Cultural appropriation? Local MacBeth staging turns to “anime” for inspiration
August 6, 2006
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be . . .
There’s a discussion flying around the blogosphere that has probably sailed right over the heads of many of you, however it’s a topic that has interested/frustrated me for some time, “cultural appropriation.” I’d written something to post here on it however I looked up and had about five pages. I think that’s past the agreed upon blogging limit. So I while I consider whittling it down ponder this article about a dramatist who looks to invigorate public interest in MacBeth via “anime.”
Cultural appropriation, acculturation, or misguided mama?
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Dork Nation 
Wow.
On the one hand, I think cultural appropriation, for better or for worse, has a long history of being the engine that drives popular culture in the U.S. And I like a lot of our popular culture and so I usually don’t mind artists ripping off inspiration from where ever they rip off inspiration.
But this specific instance bugs me. It bothers me that they wanted to have something that looked vaguely “Japanese” and so they called in someone from the Chinese Arts Alliance. Maybe that’s not as big a deal as it seems like to me, but to me, it bugs.
But to me what’s really bothering is the way in which Macbeth is posited as being so “familiar” so “us” that, in order to make it really come alive, “we” need to have it made unfamilar to us by packaging it in some “foreign” trappings.
Those assumptions about “us” and who the audience for Macbeth is really grate on me.
Have I mentioned my production of an all white version of “Porgy and Bess”?
Sensational! We sold out every night in Juneau and Fairbanks.