The Lie of Cultural Appropriation

It's not about respect for other cultures or justice for the oppressed. It's about power and revolution.

In the early ‘90s, I was a percussionist in an Afro-Brazilian drumming-and-dance troupe in the vibrant Brazilian community of San Francisco. A handful of performers from Bahia, the most Africanized part of Brazil, had brought to the Bay Area at that time an exciting form of music called samba-reggae, which was briefly popularized among American audiences via the Paul Simon album The Rhythm of the Saints and Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us” video, both of which featured the samba-reggae group Olodum.

I loved the drumming and threw myself into this scene obsessively. The Bahian performers appreciated my enthusiasm for the music and embraced me so unreservedly that when the drummers ultimately moved on to Miami, their dancer and choreographer who stayed behind worked with me to create an award-winning samba-reggae troupe, whose drummers I led. We even performed with Olodum when they participated in the annual San Francisco Carnaval parade.

With the late Neguinho do Samba, founder and leader of Olodum.

In today’s climate of divisive identity politics imposed by the Left, I – a white guy from Arkansas – would never be allowed to rise to that level of involvement and prominence performing the music of Afro-Brazilians. Instead, I would be met with open resistance and drummed out (if you’ll pardon the pun) over accusations of “cultural appropriation” – the ridiculous and racist concept that whites have no right to adopt or even flirt with the aesthetics and practices of non-Western cultures. The false assumption is that whites – especially white males – belong to a civilization that historically has been uniquely exploitative, oppressive, and racially supremacist, and so the purported victims should reclaim their stolen dignity by forbidding today’s whites access to appreciating other cultural expressions – whether it be music, cuisine or even hairstyles.

Because this idea is rooted in Karl Marx’s oppressor-vs.-oppressed worldview, the sin of cultural appropriation is taboo in only one direction; in other words, non-whites cannot be condemned for appropriating Eurocentric aesthetics or practices. Hence, it is perfectly acceptable for Chinese cellist YoYo Ma to excel in performing the music of classical European composers, or for oppressed hip-hop billionaire Beyoncé to release a country music album (indeed, Country Carter won a Grammy for Best Country Album). It’s perfectly acceptable – even celebrated – for a black actress to play Henry VIII’s wife Anne Boleyn or for a “queer” black actress to portray Jesus, a Jewish male (in this context, Jews are not considered an ethnic minority but part of the white oppressor class). But imagine the media outrage if Matt Damon were cast as Martin Luther King, Jr. or Michelle Obama or – heaven forbid – the Muslim prophet Muhammad in a biopic.

I mention all this as preface to film director Danny Boyle embracing his own cultural cancellation in a recent Guardian interview, in which he was asked about his Oscar-winning 2008 flick Slumdog Millionaire. Boyle shot the film, about an Indian ghetto kid in Mumbai who wins big on a quiz show, partly in Hindi and with a local crew. It featured Bollywood dance choreography and launched a mainstream career for actor Dev Patel. (No interviewer, by the way, is going to call out the dark-skinned Patel for cultural appropriation for his role as King Arthur's nephew in The Green Knight.)

“Yeah, we wouldn’t be able to make that now,” stated Boyle, who won a Best Director Oscar for it. “And that’s how it should be. It’s time to reflect on all that. We have to look at the cultural baggage we carry and the mark that we’ve left on the world.” [Emphasis added]

The interviewer asked with a straight face if Boyle was saying that the production itself “amounted to a form of colonialism.” The director replied,

No, no. Well, only in the sense that everything is. At the time it felt radical. We made the decision that only a handful of us would go to Mumbai. We’d work with a big Indian crew and try to make a film within the culture. But you’re still an outsider. It’s still a flawed method.

That kind of cultural appropriation might be sanctioned at certain times. But at other times it cannot be. I mean, I’m proud of the film, but you wouldn’t even contemplate doing something like that today. It wouldn’t even get financed. Even if I was involved, I’d be looking for a young Indian filmmaker to shoot it. [Emphasis added]

Everything is a form of colonialism? This sentence is illogical and patently false, but Boyle here is virtue-signaling his self-righteous, progressive white guilt for his peers’ approval, as showbiz figures so often do. He apparently doesn’t see any irony in the fact that, as an artist, he is agreeing to his own censorship when he states, “you wouldn’t even contemplate doing something like that today – and that’s how it should be.” When he asserts that cultural appropriation shouldn’t be sanctioned (by whom? Who gets to be the arbiter of what is culturally “sanctioned”?), he is saying some creatives – namely whites – should not be allowed to let their art go where their imagination leads them.

By this curious logic, Gustave Flaubert, who famously said “I am Madame Bovary,” should not have been allowed to write his classic novel with a female protagonist. Pablo Picasso should not have been allowed to draw from African influences to create his cubist masterpieces. And Paul Simon should never have been allowed to incorporate Brazilian rhythms into his music (making Olodum and samba-reggae world-famous in the process).

This is a very uncreative politicization of the creative process. Except for the unusual instances in which a society is completely isolated from contact with the outside world, culture is fluid. It grows by absorbing other influences to create richer, hybrid forms. It thrives on shared, evolving expressions that transcend borders and enrich humanity collectively. Borrowing from other cultures’ art forms is almost always an homage, not theft. Labeling this process as exploitation or stealing is a lie that the cultural Marxists weaponize against the West while ignoring how Western cultural innovations such as the dignity of the individual, freedom and democracy, and the scientific method have benefitted all mankind. Paul Simon not only didn’t steal Olodum’s music, he promoted them on his album and front-and-center in his music video. And Olodum itself was engaging in this mutual exchange of cultures by playing alongside the white American Simon to create an exciting new hybrid. Everyone wins — especially music lovers. To quote Danny Boyle: that’s as it should be.

Boyle was rightly slammed on social media for buying into the stupid, petty, retrograde concept of cultural appropriation, especially after having succeeded so wildly with Slumdog (it earned nearly $380 million on a $15 million budget and is the all-time most successful British independent film).

One poster wrote: “Progressives: Use the ladder. Get rich. Pull up the ladder behind you to signal your virtue.” Another commented, “Give all your culturally appropriated money back then Danny boy.” A third posted, “What a coward Danny Boyle is. He knows what he’s saying is utter bullshit. What about historical films? Do we need to get time travellers from the fucking past to make them? Because who are we as people from the future to tell their stories?”

Accusing whites of cultural appropriation – and progressive whites themselves like Danny Boyle offering up hypocritical mea culpae about it – is not really about engendering respect for foreign cultures or bringing justice for the oppressed. It is about power and revolution, as everything Marxist is. It is an ugly, bullying cudgel, built on a lie, for stoking racial division, subverting Western culture, and politicizing – as well as stifling – creativity.