Examining Cultural Appropriation: Pearl Buck's The Good Earth & Zadie Smith's Essay, Appunti di Letteratura Angloamericana

Scarica Examining Cultural Appropriation: Pearl Buck's The Good Earth & Zadie Smith's Essay e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Angloamericana solo su Docsity! 2° lezione 9.10 Meaning and the effects of CULTURAL APPROPRIATION Is it possible to cross cultural boundaries? Is it legitimate and acceptable? This is a very controversial topic and issue today both in the US and UK and in the English-speaking world. Links in slides  She offered a few examples  Halloween, as celebration that usually has been a starting point of debates. One of the catchphrases created by the universities of Ohio and US “we are a culture, not a custom”. They created this slogan against cultural appropriation. Maybe you are not aware of doing it during Halloween parties. How cultural stereotypes regarding Asian or Mexican identity are attacked because they are harmful? They affect people in profound ways. We are interested in reflecting the way these categories are used to read Pearl Buck in the US. What are the effects of this specific kind of reading? SLIDE 20 BRIAN MORTON Brian Morton started this essay by pointing out that the university students in the US refused to read books by author which are anti-Semite or racists. There is a growing expectation concerning what is defined as writer’s accountability for his/her opinions, perspectives on another issue that transcends the work of art itself. Morton invites us to change our perspective considering literature and all forms of art as a time machine. Instead of judging past authors through our current perspectives, we have to use their works as a time machine, thinking about how was the time in which they wrote. Slide 21 When it comes to Buck it is almost the contrary. She saw things in a different way may the writing acceptable. Slide 22 ZADIE SMITH wrote about cultural appropriation in her essay “Fascinated to Presume” which is a long attack against cultural appropriation. She starts by noticing how the definition is an element which determines the outcome of the phenomenon. It is already determined by the word “cultural appropriation”. She describes what is going on now and what is popular in the culture right now presenting it in different degrees. It is a very useful explanation that enables us to understand some of the critical expectations that are brought to bear through books when they were read and analysed in the past in the US. If you consider Buck as a white woman who happened to grow up in China because her parents were part of an Imperialist Project of spreading Christianity to a pagan land and this attempt to control and colonize china, how could she write from the Chinese perspective? One of the questions which emerged is “could she avoid being racist as she was part of the white ruling class in China?” Slide 23 Zadie Smith’s article is useful because she writes as a novelist and makes several examples that come from her experience as a writer and partially as a reader. Her definition of cultural appropriation is clear and useful. It enables us to think about todays world and cultural expectations. This debate is not limited in books but also it is found in movies, tv series. An example of this debate is the tv series “Watchmen”, debated from the point of view of cultural appropriation because it deals race tensions in the US. It was written by a white showrunner. Could a white man tell the story of racial tensions, that has been silent until now or should be left to those men who experienced those events? SLIDE 24 Smith is concerned about the limitations that this entails. Another example is about Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind which also affects American culture and gained critical recognition. Mitchell and Buck were two of the major and popular writers. Cultural reflection As a writer and as a reader Smith remembers the first time, she came across the character of Mammy, which is considered as an example of insulting and degrading stereotype and that stereotype of an Afro- American woman was painful to read. As a young girl she was looking for non-toxic representation. The popularity and impact of “Mammy” has an effect on her, because when you are young you look around you and look for some example of cultural reflections and what you find as distorted mirrors as an effect on yourself and on your perceptions.  If cultural work is a useful category, how does it interact with the other categories? As Zadie Smith mentioned Mitchell, it is the time to study the impact of Hollywood movies together with literary works in the global creation of images which become stereotypes. The Good Earth was also made in popular movies and this is another reinforcement which enables us to get another perspective. in Hollywood you can have white character playing Asian characters, because American viewers may refuse to go to the theatre. This entailed an economic risk. All of the movies made in the 1930s and 40s that were adaptations of Buck’s book had white actors who play Chinese characters.  Essay by Pearl Buck (primary texts) Breaking the Barriers of Race Prejudices The Good Earth was written by a woman living in China who persuades the Americans to publish her book after multiple rejections by publishing houses. Buck was already the most famous writer in America. The US had just entered the 2nd World War and she was immensely popular. She had won Nobel Prize and most of her novels together with The Good Earth form the Trilogy. In “The Good Earth” we read about the story of family. In the 2nd and 3rd book, we follow the story of the family through generations. She used her popularity to become a social activist. In the late 1930s and early 40s she spoke against racial prejudices in the US. In this article, she does it by speaking as an Afro-American by assuming that she is entitled to include herself in this minority. We are forced to get a glimpse of what made Buck outrageous.