{"id":314,"date":"2021-10-29T14:50:20","date_gmt":"2021-10-29T18:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myweb.fiu.edu\/escarbro\/?p=314"},"modified":"2021-10-29T14:56:59","modified_gmt":"2021-10-29T18:56:59","slug":"halloween-costumes-and-cultural-appropriation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myweb.fiu.edu\/escarbro\/2021\/10\/29\/halloween-costumes-and-cultural-appropriation\/","title":{"rendered":"Halloween Costumes and Cultural Appropriation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Me as Steve Zissou (from the Movie The Life Aquatic) Halloween 2020<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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It’s my favorite time of the year – Halloween! I try to schedule my unit on horror movies around this time (in my aesthetic class), and my unit on eating animals (in my ethics class – also pretty gruesome). This year FIU asked me to write a very short article on cultural appropriation and Halloween costumes. You can read it here<\/a>. I’ll also post the text below. But for someone who’d like to dig in a bit more to this topic, Aesthetics for Birds<\/a> had a great roundtable on the topic I’d highly recommend. Also, I made a very spooky playlist last year for my students. Enjoy<\/a>! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor discusses why many popular costumes are examples of cultural appropriation: <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

“It\u2019s the most wonderful time of the year \u2013 Halloween! Hopefully, by now, you\u2019ve planned your costume and a COVID-safe way to celebrate. But if not, I\u2019m here to discuss the issue of cultural appropriation and Halloween costumes. You\u2019ve probably heard people say, \u201cit\u2019s a culture, not a costume\u201d \u2013 but what does that mean? What is cultural appropriation and why should I care?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The term cultural appropriation covers a range of conduct \u2013 from stealing tangible cultural property (for example, the buying of looted artifacts)<\/a> to stealing ideas (for example, passing off another culture\u2019s ideas as your own), or using another culture\u2019s voice or style as your own. Philosopher Erich Hatala Matthes refers to these three types of cultural appropriation as theft<\/em>, misuse<\/em>, and misrepresentation<\/em>. When discussing Halloween costumes, we\u2019re discussing the last of these three – misrepresentation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examples of culturally appropriative Halloween costumes are \u2013 unfortunately \u2013 everywhere. Just look at your local Halloween stores (like Spirit) which advertise pre-packaged sets with names like \u201cpow wow princess\u201d or \u201ctequila shooter guy\u201d or \u201cgeisha lady.\u201d These costumes trade on a feature of cultural appropriation \u2013 outsiders of a particular culture use the resources (e.g., traditional clothing or perceived traditional clothing) of a culture that is not their own. But this alone doesn\u2019t get us all the way to cultural appropriation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cultural appropriation is also about power. Notice that the Halloween costumes I mentioned earlier depict minoritized groups \u2013 this isn\u2019t accidental. Problematic cultural appropriation is a result of power imbalances. And in the United States, these imbalances often fall on racial lines. A White American dressing up as \u201cpow wow princess\u201d can be interpreted only within the context of settler colonialism. But (mis)appropriation is not always about race or ethnicity. There is a growing movement against wearing costumes that depict prison inmates, houseless folks, and people with mental illness as these costumes also trade on an imbalance of power. As Matthes (cited earlier) states \u201cfix the power problem, fix the appropriation problem.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The University of Denver\u2019s  \u201cWe\u2019re a culture, not a costume\u201d campaign<\/a> posted flyers across campus that depicted a White woman wearing a headdress and carrying a tomahawk. The poster read, \u201cYou think it\u2019s harmless, but you\u2019re not the target.\u201d The harm here is in stereotyping a culture (misrepresentation).  Wearing this type of costume displays morally culpable ignorance about indigenous peoples and their practices. In our ignorance, we might also be wearing religious iconography in a flippant or disrespectful way (sacrilegious appropriation). We also run the risk of not just essentializing their culture but representing a living culture as a \u201csomething out of the past.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, many of these costumes hypersexualize identities. This reaffirms pernicious stereotypes with tangible consequences. Shannon Speed, the director of American Indian Studies at UCLA (and a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma) says, “If there were any consciousness in this country of the huge problem of violence against Native women and the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women in this country, they’d have to stop and think about what putting on a sexy Indian costume might mean.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ghouls just wanna have fun so I\u2019ll be creepin\u2019 it real this Halloween dressing up in a spooktacular costume. If you stop to think of the most creative Halloween costume you\u2019ve ever encountered, I doubt you\u2019ll think of the ones discussed in this article. Culturally appropriative costumes are at best lazy, and at worst racist. So give ’em something to talk about with a creative, non-appropriative costume.  Don\u2019t be a jerk-o-lantern this Halloween and let\u2019s get this party startled!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s my favorite time of the year – Halloween! I try to schedule my unit on horror movies around this time (in my aesthetic class), and my unit on eating animals (in my ethics class – also pretty gruesome). This year FIU asked me to write a very short article on cultural appropriation and Halloween costumes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":422,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,23,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aesthetics","category-fiu","category-pop-culture","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myweb.fiu.edu\/escarbro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myweb.fiu.edu\/escarbro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myweb.fiu.edu\/escarbro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myweb.fiu.edu\/escarbro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myweb.fiu.edu\/escarbro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/myweb.fiu.edu\/escarbro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myweb.fiu.edu\/escarbro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myweb.fiu.edu\/escarbro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myweb.fiu.edu\/escarbro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}