How is this not crass cultural appropriation and stereotyping?
If the topic had been a First Nations people rather than the Japanese, the article would be headlined âFaux Native American Photographyâ and would have featured an excerpt of another piece entitled âWhy the âJapaneseâ Photography Trend Is Pissing Off Real Japaneseâ, deconstructing the history and offensiveness of the Western practice of mimicking Japanese fashion and society.
I mean for crying out loud, we were just championing the cancelation of the Redskins trademark, and within eight posts weâve got a white couple with a Northern Italian surname (Formento) playing faux Japanese dress-up with trite nonsense like chewing on a katana, wearing geta in a modern paved back alley, and coyly flirting with the scandalous by draping tentacles over a womanâs face to invoke the most internationally famous Japanese fetish.
I just donât even know what to say.
you forgot that it is only wrong if they are offended. seriously the redskins thing was bad and i am glad it is done with but maybe we could do something about the real problems plaguing the natives in all of north america instead of spending social capital to fight the owner of a team who in already causes a consistent flagrant misuse of public funds.
You have a good point - but you should see how they stereotype Americans. At least weâre ashamed of Mickey Rooney.
The pictures on their website are even worse than you might expect from the excerpts here. Like, virtually every other picture is kimono + yellowface + some weird Western fantasy of Japan. Apparently this is how their âprogressive interpretation and view of Japanâ translates, because the way one progressively updates kimonos is with nipples and pubic hair.
I donât remember particularly offensive Japanese stereotyping of âAmericans.â For sure Japan has serious issues with how they treat and think of foreigners, especially blacks, Chinese, and Koreans, but offensively stereotyping white Westerners isnât particularly prevalent. At least not so far as visual depictions go (many do think that Westerners are much more likely to riot, loot, and commit crimes, especially in the aftermath of a major earthquake).
Japan is pretty racist (much less so among the youth, thankfully), but I donât see how that affects my point vis-Ă -vis BoingBoing. 
That depends on what you mean by âcrassâ. If you could get a consensus that itâs crass, then you might have a point. Stereotyping only seems to be a major problem if itâs widely viewed to be an insulting representation. If you could actually link to articles about how pissed off Japanese are about faux-Japanese photography, then maybe.
The imagery seems consistent with Japanesee pop culture.
As far as artistic merit, the biggest critics are usually the ones with the least talent; those that most advocate a womanâs freedom of expression are the most offended by female nudity; and caucasians are the first to be offended on behalf of other races.
I like drawing naked bodies â men and women â and I donât have to explain my Asian heritage to anyone.
Oh, yeah â âGhost in the Shellâ rocks.
It doesnât have to be the Japanese who are pissed off - Iâm pissed off (and Iâm not Japanese). Itâs disrespectful of another culture to just appropriate it for the âhigh-browâ equivalent of Halloween. Iâm also surprised at Boing BoingâŠ
Boing Boing: We Canât Be Progressive All The Time
Clearly if theyâve openly derided the Redskins situation, they get a free pass on Orientalism this week
Yeah, it kind of does. Otherwise we end up only allowing cultural expression within our personal âsilosâ of cultural identity⊠and youâve suddenly given the scolds within each culture the right to police others in their own culture about subjects they have no knowledge of at all. So we end up allowing certain self-appointed white people to make sure that white people only do âwhite peopleâ things. Fuck that. We already have the MPAA.
So youâre OK with Sharia Law, so long as the people in the countries where it is practiced are OK with it?
They are manifestly not okay with it. This point is also completely irrelevant. This isnât an entrĂ© into the straw man of cultural relativism.
Edit: Conversely, if you do want white people to police whiteness, isnât that more like Sharia law for white people than allowing people of whatever culture to speak for themselves? Having someone whitesplain for all whites is just going to lead to a downward spiral of repressive bullshit.
I dunno maybe it all balances out, he asked hopefully.
How do you differentiate your position from cultural relativism?
And how are all Sharia countries manifestly against it?
Maybe itâs like white/Western people dictating the contours of their own society, and demarcating the limits of acceptable behavior. For example, the age of consent in some societies is considerably lower than it is in the US. Nevertheless, itâs still a crime to have sex with people the US considers underage, even if the other part consents. Bribery is an accepted practice in many parts of the world, but itâs illegal for US companies to bribe people anywhere in the world. Weâre not telling the âvictimsâ how they should feel; weâre telling the perpetrators that we donât find their actions acceptable.
pt. 1: Because the response to offense is a matter of empathy and precedent, not a matter of crowning the winner based on false equivalence and jumping right into a legal framework.
pt. 2: Because women and minority races and religions exist in those âShariaâ countries, and Googling the news about any one of those supposedly âShariaâ countries brings up plenty of articles about violent civil conflict resulting from the ongoing, failing attempts to impose Sharia.
pt. 2+.: Because criticizing insensitivity is not the same as imposing Sharia law, nor is being insensitive the same as imposing Sharia law.
Maybe. I donât see myself as living in a âwhiteâ society, where âwhiteâ means The Catholic League and other insular factions of the GOP.
Is that where you find the source of our discontent with cultural appropriation? (And note that I used the word âwhiteâ because I was responding to your statement about âwhite people [âŠ] polic[ing] whitenessâ; I prefer to think of it as Western society.)
Iâm not sure how that addresses how your statement differs from cultural relativism, unless you think that cultural relativism is implicitly legal and unempathetic.
Minority races exist in Japan, and there actually is a diversity of perspectives there as well. What level of home-grown objection is sufficient to make it legitimate for other cultures to join them in objecting?
If you canât tell the difference between gauging the supposed sincerity of empathy for the victims of cultural appropriation and choosing which faction to feel sympathy for under a regime of Sharia law, there really isnât much point to continuing the discussion, itâll just be me constantly herding you away from the high voltage.
Gauging the supposed sincerity of empathy for victims of cultural appropriation? What does that mean? That those who find fault with Formento are not sincere? And I thought you were arguing that this is not cultural appropriation, and that there arenât victims, so what are we supposed to be gauging? And even if there is cultural appropriation and people are being victimized, why are we gauging the (white) empathy for those victims when youâve said the white perspective is largely irrelevant?
