Cultural appropriation: Yours, mine, theirs or a new intercultural?

Abstract

<jats:p>This article considers how by shifting culturally anchored design materials from one context to simplistic placement in decontextualized settings, cultural appropriation takes place in costume design. Building on that, it discusses how production teams need to be cognizant of such issues in the design process given that availability of such materials has historically been possible because acquisition has often aligned with political and commercial ambitions. Reviewing scholarship on appropriation that includes performance, costume, fashion and cultural studies, it questions how designing costumes through intercultural interaction might be navigated in a globalized context, where artists are excluded through travel bans, but cultural materials are permitted free movement. The article then discusses how to create productive intercultural projects with teams willing to invest in ethical engagement. By including case studies in which such processes were less successful as well as one that indeed created new intercultural exchanges, this article is one of the first texts to address this complex issue. It intends to engender future forward thinking conversations with practitioners and researchers on the thorny but urgent issue of cultural appropriation through costume.</jats:p>

Tricity Vogue’s ‘blueing up’ as sedimented resistance: Extravagant costume and the expanded field of dressing up

“…My methodology is interdisciplinary, predominantly drawing from the theoretical disciplines of Feminist Performance Studies, Theatre Studies and Costume Studies. The argument builds upon my feminist performance scholarship on new cabaret and burlesque (Willson 2008a;2008b;2015a;2015b) 1 but with a developed focus on issues of theatrical 'bluing up' (Herrera 2012); theories of 'blue' (Attwood 2002(Attwood , 2013Long Chu 2017;Lordi 2016) and costume appropriation and stereotyping (Maclaurin & Monks 2015: Pennington 2016Barbieri 2017 Hodes andSandoval 2018;Carriger 2018;Delhaye 2019;Chatterjee 2020). Chatterjee's (2020) recent contribution to the critical debate about costume appropriation has set this as an 1 I am also Principal Investigator on an AHRC funded 3 year project 'Fabulous Femininities: Extravagant Costume and Performative Thresholds' which is exploring contemporary burlesque costume cultures.…”

Cultural Appropriation of Asian Cuisines in Western Chefs’ Cooking Videos: An Audience Reception

“…Creating unauthentic Asian food that has an Asian name on it can not be tolerated by Uncle Roger because the cooking content created by the chefs is not contained Asian culture and can not be called an educational video. Using the unauthentic elements taken from appropriated culture for private profits and maintaining popularity is unacceptable not only for Asian people but also for foreigners since the chefs put unrelated stuff into their cooks (Chatterjee, 2020;Maiorescu-Murphy, 2021).…”

“…Some circumstances refer to cultural appropriation, which can come in the forms of inaccurate adaptation of specific cultural values, the dominant culture mixing two cultures but accentuating one, and intentionally ignoring the crucial detail of other cultural elements during modification (Chatterjee, 2020). This issue is unavoidable during this era because technology makes it easier to access another with a single touch of a finger and eventually creates a gap in the actual definition of this issue and what triggers it.…”

“…Several studies have already investigated cultural appropriation as represented in arts, tourism, and politics. While the focus of several studies on cultural appropriation varies, they are similar in highlighting controversial accusations of a culture (Lalonde, 2019;Matthes, 2016) and prevention measures on cultural appropriation (Lenard & Balint, 2019;Han, 2019;Chatterjee, 2020). Some also investigated the harmful effect of cultural appropriation associated with cultural exploitation for gaining individual profits (Gertner, 2019;Alexander, 2020;Maiorescu-Murphy, 2021) and the conflict to determine the dominating cultures (Rogers, 2006).…”