Why the cultural appropriation debate misses the mark

What’s mine is mine. What’s yours is yours.

If you think that’s what the cultural appropriation debate is about, you’re probably wrong.

Wrong, because it barely qualifies as a debate. It’s a culture war — of words.

The most remarkable part of this conflagration about appropriation is that so many writers are talking past each other. For the sake of readers, why can’t writers and artists say what they mean?

Wouldn’t social critics find a wider audience — beyond literary and journalistic circles, or the echo chamber of Twitter — by distinguishing between cultural exploration and exploitation, between respectful writing and regretful caricaturing?

The prerequisite to debate is to define. To “appropriate” typically means to take exclusive possession of something that should be held in common, to annex it without authority or right. A recent debate in the Atlantic reminds us that cultural appropriation means different things to different people.

Oxford Reference notes it has roots in Marxist class analysis (“class appropriation”) and postcolonial critiques. Today it engenders an endless game of reductio ad absurdum, as people try to catch one another out by pointing out that Shakespeare repurposed Danish history to craft his Hamlet. Or that Chuck Berry begat the Beatles, but also borrowed from Beethoven. Not to mention Paul Simon recasting Ladysmith Black Mambazo into his globally influential Graceland album.

Surely that’s not the point of the pain that people feel when their cultures are taken out of context — or when their minority voices are drowned out by a mostly white literary or artistic establishment. The resentments that motivate people to cry cultural appropriation are understandable, even if the phrase is hard for many to comprehend.

Typically it is visible minorities who complain, but even invisible minorities have been aggrieved. The Merchant of Venice is a perennial problem for Jews who read Shakespeare’s stereotypical representation (appropriation?) of Shylock. Yet most also concede that his voice (“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”) also humanized Jews for anti-Semitic audiences.

It’s difficult to read Oscar Wilde (a persecuted gay writer) without wincing at The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which his protagonist loathes the “hideous Jew . . . the fat Jew manager.”

Their writings were the products of their times. But if these writers were Jewish, would they be read differently?

Mordecai Richler was called antiSemitic early in his career — the proverbial self-hater — for his stereotypical Duddy Kravitz character. But his bona fides shielded Richler’s literary device. (When M.G. Vassanji wrote a smart biography delving into Richler’s Jewish roots, no one accused him of cultural appropriation merely for being of Indian descent, via East Africa.)

Being born into Islam didn’t spare Salman Rushdie the fate of a fatwa for allegedly blasphemous depictions of the Prophet in The Satanic Verses. The English Patient beautifully captures the voice of a Sikh army sapper, but author Michael Ondaatje is a Canadian of mixed Sinhalese, Tamil and Dutch ancestry — and not Sikh.

The point isn’t to belittle the pain people feel about lousy literature, but to call out bad writing for what it is: hurtful, harmful, prejudicial, offensive, gratuitous or misguided.

The phrase “cultural appropriation” is a distraction. Most of us agree that writers should be free to explore characters and cultures, and that other writers or readers have an equal right to rebut or resent their writings — and merit more opportunities to be heard.

But in a multicultural society such as Canada — or in a city such as Toronto that is home to more indigenous residents than any reserve — few can fathom a living literature that doesn’t transcend cultural lines. Why dwell on appropriation when it is humiliation and denigration — not to mention exclusion — that are the real frustrations?

All writing is imperfect and any character may give offence — unless you believe in the Bible as the received word of God, and the Qur’an as the immutable prose of the Prophet. Writers, more than most, understand the power of words, so why can’t we find a better way to talk about cultural representation beyond appropriation?

If writers are not only misunderstood by one another, but incomprehensible to a wider audience, then they are not only talking past each other but going unheard by everyone else. Surely the debate requires greater context, not more shorthand, and even fewer tweets (Twitter is for Trumps!).

We won’t get beyond disagreement until we can agree on what we disagree about. Whatever the challenges of cultural coexistence and crosspollination, they are better than literary solitudes. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn

The point isn’t to belittle the pain people feel about lousy literature, but to call out bad writing for what it is: hurtful, harmful, prejudicial, offensive, gratuitous or misguided