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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/31/halloween-cultural-appropriation-scare-stories
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| It’s Halloween – time to bring out the ‘cultural appropriation’ scare stories | It’s Halloween – time to bring out the ‘cultural appropriation’ scare stories |
| (13 days later) | |
| Here’s a topical Halloween costume should you be stuck for a last-minute idea – the spectre of cultural appropriation coming for your innocent seasonal festival wielding censor’s scissors and an “offensive” stamp. Like all the best Halloween ghouls, it doesn’t actually exist. | Here’s a topical Halloween costume should you be stuck for a last-minute idea – the spectre of cultural appropriation coming for your innocent seasonal festival wielding censor’s scissors and an “offensive” stamp. Like all the best Halloween ghouls, it doesn’t actually exist. |
| Every generation adds a little to the festive arrangements of its predecessors. With every migration movement and change in demographics, over the years pagan and religious ceremonies have merged to give us Father Christmas, the Easter bunny and Jack O’Lantern. Today we are adding our own festive adornment to the seasons – fake outrage over a made-up or really thinly stretched political correctness gone mad allegation. | Every generation adds a little to the festive arrangements of its predecessors. With every migration movement and change in demographics, over the years pagan and religious ceremonies have merged to give us Father Christmas, the Easter bunny and Jack O’Lantern. Today we are adding our own festive adornment to the seasons – fake outrage over a made-up or really thinly stretched political correctness gone mad allegation. |
| For what is Christmas without getting worked up over the annual story about how the local council has banned all mention of Christmas and is instead calling it Winterval? How to possibly look forward to the sugar rush of Easter without the thrill of losing your mind at a doctored photo where the word “Easter” was edited out. How can we honour the country’s war dead every November without framing a fairly simple objection to the glorification of war and industrial murder as leftie treason? | For what is Christmas without getting worked up over the annual story about how the local council has banned all mention of Christmas and is instead calling it Winterval? How to possibly look forward to the sugar rush of Easter without the thrill of losing your mind at a doctored photo where the word “Easter” was edited out. How can we honour the country’s war dead every November without framing a fairly simple objection to the glorification of war and industrial murder as leftie treason? |
| Until recently, Halloween was the innocent silly weekend where we didn’t have to worry about how it can be weaponised against immigrants or people of colour or the left. There was no residual religious component to get pretend mad about, no nationalistic element to posture about, but then someone discovered cultural appropriation. And now the most random observation on Halloween costumes is proof that cultural appropriation is ruining everything. | Until recently, Halloween was the innocent silly weekend where we didn’t have to worry about how it can be weaponised against immigrants or people of colour or the left. There was no residual religious component to get pretend mad about, no nationalistic element to posture about, but then someone discovered cultural appropriation. And now the most random observation on Halloween costumes is proof that cultural appropriation is ruining everything. |
| Cultural appropriation is the political correctness as death of civilisation dream straw man. It’s a gnarly and complicated subject that has few clear parameters, there are no obvious victims, and it’s very handy for pearl clutching. Many who accuse others of cultural appropriation aren’t sure what they mean. It is a loose, arbitrary and amorphous notion. At its most precise it is about an attitude, a lack of sensitivity and humility towards the cultures and totems of others, underscored by a refusal to acknowledge that the relative political and racial power of the “borrowing” culture is relevant – a broken compass of what is appropriate. Beyond that it’s just instinct. | Cultural appropriation is the political correctness as death of civilisation dream straw man. It’s a gnarly and complicated subject that has few clear parameters, there are no obvious victims, and it’s very handy for pearl clutching. Many who accuse others of cultural appropriation aren’t sure what they mean. It is a loose, arbitrary and amorphous notion. At its most precise it is about an attitude, a lack of sensitivity and humility towards the cultures and totems of others, underscored by a refusal to acknowledge that the relative political and racial power of the “borrowing” culture is relevant – a broken compass of what is appropriate. Beyond that it’s just instinct. |
| That makes it the easiest of targets for those who like to pretend that there is an utter crisis of liberal censoriousness stifling what is normal and natural for the sake of enforced uniformity and for those who want to poke fun at progressives for their bossy earnestness by playing the cheap exercise of “what next?”. In the New York Times Bari Weiss produces a classic of the genre when she says that “these days our mongrel culture is at risk of being erased by an increasingly strident left, which is careering us toward a wan existence in which we are all forced to remain in the ethnic and racial lanes assigned to us by accident of our birth. Hoop earrings are verboten, as are certain kinds of button-down shirts. Yoga is dangerous. So are burritos and eyeliner.” | That makes it the easiest of targets for those who like to pretend that there is an utter crisis of liberal censoriousness stifling what is normal and natural for the sake of enforced uniformity and for those who want to poke fun at progressives for their bossy earnestness by playing the cheap exercise of “what next?”. In the New York Times Bari Weiss produces a classic of the genre when she says that “these days our mongrel culture is at risk of being erased by an increasingly strident left, which is careering us toward a wan existence in which we are all forced to remain in the ethnic and racial lanes assigned to us by accident of our birth. Hoop earrings are verboten, as are certain kinds of button-down shirts. Yoga is dangerous. So are burritos and eyeliner.” |
| Are they coming for our art? Our music? The very sacred flame of creativity? In the case of Halloween, it’s, brace yourself, our children. Callers to LBC were almost in tears this week at the prospect of being told that their children could not wear what they wanted this Halloween. “Children don’t see race,” one distressed caller said. Except no one was being told that. An article by a US blogger about dressing up as Moana had triggered a spasm of distress. On LBC alone there were three phone-ins about it in 24 hours. | Are they coming for our art? Our music? The very sacred flame of creativity? In the case of Halloween, it’s, brace yourself, our children. Callers to LBC were almost in tears this week at the prospect of being told that their children could not wear what they wanted this Halloween. “Children don’t see race,” one distressed caller said. Except no one was being told that. An article by a US blogger about dressing up as Moana had triggered a spasm of distress. On LBC alone there were three phone-ins about it in 24 hours. |
| True, some claims of appropriation stretch the logical parameters of the concept, but on the whole what is taking place is only an embryonic conversation about the appropriateness of blackface, for example, or costumes that advance a stereotype. But it is being hijacked not only to shut down the discussion, but also to use it to make a broader point and blow a dog whistle warning against the creeping influence of PC culture and how it is forcing you to cede your space. | True, some claims of appropriation stretch the logical parameters of the concept, but on the whole what is taking place is only an embryonic conversation about the appropriateness of blackface, for example, or costumes that advance a stereotype. But it is being hijacked not only to shut down the discussion, but also to use it to make a broader point and blow a dog whistle warning against the creeping influence of PC culture and how it is forcing you to cede your space. |
| These are all variations on an evergreen theme, that of the hordes descending from the mountain and laying waste to the peaceful hamlet, overpowering you into submission. Whether it’s via brute force or the imagined club of identity politics, mainstream culture has always found a way to imbue the weak and inferiorised with illogically potent power. Some of this is just good business. Little gets people going like channelling the fear of this imaginary horde through the means of moral outrage. The rest is good politics. It is no coincidence that the excessive political correctness charge is one advanced by rightwing populists. The sublimation is everywhere. | These are all variations on an evergreen theme, that of the hordes descending from the mountain and laying waste to the peaceful hamlet, overpowering you into submission. Whether it’s via brute force or the imagined club of identity politics, mainstream culture has always found a way to imbue the weak and inferiorised with illogically potent power. Some of this is just good business. Little gets people going like channelling the fear of this imaginary horde through the means of moral outrage. The rest is good politics. It is no coincidence that the excessive political correctness charge is one advanced by rightwing populists. The sublimation is everywhere. |
| It’s not about the merits or otherwise of cultural appropriation. As with the anger against safe spaces and no-platforming in universities and the recent Cambridge curriculum “decolonisation”, the problem is an exaggeration of the issue at best, and an invention of it at worst. For all the space these topics command in the media, they are not the real threat to harmony. That comes from those who weaponise political correctness and associated concepts such as cultural appropriation to sow division and then blame it on the victims. | It’s not about the merits or otherwise of cultural appropriation. As with the anger against safe spaces and no-platforming in universities and the recent Cambridge curriculum “decolonisation”, the problem is an exaggeration of the issue at best, and an invention of it at worst. For all the space these topics command in the media, they are not the real threat to harmony. That comes from those who weaponise political correctness and associated concepts such as cultural appropriation to sow division and then blame it on the victims. |
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