#i'll call bs out when i see it but if it's ultimately harmless... why appoint yrself to police the many armed monster that is show business?

[princessnijireiki]

re: hamilton response, bruno mars is a cultural appropriator tho. dude is not Black

I'm gonna be really real here & say: I am not bothered by this at all & here's an article that gets into it + an interview where he straight up states his musical influence has always been Black performers...

I'll also say with some things the cat has been out of the metaphorical bag for decades, the can of worms is open, there's no takes backsies. I don't like when Miley decided to try on being Black as a costume to rebel in, but I can't make little white girls not do that, all I can do is observe... and even then, that's not the impression Bruno Mars gives me. He doesn't seem to be "performatively Black-adjacent" or trying on a Blaccent for a gag or wearing cornrows for IG likes, and his creative voice has been consistent for his whole career.

On top of which, I'm not gonna say every & all expressions of Black music & art ever were, are, or automatically should be 100% Black exclusive, esp once you take into account who all has done songwriting, backing vocals, instrumentals, production, etc in the music industry for decades going beyond "just" the face. You aren't automatically a parasite or a poseur for having historical or cultural links to or influence in arts spaces that don't appear to represent you on the surface.

This also applies to theatre... for example, the problem with the raps in Hamilton is not the ethnicoty of who wrote the raps, but that I damn sure ain't trying to hear a rap about Thomas Jefferson when rap is a Black cultural art form & that mf owned, raped, and by that rape produced more of his own slaves. Lin Manuel Miranda not being Black is insult on top of injury, esp once you realize the awful politics & money plays he and his family engage in, abusing Puerto Rican people for profit.

But then on the flip side, Allee Willis, who recently passed, was a White Jewish woman who co-wrote all the music for The Color Purple on Broadway, wrote "Boogie Wonderland" & "September" for Earth Wind and Fire, and grew up listening to Motown records be recorded in Detroit. Do we disavow her despite her cultural authenticity, do we stop listening to "September"? Do you decide that's somehow different than Lin Manuel Miranda & create a double standard, do you deride both of them just to make a point so you drag her down with him, or do you distinguish artistic integrity by what the end product is used for, whom it elevates, who profits, and if that product is indeed exploitative, harmful, or dehumanizing?

There is a difference between communal, joint engagement with an art you may very well already have ties to, use of art, and misuse of art. There are differences based not just upon having a right, permission, or access to an art in the first place, but also the level of respect with which that access is gained, how it is used, and how it is shared.

I'm not mad at being sampled, I'm not mad at Bruno Mars for being a little Filipino Puerto Rican boy who grew up listening to good-ass music, but that's a different thing than Gwen Stefani toting around the Harajuku Girls like accessories or Iggy Azalea trying to sound street when the woman's Australian or Justin Timberlake deciding he's white again.

We gotta get past 101 levels of Cliffs Notes theory & definition, and move on to application, and understanding of what appropriation looks like in action in different contexts & different industries (and from or by people of different ethnicities, and how that influences their "claim" to a thing or not), how it works (incl inherited appropriation ie we can't un-gentrify Americanized yoga at this point so it's not the YMCA group class trainer's fault vs active appropriation ie Vanessa Hudgens does not need to wear a bindi to Coachella), and being able to recognize & express why it's appropriative— if you even have all the information you need to make that judgement in the first place.