Inspiration through theft

I have to admit that were my books about me, the characters would consist of ageing, middle-class men with a background in education and who like to talk for hours about philosophical and political issues. What is more, these characters would have travelled a great deal, have a penchant for beginning sentences with, "when I was in Italy..." and then go on to bore listeners with stories about, well, when he was in Italy nearly 40 years ago!  

I might get away with writing, perhaps, 2 novels about this person but such a narrow approach to  characterisation would not give me much chance to develop or explore other people and what makes them tick. 

Fortunately, I do not write about myself, although I am often heard to say that the books could only have been written by me. 

One of my favourite activities is to plop myself in a café or restaurant and observe my surroundings. And then I become the thief who steals every snippet of conversation from surrounding tables, takes in every smell, sight and sensation in the room. These things inspire me and I grab them like a pick-pocket or a bag-snatcher. However, during the writing of a novel, the original snippets of conversation, the people who uttered them - and the situation in which the conversational exchanges were made - will change. Therefore, all my novels are unreal - completely lacking in authenticity. They are, simply, fake, and fakeness is the nature of novels. The people never existed, the events never happened and the words I use were never spoken. It’s all about what you can get away with.

And "getting away with it" is becoming difficult. There are people who tell us that any experience, any costume, any way of doing and saying things associated with a minority or disadvantaged group is a no-go-area. To exploit such a group would make me guilty of cultural appropriation or, to put it another way, it is the stealing of traditional knowledge, cultural expression or artifacts from someone else's culture without their permission. "Someone else" might include people from other nationalities, races, sexual and gender categories and classes of economic  under-privilege. Cultural expression or artifacts can include: dance, dress, music, folklore, cuisine and religious symbols. So, I had better not write about eating spaghetti in Italian restaurants or traditional Bavarian dancing, for example, or I will be guilty of cultural appropriation. 

The crime of cultural appropriation is not confined to fiction writing. A yoga teacher at the University of Ottawa in Canada, was shamed into suspending her class because yoga originally comes from India. Well, I suppose she could re-title the course. "Mind and Body Stretching” is a title that comes to mind or "body bending." 

The question that comes to my mind is this. If permission to use artifacts from other cultures should be granted, who would do the granting? Where would I go to get it? Who would be able to give me permission to use a character from another race or culture, or to employ the vernacular of a group to which I don’t belong? 

Suppose the permission was not granted? Then, James Bond would have no foreign villains, Graham Greene's novels would probably be banned along with many of Joseph Conrad's most famous works. 

But for me, putting words into the mouths of people different from myself, daring to get inside the heads of strangers and understanding their souls is what writing is all about. Take that away and I think I will take up classes in yoga instead - sorry, I mean mind and body bending classes. 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Ranald Barnicot]

Yes, the idea of cultural appropriation is very interesting. There are two examples from the world of rugby: 1) the singing of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" at Twickenham was decried as cultural appropriation by an Afro-American academic, whose name I can't remember; and 2) the use of the name Exeter Chiefs by the very successful Exeter rugby club, together with the use of Native American head-dress and costume by the fans. I've got more sympathy with the second than the first of these objections. "Swing Low" doesn't belong to any ethnic group any more, whereas Native American culture shouldn't be reduced to mere picturesque jokiness. I think that the management of the club may have agreed to change the name, I'm not sure. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to see legislation to ban this type of crowd behaviour.

Bristol Bears used to be known as Bristol Shoguns. Maybe they changed the name for a similar reason of political correctness.

[Robert Goddard]

"Swing Low" was always accompanied by a variety of lewd gestures if my memory serves me well. These gestures were a kind of dance really and the song a sort of excuse to dance rather than appropriate culture.