Somebody is sure to say I'm overthinking this, but here goes. After all, I don't believe there's any such thing as overthinking, and sometimes something requires a lot of thought to noodle it through.
So: I am in possession of two souvenir tiki pieces, a giant spoon and fork, that hung on my grandparents' wall as long as I can remember. They were a source of awe and delight to me as a child and a source of comfort - of the everything-stays-the-same-here variety - as I got older. And now they live with me. They have perched on top of door frames in my kitchen for a couple of years but I keep considering what else I could do with them. Part of me wants to hang them in the dining room. I love their kitschiness, I love the memories associated with them. But part of me thinks their kitsch power resides in something more sinister: an exploitative, racist view of "natives" of other places. The mere fact that I feel uneasy about having them displayed in my home tells me that I need to explore this.
Many of us grew up hearing casually racist statements from grandparents and just-as-casual "their generation didn't know better" excuses from our parents. That implies, somehow, that our generation does know better. And if we know better, we ought to do better, right? I generally stay away from design that relies on cultural exploitation. While I love the look and symbolism of prayer flags, because I am not a Tibetan Buddhist, I do not fly them at my own home. I don't decorate with foreign language symbols if I do not have the ability to read them. When I see a decorative item from another culture, I ask myself, why do I like this? What would this item mean to somebody from this culture? Would I be trivializing that by having it in my own home? I extend this to other practices, as well - for example, I do not call celebrations of pregnancy "blessingways" because I am aware of the significance of the word and original ceremony to Diné people, and when I host a mother-blessing, I draw from spiritual practices important to me, rather than borrowing "native American" traditions. While it is true that cultures have always borrowed from each other, it's important to me to consider how the members of the borrowed-from culture feel about the borrowing. Is it borrowing, or is it stealing?
When discussing cultural appropriation, people often get caught up in the belief that all cultures borrow from each other and that because this happens, it is inevitable, and perhaps not worth examining. One thing they fail to identify is that generally, cultural assimilation occurs as a raiding of a minority culture by a dominant culture, and that this assimilation is different from other methods of cultural syncretism. Syncretism is the merging or union of two things in useful ways, such as the development of a pigeon language, the spread of slang words, and the adoption of new dietary habits when one culture is exposed to another. Syncretism is not the collection of items as interesting kitsch. Being inspired by the Navajo practice of a gathering of women to celebrate pregnancy would be an example of cultural syncretism, especially if the inspired person feels a need for this sort of community practice and lacks it in her own life. Copying specific Navajo rites and using their language/phrasing is cultural appropriation. Appropriation is certainly one route of cultural syncretism, but it operates via raiding a non-dominant culture and taking its elements out of context. Because of the colonialist aspect (dominant culture raiding non-dominant culture), there is a power imbalance, which makes appropriation exploitative.
The tiki spoons represent an era in which Polynesian cultures were considered exotic. I'm sure the experiences of World War II veterans who had been stationed in the South Pacific served to heighten awareness of the cultures there and supported an attraction to and curiosity about these places. The musical South Pacific (long a favorite of mine; I owe my marriage to an audition performance of "My Honey Bun") highlights both the kitsch factor of Melanesian culture and the racist tensions underlying American interactions with natives there. Frolicking in grass skirts: fun! Deeper understanding of islanders as humans: difficult. Tiki items were (and are) shorthand for carefree island living, novel flora and fauna, vibrant color, strange new flavors. They are not useful items or practices being adopted (syncretized) by another culture. Kitsch is appropriation for decoration's sake.
Kitsch is the flotsam on the surface of a culture. It's easy to scoop up and take home. It provides a snapshot of the things that struck you - but like first impressions, these souvenirs may not be an accurate representation of the people who produced them. It's easy for us to lay back on our surface impressions, and it's easy for souvenir shops to cater to them. It's easy for us to use them as shorthand for our hipness, our eclecticism, whether we're selling a cookbook (like Sophia, above) or decorating our kitchens (like my grandparents, and now me).
I'm not sure whether these spoons came from a department store or a Hawaiian vacation. The latter certainly seems possible. Magdalena Georgieva suggests that the thought behind a souvenir purchase - decoration or treasured memory? - is the difference between cultural appropriation via souvenir and acceptable collection of native art. I'm not sure sure. Liking something, even having warm fuzzy feelings about it, doesn't make its use any less an act of exploitation. Especially if that thing was created specifically for tourists, as is almost certainly the case of my giant fork and spoon.
I feel fairly comfortable saying that the tiki dinnerware represents a form of cultural appropriation. What I'm less comfortable with is what to do about it. If I were facing these items in a store, the solution would be simple: don't buy them. But what to do when the items represent not only a culturally sticky situation, but also a treasured part of family history? And how would my response be different if the items in question were less geographically and culturally foreign to me - like, for example, a "mammy" cookie jar, or a piece of "art" bearing stereotyped Chinese cartoon figures. Because I don't know about the culture who created the tiki pieces, and I don't know the circumstances under which they were created and purchased, I'm not completely sure what they represent. Or am I? I'm pretty sure nobody was ever planning to eat with them. I'm fairly confident that they were carved to look like a Westerner's impression of Polynesian art and that they are fairly poor representations of authentic Polynesian culture. What does it say to my children and to my guests if I hang them on the wall? Yet I still get hung up on my own fondness of these items and, at the same time, a desire not to be wasteful - after all, where do the mammies and tikis go if we don't display them? Do we let them rot in attics? Set them free in thrift shops so that other people's guests and children are exposed to them? Do we (cringe) destroy them?
Is there any amount of warm fuzzy memories that can polish away a patina of cultural exploitation? Once colonialism appropriates an object, can it ever be set free?
More reading:
SeeLight: Defining and Identifying Cultural Appropriation
What is Cultural Appropriation? (great comments)
