Blog Post #4

Cultural Appropriation

As an Asian, I disagree that the song “Hello Kitty” from Avril Lavigne is racist.

The video was filming in Japan which apparently shows the culture of Japan, not all the Asians. The culture in each Asian country is different, which have its own stereotype and cannot be fixed with all culture.

The costume appeared in the video that looks fancy and colorful is a usual way that Japan teenage wears. I agree with this statement that “picking and choosing pieces of a culture and wearing them for kicks like a hilarious Halloween costume, then discarding them with it’s no longer fun and going back to comfortable white celebrity  life”. The costume will be discarded when the video is done because celebrity has to create new project and work all the time, but it is not cultural appropriation. The video was made to attract viewers which needed to express the image and environment regarding to the song title and lyrics. Meanwhile instead of thinking as culture appropriation, I think Japan sees that it is good opportunity to spread their culture and image through celebrity and their song because they, themselves, are the one who came up and created this image of their teenage life which is known as “kawaii”. Japan always comes up with new weird fashion style, selfing act and their kawaii language which they will definitely and glad if someone is follows or uses their style.

With Asians characteristic in society, I agree that “Asian characters in cartoons often have slanted silts for eyes. That’s not what Asian people actually look like”. Most of Asians indeed have slanted silts eyes including Japanese, but not all Asians. However, I can say that the reason that they create Asian character having slanted silts eyes because they wanted to clearly indentify the character by the first impression. In the other hand, not all the cartoons create slanted slits eyes Asian character. It depends on the type of cartoon, created location, and the intention of the author. The cartoons is not “what to be fixed with one structure”, you can still find a lot of Asian cartoon without slanted silts eyes character. I think it depends on the audiences, and how you choose to consume the media.

There are many way to analyze and consume media which you can consider. The statement that “….parents don’t analyze their media consumption through the lens of critical race theory. (Those kids are probably downloading “Hello Kitty”….) is relatively racist to the song and parents. Each parent has their own way of analyzing and providing media to their children. “Why do you think that Hello Kitty is inappropriate for others’ children?” parents might think that “Hello Kitty” is not bad and not considered as cultural appropriation for Asian. They might think that the song is for relaxing or fun only. “What if they listen to the music only”, do you still think that the song is considered as cultural appropriation. I can say that there are many ways to consume the media which cannot be fixed. Parents from different places might think that “Hello Kitty” is adorable by representing Japanese Kawaii style. Hence, I think this statement is inappropriate in the article.

As we know that Asians is not the population in only one country, many countries combine into Asian. Hence, we all have our own thought about the media. Media appropriation cannot be fixed in one thought, which in this case “Hello Kitty” is not considered as cultural appropriation.  I disagree that “Hello Kitty” is one of the cultural appropriation for Asian because it illustrate the culture of Japan only. 

Link to the article: http://www.xojane.com/issues/thanks-avril-lavigne-now-i-have-to-explain-cultural-appropriation-to-my-asian-american-kids-again