Asian-American burlesque performer Shanghai Pearl wrote a poignant response on how this act offended her, and the responses on this (and on other means) are stunning - some are in support, speaking up about racism and prejudice and privilege, and some are so defensive to the point of sickening. There are claims that Shanghai Pearl wants to "censor" people, claims of "nothing is sacred", even an accusation that she's just "choosing" to be hurt.
Sadly, none of this is new to anyone.
Racialicious has a great roundtable with Chicava Honeychild, Shanghai Pearl, ExHOTic Other, and Essence Revealed about Dita's act and racism in the burlesque scene. There's also some discussion about whether it's easier to be defending Dita because it's an Asian act, while something more obviously racist such as lynching or slave boats would get more of a response. (Personally, having known performers that do blackface, I am not so sure.)
As mentioned before, one of the catalysts for doing the work that I do - including and especially this MFA - was the amount of cultural appropriation and racism I observed, received, and heard about in burlesque & creative sexuality. Cultural appropriation doesn't allow marginalised and minority folks to tell their story their own way. We get pigeonholed, expected to either be completely "ethnic" (sometimes using ethnic identities that aren't exactly ours but rather are ones we fit into, since no one believes our story), or completely conformist in what I like to call "Victorian 1950s" - rolls and pale skin and corsets. Deviate from either and you risk not being as respected, not getting as many opportunities (whether "you're too niche" or "you're too weird-looking"); conform to either and you get told off for not playing your part right. We can't win!
The Racialicious article talks about a group of Chinese exchange students who went to see Dita's act and were aghast at the Opium Den section:
The first thing that came to my mind was the fact that I was surrounded by a very large group of Chinese exchange students, who all had their mouths open and were just as stunned as I was. The girl next to me leaned over and said, “We don’t smoke opium and dress like that! Is that what you think we do?!” and they all began whispering amongst themselves.It gets really awkward, uncomfortable, and sometimes downright dangerous to be in the same space as a performance that appropriates and mangles our culture. I was in a party where there were 2 White performers doing a "Kali" and "Krishna" blueface (well, blue-body) act, reducing the two important Hindu deities to fire-playing savages. I'm not Hindu and never have been, but being South Asian I do get a lot of assumptions and questions about Hinduism, and a lot of the culture I was raised in was heavily influenced by Hindu culture so I was struck particularly hard. I didn't want to have to answer weird questions about Kali or Krishna, I didn't want to be assumed (as had happened before) that I was a "yogini" since I was 6 years old, and I especially did not want to endorse an act that played to the wider societal assumptions of Kali as a demon and Krishna as just some random dead deity. No. I left the party post-haste.
Nothing is sacred. This comes up over and over again, and I am sick of it. If it's not a culture that you are involved with, not something you grew up with, not something you have a connection to - you don't get to say what is sacred or not. I know it's fashionable now to decry everything as "superstition" and stick to PURE RATIONAL SCIENCE!!!, but I often find that those feelings tend to stem from the fallacy that all belief systems that incorporate some sort of Higher Power work the same way (Bearded Man on Cloud being didactic) and that spirituality is the same for everyone. There are many symbols and entities in the world that are still sacred, that still holds meaning and protocol, and to abuse that is to deeply disrespect the original culture and say "you're just a plaything for me, just a costume in a box, there is no meaning because I said so". Imperialistic and colonial - "I shall impose my ideas onto you".
A lot of this happens not even out of maliciousness, but out of a misguided sense of "Respect" - for example, this newer trend I'm noticing of having anyone who is not an Aboriginal/Indigenous Australian male of playing the didgeridoo. That instrument has strong protocols about who gets to play it, when, and why, and any gender politics involved is not up for the outsider to decide: the Aboriginal/Indigenous Australian communities have their own vast history of gender issues, likely consider gender rights in a different paradigm to yours, and it's not your place to tell them what's good for their culture. As it is, Aboriginal/Indigenous communities tend to be vastly underemployed anyway - so if you're really after a didgeridoo player why not hire someone qualified to play one?
And that's the other sticking point with cultural appropriation, especially in burlesque: the idea that because portrayals are often "positive" and "admiring", rather than "mocking", they can't be bad. Cultural appropriation is disrespect. You're reducing a culture with very loaded symbolism and history into something cutesy and fashionable, while not looking at your own internal racism and how you work to perpetuate or decrease that. Just because it's putting the culture in a good light doesn't make it OK - it's still reductive and often baseless, and adds to the burden of prejudice & stereotyping that affects people from those cultures.
Not to mention the double standard too - it's pretty and glamorous when Dita von Teese and her ilk wear traditional Chinese clothing. When a Chinese person wears it? Go back to your country! Why are you not assimilating?! Backwards FOBS!. People lose jobs, opportunities, relationships, respect for looking even the slightest bit their ethnicity (hence the proliferation of skin-bleaching projects for South Asians, for example) - when those from the outside get to be called "cool" and "trendy". This double standard is one of my biggest frustrations with cultural appropriation, more so than the actual appropriation: it's the weight given on who wears what.
The other big frustration? Censorship in the guise of "you want to censor us!". Take Shanghai Pearl's note for example: she spoke up about her offence and the problems with Dita's act, and people claimed she wanted to "censor" burlesque - and told her to not speak up. Who's the one censoring here? Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism, or freedom to avoid hearing the bad stuff. If you want to create an act that is appropriative, disrespectful, offensive? Well, your prerogative - just don't be surprised if people enact the same freedom of speech you used to speak up against it. It's not a discussion when the thrust of the discussion is "Like me or you fail".
People don't seem to get it; it's like talking to a brick wall. I'm not a fan of necessarily separating ourselves in the scene, but I can see why that's necessarily for personal safety and sanity. Things need to change, space needs to be opened up, and people need to listen.
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