For a long time, I have tried to explain the momentary discomfort I felt from time to time upon seeing the media’s version of an “Asian culture” for the first time. I vaguely imagined that I was offended, but at the same time I had doubts about the validity of my own feeling, that felt rather foreign. The pop industry’s claim about Asian culture–despite their tendency to confuse Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures–usually has a grain of truth. The celebrities did wear what appeared to be some Asian countries’ traditional costume, the martial arts indeed is an East Asian cultural artifact, and I was not a qualified cultural expert to pinpoint some minor details they may have gotten wrong. Before I finally found out the true source of my unease hidden behind a few factual inaccuracies–an unfamiliarity behind a familiarity–I was cautious not to appear overly sensitive and tried to believe that what I was witnessing was an interaction among different cultures. People’s dismissive attitude about cultural appropriation, in this context, is not hard to understand. A white narrator from TheRebel Media explains one should stop “whining about cultural appropriation” because wearing a foreign costume does not take away anything from the original culture, and she herself wore a kimono to a japanese festival without offending anyone. I believe it was essentially a similar sentiment that inspired Erika Christakis, a former Yale lecturer who urged her students to “be a little obnoxious..a little bit inappropriate or provocative or…offensive” in their choice of Halloween costumes. From the perspective of a child development educator, she saw indirect contact with the foreign as “transgressive”. Bell Hooks might call this desire for a personal transcendence a cultural cannibalism, readily consuming the culture and the history of the Others for one’s use (Hooks, 2001). But Christakis would doubt if wearing your favorite costume–just as she herself bought a Bangladesh clothes in a local market–brings such grave effects.

I am not giving all these claims from proponents of cultural appropriation to say they are wrong. It is simply superficial to think that only things that can be appropriated are things with forms, such as clothes, accessories, food recipes etc. Frankly, the products themselves are of secondary importance. I am aware that Katy Perry’s special performance of her new release Unconditionally in American Music Award 2013 roused controversy mostly because she was white, and she was wearing a traditional Japanese costume. She used a Japanese costume to perform in front of her white audience, and some critics found it appropriative. And my argument starts here: it is not the apparent visual discrepancy that makes her performance a blatant example of cultural appropriation. It is not the reason people should care at all about a pop industry appropriating a culture. The discussion of cultural appropriation should instead focus on the hidden idea wrapped in the visual.

It is not to say that the visual aspect of the performance is irrelevant. It seems that Perry confused traditional Chinese clothes with Japanese clothes in her delivery of Japanese cultural artifact.

Overall pattern and style of the costume appears to be kimono, but the neck and open slits resemble cheongsam, a traditional Chinese costume. What she gives her audience is the general feel of East Asia, nonspecific and generalized, while claiming to represent one specific culture. Kimono is a costume a Japanese person would wear to funerals, festivals, coming-of-age ceremonies, or on any other ceremonial occasions. It is a quintessential symbol of Japan that people “hold it to their heart” (Valk, 2015). Nonetheless, this very item is now tailored to fit into Perry’s marketed image. With the open chest and sides that reveal Perry’s legs, kimono now is an outfit for a free spirited and hot California “gurl” who sings in her powerful voice.

Traditional Cheongsam

Traditional Kimono

Kimono is a costume a Japanese person would wear to funerals, festivals, coming-of-age ceremonies, or on any other ceremonial occasions. It is a quintessential symbol of Japan that people “hold it to their heart” (Valk, 2015). Nonetheless, this very item is now tailored to fit into Perry’s marketed image. With the open chest and sides that reveal Perry’s legs, kimono now is an outfit for a free spirited and hot California “gurl” who sings in her powerful voice. Nonetheless, I have to say that it is worth pointing out Perry’s inaccurate representation but such analysis does not touch the heart of the issue. Yet even critics these days end their analysis on what they can see. Their analysis is shallow, trite, and insignificant. Patricia Park, a writer of New York Times and Guardian, expresses her confusion in her editorial:

      “Her kimono, despite some cultural inaccuracies in the form of strategic slits, was rather prim by Hollywood standards. (…) I couldn’t find anything that officially screamed offensive … And there have been far more egregious “yellow faced” attempts.”

Park adds that she as an Asian American is rather indifferent to her choice of clothes, and so were the most of Asian American students to whom she gave lectures about culture.  Park’s analysis is noteworthy for two reasons. First, even the language of a cultural critic focuses on visual aspects of the performance. What she assumes in her argument is that if Perry wore traditional kimono and cultural experts confirmed everything they saw was right, there should be no problem. Park only succeeds in analyzing a piece of cotton, not the context in which it is placed –which I will discuss soon. Second, she emphasizes her Asian American ethnic identity to give her voice more depth and authority than it deserves. And Park is not the only one. In Perry’s performance, Just like many other talks about cultural appropriation, one’s ethnic identity appears to be an ID card one shows to enter the discussion forum about Perry’s performance. A frequent reference to one’s ethnic identity and origin in this sort of discussions is an appeal to one’s historic lineage rather than one’s knowledge in the subject matter. It is inherently given, not earned. It is just like an unalienable right – a right to freedom, a right to happiness–except that it is a right reserved for only a select number of people. I call it a ‘right to be offended.’ And this right, directly or indirectly called for in the public discourse surrounding Perry’s performance, decides whose voice is to be heard and whose is to be discarded.

      It is the conversation between the appropriator and the appropriated, the offender and the offended. People who are in neither of the category are cautious, unsure, and silent. One Japanese commented online expressed what appeared to be a general confusion at the apparent “fuss”: “I’m Japanese and I appreciate she expressed the beauty of Japan and its culture. Everyone is unnecessarily nervous on cultural issues.” Some tried to argue that Perry’s performance was problematic and offensive, to which an anonymous commentator replied: “Are you Japanese?” With the right to be offended as the ultimate authority, the public discourse about Perry’s controversy is bound to be dichotomous. There is only one Japan and one Foreign. In the past, it was a similar division that led the West to treat the Eastern counties and their culture as one collective entity, the Orient, and decorate it with their fantasies (Said, 1987). And even in the present, the seemingly productive discussion on culture is caught up in generalization, stereotypes, and deindividualization. One well-received Youtube video “Can Foreigners Wear Kimono? (Japanese Opinion Interview)” by a Japanese cultural writer shows how this works. Two entities –“Foreigners” and “Japanese” – have conversations about cultural appropriation, while all the others are spectators. Himself a Japanese, he and his interviewees found no problem with Perry’s performance. To confirm this claim, he put representative authority on seven Japanese people, whose name, age, background etc. remained unknown. It was this precise vagueness that seemed to give those voices a license to speak on behalf of the Japanese. One can only speculate from their causal outfits that they are probably ordinary young people, perhaps college students. Filling the void of their individualities, are their Japanese faces, the language, and their presence in a street of Japan. One interviewee speculated why Perry’s performance might have been criticized: “Because of the umbrellas? They could be weapons.”

      This Japanese Youtuber who profits from his production, does what the business of appropriation is accused of doing. He asks the audience to take a generalized imagery associated with Japan, perhaps with the touch of childlike innocence of the East and appreciation to the West, as ordinary experiences of the Japanese. The audience willingly does, disarmed by the license of cultural identity.

      So far, I have given most attention to the reception of Perry’s performance, and now I move to direct my attention to the content and the idea behind her work–the point a conversation about cultural appropriation should focus on. Anyone who has watched the music video of Perry’s Unconditionally –and here she does not wear kimono but a dress in a ballroom – can see that her message is simple and straightforward. The images of a mother holding her child, affectionate gestures between lovers of different race and even gender show Perry’s emphasis on the love that transcends limitations.

     A car crashing into Perry in the music video almost reinforces the idea of self-sacrifice. In Perry’s AMA performance, she embodied this embracing and almost self destructive love through a body of japanese geisha. The nuance and the visual association Perry draws in her performance reminds one of a fictional character “ChoCho San” from Madame Butterfly. ChoCho San first appeared in a short story written by an American writer in 1898, a period after the year 1853 when Japan was forced to open its port to the West. Later in 1904, this piece turned into Puccini’s opera in 1904. ChoCho San is a geisha who falls in love with white lieutenant, waits for him everyday, and kills herself when she is abandoned. At that time, an affair between a Japanese woman and a white visitor was not unheard of. But the portrayal of ChoCho San is only complete with a Western fantasy about an unconditional love of an Asian woman. Un bel dì vedremo (“One fine day we shall see”) shows ChoCho San’s endless waiting:

And I wait a long time

but I do not grow weary of the long wait.

(…)

I with secure faith wait for him.

     And in her performance, Perry brings back the idea from more than hundred years ago and sings of unconditional love just like ChoCho San would do. She sings of “All your insecurities / All the dirty laundry” that she readily embraces while she is dancing in a kimono. She sings of a love that can, as shown in her music video, bring her own destruction while she shows herself surrounded by japanese cultural artifacts.

Perry’s AMA performance

ChoCho San from Madame Butterfly

Many follow-up articles on the performance said the staging was exotic – “originating in a distant foreign”. The very idea is constructed upon the notion of distance, but not a physical distance in this context. It is a distance between time, between a modern and postcolonial, between the present and the past. Even in the year 2013, the image of Japan is still trapped in the late 1890s when Japan was first penetrated by the West. This is the idea of Japanese culture wrapped in kimono, flower blossoms, and extravagant paper fans. And Perry returns this newly crafted culture to not only her white audience but also to the Japaneses. In all her innocence, Perry said her performance was meant to pay tribute to Japanese culture, and clarified that she did not mean to mock their culture at all. It was her love that led to the production of this particular performance. The crucial question at this point is – does intention still matter? Perry has the product of cultural appropriation up on stage, people have seen it, and it’s there. I say what matters is the invisible idea that the images hide, an imaginary fantasy about the Others that the consumers are asked to believe as a reality. Changing the content and returning it in the same wrapper is the industry of appropriation.

Emulated the style of George Orwell (“Why I Write”), revised by Aanya Kupur, in response to the prompt about cultural appropriation of ordinary people.

Reference

Park, Patricia. “Why all the fuss over Katy Perry’s geisha performance at the AMAs?”, The Guardian, November 26th 2013, Web.

Rebel Media, “Cultural appropriation isn’t racist–it’s really cultural appreciation”, Rebel Media, September 21st 2015, Web. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwQvnyIR9_0

Said, Edward. “Orientalism”, Pantheon Books, 1978. Print.

Valk, Julie. “The “Kimono Wednesday” Protests: Identity Politics and How the Kimono Became More Than Japanese”,  Asian Ethnology Vol 74 No.2, 2015, Web.

Yuta, “Can Foreigners Wear Kimono (Japanese Opinion Interview)”, That Japanese Man Yuta, September 26th 2016, Web. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pXotxxYFlk

      Do we really care about the feminist struggles of the protagonists who disguise themselves as males to get an access to a male-dominated sphere? Often in movies and tv series, these female protagonists strive to refuse expected gender roles imposed upon them and prove themselves as professionals capable of achieving what the male characters do. Yet as viewers, at least for me, our central concern is not so much about their successful accomplishment in realm of professionalism but about the romance between a male and female character. We impatiently ask: so when is her future lover is going to find out that she is not a man? And it is a natural question to ask, since the tension that drives the plot is a romantic one, and confrontation of real life discrimination is given secondary importance in their depictions. It is fair to say that those media productions are in fact about love stories of the female and male character, who stays unbelievably oblivious until the very end despite the fact that the female protagonists usually have the stereotypical characteristics of traditional femininity–either very sassy outside the disguise or with traditional gender expectation of females–and those traits make the disguise unconvincing.

      This golden cliche also applies for the female protagonist in She’s the Man, who dresses up as her twin brother to join the boys’ soccer team in his school.  In the end, she is accepted as a member of the soccer team as a female and beat her ex-boyfriend in a rival soccer team. The festive scene in the end that shows her victory almost reminds one of a carnival scene: the loud crowd cheers at the players, people take their clothes off, and the comic depiction of the defeat of the traditional male power celebrates the inversion of hierarchy. As shown in the movie description, this scene indeed seems to show that “girls can do anything guys can do.” But it is not any girl who is accepted as a member of the domain allowed only for males is not any girl: it is the hot girl that is shown on the poster for She’s the Man, the one that falls in typical female gender description.

      I am saying we should be bothered by such association established in the movie, and take this cheesy rom-com as more than a “harmless fun for the 12 year olds” as noted by one critic. The reason is that the ideas linked with different aspects of gender throughout the movie tells us a very different story about the ideal world suggested by the movie, and this feigned utopia is just a different way of describing the reality the female protagonist was trying to escape from.

      Ideas and imageries this movie uses to frame and construct male and female genders are glaringly simple. The female protagonist, Viola, chooses to play soccer instead of becoming a debutante as constantly insisted by her mother. In Viola’s nightmare, she is wearing a heavy dress with flares which restricts her movements and make her embarrass herself in the soccer field (00:27:18). The dresses that police one’s body represent the traditional role of female, and Viola’s choice to be a female soccer player as a way of freely using her body is an escape from such gender expectation. If they are to refuse the dresses and be soccer players, what would be the new outfit that suits them? There is only scene from the entire movie that shows girls’ soccer team having a match, and they are all wearing bikinis (00:00:50). So an alternative to a dress is not a soccer uniform–but a bikini. The scene that celebrates liberation of these girls focus on their breasts, legs, and the curves of their half-naked bodies in close-up freeze frames. This opening scene of the movie sets a new definition of female gender: if they are not going to be ladies in pretty dress, they will be hot girls in bikinis seducing male audience. A coincidence or not, the lyrics of the background music of the scene, No Sleep Tonight by the Faders tell us what messages these girls may be sending to their male spectators.

“You want me

You want me all the time

…

Baby I’m what’s on your mind

You can’t stop this feeling”

      These lyrics once again reinforce the mental connection between females and their sexual appeal. So the girls who want to escape from their traditional gender frame have to redefine themselves in terms of their physical appeals.

      Viola’s transformation from female to male focuses on hiding physical features and process that defines females in this movie–her hair, breasts, and tampons. Then she learns to walk, talk, and spit like a man. (00:13:31) This juxtaposed contrast piece together for the audience that physical traits define a woman, and actions define a man. These differences become more apparent in the male-talk and woman-talk in number of occasions. When her ex-boyfriend Viola compliments her that she has become better at soccer, Viola responds that he has gotten better at kissing and that she has taught him well (00:02:57); when the two argue, the ex-boyfriend is the one who says “End of discussion!”, to which Viola responds, “Then, end of relationship.” (00:05:31). Because physical skills are alien to female gender, Viola and her soccer teammates are described as amateurs throughout the movie. In fact, when Viola tries out for a boy’s team disguised as her twin brother, she finds out that she is in fact not as good as male soccer players (00:18:35). Indeed, to break the limitations of her gender and be elevated as an amateur to a professional, Viola has to get help from her future boyfriend Duke–a name that connotes social status. Again, a simple binary distinction between the two genders arise from their interactions: women provide sexual pleasure to men, who in return can teach them skills and allow their entrance into realm of professionalism.

      Other characters, Eunice and Monique, who do not fall in such description of femininity function as jesters whose appearance and behaviors induce laughters from the audience. Eunice, a socially awkward character who wears glasses and braces is the best representation of stereotypes about smart girls. When she becomes the lab partner with Duke and tells him that “I am gonna be the best lab partner you’ve ever had”(00:34:18) as she looks at Duke in an excessively seductive way. Her expression of sexual desire looks awkward, as if intelligence and sexual appeals are two incompatible characteristics that appear comical and elicit laughter. But what exactly are such scenes asking us to laugh at? Is it not encouraging us to mock the connection between a female with intelligence and their unpleasant femininity that, as confessed by one online commentator, even causes the feeling of “disgust”? Through the gender dynamic presented in She’s the Man, females with skills are unattractive, if not repulsive.

      Monique, a stereotypical blonde girl who is considered “hot” among male characters in the movie, is on the other side of the spectrum and still the femininity she represents is also not desirable from the movie’s perspective. She is confident enough to reject a guy and say, “girls with asses like mine do not talk to guys with face like yours” (00:31:59). But Monique is rejected by Viola, who Monique mistakes for her twin brother Sebastian and makes fun of her in front of the crowd by calling her ugly. The defeat of the hot girl who is attractive yet unwilling to be their girlfriend generates feeling of catharsis among the male characters, who describe Viola as their role model. A member of female gender in the movie falls in one of the three categories: she is hot and spiteful, she is smart and repulsive, or she is attractive enough but also needs help from men. And I do not have to tell you which of the three types represents an authentic female the viewers and crowd cheer at in the end of the movie.

      But Viola herself is subject to laughter before she reveals her true gender–that is, before she clarifies that her feeling for Duke is not homosexual. Physical contacts between Duke and Viola when she is pretending to be Sebastian always end in Duke’s awkward rejection or exaggerated shuddering. Even Viola  makes it clear that she has no sympathy toward queer love. Meyer in her paper notes that Viola’s “persistent attempt to avoid intimate moments with Olivia”, a very attractive girl who mistakes Viola for a guy and falls in love, in fact “underlines the devalued and humoristic aspects of same-sex desire.” Homosexuality in the movie is something that can be readily used as a bad pun in a scene where Viola’s mom asks to the debutantes, “Now, who is ready to come out?” (1:03:49). She is the Man, a story that revolves around only two authentic genders, invites the viewers not only to laugh at queerness but also to root for Viola to reveal her heterosexual love for Duke. Viola’s choice to dress herself as a man lost its initial significance as a means to resist the discrimination in her life, and it is no more than an obstacle she has to overcome to be loved by Duke, a new life-goal that quickly replaces her original goal. Duke’s response to Viola’s confession of love summarizes how the movie views same-sex love in one phrase: “That’s just weird.” (1:27:10) Viola has to assert her femininity which is defined by her breast and her desire for a male. (Meyer, 2011). Now there indeed is no hindrance to their love, and Duke gladly confesses that “everything would’ve been so much easier if you [Viola] stayed as a girl” (1:38:14).

      The carnivalesque scene in the end of the movie does appear to cheers Viola’s victory against her opponents and her successful achievement of the initial goal in wild festivity. It pretends to be a utopia where traditional hierarchy and rules are thrown out of windows. When Viola confesses that she is in fact a girl who pretended to be Sebastian to be a part of the team, her soccer coach explicitly claims that “we do not discriminate people based on gender” and tears up the soccer manual book (1:29:45). After a direct negation of the traditional rules, Viola runs as the first wing player while the American flag symbolically flashes in the background. However, even in this ideal world that claims to embody American dream, females are still associated with unprofessionalism. The soccer coach calls his players a “bunch of girls” as they lose focus of the game and end up fighting with one another(1:26:32). In this world, Viola confesses her feelings for Duke after the removal of an obstacle–her potential queerness–and succeeds in dating Duke, yet another traditional masculine figure who is described to be a “sensitive guy” with feelings but is quick to be seduced by sexual appeals of Olivia and Viola. In the ending scene, Viola is happy to be the girl accompanied by a male to her debutante party in her elegance dress, the traditional role of a female she was so desperate to escape from. 

       The utopia this movie suggests in the end celebrates the firm re-establishment of traditional orthodox power.  In the end, just like many other bad rom-coms, love is an explanation to everything. But it has to be a heterosexual love between an attractive  girl who is only made happy by a guy who teaches her how to be a professional. Her feminist goal? Again, coincidence or not, the closing song Move Along by The All American Rejects provides you with an answer:

“Move along, move along like I know you do

And even when your hope is gone

Move along, move along just to make it through”

      Yes, move along, even if there still may be discriminations, because us women will be saved by our fellow men “as long as they conform to the codes of femininity within the matrix of heterosexual relationships (Butler, 1990).”

Revised by Juna Khang

Works cited

Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge Falmer.

Fickman, Andy. About the Movie, ITunes Preview, web.

Meyer, Elizabeth (2011). “She’s the Man”: Deconstructing the Gender and Sexuality Curriculum at “Hollywood High”. Counterpoints, Vol.392.