This has started a little round of angry comments on FB about the same things -- defending the sacred vs. freedom of speech. But I think this is interesting for another reason -- on whether cultural appropriation falls into unjust restriction of freedom of expression, and if not, how to talk about cultural appropriation. Many Westerners are culturally Christian and treat the gods of Eastern religions the way they do the Greek and Roman pantheon -- they find them fascinating and inspiring as anthropomorphims of abstract ideas, but do not regard them as real. Several gods capture their interest more than most, Kali in particular shows up in a lot of fantasy-based Western media because her identity of goddess of destruction is unlike any other figure in mythology and religion known to Westerners (she is the only Hindu goddess who shows up in Neil Gaimans American Gods, for example, even though actual Hindu devotees to Kali are significantly rarer than devotees to Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesha, Lakshmi, etc.). Kali appears too in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom -- terribly inaccurate and exoticized depictions of India, but then again, it is Indiana Jones. However, unlike the act of invoking the nine muses or waxing lyrical about Cupids arrows, Kali is still revered as an actual goddess by a significant number of the worlds population. Theres something rather thoughtless about looking at another persons religion and treating it as mythos to represent abstract ideas of your personal choice. On the other hand, this raises questions on whether any population has a monopoly on how religious iconography is to be represented. But that is the problem of discussions about cultural appropriation everywhere -- argument about how it is a tool of oppression works only as long as we regard signs as having fixed relationships between what themselves and what they signify.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 07:02:17 +0000
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