racism and cultural appropriation.
I've seen so many people where native American regalia as a costume, as a prop, as an accessory, as an aesthetic. For me, that just demeans who I am as a native American person, as an indigenous woman, because my identity has been reduced to a $20 costume. With that brings in the stereotypes of what native American people or indigenous people are represented as.
Native American women have been sexualized throughout all of history. The most popular would be Pocahontas, who was a child, and she's seen as beautiful, as a princess, when in real life, she was one of our first missing murdered indigenous women.
For native American people, it hurts knowing that most of our country still sees us as something that can be sexualized, something that is demeaned into what people say honor us. Honoring us can be found in different ways, but it doesn't have to be found in dressing as us, trying to be us, because it hurts to know that someone can dress up as a native American and take it off whenever they feel like it. I carry around my identity 24/7. I can't take that off.
It feels less empowering when you see people use these aesthetics as a way to identify you as, and that's something that I hope we can change soon, in the future.
Danor Gerald:
Wow.
Lonzo Liggins:
Powerful.
Danor Gerald:
Passion.
Lonzo Liggins:
That was very powerful. I'd love to get your thoughts on it. What do you think, Paisley?
Paisley Rekdal:
I think she's completely right. Again, there's no question about that to me. Because we were sort of joking before, about sort of the ways in which people even appropriate Cinco de Mayo, which is they turn it into a kind of cartoon. The ways in which, especially native women, have been sexualized, and certainly there's and a tremendous history of genocide that is continuing on today with what's happening with native women. So to take, unthinkingly, these objects and artifacts from other cultures, or to try to dress up as something that you want to perform or to imagine yourself as aligned with. I think we have to be able to say, where are we different? And respect those differences too, because all of these objects and items that we're attached to, have historical meaning and value. Oftentimes, when we move into cultural appropriation, it's because we're not actually paying attention to the historical meanings of the people who have these items, where these items, who they are, and this isn't just dress up.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
It's a very powerful and sad story to talk about. Yeah.
Erika George:
What really got me in her expression, was the, "I don't take this off."
Paisley Rekdal:
Exactly.
Lonzo Liggins:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paisley Rekdal:
Yeah.
Erika George:
This is something that I am embodying.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Erika George:
And others are extracting and reinventing in ways that are not consonant with the truth that she understands and knows about Pocahontas, as the first missing and murdered indigenous woman.
Paisley Rekdal:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Erika George:
Right? But we glorified that, there's the wonderful Disney cartoon.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Erika George:
But there are deeper histories and stories that she lives and knows, and to see that played back with a dissonance that is disrespectful, captures the injury. I heard that in her voice. And I think when one is in conversation with people who haven't had to think about the consequences of an appropriation, or what is the real injury here or the harm. We've talked about the economic extraction, but there is an emotional impact as well.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yes.
Erika George:
That I thought was very clear in her.
Danor Gerald:
I think the problem that people have, is they don't know the difference a lot of times; they don't understand what they're doing. There's a certain ignorance when it comes to this topic, and it's been traditionally done this way, and it seems like it's not a big deal. But to me, what you guys are doing is important, because the difference is really education in my mind.
Erika George:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paisley Rekdal:
Completely.
Danor Gerald:
Like if you are able to explain what this garment that you're wearing means, or the symbolism or the traditions behind it, when someone asks you, then you're wearing it with appreciation, because you're using as an opportunity to teach about a culture. At least that's how I see it, in my mind.
Lonzo Liggins:
Do you get push back from white students or other students who say, "Look, this is too much"?
Danor Gerald:
"I'm just having fun," right?
Lonzo Liggins:
"What's the big deal here?"
Paisley Rekdal:
This is the thing. When I started writing the book about appropriation, I think one of the things that commonly is said by certain white students is the human imagination is free, and it's not. I always have to explain that we might all share very similar emotions: jealousy, love, rage, desire. But we're only able to express them in particular ways, based to a certain extent on the ways that we've been socialized and historicized into very particular bodies. You know, for example, the whole thing about Will Smith's slap, and the whole thing about this plays into a stereotype of angry black men who get violent, right?
Lonzo Liggins:
Right, right.
Paisley Rekdal:
The disappointment that I was reading from some think pieces, sort of saying, "You can't express your anger this kind of way."
Lonzo Liggins:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paisley Rekdal:
But that's what I'm talking about, which is we can all express and feel anger, but we can't express them in the same ways because of racial stereotypes; the ways in which historically we've been imagined.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
And when we, ourselves, imagining our own bodies, we are also constructs of history in society.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
And so there's nothing really free about this. So when people push back and say, well, I should be able to do this because, "Hey, what's the big deal?" The big deal is you just don't know your history.
Danor Gerald:
Right.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Erika George:
I have to jump in and talk about my classmate Ketanji Brown Jackson, we were in law school together.
Paisley Rekdal:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Erika George:
I don't know if you watched the confirmation hearings. This is an African American woman, very accomplished lawyer, who wears her hair natural, in dreads.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Erika George:
Just take 13 hours of questioning and abuse, no anger.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Erika George:
And she didn't get to pull a Brett Kavanaugh.
Paisley Rekdal:
Right.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Erika George:
So there are guardrails and constraints around how a particularly embodied person has the liberty, freedom to express the full range of human emotion.
Paisley Rekdal:
And I think that is, when I think about what race is, in some ways it's a series of choices that get made on almost a minute-to-minute basis, based on who you're speaking to and who you're around.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right, right.
Paisley Rekdal:
I get to be more this or less this.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
Depending on who I'm with.
Danor Gerald:
Do you guys have any parting words for us that you'd like to share about this topic?
Erika George:
Well, I do want to continue to invite people to explore and appreciate other cultures. I think that's how we come to understand the commonalities that we share as humans, and appreciate the differences. Respect. If we ground what we're doing in a true spirit of respect, and inquiry, and asking, and engaging, I think there are ways that we can be better, do better, and certainly continuing to understand and appreciate other cultures, is something that is, as an educator, I'm committed to doing.
Lonzo Liggins:
Perfect. Paisley, we are going to keep you around.
Paisley Rekdal:
Okay.
Lonzo Liggins:
We're going to wrap this show up. We're going to talk more about this on the podcast, so we're going to hear more of your words and wisdom.
Speaker 1:
We'll get back to this conversation, on Roots, Race and Culture in just a moment.
Speaker 2:
PBS Utah is also home to other dynamic podcasts. More Than Half covers some of the most challenging issues facing women in Utah, and how it takes all of us to make change happen. Here's a clip from the episode, A Separate Space.
Speaker 3:
I don't think a lot of people realize that it's just not common for people of color, especially women of color, to see themselves in the stories that we're reading.
Speaker 2:
Subscribe to More Than Half wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1:
And now back to Roots, Race and Culture, from PBS Utah.
Danor Gerald:
So we're back here with Paisley Rekdal. We're going to start talking a little bit more about your book, Appropriate or Appropriate. Either way.
Paisley Rekdal:
Either way.
Danor Gerald:
Either way, you can say either way. It's funny, because I was going through this and there's a lot. You don't just talk about literature. You talk about art, you talk about music, you talk about it all. You even mentioned Graceland, Paul Simon's album.
Paisley Rekdal:
Yes.
Danor Gerald:
I was like, "Oh no, she's going to after Paul Simon." But you made some good points about it, though. I want talk about that in a second, but I wanted to find out. You mentioned culture appropriation in two categories, subject appropriation and content appropriation. Could you break that down a little bit for us?
Paisley Rekdal:
Yes. Actually there's many different forms of appropriation. From adaptation, which is when you're taking a text that we might already know or an art form we already know, and then adapting it and telling a new story. That's part of the pleasure of that. You can actually see, for example, Romeo and Juliet is being redone from a trans perspective, in Brazil, as a TV show. That's a form of adaptation.
Subject appropriation, content appropriation, or motif appropriation. This is when we get into sort of our fine-grain things. Motif appropriation is where you're taking elements of an artist's work and readapting reusing it for your own purposes. If I write a poem that's a pantoum or villanelle say, which comes out of Malaysia or France, that's a form of motif appropriation. If I rewrite a fairy tale or myth from another culture, that's motif appropriation too.
But if I'm writing in subject or content appropriation, that's where I'm starting to think about writing from the viewpoint of someone outside my own identity; someone from a very different culture or someone from a potentially different race as well. I'm writing about their experiences or I'm maybe using their own voice to tell their story.
Danor Gerald:
Now, are any of those- Excuse me. Are any of those appropriate or do you feel like they're all off the table?
Paisley Rekdal:
That's a great question, because technically they can all be appropriate. Being an appropriator in art doesn't require that you perform any racist kinds of stereotypes. It doesn't even require that you materially benefit from this. You could give all the money away to somebody else. But oftentimes some of these appropriations become harmful because the artist hasn't really thought through some of the ways in which they are writing about these cultures or imagining these cultures, and that they might fall into very well-worn, stereotypical tropes.
Danor Gerald:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
Or they basically hide the fact that there is, in fact, this kind of cultural influence, and they take all that money and that attention for themselves.
Lonzo Liggins:
I think there's times where I feel like, especially with young people, cultural appropriation is confused. They don't actually understand what it is. It's like anything to do, oh that's cultural appropriation.
Paisley Rekdal:
Right.
Lonzo Liggins:
Oh, that's cultural appropriation. It's a lack of education with it. I was reading this, this article where they were talking about Kim Kardashian wearing a Notorious BIG shirt, just appreciating the Notorious BIG. I think what comes to my mind is, where is it that cultural appropriation gets just completely blurred, where people don't understand that there's actually a specific way of appreciating culture and a specific way of appropriating a culture?
Danor Gerald:
Let me just jump in there. I think some of that also has to do with what the younger generation are growing up with, like memes, and this constant sense of posting, or new ideas and mashups and these sort of things. Because, in the digital world, it's so quick and easy to take a little bit of this and mix it with that, and, oh, you have something new and it's okay. So that's, I think, why the lines are so blurry and confusing to them.
Paisley Rekdal:
I think it's a great point. You know, I hadn't thought about it that way, but I think the digital space makes people more likely to, as you say, cut and paste, and mix and match, and put things together. But at the same time, it's made us open to a world of judgment that we haven't had before, where people can make a mistake and it's amplified.
Lonzo Liggins:
Oh yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
Tremendously. And I think that is one of the reasons, also, why people are so, at the same time that they're mixing and matching, and matching and appropriating wildly in their artistic lives, they're also terrified of the ways in which people have to stay in their lanes.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
But of course, when we're trying to talk about staying in our lanes, I mean, if you really think about your life, there's very few lanes that you're not crossing over.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
We're not really only one thing.
Lonzo Liggins:
Especially in American culture.
Paisley Rekdal:
Especially in American culture. We're encouraged to appropriate in so many ways, whether it's just consuming products that we like, or watching artists that we love perform, and they're referring back to other artists. Part of art is this amazing and just constantly evolving conversation. That's what makes art special. Not it's only this person ever said this one thing, but actually, you listen to a confluence of voices. That's what music is. That's what art is.
Danor Gerald:
Well, I rarely listen to the radio, but I remember a little while back, flipping through stations and I got to a country station. There's some old school country music that I like, I grew up in Texas. But I'm listening to it, and I was like, "This sounds like hip-hop does."
Paisley Rekdal:
Yes.
Danor Gerald:
Like, what happened to country music?
Lonzo Liggins:
It's blended into it.
Paisley Rekdal:
Well, and Lil Nas X, actually.
Danor Gerald:
Yes.
Paisley Rekdal:
He does, he hits it with a country song that he actually makes like a black, queer kind of anthem.
Danor Gerald:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
There's a wonderful podcast called That Ain't Country, by a guy named Harry [inaudible 00:28:22], where he's like tracing the roots of country music via African American influences.
Danor Gerald:
Wow.
Paisley Rekdal:
So we have this idea that, in some ways, these art forms where we think we know what they look like, but they've always been blended at their sources.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Danor Gerald:
But blended has been good, though.
Paisley Rekdal:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Danor Gerald:
Like there's- Elvis Presley is good, you know. Beatles are great, Rolling Stones are great. There's a lot of good stuff that can come from that.
Paisley Rekdal:
Yeah.
Danor Gerald:
I don't think there's anything wrong with borrowing styles, that's how music has been ultimately created.
Paisley Rekdal:
Evolving.
Lonzo Liggins:
I love [inaudible 00:28:48].
Danor Gerald:
It's always evolved that way. But in your book, you were talking about Paul Simon's Graceland. And because I want you to elaborate on that, because that really plays into what I'm talking about, which is where you can create something really great, which is what Paul Simon did with that album.
Paisley Rekdal:
He did.
Danor Gerald:
He brought in those South African influences, and he made this amazing album.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Danor Gerald:
I love the song Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.
Paisley Rekdal:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Danor Gerald:
But there was a flip side to that. Would you talk about that?
Paisley Rekdal:
Yeah. I mean, for me, Graceland is one of those perfect examples of how it can be great and bad, pretty much at the exact same time. Graceland is this amazing album; I played and played and played it all the time in college. He brings in, and he was very open about bringing in, these South African artists, who were very big in their own country, at that time. They were well known musicians. And he's like giving full credit, and made sure that when he went on tour, he was like, "They're going to get first class treatment, they're going to get all of the same things that I get." But the problem is, that once it hit the West, those names dropped out of the picture.
Danor Gerald:
Oh.
Paisley Rekdal:
And he still got the lion's share of the profits, the attention, all that sort of stuff. He was like, "You know, I'm doing this in part to pay attention to apartheid in South Africa, to give these artists an opportunity to be heard also, in a wider context." But even people who were very pro defeating apartheid were saying, "You actually violated a treaty that said, you're not going to go into South Africa and perform and do anything, and bring any sort of money into this economy in order to stop apartheid." So there's a lot of little issues on the side. I shouldn't say little issues, but big issues, on the side of making Graceland, which is, did he still get more attention? Did he violate a treaty that actually, maybe if he'd stuck outside of South Africa, might have been more powerful in changing apartheid earlier, stopping it.
Danor Gerald:
Wow.
Paisley Rekdal:
That's the thing. We have this amazing piece of art, and we have artists who worked with him, some of them who are very divided about that. They'll say, "This was a great experience for me, this did everything I wanted it to," and others who are still bitter about it to this day.
Danor Gerald:
Wow.
Lonzo Liggins:
Is it possible to appropriate white culture?
Paisley Rekdal:
Oh, yes.
Lonzo Liggins:
Because we're talking a lot about minority cultures and stuff like that, but white people will say, "Hey look, you guys are taking our culture. You guys are flying our [crosstalk 00:31:02]."
Danor Gerald:
What is an example of that? I want to hear an example of what you think is appropriating white Western culture, or something along those lines?
Paisley Rekdal:
Well, I lived in Asia a number of years, and so the appropriation of white culture, European culture, is kind of everywhere. From the use of American or French on different signs. French bakeries are huge in Japan and in Korea.
Lonzo Liggins:
Wow.
Paisley Rekdal:
And the Francophilia feel is in enormous in Asia. There's whole shows that you would watch, where the plot line was can I get to Paris? There's a fascination with the culture. Obviously, they wear Western dress just the way that we wear Western dress.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
They also wear more traditional dress for themselves too. So they've been appropriating white Western culture for ages, and so they have a very different relationship to it. Now we might, in the West, say, "Well, that's simply because they have been disempowered," but that's not how they see themselves. They see themselves- Economically, one can make the argument that a lot of Asian nations are not disempowered whatsoever, globally.
Lonzo Liggins:
Sure.
Paisley Rekdal:
So the ways in which they're adopting, adapting, changing white culture to fit their needs. K-pop is, itself, obviously influenced very deeply by American hip-hop, American rock and roll and music.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
So we're adapting and appropriating all the time. So this doesn't only work in one direction. When we think about appropriation, we might imagine it's like white Americans taking whatever they want. The reality is everyone's taking everything.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
All the time.
Lonzo Liggins:
Is it damaging white people, though, when people are taking their culture? Is that where it gets blurred?
Paisley Rekdal:
That is a great point. So no. White people have done pretty well, historically.
Lonzo Liggins:
Sure.
Paisley Rekdal:
And they have a lot of cultural power and cache, so any sort of negative press about white people can pretty much be drowned up by a lot of very positive press done by white people, put out by white people. Historically it doesn't have the same weight, you're right. But when we're thinking about, in Asia, I find that Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans have a very different relationship and understanding of appropriation than nationally born Japanese, or Chinese, or Koreans, because they have different senses of empowerment within their own nations. If you are a minority in America, if you're underrepresented in some way, you've grown up with just an entire lifetime of people looking at you askance, and having very particular ideas about you.
I'm biracial, I'm half Chinese. The image of the orientalist, submissive, hypersexualized Asian woman has been with me my entire life.
Lonzo Liggins:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paisley Rekdal:
Men approach me based on that.I recognize that these have really damaging effects, and so appropriation isn't just a sort of academic thing for me. I understand what the dissemination of these stereotypes means for people on an emotional level, on a day-to-day basis. But if I lived in Asia, what's interesting is I would be approached as a white woman there, and I would be approached in some of the same ways.
Danor Gerald:
Wow.
Paisley Rekdal:
Like their idea of the hypersexualized American woman, that she'll sleep with anything. So I recognize that that stereotype can cut a very different way too, in another kind of country. We all stereotype each other. It's the recognition of this, and the ways in which we can use appropriation weirdly to sometimes change these dynamics and change these narratives, that interests me.
Lonzo Liggins:
I want to bring it local.
Paisley Rekdal:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lonzo Liggins:
Because there was a story here. I think we're all familiar with this story that happened some years back, of a girl wearing a prom dress.
Paisley Rekdal:
Oh yes.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yes. She was a Utah student. She wore, I think you can explain it better because you actually mentioned it in the book.
Paisley Rekdal:
I do.
Lonzo Liggins:
I'd love to hear that story and get your thoughts on that.
Paisley Rekdal:
It's a young woman who is going to a prom, and she decided to wear a cheongsam, which was what we might consider a traditional Chinese dress. It's also called a qipao in the north. There's nothing wrong with wearing a cheongsam. I would argue that lots of people wear the cheongsam. But she decided to start posing in this way that looked a little bit like she was in the musical, The King and I. Doing this very stereotypical bowing.
Lonzo Liggins:
Oh no.
Paisley Rekdal:
And with a prayer position. She just looked like she was parodying the country into the culture, and burlesquing it, and also getting it wrong because no one in China does that.
Lonzo Liggins:
Oh wow.
Paisley Rekdal:
So she turned a dress, not into a cultural artifact, which maybe all of us could wear and share, but into a cultural parody, to something that became about her ideas of Asian-ness itself. So I think a lot of this-
Lonzo Liggins:
That's where the controversy happened.
Paisley Rekdal:
That's where the controversy happened.
Lonzo Liggins:
It wasn't as much the dress, the wearing it?
Paisley Rekdal:
Right.
Lonzo Liggins:
That would have been okay.
Paisley Rekdal:
That would have been fine.
Danor Gerald:
But the gestures-
Lonzo Liggins:
Most people, it was the gestures.
Paisley Rekdal:
It was the gestures.
Lonzo Liggins:
It was the behavior. It was blackface.
Paisley Rekdal:
Right, exactly.
Danor Gerald:
Yeah, blackface. But so much of that comes from, I think, the media that she was exposed to.
Paisley Rekdal:
Right.
Danor Gerald:
To The King and I, and to all of those stereotypical, old-school kind of movies and things. That people at a young age, that's how they gain some sense of understanding different cultures. Unless you're traveling all over the world when you're a young adolescent, you don't know, other than what you see.
Paisley Rekdal:
Exactly.
Danor Gerald:
And so that definition was really inappropriately put into her mind, and then she just followed suit. I wonder how she even got to the point where she decided to wear this dress? Who thought this was a good idea?
Paisley Rekdal:
Yeah, yeah. That's sort of a tagline to it all, who thought this was a good idea for all of it? I think, going back to your comment, which is so important here, which is that I think a lot of people, in their ignorance, they think they're appreciating this culture. This speaks to the powerful, powerful ways in which these stereotypes have ingrained themselves into the culture. And the problems with appropriation too. I feel like I'm promoting appropriation, but this is a real problem, where when we keep taking people's stories, and performances, and clothing, and burlesquing them and making them into these kinds of stereotypes. It becomes so repeated over, and over, and over again, people might just sort of thoughtlessly reach for the thing that they've seen. They're like, "Well, it must be good because I see it everywhere."
Danor Gerald:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
"This must be true."
Danor Gerald:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
"Because I see it everywhere."
Danor Gerald:
It has to be acceptable, everybody's doing it.
Paisley Rekdal:
Everybody's doing it. Exactly.
Danor Gerald:
I have a little question for you that's kind of on topic, but maybe you consider it off. I don't know. What do you think about when someone, let's say, is doing a movie, and the movie, let's say, is based in a certain country. And the actor playing that character-
Paisley Rekdal:
Puts on a terrible accent, maybe?
Danor Gerald:
Yeah. Has nothing to do with that culture or has no heritage there. Do you feel like that's a form of appropriation? Where does that fall in this whole thing?
Paisley Rekdal:
I have to say, I struggle with that, because I remember when Ghost in the Machine was coming out, and then Scarlett Johansson is cast as an Asian woman.
Danor Gerald:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
Or you see this happen over and over again in Hollywood, and you just go crazy. Because representation is so tough.
Danor Gerald:
Yes.
Paisley Rekdal:
And it matters.
Danor Gerald:
You couldn't find an Asian actress?
Paisley Rekdal:
Not a single one, right?
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
And it matters because the entire movie is filled with people who are white, and then the one character supposed to be Asian is also filled by a white person.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
But I also recognize that there is something to be... They are actors.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
And I think it does make me wonder, why am I comfortable with certain types of acting performances? For instance, a straight actor playing somebody who's gay. Why am I more likely to accept that than, say, somebody who's going to try to perform being from a different nation, national identity?
Danor Gerald:
I think Matt Damon played in a movie. It was a while ago. Do you know the one I'm talking about?
Paisley Rekdal:
I know what you're talking about. He goes to the Great Wall. I think it's called The Great Wall or something?
Lonzo Liggins:
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Danor Gerald:
The Great Wall. I was like, what are you talking about?
Paisley Rekdal:
Yes, I know. Well, even just recently. What was it? The House of Gucci, where all of them were performing with these bizarre, and not even similar Italian accents. I was like, if they were in Italy, they wouldn't have these accents. If they were truly playing Italians, they could just speak like themselves, and you just pretend that they were Italian. Why are they trying to perform these kinds of cultural tics? It struck me as absurd, and for a while I couldn't even tell if the movie was meant to be a comedy. I was like, "Well, maybe this is supposed to be funny, and it's not as funny as it thinks it is."
Lonzo Liggins:
I even get irritated when there's like black, British actors playing American parts.
Paisley Rekdal:
Yeah.
Danor Gerald:
[crosstalk 00:39:36] American.
Lonzo Liggins:
Something sounds funny.
Paisley Rekdal:
Something's funny, yeah.
Lonzo Liggins:
He said that word wrong. Who would say it like that?
Danor Gerald:
Well, that's been a thing. A lot of leading men, which would normally be, traditionally, American hero types, and this is white American heroes. The great white male savior that's been kind of going on forever in America. But yet now they're casting like British actors, Australian actors, and all of these other actors to come and play some of those roles. I wonder if they feel like that's not fair. I wish there was a white man here to speak on that.
Paisley Rekdal:
What you're also getting to is the very uncomfortable truth around appropriation, and acting in general, which is there's no actual unbreakable link between you, and your culture, and the products you produce. Which means, just because I'm biracial doesn't mean I'm going to produce the great biracial American novel. It could be that someone's going to write about biracial identity who is white, in a much more interesting way than I could do.
Lonzo Liggins:
Wow.
Paisley Rekdal:
And I think that's what makes it really- Like when we're thinking about why cast this actor versus that actor, representation matters.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
But you also have to deal with the problem of talent,. The sticky problem of talent, which is that someone might actually be able to interpret, based on that difference and distance.
Lonzo Liggins:
Right.
Paisley Rekdal:
I have to say, as an artist. As a scholar, I'm much more conservative, but as an artist, I'm much more liberal because I would rather risk having the bad representation, perhaps, and I would rather risk having the offensive gesture made, than not to have the ability to see more talent, to see more interpretations, because it does also cut both ways. You might have someone create a bad representation, but it also offers the opportunity for somebody who has been marginalized to create an appropriative work that speaks back to power, and turns it around, and in fact enters into this canon in ways that maybe they wouldn't have had access to except for being able to appropriate.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Danor Gerald:
So it's opening that dialogue.
Paisley Rekdal:
Exactly.
Danor Gerald:
For advancement of our cultural understanding.
Paisley Rekdal:
Right.
Lonzo Liggins:
We don't have a lot of time, we've got to move on. But before we go, I want to get your opinion, because we didn't touch on this in depth, which is like hairstyles and clothing. Dan and I were talking about this and with me, I personally don't have an issue with the hairstyle thing. It just depends on how it's worn. But I'm curious to get your opinion on that, as far as whether you feel like, say for example, a white woman wearing dreadlocks or, you know?
Danor Gerald:
I am always- I like women that wear [crosstalk 00:42:22]
Lonzo Liggins:
I'm shocked when I see an Asian woman with blonde hair.
Paisley Rekdal:
Yeah.
Lonzo Liggins:
It's shocking to me, and I don't know what to think.
Paisley Rekdal:
Yes, and you don't know what to think because is it self-hatred or is it appreciation? Or is it entering these- When black women put in blonde dreads as well.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yeah.
Paisley Rekdal:
I remember reading an interview with one actress, and she's like, "We do this in order to show that we can do what you do, and we can look better in it." I thought that was an interesting statement, the idea of a kind of empowerment, which is that this is we can play with these kinds of hairstyles, and basically make it that we're part of this conversation. We're not shut out from it, and in fact, like she said, we can look better at it. It doesn't bother me, but I recognize why it does bother other people. I do think, controversially I guess. I think we're in a place now where we might be so, I don't know, obsessed with ideas of authenticity, and obsessed with ideas of individual subjectivity, that we actually miss some of the benefits of a communal and a global culture.
Lonzo Liggins:
I love that.
Paisley Rekdal:
I think it's important to remind ourselves of that, because there are things that also we can appreciate and share with each other, that mean that we are not shut out from any kind of conversation.
Danor Gerald:
I love that. I think, I think that the collective wisdom is more valuable than individual preference. And we can use these art forms and these challenges that we face as opportunities to learn from each other and to grow.
Paisley Rekdal:
Yeah.
Danor Gerald:
And to become closer together instead of dividing ourselves. I think that's kind of what this topic really is all about. Are we becoming better at understanding each other and uniting, or are we just fractionalizing ourselves and saying that this has stay in your lane kind of thing.
Paisley Rekdal:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Danor Gerald:
And that's the real challenge that we all have to face as individuals, whether you're an artist or not. I think it all, again, boils down to just educating yourself on each other's culture.
Lonzo Liggins:
And we can start with Appropriate.
Paisley Rekdal:
Yes, please do.
Lonzo Liggins:
It's a wonderful book. Paisley, where can people get this book?
Paisley Rekdal:
Everywhere. Just everywhere. But locally, the King's English Bookstore. It would be terrific if you ordered from them.
Lonzo Liggins:
Yes. King's English is a great store, I don't know if you've been there.
Paisley Rekdal:
It's great.
Lonzo Liggins:
It's on 15th East, 15th South.
Paisley Rekdal:
Oh, it's fantastic.
Lonzo Liggins:
Great little area there.
Paisley Rekdal:
It's wonderful.
Lonzo Liggins:
It's been such a pleasure having you here.
Paisley Rekdal:
Yes.
Lonzo Liggins:
I want to give you the final word and kind of see us out about what people should know about cultural appropriation.
Paisley Rekdal:
Well, thank you again so much. I really appreciate the time and attention. It's been a great conversation. I guess I'm just trying to think about what I want people to know. I guess, to stop being so afraid. I think that's the thing, that people are so afraid that they're going to offend people. I think if you go in with the intention to educate yourself, you go in with the intention that you can always learn more, and you go with the intention that if you do mess up, you can learn from that, then appropriation is something that, I think, can only expand your own world.
Danor Gerald:
I love it.
Lonzo Liggins:
Love it. Awesome. It's been great having you, Paisley.
Paisley Rekdal:
Thank you so much.
Danor Gerald:
Thank you.
Speaker 1:
All right. That's going to do it for this episode of Roots, Race and Culture. Check out our website for even more content, including interviews with some pretty dope BIPOC business owners. You can find all that and a bag of chips at pbsutah.org/roots. And you'd be doing us a solid if you told all your friends about our show, but until next time y'all, we are out.
