When it comes to cultural appropriation i'm not well versed into that matter so i might be wrong on this. Please be gentle, i understand this is a loaded issue and i'm not out there to make people angry. I just want to learn.
I thought the issue revolved around the idea that you're taking the good parts of other cultures and claiming them as part of your own. When you look at that Israel performance, the stage & costuming was made to create an asian vibe, while not having a clear reason to do that apart from the looping tables looking sort of cyber, combined with a lot of cyberpunk styling themselves after that continent. But at the same time, i wonder what the thing is that turns it racist instead of appreciation. Wouldn't it need years of continuous 'stealing' of this style before people start making the false connection that this style is part of Israel instead of Asia? One artist using this style feels like such a small blip on the radar that no one would ever start to attribute these icons to Israel.
Looking at my own country's performance (The Netherlands) we had a guy that adopted the 'Waylon' stagename because he's a fan of Waylon Jennings. Very much an country / americana lover that has styled himself after that image for years. We had dancers krumping around, which is also not part of our culture. Honestly, i think that was a pretty tacky presentation. But as we're a very US-focused society, there are loads of american things we pick up and embrace. I'm lucky enough to not have grown up in a ghetto and never felt like my race was an issue, but i still love to listen to hiphop songs where that's part of the content. We eat McDonalds & hang around in Starbucks. We are entertained by the same movies,music, theatre and books. We make use the same services and touch the same devices. When we start to style ourselves in an American fashion , isn't that relatively natural for the people that grow up in such an environment? We get influenced by what surrounds us. A lot of that is American.
As the world becomes more and more globalized, we see ,hear and experience more and more cool shit that is not part of our own heritage. When we humans love something, we might want to surround ourself by that. I think the most common one that we encounter on the internet is how anime lovers are more likely to take japanese classes, enjoy cyberpunk, listen to japanese music and adopt japanese sounding names & avatars on the internet. Japanese media like Attack on Titan & Valkyria Chronicles take certain aspects of germanic culture to dress their stories in. we're dressing up in Lederhosen & Dirndl's when we take part in the german Oktoberfest. We don't do that to take away their culture, we do it because it 'fits' with the event, and is very much a once in a year event that warrants such a celebration of German culture to us. That feels more natural than admiring it from the side as we stand there with our orange-coloured outfits representing our own national iconography.
I guess that i have a hard time conciling with the idea that as globalization spreads, we can learn & appreciate aspects from other cultures,but should keep ourselves far away from letting others know about that, through how we present ourselves. That feels counter to the idea that you can grow up with all those different cultures affecting you and shaping you into the person that you are today. If you spent 3 years in India and felt a huge connection to that lifestyle, what's against carrying some of that with you? As long as you're not making a deliberate effort to obfuscate that it's native to India or promote the idea that the style originated in your nation, i don't see the problem.
When i think of cultural appropriation i feel like it requires a certain group, institution, country or ideology to have a multi-year campaign to keep claiming the same cultural icons as their own until people start to see that group as the rightful owner of those symbols. Like a football club having an native american name & logo to the point where people might associate them first with the icons presented. An artist wearing a cowboyhat or a kimono feels like a pip on the radar that doesn't have a similar effect. To me, there's a difference between a deliberate attack on a culture over a long stretch of time by a powerful group of people and the personal choices of an individual. Especially when the person has no known longstanding history of trying to take those cultural symbols away from the rightful owners.
I guess the main question i have is : How can you show appreciation of a different culture and embrace it, without it being seen as a malicious deed? Or should we ideally not acknowledge that appreciation in our appearance , but rather adopt a more Billy Mitchell-esque appearance that solely incorporates your own culture's heritage?
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