In Search Of The Full Story: That Old But Relevant Argument On Appropriation

Sonam Kapoor’s cameo on Coldplay’s Hymn for the Weekend lasted shorter than wine does at a Punjabi wedding, a Twitter user joked. He, too, was unpacified. The video, even with an Indian actress in it, was another instance of cultural appropriation. But what of Beyoncé? Does she get a pass because she is a colored woman? Does the non-dominance of her black culture imply that she’s incapable of appropriating other non-dominant cultures?

What of Kendall Jenner booking the face of an African inspired collection at Mango? Does Mango owe its brand loyalists authenticity in the messaging of its collections? And would authenticity in this context necessarily mean the use of an African model?

A thin line does separate cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation, and fans of Coldplay’s video rally behind its beauty, with some expressing their gratitude on social media, happy that the video shows the pleasant side of India, and not any of the traffic congestion or poverty.

Thanks Beyoncé!

Herein lies the problem with Coldplay’s video, and any other artistic or cultural work for that matter. That a people should be grateful to a pair of pop stars for kindly representing a culture or a place is the product of an unequal society in which only a privileged few have access to a platform that gets listened to and watched. And this is an important stance on the appropriation movement. It’s simply a plea to platforms privileged with audiences to stop unjustly benefiting from the wealth of underprivileged platforms, especially since such unequal privilege clearly has nothing to do with the content.

You are probably so tired of the appropriation vs. appreciation argument. So am I. But social justice struggles have never been known to be short. What is at stake here is not just justice for people that don’t have a platform that gets listened to — what’s at stake is also a society that by only accessing the voices of a few, remains miseducated and ignorant of the experiences of many of its people.

Searching for the full story

Coming of age in a place and in a particular way, absorbing the sounds and the sights of a particular place in a particular way, comes with its narratives and its burdens. For those from Africa, it was once called the “burden of Africanism.” All an argument against cultural appropriation purports to want, is a society that is unafraid to see the beauty of a story laden with the messes and the burdens of its owners and storytellers, a people unafraid of the full story. Both Beyoncé and Coldplay lack the depth and nuance of knowledge and experience an Indian artist might have brought to a video that features Indian culture. Kendall Jenner too lacks the meaning an African model might have brought to the Mango collection, which was probably conceived by a Creative Director that might only know of the Savanna from Taylor Swift’s depthless Wildest Dreams video.

In fact, an example of a full story told recently in an Ikiré Jones fashion collection called “After Migration” features the following poem:

“Did you recline comfortably in your beach chairs

and gaze out into the horizon,

as our children washed up on your shores?

Did you sneer at your newspaper headlines over a warm breakfast,

and curse your strange new neighbors

as the media whispered that we were the ones to fear?

Or did you take our hands,

and pull us from the water,

before asking us for the stories that dragged us so far away

from the people we loved?”

The full story need not be sad. It need not be activist. The full story might even be unachievable. But the owner of the story is almost always closer to its fullness than anyone else.