I grew up in and around Salt Lake City, Utah. If you've managed to find a more homogeneous, white, single-religion place lacking diversity of any kind, I'd be surprised. ;D Salt Lake is probably the most diverse area in the state, but that's not saying much. And yes, very fast food and strip mall and big box store kind of place.
Now I want to know about the business suit thing. TELL ME. :D
Of course rejecting McDonald's and gimcrack is no excuse for being disrespectful and just shoplifting from other cultures.... *ponders*
Exactly! That's kind of the trouble with feeling that you have no culture, I think, is that it immediately makes you want to steal from others. It's one thing to take some element from the world's history -- like I'm thinking now of doing more of an ancient Greek or Roman look for a tattoo -- that you are in some way a part of, and another to take something from a culture that is very much living and still attaches very significant meaning to those symbols. (Which is not to say that I don't think Greeks or Romans are living cultures anymore, just that those days of empire that I'm using artistic style from are more a part of common history because they sort of conquered so much of the world; it's a point of common heritage, IMO.) Particularly when there's such a fresh history of, you know... war and horror and genocide. And we're basically still fucking the tribes over, so... shitty on a great many levels, to steal their symbols too.
You're definitely right, there are opportunities to get more acquainted with tribal culture, but even if I'd gone to every pow-wow in the northwest for the last twenty years, I still don't think that would make it okay for me to appropriate. I can see if a tribe invited an outsider in, which I'm sure happens, but that's kind of the key to the whole thing, isn't it? You have to be invited to be a part of that culture, and even then you have to be aware that it still isn't yours, to do with as you please.
no subject
Now I want to know about the business suit thing. TELL ME. :D
Of course rejecting McDonald's and gimcrack is no excuse for being disrespectful and just shoplifting from other cultures.... *ponders*
Exactly! That's kind of the trouble with feeling that you have no culture, I think, is that it immediately makes you want to steal from others. It's one thing to take some element from the world's history -- like I'm thinking now of doing more of an ancient Greek or Roman look for a tattoo -- that you are in some way a part of, and another to take something from a culture that is very much living and still attaches very significant meaning to those symbols. (Which is not to say that I don't think Greeks or Romans are living cultures anymore, just that those days of empire that I'm using artistic style from are more a part of common history because they sort of conquered so much of the world; it's a point of common heritage, IMO.) Particularly when there's such a fresh history of, you know... war and horror and genocide. And we're basically still fucking the tribes over, so... shitty on a great many levels, to steal their symbols too.
You're definitely right, there are opportunities to get more acquainted with tribal culture, but even if I'd gone to every pow-wow in the northwest for the last twenty years, I still don't think that would make it okay for me to appropriate. I can see if a tribe invited an outsider in, which I'm sure happens, but that's kind of the key to the whole thing, isn't it? You have to be invited to be a part of that culture, and even then you have to be aware that it still isn't yours, to do with as you please.