costume appropriation

I know Halloween is past and people have already done the whole obligatory cultural appropriation post, but I wanted to chime in on it with a bit of a different example. This instructable features a homebrewed costume of the Hindu goddess Kali, who is often depicted in Western imagery as merely a goddess of death and destruction. Even when she isn’t explicitly named, the image of a multi-armed goddess with a necklace of skulls and a craving for human flesh is sometimes used in media (I’m looking at you, Temple of Doom) to evoke her more terrifying aspect.

As you can see, the costume itself is very detailed and well crafted, with particular attention paid to the false arms (which are foam, and not hollow casts as I’d thought).

Now, in her introduction the crafter/artist offers the following:

I’ve always had great love and respect for the religious art and architecture from eastern cultures, but especially for the Hindu Shakti (divine mother) goddess’. There is one goddess; Kali (she has several manifestations and names) who I took special notice of. She is the representation of life through death. The frightening, deadly destroyer aspect of female nature. I decided to pay tribute to her this year by constructing an elaborate costume featuring realistic, movable arms.

This becomes important because, in the comment thread following her instructable, the following statements are made:

Is a goddess a joke to you? You don’t even respect her anywhere, she is called Maa Kali not just Kali, people in India wuldn’t have liked seeing this, I know I am going to be flamed, but even though I am not that religeous, I can’t stand such an insult for a goddess that you create a halloween costume out of it.

To which she responds:

Thank you for your concern.
I knew there would be a chance that my intentions would be misconstrued. If you had actually read my intro, you would have noticed that I acknowledged the Goddess Kali’s various manifestations and names.
I also very clearly explained that I created this costume as a tribute, not as a joke. I think the effort I put forth is obvious, and clearly not the result of an ignorant intention. This is art to me, I take it very seriously. Based on your spelling and grammar, I’m surprised you have any interest in this subject.

Now, while I do feel that there is a better way to have suggested the inappropriateness of adapting another culture’s religious figure for your Halloween costume, what really strikes me is the outright attack the crafter makes on the individual expressing indignation and outrage. Without even stopping to address hir feelings, the crafter straight up assumes that hie did not read the introduction, that her intentions as an artist were “misconstrued” (as opposed to understood, but opposed), and then adds in the unnecessary and cruel dig at hir spelling and grammar (despite the fact that neither constitutes even the barest challenge to understanding the content of hir comment).

It also bothers me that the crafter doesn’t address the line about “people in India would be bothered by this” — she ignores it completely. Since she’s covered in blue paint I can’t say with certainty that this is an example of white privilege, but I definitely think it falls under a more generalised Western privilege, that is, the privilege that says we can pick and choose from the cultures and religions of these other peoples of the world without regard for how the practitioners of those religions and inhabitants of those cultures feel about that appropriation. Especially given her claim in the introduction — that she has “great love and respect” for “eastern cultures” — it seems to me that she would know and respect their ideas about how their religious figures should be represented. Since she went ahead with it anyway, this suggests to me that she either doesn’t know or doesn’t care; given her lack of response to the indications of the feelings of Indian people, it seems to be more “doesn’t care.”

This is actually rather typical regarding a response to an accusation of racial insensitivity, inappropriateness, etc. It is a hallmark of privilege to be able to ignore the feelings of the one bringing the challenge, to not have to think about the ways in which your actions may take consequences you did not anticipate. Had the crafter apologised and admitted she had not realised her costume might cause offense — it would not have entirely mitigated the damage (just because it was an accident doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt), but it would at least have demonstrated a sensitivity to the harm that had been caused, and would indicate a sense of respect for the people and the culture from which the crafter had appropriated her outfit. As it stands, however, she seems entirely unwilling to even entertain the possibility that her work could mean anything other than what she intended it to mean.

I’m sure JK Rowling could explain to her otherwise, at this point :p

A different user said:

Not a flame, but would you show the same zeal in defending against people making God costumes of Judeo-Christian “God”, Zeus, or somebody’s interpretation of Gaia? If you would, more power to you, but I personally did not see anything insulting by this instructable, or even the author’s demeanor while wearing the (Maa) Kali costume.

This is another common response to accusations of injury and offense, the implication being that if you are not offended by another, puportedly similar situation, then you have no right to be offended by the thing you are claiming to be injurious. Often times, however, these situations are not as analogous as the individuals presenting them would like to believe; they are often fraught with power indifferences and other contextual inequalities that make them inappropriate comparisons.

In dialogues about race and ethnicity, this tends to come up as “Well you aren’t offended when Black people are prejudiced against white people, so you shouldn’t be offended when white people are prejudiced against Black people.”  This is kind of like saying, “Well you aren’t bothered by employees talking smack about their boss, so you shouldn’t be bothered by a boss gossipping negatively about his employees.” Obviously, the relative power of the boss to ruin an employee’s life with negative gossip is far greater than that of even five employees complaining about their boss. The same is true when we are comparing whites and people of colour: whites hold more social and cultural power than people of colour, so the ability of white people’s actions to have negative effects on the poc community are far greater than the ability of the poc community’s actions to negatively affect white people.

In this specific comment, the Judeo-Christian God is the normative, hegemonic god worshipped or at least respected and acknowledged by most of the politically powerful figures around the world. There is a huge difference between someone dressing as Buddy Christ and someone dressing as Kali for this reason. The balance in representation for the Judeo-Christian God is far greater than that given to Kali; that is, there are more positive representations of God than negative/critical ones, so the overall image we get of God is a positive one. Kali, on the other hand, is frequently depicted as murderous and dangerous, a kind of bloody femme fatale incarnate; there are few representations of her in Western culture in her other aspects (she is also worshipped as a benevolent mother-goddess and in some places as a redeemer of the universe).

What say you?