She may be adored today, abhorred tomorrow. If you can make it as a white girl you have moved the realm of disadvantage to privilege: from dangerous black to safe white; from the utilitarian masculine to the glamourous feminine. Als pushes this further by suggesting that for an artist like Eminem, the drive to create comes from a need not merely to look in from the outside, but also to touch, to sample, to take. Attending a high school in which cultural appropriation was so demonized, I could never understand this supposed rule that my feelings were not valid because cultural appropriation “did not apply to food.” After some time and reflection, I’ve realized that the rule was never really, “cultural appropriation doesn’t apply to food,” it was actually, “cultural appropriation doesn’t apply to anything that we, as white people, would like to continue appropriating,” which very often targeted Asian culture. The Uncomfortable Art of Influence: Hilton Als’ White Girls and Cultural Appropriation, The debate about the ethics of cultural appropriation was reignited recently when the Australian fashion label Perks and Mini (P.A.M.) were criticised for their use of African-themed designs in a fashion collection displayed in the Melbourne Now exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria earlier this year. I have had it with the stupid lectures! In his opening essay Als observes of himself and his kin, ‘we like girls more than the world liked them, which is to say more than they liked each other, let alone themselves.’ That love–hate dynamic helps to explain how the white girl has such symbolic significance: her position in society is essentially unstable. Although my family did not live near Arcadia, this became a common spot for us. ‘They are kind of stealing another culture, I’m not sure if that’s OK or not,’ said one visitor to the P.A.M. installation at the NGV, in Alexander’s piece. Katy Perry has had her fair share of experience with cultural appropriation, starting in 2013. To say that non-Asians should not be able to consume and enjoy Asian foods sounds absurd, which is why I never said anything about my white peers’ extreme affinity for my favorite restaurant: Din Tai Fung. Cultural appropriation is the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, of one people or society by members of another and … Caroline Hamilton is a post-doctoral research fellow in the department of Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne. To put it simply, there are rules to the game, and expectations about who should play, but recognising this and discussing it openly make many people uncomfortable, as the Walters/Pryor exchange makes clear. These facets are usually embraced because they are viewed as kitschy, fashionable or ironic. In fact, I’ve consistently gotten takeout from the Century City location every couple of weeks over the past few months. Cultural appropriation is a highly complex and constantly evolving issue which requires discussion and debate’– and then it was back to business as usual. But at the same time, I mourn what Din Tai Fung used to be; the complimentary jasmine tea, the disposable chopsticks with “xlb eating instructions,” the significant role the original Arcadia location played in my identity growing up, and everything else that was lost along the way in order to make room for the affluent classes of mainstream America. in the drylands of the Murray-Darling Basin (Somerville, 2013). It was constantly evolving into a place I no longer recognized. Have you ever felt like your cultural identity was being stolen or misused, but lacked the confidence and vernacular to call it out? The founder of a Toronto broth bar has issued an apology following accusations of cultural appropriation. Before that, it had converted into a take-out only model, as it did not fit with the brand’s new, high-end aesthetic. IF YOU ask someone to cite examples of cultural appropriation, there’s a good chance they’ll give you one of the two issues that have been well publicised in recent times. With food, it isn’t just eating food from someone else’s culture. He is not denying Mathers’ whiteness, just saying that his status as white needs to be understood in terms of other considerations such as class and economics; his awareness of being on the outside looking in. He recalls being stared at by all the Asian families and feeling like the minority for one of the only times in his life. How can white people “discover” a food I have been eating my entire life? By opening new locations in high-end shopping centers in predominantly white areas, Din Tai Fung has done the same by telling white people, “look, this restaurant and these foods are for, Before that, it had converted into a take-out only model, as it did not fit with the brand’s new, high-end aesthetic. Kill Your Darlings is largely produced on unceded sovereign Wurundjeri country. Din Tai Fung opened its first U.S. location in 2000 in a strip mall located in Arcadia, California, a predominantly Asian area. Sick Leave: A Year of Living Horizontally. It’s a state of mind, a way of acting, the pose of privilege.’ Becoming a white girl is a process of self-creation – a means of rewriting one’s social identity – the focus is privilege, who has it and who will never have it, and what those without it are supposed to do. He recalls being stared at by all the Asian families and feeling like the minority for one of the only times in his life. Girls at my high school suddenly seemed to model their entire personas off of liking this “authentic Asian cuisine.” Not only this, but white classmates of mine heralded themselves for the “discovery” of Din Tai Fung. However, when I first visited the new location, something felt different. In fact, I’ve consistently gotten takeout from the Century City location every couple of weeks over the past few months. And when we sat down at our table, they gave us ice water, without us even asking! It is in general used to describe Western appropriations of non‐Western or non‐white forms, and carries connotations of exploitation and dominance.” This new term popped up on my high school community’s radar after celebrities like Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry came under fire for their aesthetic utilization of other cultures in their music videos. For those that are listening, cultural appropriation is understood as not being 'appreciation' and by large, is not okay. You are entitled to admire culture. You are entitled to engage with our culture if you do so respectfully. You are entitled to appreciate our culture. You are not entitled to appropriate our culture. It makes their seeing me as a nigger even more complicated.’. A gay, black man working at one of the most prestigious publications in the world, Als has a sense of what it means to use culture for personal advantage. I understand white privilege, cultural appropriation and racism. Cultural appropriation is when members of a dominant culture adopt parts of another culture from people that they’ve also systematically oppressed. Though I was a child, I still have vivid memories of my first experience with Din Tai Fung’s famous xiao long bao, or “juicy pork dumpling.” My Auntie and Uncle showed me how to pick up the dumplings with my chopsticks, ever so careful not to puncture the dumpling’s skin and let all the soup rush out. I can’t say it. Parpal Dumplin is encrusting, meaning it adopts the shape of whatever it covers. What constitutes a personal connection to another culture? Instead of waiting for our table in a little corridor with all the other Asian families, we now had the option to shop at high-end retailers until we received a text that our table was ready. But many of our discussions around cultural appropriation lacked nuance, and one thing was made exceptionally clear to me by my white community: cultural appropriation did NOT apply to food. Since then, Din Tai Fung has expanded into a massive, international chain with additional locations around the globe. [1] The aim of the project was to explore different ways of relating to water and land in response to the crisis of water in the Murray- Darling Basin. Is it ok to treat a personal connection as little more than a pass note into a culture? In just months, it felt as though Din Tai Fung no longer belonged to me as much as it belonged to my white peers. Your support helps us to pay writers and publish new work. Leaving aside his attempts at a physical transformation from black to white, Jackson’s life history was marked by a series of attempts to gain distinction and acquire new signs of his privileged position: first with houses, cars, jewels, antiques and later with monkeys, wives and children. Individuals might be free to play around with their identities but social forces shape these games. This apparent cure-all response – ‘cultural appropriation is complicated’ – euphemistically skirts around a less pleasant truth: cultural appropriation is always, necessarily, an uncomfortable art. For example, I recently had a friend ask me, “Is it cultural appropriation for a white person to eat Chinese food?” I mean, it would sound absolutely ridiculous to ban white people from eating Chinese food, wouldn’t it? I was thrilled that a new location was FINALLY opening closer to where I lived. ‘Unlike many of the whites he grew up with, Mathers never claimed whiteness and its privileges as his birthright because he didn’t feel white and privileged,’ Als observes. A few weeks ago, the original Din Tai Fung USA location in Arcadia closed down for good. Your support helps us to pay writers and publish new work. (Laughter.). There is no doubt that luxury fashion in general has a problem with cultural appropriation. It is one of the reasons why people of all races are checking out of the debate. You said it pretty good. The people working there were white. White girls wore traditional cheongsams to prom, dawned bindis and kimonos at music festivals, and there was even a period of time when Hello Kitty and “kawaii” aesthetics permeated my high school’s fashion scene. Brooklyn Chop House, located at 150 Nassau St., offers cheeseburger shumai, pastrami dumplings, and French onion soup dumplings, to name a few. . But many of our discussions around cultural appropriation lacked nuance, and one thing was made exceptionally clear to me by my white community: cultural appropriation did NOT apply to food. Learning about this phenomenon was a bit of a sigh of relief, as it perfectly described many experiences I felt growing up as an Asian American in a predominantly white community. Whether or not it’s ok, as a social phenomenon, this kind of ‘theft’ has the potential to demonstrate some of the more entrenched inequities in our society. The stickers were only one part of a larger online campaign to draw attention to what was deemed inappropriate use of Indigenous cultural emblems. I have many fond memories of waiting for hours just to get a table—how my sister and cousin and I would wait outside with our complimentary jasmine tea, sitting among all the other Asian American families waiting to savor their dumplings. The hippies romanticised indigenous and eastern cultures, an act of unapologetic cultural appropriation. They first took us to the Arcadia location long before the chain became the new go-to for Asians and non-Asians alike, opening seven additional locations in California alone. There is no shortage of Asian restaurants in Iowa City, and while Dumpling Darling doesn't claim to be 'authentic', they still profit off of the Asian community and culture without giving back in any meaningful way whatsoever as well as continually act dismissive and silence Asian voices who speak up on the topic. Of course, people understood that dressing up in a Native American headdress at Coachella was cultural appropriation, or that a non-Black person wearing cornrows was just wrong. Pryor: Well, good. Cultural appropriation is defined as “the taking over of creative or artistic forms, themes, or practices by one cultural group from another. Taking cultural theft for granted, Als takes his readers miles beyond ‘the discussion and debate’ recommended by official institutions like the NGV. Would it be better instead to simply state who is allowed to take what and from whom? My white classmates’ sudden dumpling obsession was a clear symptom of this type of capitalism and gentrification at work. I am glad to still enjoy all these things, and glad others can enjoy them as well. Of course, people understood that dressing up in a Native American headdress at Coachella was cultural appropriation, or that a non-Black person wearing cornrows was just wrong. By opening new locations in high-end shopping centers in predominantly white areas, Din Tai Fung has done the same by telling white people, “look, this restaurant and these foods are for you!”. Despite the gentrification and location changes it has gone through, I still enjoy Din Tai Fung. Any restaurant owned by white Americans serving street tacos and “Korean Beef Lettuce Wraps,” places itself within a broader debate, that of cultural appropriation in the food industry. FOr sure these are difficult conversations….and it is good that there is a place to have these conversations and ask questions. However, it quickly became clear that the parts of my own culture which I felt were being appropriated by my community would not be considered valid forms of “cultural appropriation” if they were not tied to a streamlined and easily-digestible argument. They first took us to the Arcadia location long before the chain became the new go-to for Asians and non-Asians alike, opening seven additional locations in California alone. At the same time, I’m confused about the line between that and cultural appreciation (including historical designs, fabric and so on.) I can’t … you can say it. This is apparent not only by my own personal anecdotes, but also by broader changes to the brand over the past ten years. And of course, it doesn’t hurt that the food is genuinely delicious. The dominant culture can try the food and love the food without ever having to experience oppression because of their consumption. It is the practice of taking of traditional knowledge, cultural artefacts, ceremony, iconography or other cultural intellectual property without consent and outside of cultural protocols. Becoming a white girl means moving from the outskirts of a culture to its centre; from the ‘shit girl’ in the boondocks to the ‘it girl’ of Hollywood. What made a figure like Richard Pryor so powerful as a performer was the way he liked to break the rules by drawing attention to them. This appropriation shows a serious lack of understanding and respect of protocols. It is more difficult to make sweeping statements. I hardly ever visited that location anymore, but hearing about its closing triggered joyful childhood memories of dumpling eating competitions with my sister and visits to JJ’s bakery across the parking lot to buy lotus paste mooncakes during mid-autumn festival. Din Tai Fung first began in Taipei, Taiwan, as a cooking oil retail business, but was reborn as a restaurant in 1972. Din Tai Fung immediately became a popular staple of my white peers’ diets and social lives. However, when talking about the appropriation of our cultural foods, there is a lot of nuance to take into account. Here are some other areas of irritation and appropriation that would make us cry if we didn’t have such a deadly cathartic sense of humour. Ironically, this was one of the only places I remember going as a kid where the rest of my family, Flash forward to 2013 and Din Tai Fung opened a new location in Glendale, CA at a popular shopping center called, Attending a high school in which cultural appropriation was so demonized, I could never understand this supposed rule that my feelings were not valid because cultural appropriation “did not apply to food.” After some time and reflection, I’ve realized that the rule was never really, “cultural appropriation doesn’t apply to food,” it was actually, “cultural appropriation doesn’t apply to anything that we, as white people, would like to continue appropriating,” which very often targeted Asian culture. Acts of cultural appropriation don’t subvert systems of oppression but provide an alternative means for navigating them (old rules, new games, if you will). I hardly ever visited that location anymore, but hearing about its closing triggered joyful childhood memories of dumpling eating competitions with my sister and visits to JJ’s bakery across the parking lot to buy lotus paste mooncakes during mid-autumn festival. Similarly to Din Tai Fung, retailers like Urban Outfitters capitalize off of this fetishization of Asian culture by creating Asian-inspired designs that make cultural appropriation not only accessible to white people, but also make it feel acceptable. However, even this was all influenced by larger capitalist forces. Flash forward to 2013 and Din Tai Fung opened a new location in Glendale, CA at a popular shopping center called The Americana at Brand. These changes included a significant increase in price, cosmetic changes to the restaurant interior, and locations in which the chain chooses to open new branches. Though I was a child, I still have vivid memories of my first experience with Din Tai Fung’s famous xiao long bao, or “juicy pork dumpling.” My Auntie and Uncle showed me how to pick up the dumplings with my chopsticks, ever so careful not to puncture the dumpling’s skin and let all the soup rush out. Cultural appropriation is when members of a dominant culture adopt parts of another culture from people that they’ve also systematically oppressed. She has written a book about American publishing celebrity Dave Eggers, One Man Zeitgeist (Continuum, 2010). Decorated with an earthy colour palette, the plentiful seating makes this venue a good choice for large bookings. Sylvie, nine, helped name the purple sponge that was found off the north Norfolk coast ten years ago. In her review of the book for The Rumpus Anisse Gross asserts that, for Als, ‘being a white girl isn’t about being born white in a woman’s body. This was where my family was first introduced to Din Tai Fung by my Auntie and Uncle. One of the easiest—yet continually ignored—ways to be mindful on Thanksgiving is to not appropriate Native American cultures, or any culture for that matter. Cultural appropriation is defined as “ the taking over of creative or artistic forms, themes, or practices by one cultural group from another. Despite the gentrification and location changes it has gone through, I still enjoy Din Tai Fung. Unlike other artists who have borrowed heavily from black cultures, such as Eminem, the designers appear to have taken what they please; exercising an oversize sense of entitlement without avowing a shared world view or acknowledging from where their entitlement springs. The need to find/discover one’s self via the culture and heritage of a different people is nonsensical to me. Dear Asian Youth is fiscally sponsored by Irvine Lights, Din Tai Fung and the Appropriation and Gentrification of Foodways. We would not need to drive as far to get our beloved xiao long bao and maybe, the wait times would not be as lengthy either. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land and pay our respects to Elders past, present and future. Cultural appropriation is most often perpetrated against minority groups, who are victims of oppression and have been historically exploited. The Murray-Darling Basin is known as ‘the food bowl of the nation’ and produces 40% of the nation’s agricultural production in ways that are unsustainable. By Als’ definition Eminem, Michael Jackson, Richard Pryor, Louise Brooks and Truman Capote are all white girls. Same. Several Torontonians criticized Ripe Nutrition’s white owner Alexandra Baird for co-opting traditional Asian foods including bone broth and dumplings and marketing them as wellness items. It is in general used to describe Western appropriations of non‐Western or non‐white forms, and carries connotations of exploitation and dominance. Restaurants like City Steam also raise questions as to the very nature of American food. Have you ever felt like your cultural identity was being stolen or misused, but lacked the confidence and vernacular to call it out? This was a far cry from the usual Chinese dining experience. Take for example this exchange in an interview between the comedian Richard Pryor and TV journalist Barbara Walters, from which Als quotes: Walters: When you’re onstage … see, it’s hard for me to say. I wonder why. The video, entitled, ‘P.A.M. Cultural appropriation is a highly complex and constantly evolving issue which requires discussion and debate’– and then it was back to business as usual. I n multi-ethnic Singapore, culinary cultural appropriation can be a complex subject. By assuming the role of a white girl, Als suggests, individuals try to shift themselves out of an undesirable identity and into the arms of the popular culture. And since Darling bases her income on selling the desirability of her own fabulous lifestyle, and in influencing other young women to find that lifestyle desirable, she is literally appropriating Indigenous culture to benefit her own bottom line. But some people have pushed back against the idea of cultural appropriation. However, it quickly became clear that the parts of my own culture which I felt were being appropriated by my community would not be considered valid forms of “cultural appropriation” if they were not tied to a streamlined and easily-digestible argument. If only Asian people could eat Asian foods, it would be astronomically detrimental to Asian eateries, which many Asian immigrants rely on for their livelihood. Din Tai Fung opened its first U.S. location in 2000 in a strip mall located in Arcadia, California, a predominantly Asian area. Ruby feels very strongly about issues surrounding cultural appropriation and Asian fetishism, and uses her burlesque as a platform to invoke change. Around my sophomore year of high school, a new term started becoming very popular in all of my classmates’ academic vocabulary: ” This new term popped up on my high school community’s radar after celebrities like Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry came under fire for their aesthetic utilization of other cultures in their music videos. White girls wore traditional cheongsams to prom, dawned bindis and kimonos at music festivals, and there was even a period of time when Hello Kitty and “kawaii” aesthetics permeated my high school’s fashion scene. The works – large, free-standing photo prints accompanied by video footage, depicting white models wearing the designers’ patterned fabrics – were defaced with stickers reading: ‘I’m just so bored of being white!’. Although my family did not live near Arcadia, this became a common spot for us. Incidents such as those involving art:broken and P.A.M. demonstrate that appropriation and performance cannot run in both directions without causing alarm, discomfort and confusion. According to Als, a musician like Marshall Mathers (aka Eminem) can be understood as more than just a white boy appropriating black music. I mean, who can survive quarantine without some xiao long bao? Cultural appropriation, defined broadly as the use of a culture’s symbols, artifacts, genres, rituals, or technologies by members of another culture, is inescapable when cultures come into contact, including Shared by many artists this impulse, Als says, comes from ‘a sense that delving into “otherness” allows them to articulate their own feelings of difference more readily.’. To him the figure of ‘otherness’ that an artist like Eminem works to interrogate and imitate is not the young black man on the street corner but the ‘white girl’, the very beating heart of our popular culture. Both pan-fried and steamed dumplings are on offer, with the usual traditional filling choices of pork, chicken, seafood and vegetarian. Around my sophomore year of high school, a new term started becoming very popular in all of my classmates’ academic vocabulary: cultural appropriation. Din Tai Fung USA, as a business, has transitioned to be less of a social space for the Asian American community and has instead become a larger, more service-oriented establishment, capitalizing off of the upper-class’s demand for an authentic taste of another culture. A video, attributed to an anonymous user known as art:broken, was uploaded to vimeo and then circulated online by several local artists who expressed sympathy with art:broken’s concerns for Australia’s international artistic reputation. ‘To say, as many critics have, that whites steal from blacks who originate important work in music or fashion is beside the point,’ writes the American critic Hilton Als in his recent book White Girls. It was on everyone’s Instagram story every weekend; people started having birthday parties there, and I found myself getting flooded with DMs saying, “OMG you like DTF too? Cultural appropriation is often mentioned but undertheorized in critical rhetorical and media studies. Defined as the use of a culture’s symbols, artifacts, genres, rituals, or technologies by members of another culture, cultural appropriation can be placed into 4 categories: exchange, dominance, exploitation, and transculturation. They share an important narrative of becoming: the tales of their paths to stardom combine traditional success stories of self-making with a narrative of personal drama, ever-unresolved. I remember my dad telling us he went alone once with his other white friend. The full version of this article is available to KYD Members. Same. I must acknowledge, however, that this “discovery” did not come out of nowhere. With food, it isn’t just eating food from someone else’s culture. Looking back, Din Tai Fung was not an isolated incident. The whole cultural appropriation issue is a bad joke that obscures and detracts from the real life concerns of POC. Subscribe now for full digital access to KYD for less than $1 a week! Ⓒ 2021 Kill Your Darlings | Privacy Policy, Design by The Company You Keep | Build by Cinch, Big Henson Energy: The Ridiculous Optimism of The Muppets. Like Walters dropping the N-bomb in her interview with Pryor, audiences instinctively recognise that appropriations like these are in some way inappropriate. If anything, art:broken’s ironic stickers are misplaced on the cardboard cut-out models wearing P.A.M.’s designs, the real targets of their anger are the consumers who fail to recognise their role in the game. A white girl may be celebrated, but only on the basis of her agreement to always play her role. Als’ writing elucidates the uncomfortable truth lurking behind criticisms like those made by art:broken: ‘[t]he subject of blackness has taken a strange and unsatisfying journey thorough American thought: first, because blackness has almost always had to explain itself to a largely white audience in order to be heard, and, second, because it has generally been assumed to have only one story to tell – a story of oppression that plays on liberal guilt.’, Als is a staff writer for the New Yorker and has a declared self-interest in the cultural theft that marks the everyday art of living for many individuals. It’s a fine line and it’s time we talked about it. I remember my dad telling us he went alone once with his other white friend. Of his own experiences as a black man, Als writes, ‘So much care, so much care, is taken not to scare white people simply with my existence, and it’s as if they don’t want to deal with the care, either. I have many fond memories of waiting for hours just to get a table—how my sister and cousin and I would wait outside with our complimentary jasmine tea, sitting among all the other Asian American families waiting to savor their dumplings.
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