Cultural appropriation in role play
Jul. 25th, 2006 11:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annwfynThis is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, and have decided to throw open to a wider group.
Obviously, I'm sure all readers of this LJ are roughly aware of what cultural appropriation is. What is crrently running through my mind is a curiosity/concern about how it intersects with role playing as a hobby, and to what extent we as role players are:
a) guilty of it
b) responsible for whether or not it occurs in our role playing games
c) people who actually think it's a bad thing.
You see, I'm really aware that role playing basically means 'pretending to be something you aren't'. And that's a good thing, by and large. But often it seems to involve 'pretending to be something you don't know anything about', and that pretty much tends to lead to 'getting it wrong'. Of course, at times this probably doesn't matter. While I don't have a clue what it would really be like to be an ethnic minority, hated and feared for the green colour of my skin, and carrying with me a history of burning villages, killing adventurers, and hiding out in underground dungeons, I doubt that there are many real life orcs who are going to be offended by my blatant use of prejudicial racial stereotypes. However, in a large number of games I play (primarily the White Wolf games set), I'm not playing a fantasy race, or a member of a culture that only exists inside someone's mind. I'm often playing something I'm not, which is also something that someone else is.
I remember with acute clarity the American Cam event I went to where I encountered a girl playing a Fianna kinfolk in an IRA t shirt. I remember with greater clarity her insistence that the IRA were an organisation who never hurt civillians, and were just trying to get the British Army to stop occupying her country. I was sure that the 21 people killed in the Birmingham pub bombing would have been rather surprised to hear that. I hope that the views expressed by the player were purely IC, but I had a horrible feeling throughout that the player wasn't much more knowledgeable about the history of the troubles in Ireland, and I did walk away from that encounter feeling rather offended. I wasn't annoyed at the fact that she was playing a member of the IRA, but I was really rather unimpressed by the fact that she seemed to know so very very little about a very real struggle which had killed a lot of people, including at least three family members of one of my school friends.
On a lesser scale, I'm fairly sure that most Brits will remember the occasional dodgy accent or just wonky portrayal of an Irish or Scots character in the old Cam chronicle.
The Brits, in general, have always tended to mutter darkly about such things. But should we? Do we have the right to be annoyed by people from another country playing characters from our country when they really don't know much about what it actually means to be Scottish, or Irish, or English these days? And if we do have the right, do we really need to look at what we're doing ourselves?
I'm currently involved with an independent old WoD larp. I'm also living withbringeroflight, who is my insight into the Camarilla live action role play society these days, and I see a lot of PCs in both games who are characters of a culture which is different to that of the player.
I see a lot of Japanese and Chinese characters, played by white kids who have never been further east than Essex. I see a lot of Russian characters played by people (and I've been one of these people) who could probably pick out Moscow and St Petersburg on a map, but wouldn't have a clue where Khabarovsk if there were left stranded in the town centre. Let's not even talk about World of Darkness: Gypsy (I'm told that White Wolf's follow up titles - World of Darkness: Jew, in which the characters had special abilities to make money, and Nigger: the natural rhythm were cancelled due to budget cuts).
What I guess I'm wondering, is whether those characters are OK?
Is it OK for us to splash around in someone else's culture/history/race, without necessarily knowing much about it, or having any rights to it, simply because it's just a game?
Should we be more responsible in our role playing, and maybe only play something we can research properly, and it's the attitude that matters?
Or is it just insulting for a bunch of white kids to run around pretending to be Japanese vampires with magic powers, and should we actually just stick to what we know and what we actually have rights to?
I'm really undecided on this - on every single angle.
Opinions?
What do you guys think?
Obviously, I'm sure all readers of this LJ are roughly aware of what cultural appropriation is. What is crrently running through my mind is a curiosity/concern about how it intersects with role playing as a hobby, and to what extent we as role players are:
a) guilty of it
b) responsible for whether or not it occurs in our role playing games
c) people who actually think it's a bad thing.
You see, I'm really aware that role playing basically means 'pretending to be something you aren't'. And that's a good thing, by and large. But often it seems to involve 'pretending to be something you don't know anything about', and that pretty much tends to lead to 'getting it wrong'. Of course, at times this probably doesn't matter. While I don't have a clue what it would really be like to be an ethnic minority, hated and feared for the green colour of my skin, and carrying with me a history of burning villages, killing adventurers, and hiding out in underground dungeons, I doubt that there are many real life orcs who are going to be offended by my blatant use of prejudicial racial stereotypes. However, in a large number of games I play (primarily the White Wolf games set), I'm not playing a fantasy race, or a member of a culture that only exists inside someone's mind. I'm often playing something I'm not, which is also something that someone else is.
I remember with acute clarity the American Cam event I went to where I encountered a girl playing a Fianna kinfolk in an IRA t shirt. I remember with greater clarity her insistence that the IRA were an organisation who never hurt civillians, and were just trying to get the British Army to stop occupying her country. I was sure that the 21 people killed in the Birmingham pub bombing would have been rather surprised to hear that. I hope that the views expressed by the player were purely IC, but I had a horrible feeling throughout that the player wasn't much more knowledgeable about the history of the troubles in Ireland, and I did walk away from that encounter feeling rather offended. I wasn't annoyed at the fact that she was playing a member of the IRA, but I was really rather unimpressed by the fact that she seemed to know so very very little about a very real struggle which had killed a lot of people, including at least three family members of one of my school friends.
On a lesser scale, I'm fairly sure that most Brits will remember the occasional dodgy accent or just wonky portrayal of an Irish or Scots character in the old Cam chronicle.
The Brits, in general, have always tended to mutter darkly about such things. But should we? Do we have the right to be annoyed by people from another country playing characters from our country when they really don't know much about what it actually means to be Scottish, or Irish, or English these days? And if we do have the right, do we really need to look at what we're doing ourselves?
I'm currently involved with an independent old WoD larp. I'm also living with
bringeroflight, who is my insight into the Camarilla live action role play society these days, and I see a lot of PCs in both games who are characters of a culture which is different to that of the player. I see a lot of Japanese and Chinese characters, played by white kids who have never been further east than Essex. I see a lot of Russian characters played by people (and I've been one of these people) who could probably pick out Moscow and St Petersburg on a map, but wouldn't have a clue where Khabarovsk if there were left stranded in the town centre. Let's not even talk about World of Darkness: Gypsy (I'm told that White Wolf's follow up titles - World of Darkness: Jew, in which the characters had special abilities to make money, and Nigger: the natural rhythm were cancelled due to budget cuts).
What I guess I'm wondering, is whether those characters are OK?
Is it OK for us to splash around in someone else's culture/history/race, without necessarily knowing much about it, or having any rights to it, simply because it's just a game?
Should we be more responsible in our role playing, and maybe only play something we can research properly, and it's the attitude that matters?
Or is it just insulting for a bunch of white kids to run around pretending to be Japanese vampires with magic powers, and should we actually just stick to what we know and what we actually have rights to?
I'm really undecided on this - on every single angle.
Opinions?
What do you guys think?
