It's a different thing because it's tied in with playing a character in a wider context
i think this is a pretty dubious distinction, at best. it's OK if you're playing a character?
i'm not even sure that i accept the basic assertion - that the Wu-Tang appropriation of a sort of pop-culture Asian martial arts thing can really be reduced to simply "playing a character." there's definitely an element of theatricality there, sure, but i don't think that's all there is to it. i think that part of the genius of the Wu-Tang aesthetic is their conflation of the mental discipline of the rapper with the mental discipline of martial arts and the mental discipline of the Five Percenter. the Wu style brings all these disparate images together into one, cohesive image of a street-smart warrior/rapper figure. they treat prowess in physical combat and gangsta shit and prowess on the mic and the struggle for black liberation in the most mental and abstract senses (the liberation of the black mind, in a very real sense) as a the same thing, that life in Shaolin (both the physical city and the idealized mental plane) is a series of puzzles to be solved by the well-honed mind of that figure. in that way, the image of the Eastern mystic/martial artist is not simply active on a theatrical level, but rather it's deployed in a sort of visualization exercise for inner liberation and triumph over external obstacles (which are basically the same thing). it's deeply, deeply ingrained in every aspect of the Wu project and i don't think this really addresses that in that i think that the appropriation involved is deeper and more significant.
and not just a meaningless appropriation for the sake of it.
so, who determines whether something is "meaningful" enough (and to whom?) for it to be "valid," then? for it to not be cultural tourism?
and which is a more significant act of appropriation: adopting something for "shallow" aesthetic reasons, or claiming a deep tie to a culture that's not your own? who's committing the graver offense, if you want to look at it as an offense: the European socialite wearing a silk dress with Chinese dragons embroidered on it, or the Irish-American poet who claims to be carrying on a mystic tradition that incorporates the work of both Rumi and Basho, and claims authority to speak on behalf of that tradition?
let me go on record as saying that, in general, i think kanji tattoos on white folks at this particular juncture in time and space are kind of tacky. howevever, memes spread. that's just what they do, and while i share some degree of apprehension about the appropriation and colonialization and blah-blah-blah, i don't know that it's a worthwhile investment of time and mental energytying ourselves up in knots over something that, basically, is going to happen whatever we think about it.
also, i'm wary of falling into the "Noble Savage" trap: that Other Cultures are somehow pure, pristine, and, crucially, static and unchanging, before the crassly commercial Western appropriators show up. it's important to recognize that "authenticity" is as much of a cultural construction as anything else, and casting the cultures which are subject to appropriation as passive, static traditionalist victims is perhaps worse than the alternatives. |
