GMT: someone I know did that but more in the Book of Mormon style. After reading this I wondered whether that was acceptable.
I think of all the kids that go as firemen, or batman, or a cowboy, or a nurse. Is that disrespectful? So the question of wearing a cultural costume can just be to be someone else for the evening, not necessarily making fun of a culture. Black face is something a bit different. Black face isn’t really performed anywhere anymore is it?
Performed? Hmm…
Do you think Gene Wilder could do a remake of “Silver Streak” these days? You know…with a Richard Pryor substitute?
Blackface is disappearing, even in productions of Othello (and Otello, too).
No, Silver Streak could not be re-made at all. Better question is - should I feel bad about chucking due to the mere mention of silver streak, wilder, and pryor? This is where we get in trouble with humor, it is a very generational thing.
The issue is that the geisha has long been used historically in the US and Western society to negatively stereotype Japanese-Americans and by extension of stereotype by the dominant majority because of the prevailing popular Western perceptions from mass media and prevailing notions “All Asians/Asian-Americans look/are the same” other Asian-Americans.
There’s also a difference between how one experiences negative stereotypes in a society where one is part of the dominant majority as the case with being Japanese in Japan versus as a visible minority as the case with Japanese-Americans and by Western extension of stereotype, other Asian-Americans. It’s a reason why this issue is much more of a sensitive issue among Japanese-Americans and Asian-Americans as opposed to Japanese/East Asians who spent their entire lives or at least their formative or moreso…their young adult years in societies where they’re part of the dominant majority.
Incidentally, many White classmates/colleagues I’ve known only started to understand this dynamic once they went abroad to other countries where they are the visible minority and had to face similar types of negative stereotyping and discriminatory behavior/treatment as a consequence.
One case of this was landlords in Japan refusing to rent apartments to them because Americans…including White Americans were negatively stereotyped with being obnoxiously argumentative, unclean, prone to rowdy and violent behavior to point of damaging apartments/threatening neighbors, and criminality. Part of this is due to prior bad experiences with a few bad apples among American tourists, students, and military personnel.
Well, @cobrat, I distinctly remember seeing and reading information about geishas as a child, and it was NOTHING like what you claim. Geishas were presented as lovely women highly skilled in the arts and part of an honored formal tradition linked to the tea ceremony and other admired Japanese cultural icons such as flower arranging, beautiful temples, exquisite gardens, and the like. There was NO mention of any sexual activity, nor were they portrayed as entertaining drunk businessmen.
Dressing as a geisha would be like dressing as a princess.
What I’m describing is how the US/Western mass media and popular culture has appropriated the image of the geisha to negatively stereotype immigrants of Japanese and Asian origins and their descendants…not how they are portrayed in educational scholarly books on the subject matter. And oftentimes, it’s the former which has far greater influence on the larger popular segment of American society.
And if you don’t know. I’d recommend googling about Geishas and stereotyping of Asian-American women in US/Western Culture to start.
No, I don’t agree with you. When I was a child I wasn’t reading scholarly books on Japanese culture. Just absorbing what was shown to kids in the 50s and 60s.
And in no way, shape, or form was the image of the geisha used to negatively stereotype immigrants or anyone else.
The irony is that the geisha was presented in a manner that completely eliminated the less savory aspects of the geisha that would indeed have been viewed negatively. The geisha were cited to glorify Japanese culture, not to attack it.
And yes, I know all about stereotyping of Asian women. Ironically, many of the works that do so use the supposed submissiveness of Asian women to take a swipe at Western women. Please do not attempt to educate me on the subject of the objectification and subjugation of women.
I’m sorry, but what I’ve observed and experienced from being an Asian-American myself, heard from Asian-American women, and volumes of studies and articles by Asian-American Studies and Feminist scholars on this very issue shows you’re experiences with how geisha were portrayed in US mainstream mass media and mainstream culture shows either your experiences are extremely atypical from the ones experienced by American society overall or you’re ignorant of the underlying issues revolving around how the geisha has been reappropriated to negatively stereotype Asian-Americans.
And how would you know there were no negative stereotypes towards Asian immigrants or their American descendants? Are you an Asian immigrant or an Asian-American? Do you have the temerity to claim you can step in and fully understand what negative stereotypes we’ve been subjected to historically and currently to this very day?
I find it ironic you’re telling me not to educate you on the subject considering you’ve just effectively dismissed and denied the experience of many Asian-Americans including many women I know and also my own observations and experiences as someone who is an Asian-American along with decades worth of studies and articles discussing this very issue…most of which are easily accessible by google. This has also been an issue which has been frequently discussed within the Asian-American community, especially feminists within that community with much concern and frustration.
I don’t see how a random Asian American is a particular authority on Japanese geisha culture, or a particular authority on what most people think of geishas, or of Japanese, or Japanese Americans, or Asians in general.
In my opinion, US mainstream over-glamorizes geishas, and the images are generally very far from negative. I fully agree with Consolation:
In any situation where men are paying women to socialize with them, there is a sexual connotation. Let’s not pretend that Japanese society is operating on some extraordinarily high moral plane.
But don’t all asian people know each other?
^^^ just making sure u know I was being sarcastic…
Possibly, but contrary to how they’ve been portrayed in US popular culture/mass media, they weren’t prostitutes. .
Recalled a few articles and class discussions about how the sexual connotation aspect commonly emphasized was due to preexisting stereotypes of East Asian women among US soldiers stationed in Japan right after WWII and the pimps/madams labeling their prostitutes as “Geisha girls” in order to play to those stereotypes to encourage the patronage of those soldiers for financial reasons. And that. in turn, caused the wrongful equation of Geisha and prostitution in the American/Western pop culture/mass media.
Related, here’s an editorial discussing the outrage over Kate Perry’s portrayal of a Geisha in her 2013 AMA performance which touches on some of the points Consolation and others are not only ignoring, but dismissing in ways which imply they know more about a given stereotype’s impact on a minority group than members of the minority group themselves::
I think I would like a basic analysis of the social role of courtesans in pre-revolutionary France. Does anyone have any information on this?
Will there be a quiz at the end of this lecture?
I find the whole Halloween custome thing incredulous. I am caucasian with a natural fro so is my natural hair when i dont flat iron it a mockery on african americans? Can my children not dress up as american indians although their great great grandmother was full blooded american indian? Yes she was terribly discriminated against and burned everything related to her identity to avoid discrinination. As a nation we have bred across nationalities, cultures and nations. Do all american indians look like indians? Are all blacks dark because some are light skinned and may not appear black. Are all spanish people mexican? No. There many families that are in fact multiculural. This pc stuff marginalizes multicultural families. Is a child who is half hispanic but appears white not allowed to wear a sombrero? If my child was to dress up like obama because he or ahe admired them why not? Can a child of color not dress as a white person? So from what im seeing whites cant dress up in any customes that belong to other cultures. Yet its ok for them to dress as white people? See how crazy this is? And a boy who wants to dress up as a girl because he loves some princess is an afront on transgenders? This pc stuff is based on assumptions. It is making blanket assumptions on strangers they do not know. Many who in fact either admire the person they are dressing as or has cultural relevence to them that you cannot see because those in authority to make these assumptions have preconceived notions of what an american indian, mexican, african american, korean is supposed to look like. First and foremost we are americans no matter how we got here.
People are being deliberately obtuse with this Halloween thing. How difficult is to understand that other people’s cultures are not costumes? Dressing up like a specific historical character is fine; but usually the Pocahontas costumes are just generic “Indian princess” getup that’s not historically accurate and has no indication it’s actually Pocahontas. (The most famous depiction of Pocahontas has her wearing English clothing.) People, for example, will wear war bonnets for Halloween. War bonnets are symbols of great respect in some Native tribes and men have to earn each and every one of those feathers; when some uneducated dude just dons a huge one because they think it’s funny/awesome, it’s disrespectful.
I’ve seen so many costumes that genericize an entire culture: “Mexican,” “70s black woman”, “Native American princess,” “random Japanese woman in a kimono” (or worse, those parties that use racist slurs for costumes and hav people dress up like negative stereotypes). These items are not costumes to people. That’s their culture and their cultural touchpoint. They wear it every day. Or, worse, they wear it only on special occasions because it’s sacred (see also war bonnet).
Yeah, I do feel kind of weird when I see a person who’s hair is not naturally afro-textured wearing an Afro wig for Halloween when they are not specifically dressed as someone. (Foxy Cleopatra or Pam Grier or Angela Davis costume? Awesome. “Generic black woman beacuse this is how their hair looks har har?” Ummmm…no.) It’s because my afro-textured hair has been stigmatized for decades, centuries; I burned my scalp trying to straighten it to be mainstream acceptable and feel beautiful as a teenager; I’m only beginning to see it represented in the media as something that could be acceptable (and even then only when the curls are looser than mine); and I have a tinge of worry when I wear it every day about whether someone will perceive me as angry, difficult, or militant. A person putting it on for a day of revelry doesn’t have that context and it’s just a cool hairdo to them, and it feels kind of itchy to me.
No, children should not dress up as generic “American Indians.” How would you do that anyway? By using stereotypical clothing and markers. Native Americans are real people who didn’t die off in 1492; they live today and they wear jeans and T-shirts and business suits and skirts and all kinds of clothes. You can’t dress up as an “American Indian.” I don’t dress up as a “black person.” I am a black person and there’s no specific way to be a black person. What would dressing as a “black person” even look like? Examine: why are you wearing a sombrero? Are you dressing up like a specific person or are you dressing up as a genericized Mexican because ha ha, that’s what Mexicans wear?
Of course a little boy (or girl) can dress like Obama if they want to, because Obama is a person. Or Doc McStuffins, or Nicki Minaj, or whoever. Those are actual people who have somewhat distinctive clothing and can be represented as a person. (But for the love of god, you don’t have to wear blackface to do it.)
You can dress up as people from other races. You can’t dress up as another race. I get my authority as the PC police officer/social justice warrior of the ages/raging hippie liberal whatever from a flying unicorn who speaks Esperanto.
I think I’ll stick with my Godzilla (classic) costume…unless dressing up as a Kaiju is viewed as culture appropriation…fi so that makes me a sad Kaiju… :((
Maybe I can say it’s a Fat Gator costume…FEAR the FAT GATOR and his ATOMIC BREATH!!!..Oh NO, here comes the dreaded Atomic Treadmill with it’s devastating incline level attack!
Where do lederhosen and bosommy dirndls fit in the cultural-appropriation-outrage food chain?