The Guardians Gazette No. 4
Appreciation, appropriation, and gatekeeping, or What we borrow, what we steal, what we pay homage to, and boundaries
I have a weird relationship with Asian media.1
Well, weird is probably not the right word. Complicated is more correct, but doesn’t quite encompass the...awkward? uncomfortable? proud? possessive? feeling of, well, gatekeeping I want to do.
Because the minute I let the mainstream in on my secret stash of awesome, it will no longer be cool.
First things first: I am currently in the downswing of my bipolar mood cycle, so everything is harder to accomplish than it should be, including writing this essay. The thing about bipolar depression is that it’s not that I feel “sad” or “low” so much as I’m playing on Nightmare mode. It takes approximately 8000x more effort to take a goddamned shower than it should! I’m tired!
Anyway, all this to say that if this essay is less cohesive than my others have been, I apologize in advance.
So. Let’s talk about cultural appropriation.
But I don’t really want to talk about appropriation at the moment so much as the cultural part of the phrase.
What is culture, exactly?
I probably think about this more often than I should, or rather, I think I care about this in a way that would never cross most other people’s minds. Maybe it’s because being a member of a diaspora makes me feel culturally insecure, causing me to hoard my resources the way my dog, Pollux, hoards his treats. Or maybe it’s because I’m American, a country whose cultural identity was formed out of stripping, stealing, and snubbing existing cultures.
But again, what is culture? How is it defined? What defines one? Who defines one?
The answer to the first question is surprisingly nebulous. Culture can refer to the collective artistic and social achievements of a group of people; in fact, we call individuals who are familiar with and well-versed in those arts and achievements as “cultured.” Culture can also mean a set of social norms shared amongst a group with attributes in common. You could probably come up with a dozen different definitions for the word, but none would ever wholly encompass the fullness of its meaning. The nuance. The slippery, indefinable and undefined edges.
For me, culture is an unspoken language. The subconscious understanding shared in a collective without the need for words, explanations, or thought. It’s how my voice shifts and grows deeper in pitch when I switch tongues from English to Korean, it’s how I hold my shoulders on the streets of Seoul, how I start with my thumb on an open hand while counting on my fingers, folding them one by one, then uncurling them in reverse order once I pass “5.” It’s how I — and every other child of an Asian immigrant mother — knew intimately the depth and significance of the chasm between “You’re getting fat” and “I love you” in Everything Everything All At Once.
There is a phenomenon called code switching, when individuals switch from one mode of speech with one group, to a different mode of speech with another. For example, a lot of Black Americans will code switch between AAVE and “standard” English depending on the audience, or a lot of gay men will toggle the dials on their “gay voice” depending on the situation. Every individual who is a part of multiple cultures will code switch, even if they’re not conscious of it.
I think I’m more conscious of it than most.
I’ve always felt on the outside of a lot of the cultures I could theoretically lay claim to: my gender, my sexuality, my ethnicity, my nationality. Never quite a girl, even though I wasn’t a boy; never quite feeling attraction, even though I could feel desire, never quite part of the Korean groups at church or school, even though my mother is Korean, and never quite American, despite having been born and raised here.
But I understand those languages all the same.
The funny thing about being fluent in multiple languages is the instant bone-deep recognition than happens when you hear it, even if you didn’t comprehend it. If you’ve ever traveled in a country where you didn’t speak the native language but hear someone speak your tongue, you’ll know. You’ll just know, even if you couldn’t understand a word of it.
That’s culture.
Or rather, that’s how I define culture. That bone-deep recognition of a language you know in a foreign land.
Learning another language — another culture — is not necessarily a matter of vocabulary or research. Someone can study a foreign language for years and become quite skilled and proficient in it, but true fluency goes beyond grammatically perfect sentences. True fluency happens when you can play with the language in ways that make sense and require no explanation to native speakers. That requires true understanding and empathy, otherwise you end up with a tattoo that you intended to read 7 rings and got one that reads shichirin, or a small charcoal grill.2 It’s the difference between a translator and an interpreter. The difference might be slight — minuscule, even — but it’s still there.
My mother is a Korean-English interpreter. Translation usually has to do with the written word, while interpreting has to do with speech. She interprets for people in person — at legal proceedings, at video game tournaments, at golf tournaments, in other countries, for the government, etc. But my mother does more than merely transmute one language into another; she also moderates focus groups for various multinational companies, usually in English, trying to gather and synthesize the thoughts and feelings of Asian and Asian-American groups when it comes to marketing and market research.
Cultural exchange has always been part of human history, but it’s not until late-stage capitalism starts infecting the systems of the richest countries of the world that the notion of cultural appropriation starts to make its way into our cultural consciousness.
And yes, repeat after me: it’s all capitalism’s fault. As per usual.
During the Tang Dynasty of imperial China, women wore red beauty marks on their faces, called 花鈿 (huadian, “flower filigree”), usually painted between their brows in various shapes. There is a legend about plum blossoms being the origin, but the look was most likely inspired by the bindi. Trade between India and China was flourishing during this time, and fashions reflect this cultural exchange. Indeed, the fashions of the Tang court made its way to the kingdom of Unified Silla (an early Korean kingdom) to become what is now the modern-day 한복 (hanbok). China appropriated the bindi, and Korea appropriated Chinese clothing. Cultural exchange and appropriation have gone hand-in-hand since time immemorial.
It starts to get tricky when capitalism gets involved, and even trickier for diasporic cultures.
I follow the Instagram of a designer of modern hanbok for plus-size people, and one of the questions they are constantly asked is whether or not it’s okay to wear hanbok if they are not Korean. Their answer is always the same: as long as it’s done respectfully, it’s fine. I suppose it’s like wearing a sari to South Asian wedding if you’re not of South Asian descent; as long as it’s done with respect and permission, it should be fine.
I used to think it was the permission part that tripped people up when it came to cultural appropriation. After all, some people can’t accept that permission can be denied and don’t take rejection very well.
But the real problem isn’t permission (or lack thereof), it’s profit. Who benefits in the matter of cultural exchange and appropriation? Does one party have systemic advantages over the other? Can one party exploit the other? Is the exchange unequal in any way?
Take, for instance, the matter of Black hairstyles on white people. In American society, dreads or locs, box braids, cornrows et al are considered “cool” or “edgy” on white people, but “dirty” or “unkempt” on Black people. Black hairstyles arose from Black hair textures and often serve as protective styles, but as most white people don’t have the same hair, these fashions are affectation. White people gain cultural cachet, but Black Americans gain nothing from the exchange. A very clear-cut example of appropriation.
But cultural exchange doesn’t always lead to cultural appropriation. Asian martial arts can be practiced by anyone. Kimchi has become a ubiquitous staple in dishes even in my corner of western North Carolina. Yet there are some cultural exchanges that are not necessarily disrespectful but...fraught. Religion — especially ethno-religions like Hinduism, Judaism, Shinto, and other indigenous practices — is one. For example, yoga is now touted as a fitness thing, stripped of its spiritual origins.
Music is another exchange where things can get murky very quickly. Kpop, one of South Korea’s biggest cultural exports, has its roots in Black American music (especially hip-hop and R&B),3 which they were first exposed to when Americans occupied Korean soil after the end of World War II. In fact, most American music started out as Black music: rock, jazz, and even country. Who benefits in these exchanges? Can one group benefit more than another in music? Individually, yes. Elvis stole songs from black musicians and made them cool for white audiences. Collectively? ...I’m not sure. The top hip-hop artists in America are still Black, not white or Korean.
And here we come down to the matter of credit, acknowledgment, and ownership when it comes to cultural appropriation. Who owns culture? I’m not Black, so I can’t speak on or for Black Americans, but when it comes to Korean and other East Asian media, I start to feel...possessive. Or...protective might be the better word. Can I trust outsiders with this? Moreover, can I trust them not to steal it and profit from it?
Capitalism, you see.
I think of all the American remakes of Asian dramas and films: Oldboy, the retelling of Hachiko’s story with Richard Gere in Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, and the just announced remake of Squid Game, the whitewashed Ghost in the Shell. I bristle, worried someone might steal my limited stash of cultural capital. I want to be acknowledged for my culture’s awesomeness, but I don’t want people outside my culture to profit from it.
It’s a scarcity mindset, to be honest.
When I think of the ScarJo version of Ghost in the Shell, I remember how Asian-Americans were upset by the casting, but Japanese people in Japan were not. I think of that small business modern hanbok designer not minding when white people wear their creations. I think of my aunties in Korea feeling excited that Americans are getting in on the hallyu wave. They don’t feel that scarcity mindset; they are the dominant cultures in their respective homes. Of course they can give parts of their culture away; there’s more where that came from!
Diasporic people don’t have that luxury. We are my dog, Pollux, forever hoarding our treats in case someone steals them.
When it comes to consuming culture from the homeland, diasporic people don’t have any more materialistic claim on those exports than outsiders, but...but. That sense of ownership persists. Because my god, we are starved for representation, we are dying to hear a familiar voice in a foreign land.
I got an early review for Guardians of Dawn: Zhara that essentially called my world-building a shallow pastiche of Korean culture.4 They used a picture of a white person as their avatar, so I’m going to do a little assuming about their identity and culture. My assumption is that they don’t hear that bone-deep knell of recognition in my words, and that's fine. The book isn’t for them because it wasn’t written for them.
It was written for me.
Media from Asia, not Asian-American media.
Cough, Ariana Grande, cough.
Black people also taught Koreans how to fry chicken, which Koreans exported back to America.
Never mind that the world of the Morning Realms was more inspired by a fantasy imperial China than Korea.