OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

I think this article makes it clear that if you try and do a critique of cultural appropriation in crazily exorbitant mixed media pop music entities you'll run into trouble

I couldn’t finish it. Lost the plot somewhere around “it wasn’t until Twitter raised my consciousness...”

Gwen Stefani Has Been Culturally Appropriating For Twenty Years And Now I Kind Of Want To Die

I always want the authors of these pieces to take their logic to its inevitable conclusion. "Gwen Stefani Is Of English And Italian Descent. Here Are The Clothes It Is Acceptable For Her To Wear In Videos And Photo Shoots."

sounds like task better suited to those who vociferously deny the reality of appropriation as a phenomenon or who acknowledge it exists but emphatically declare it to be value-neutral or Not Harmful Actually

I dunno. If there's a problem with what she did, isn't there a hypothetical thing she could have done instead?

wait til she finds out about the Village People

The clickbait trend of re-appraising things that were made in a cultural context very different to this one as Actually Bad Because It Isn't Woke will give this thread material for years to come.

it is a very bad & badly written piece for sure

Was the cultural context of the late 90s/early 00s really that different? It's fair to debate the idea of cultural appropriation or its harmfulness but the ideas were not unfamiliar at that time. xp

it's a terribly written piece, for sure, but the idea that "the context was different" in this circumstance is simply that the criticisms of these moves made by Stefani et al weren't being heard because those who made them were less able to be heard

^^^^

It’s very surreal to hear the “it was a different time” defence wheeled out for stuff that I was alive for, like political correctness was invented 5 years ago or something

(That’s more of a general comment than anything to do w this thing I haven’t read)

fwiw I definitely read criticism of the harajuku girls at the time--quite probably the Salon piece linked in the article

"cultural appropriation" discourse is often a real mess where the reasonable point "sometimes things from a foreign culture are used in a way that doesn't respect the culture, whether that's by misappropriating something of cultural significance (the classic example is native american war bonnets as festival headgear) or just using the foreign as meaningless ornamentation (such as plastering meaningless japanese characters on something for the ~aesthetic~)" is taken to the quite ridiculous extreme of "all mixing and exchange of ideas etc. between cultures is Racist and Bad"

this article is not a very good on the issue as it's just "i learned a while ago that this was bad from twitter" instead of any deeper look at things. i don't think most of its main points are ultimately incorrect though - the harajuku girls have always struck me as a weird and racist concept in the way that they're leaning into stereotypes and mostly just there as decoration?

I think the context is absolutely different from the 90s and early 00s, and social media + clickbait journalism is the big differentiator. You can't pretend that it hasn't changed how media savvy people perceive and react to these things. Generally speaking people knew about the concept of cultural appropriation, sure, but cared less about appearing morally righteous on the internet back then, and there was no Twitter for people to try to create a movement to "cancel" people on for an awkward yet innocently intended stylistic choice. Like, in 2004 being accused of cultural appropriation was maybe enough for people to be like "Oh yeah, that does seem kinda lame. I quite enjoy that song, though" and then moving on with their life. You could essentially have your career derailed if you're accused of it now (see: Lily Allen). So I would say that artists with PR teams are now more aware of this than ever before, and are hyper-conscious of letting anything that could be perceived as cultural appropriation slip through the cracks, lest they too get cancelled on social media, where their target audiences spend most of their time. So yeah, I think it is a different cultural context, and if Gwen Stefani did the Harajuku Girls thing as a Fresh Brand Strategy In 2018 she'd get (rightly) slammed for it, but there's no use in acting like she had the same access to information about cultural appropriation and its impacts that we do in a post-social media world where it's now written about A LOT. Basically, give her a break.

that argument posits that cultural appropriation is bad if it upsets fans and affects sales, rather than its bad because its tasteless and unnecessary

I suspect stefani will be ok

I mean as a white guy from Scotland I don't really have a say on what is/isn't appropriation because I'm not the one who has to live in the shadow of it but it wouldn't take anyone two minutes to look at the harajuku girls and ask "what's going on here?"

which is all really annoying because "what you waiting for?" is a jam

Orientalism was published in 1978

The piece works on this measure of “can you believe we don’t talk about this” and then links to multiple articles where people were talking about it.

Yeah, I think it's the case that:
i) Stefani engaged in crass and largely tasteless use of 'exotic' cultural symbols, which isn't exactly a capital offence but is crass and tasteless.
ii) There is no reason why this should have been hard to realize at the time.
iii) The Wanna Thompson Broadly piece is incredibly dopey.

Guys this was discussed extensively at the time, I remember it well

Yeah, not only does Thompson link to a 2005 Slate piece, if she checked the Wikipedia entry for "Harajuku Girls", she would have learned of Margaret Cho's contemporary criticisms.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuu_Kuu_Harajuku

This show is still ongoing

that argument posits that cultural appropriation is bad if it upsets fans and affects sales, rather than its bad because its tasteless and unnecessary

― boxedjoy

i'm not sure the aesthetic argument against cultural appropriation is any stronger than the capitalist argument against cultural appropriation!

I mean, it is if you care more about aesthetics than about capital. But, yeah, it can be disrespectful in the way that ufo describes.

Sorta surprised that the Harajuku thing is still the main charge against Stefani, as that was like 15 years ago

Honestly I thought she'd have moved on to I dunno hula dancers or Inuit girls or something by now

wins otm!

lol at ppl actually believing the lily allen "people called her racist and that ruined her career!!" spin rather than the simple reality that she just wasn't releasing hits

I mean, it is if you care more about aesthetics than about capital. But, yeah, it can be disrespectful in the way that ufo describes.

― Locked in silent monologue, in silent scream (Sund4r)

my argument is more that there's a tendency to conflate the aesthetically bad with the morally objectionable, and i'd argue that they're distinct qualities.

Has literally one person in music been successfully cancelled?

Like I saw Joan Jett and she is still straight up playing Gary Glitter songs, and gotta say what he did is way worse than being Neptunes Weeb

thanks for the tip: Joan Jett is now cancelled

too late — she’s been canonized!

i think charles manson has been successfully cancelled

she is still straight up playing Gary Glitter songs

FREE MIKE LEANDER

wait, Paul McCartney hasn't played She's Leaving Home since 2003, maybe Mike Leander is cancelled (even more so than cancered)

WTF @ this “cancelled” bullshit.

You know who else's early branding would be considered offensive by today's standards? pic.twitter.com/7bGFZTu4vT

— Jeremy Gordon (@jeremypgordon) November 18, 2018

....... vice isn't exactly virtuous!!

Sadly, Dos & Don'ts Have Been Problematic This Whole Time

It is a really fascinating irony

Wonder if that links to a broader problem: as all culture is mongrel, you can't criticise cultural appropriation from a position of innocence

why ppl in the west have always been drawn to classical antiquity revivals, positioning themselves as new athenses/romes iirc

ftr i wasn't trying to be sarcastic i was just making a dumb joke. vice is actively racist trash that is a lot more than 'compromised like we all are' or whatever. cultural exploitation is lame. arguments in defense of it sound like trickle-down economics to me. that being said i don't really want to read an article about gwen stefani doing it written by a newly woke twenty-something for vice dot com but best of luck to that person u no.

We're going to fight like fuck to have Gwen Stefani recognised as problematic.

What the hell is this, from LA Weekly

Blackbear is more than just a musician. He is one of the most talented, hard-working, dedicated and strong artists to enter the studio. Aside from his ability to create hit records seemingly effortlessly, it’s his real-life experiences battling anxiety and substance abuse that he bravely recounts through his lyrics. Records like “Anxiety” and “If I Could I Would Feel Nothing” give hope and strength, allowing his growing fan base to not only relate but to find comfort.

Real name Matthew Musto celebrates many successes, including three independent albums and sold-out shows across the world. In 2017, he landed his first placement on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Do Re Mi” from Digital Druglord, with the remix featuring Gucci Mane accumulating 88 million views on YouTube and counting.

Now at 27 years old and in the best headspace he’s been in for a long time, Blackbear plans to take his already flourishing career to the next level. With his forthcoming project titled Anonymous coming on Valentine’s Day, fans can look forward to some of his best work yet

I guess LA Weekly is the one that was bought out by a secret ownership group and they fired all the writers? It shows.

Now at 27 years old and in the best headspace he’s been in for a long time,

is the writer his therapist?

Reads like a copy-paste job from a PR kit, and probably is.