Cultural Appropriation in American Films
Lens: Gender
By: Silvio Guiso
A basic definition of cultural appropriation is when you take something from a different culture, and use it for your own purpose, often ending up misrepresenting the other culture. A lot of the times, people are unaware of how the actions they take have an impact on a different culture. I will be looking more deeply into the Gender aspect of cultural appropriation and how it can affect the different groups and minorities.
Gender can nowadays be very tricky to define. But for this post, I will be using Black’s Law’s definition of Gender, which is: “Defined difference between men and women based on culturally and socially constructed mores, politics, and affairs. Time and location give rise to a variety of local definitions. Contrasts to what is defined as the biological sex of a living creature.” So do not confuse this with the biological version which is more specifically based on sex. So either male, female, or in our current more modern society, X, for people who do not wish to identify as either male or female.
Redefining gender is also a very important step towards how Ronald Takaki wants us to slowly start changing this country. In his last chapter, “We will all be minorities” he mentions that if we want to have an impact and make a change, we will have to redefine who is actually an American. “Demography is redefining who is an American. The time has come for us to embrace our varied selves” (page 439). And we should actually go even beyond that, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to a single country! Because in the end, we all come from the same species, we just have cultural differences that make us unique. But it’s already a leap forward, so slowly we’ll get there.
Cultural differences is what I would like to address, because what might seem obvious for one culture or group might be completely farfetched for the other. A huge distinction should be made between purposely being ignorant and just not knowing about something. Because the latter has no intent of hurting or targeting a specific group while the former just does not care. However, the targeted group’s reaction will be the same, no matter if the appropriation was done on purpose or by accident. That’s why it is very important to know what you’re wearing or saying, to know who or what you are representing. Because appropriation can be avoided by showing respect for each other’s differences and by doing a minimum amount of research.
I understand that when making movies or video games we want to tell a specific story that targets the biggest possible crowd. But in order to target a huge public, we will have to abide by a certain set of rules. The most important rule is the entertainment factor. Neil Postman says it so well when saying: “Thou shalt induce no perplexity” (page 147). Meaning that in order to keep a crowd interested, you will have to make the display very entertaining. An example of this is when two gay people would be kissing in a movie, a more conservative crowd would not approve and would not likely recommend the movie to anyone. But if those gay people would be thrown in prison for such an act, the conservative crowd would not be perplexed because the display would be in line with their values and beliefs.
Even though Wonder Woman was a huge step forward with Gal Gadot as a strong female non-American lead and Patty Jenkins as the director… The movie still objectified women in a very stereotyping way. Gal Gadot was portrayed as this super beautiful Amazonian who had it in her to become this fiery warrior. But any warrior would highly unlikely weight under ten pounds and do not have a single scratch over their entire body. The same goes for women in video games. Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider series was an awesome protagonist but also very much objectified. Obviously they were just satisfying their biggest crowd but at the same the creators were establishing a norm for how women are supposed to look. Lara Croft is only one example. Another great example is fighting games such as the Tekken, Mortal Kombat and Dead or Alive series. The creators took fighters from different disciplines, such as Karate and Kickboxing. Obviously portraying the ladies who know eastern martial arts as Asian, giving them ridiculous proportions, a huge cleavage and barely any other clothes.
One of the more famous movies, Grease, also shows a big amount of gender appropriation. Sandy, who does everything to change her appearance just to impress Danny. And also Danny who had to lie to his friends about having had a sexual relationship during the summer break with Sandy, just to look cooler. Because if not, he would significantly decrease his awesome image.
Although there are a lot of bad examples out there, there are also a lot of good ways to portrait a movie. Like the release of Hidden Figures, that inspired a lot of women in STEM fields. They invested a lot of time trying to get an accurate picture of the events that happened during that time. However, our community partner, Dustin Kaspar, firmly believes that movies have to be told by their proper story tellers. A movie about a certain culture will best be told by someone from within that culture. Someone who understands and has lived among that group. Because creating a feeling is difficult if you don’t entirely understand the feeling.
Reference list:
Black’s Law Dictionary – Free Online Legal Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved November 06, 2017, from http://thelawdictionary.org/
Postman, N. (2007). Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of show business. London: Methuen.
Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror: a history of multicultural America. New York: Back Bay Books.
American Film 