About “Tár”, Indigenous peoples, and plagiarism

An open letter to the director

To Mr. Todd Field
Director of “Tár”
NBC Universal Pictures

Subject: A note about Lydia Tár’s research among the Shipibo

Innsbruck, 16 April, 2023

Dear Mr. Todd Field,

if you wonder who I am, please let me explain in two paragraphs:

(1) I was contacted by your staff for an assessment on the Shipibo-Konibo song you originally intended to use as an opener for the movie. The person responsible for soundtrack acquisition, Natalie Hayden, first asked the renowned UCLA ethnomusicologist Anthony Seeger, who then recommended me. Possibly, my report also reached your eyes. I was recommended by Prof Seeger, because:

(2) I am the person who “received his PhD in musicology from the university of Vienna, specializing in Indigenous music from the Ucayali valley in Eastern Peru, where he spent five years among the Shipibo-Konibo”. That means that I am the person who — uniquely identifiable — actually did the research that is claimed by your fictional character Lydia Tár (try and google the quote. You will find my CV and Lydia’s — nobody else’s).

When I watched the movie for the first time, I was quite startled when hearing my own CV read out literally, without amendments or intents to obscure my identity, during the initial presentation of Tár for her interview.

My CV served, obviously, only one purpose: to make a distant connection between Lydia and an Indigenous people well known in popular discourse for their “shamanism” and attraction to spirituality-seeking Westerners. It is however quite disappointing, that apart from this reference, the Shipibo appear very marginally. Besides the song, there is only a photo in Lydia’s apartment, a half-a-second shot in a dream sequence of a half-naked face-painted man (how painstakingly colonial!), and a mention of Shipibo song composition in the opening interview.

In the very first seconds of the movie, the Shipibo are intrinsically ridiculed: Lydia asks the Indigenous singer to “ignore the microphone; sing as if it’s not there”. This depicts the Shipibo as a “pristine tribe”, unaware of the document-making that occurs by pressing ‘record’… please let me tell you that Shipibo people, including the featured Elisa Vargas who I met personally in 2001 in order to record some songs with her, know very well what a recording implies. Then, Lydia’s English-language request is translated into abysmally read Shipibo text, which is incredibly ridiculous for anybody who knows this tongue.

I was harshly disappointed by the “illustrating” way you made use of the Indigenous people. It seems that you wished to add some “mystical spice” to Lydia Tár — in order to make the character more interesting? She was not only a musician, but also a researcher? But: what happened to her research? Do you really think that somebody who spent five years in the Amazon would behave like her? It rather appears that she spent five weeks in a gringo rainforest lodge, drinking ayahuasca, and believing that she’d be chosen and divine. This is what often happens to Westerners who “do some ayahuasca” and think that they “got it”.

For me it is quite obvious that when writing the script, you fell into the same traps as did Lydia Tár: For her own grandiosity, she “forgets” to think about others’ perspectives, she “forgets” to ask if she could use others’ works or ideas, she does not consider other people’s feelings or needs. She also would probably not have asked if she could usurp someone’s CV, and she would not think that an Indigenous people deserves to be honored instead of just being used.

I felt personally treated very intrusively. My own, definitely identifiable, life was plagiarized. You cannot imagine how many people ask me about “my contribution” to the movie, and how nasty this feels. Of course, it is my own personal pride that I felt was abused. However, I am not alone, the Shipibo people and with them, the world’s Indigenous peoples would deserve an explanation why in 2022 they still have to serve as a “mystical addendum” to Western classical “high culture” in a way all-too reminiscent of old-fashioned colonialist Hollywood exoticism.

There was no Academy Award, despite six nominations. One could think that somebody from the Indigenous fraction set some magical power in motion to put the movie in saladera, in bad luck state.

The Shipibo people have a saying: yatankas jonira jawebioma potá.

A person who always wants to get hold of all is left with nothing.

Yours sincerely,

Bernd Brabec
Assistant professor in ethnomusicology
University of Innsbruck, Austria