randomWalks

This seems to be a pet project for randomwalks editors.

It happens everywhere, with white skin, black skin, brown skin, whatever. It happens in English, in Turkish, in Russian and everything.

I believe you might think it's easier to label this kind of act disparaging when white people do it, because in this instance we're dealing with a character language that many Western speaking people can't understand, if they don't take the time to learn it.

What about when you see a ten year old Chinese girl wearing a shirt that says "My Dick Would Like to Buy You a Drink?"

I'm not sure exactly what your intention is in putting this link up. Are you saying that white people shouldn't ink themselves in Japanese?

Tell the Japanese they shouldn't of massacared 300,000 Chinese, with bayonets. What, is he trying to preserve his culture?

Non sequitur. When the dominant majority appropriates elements of other cultures in a manner which divorces them from their original meanings and people, it's uniquely problematic. This is not a pet project of randomWalks, it's an axiom.

A Chinese girl wearing a t-shirt with nonsensical English is a bit different from someone going as far as getting a tattoo of nonsensical kanji, intentional or otherwise. I second Adam, it's about people fetishizing parts of a language and culture they have no clue about and therefore find 'exotic'. Why don't you tell the Japanese they shouldn't have bayoneted 300,000 Chinese, d fresh? You are clearly comfortable on the moral high ground. And I'm guessing you're fluent in Japanese, too. Sayonara!

Don't we speakers of english fetishize english, is my point.

I mean, look how we design and engraph everything around us, including us.

JD wants me next tatt to be this: (hentai)

But those non-sensical t-shirts are even more disturbing, arent they? when most people go and get a Kanji tattoo they at least want to convey the meaning of the symbol, right? (granted, the lazy bastrads could look up the symbols for themsleves) whereas the japanese, similarly not bothing to really learn the language, just dash off anything moronic and put it on a shirt. And no one is fetishizing anything, unless what thier fetishizing is the tattoing experiance it's self which never should have become a fashion statment.

the thing i find most disturbing about this artical is that rather than not tattoo those who he does not respect this guy brags about cheating them out of thier money, he's no better than a shisty used car salesman. In most of Europe (and possibly elsewhere) tattooists have to apprentice and belong to guilds, anyone pulling the kind of arrogant crap this guy is doing would be fined and put out of business.

I don't have much respect for the lazy fashionista tattoo kids but there is a bond of trust that has to exist between a tattooist and client, heres a guy your trusting with your skin! and this guy broke it, brags about breaking it regularly, thats far more attrocious than simple ignorance.

Wow, thnaks RandomWalks!

""Souf Oaklin fo' Life!!! uses invented names in all its stories, except in cases when public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental.""

The story is a fake.

I hadn't actually clicked until now. In any case, it's a hilarious story which well illustrates my point, as far as I'm concerned. I still don't know what doug's point is. I don't care what Japanese do with English in Japan!

When the dominant majority appropriates elements of other cultures in a manner which divorces them from their original meanings and people, it's uniquely problematic.

So it's only a good thing for cultural artifacts created by Europeans to enter the public domain after a certain amount of time? This doesn't apply to Asian cultural artifacts? I don't know who the Japanese Sonny Bono might be, but regardless of his efforts I'm pretty sure the copyright on kanji is up by now.

I'm being snarky, but either things that are created enter the culture at large at some point, or they don't. There's can't be a separate Japanese public domain that contains things that only Japanese people are allowed to use for self-expression. This isn't "problematic" -- it's the way all cultures grow and evolve. The Japanese love Western classical music and invented the CD so we all could buy near-perfect recordings of Beethoven's Ninth on a single disc. Some of us like anime even though most of the deeper meanings probably elude us, and that love has enriched American animation. And so on.

One nice thing about a form of writing like kanji is that it can be appreciated on many levels, so even if you don't understand the word it represents, you can still enjoy its appearance. I can't think of a letter that anyone would want tattooed on their arm (well, Douglas Hofstadter might want the Helvetica "a", which he believes is the finest letterform ever designed -- if he were into being inked, which doesn't really seem his style). But a beautifully-drawn kanji? Sure, why not? Would you object to someone having a tattoo of an Egyptian hieroglyphic? Is either really any worse than having a print of "Guernica" simply because you think it's visually interesting, without understanding that it's a powerful anti-war statement? Sure it's shallow. But how are you going to ban shallow people? Do you really want to? (Sure, everyone "wants" to. But do you REALLY want to? I mean, REALLY really?)

What Sakai is doing is a cute prank. But how is it ever right to take advantage of ignorance? He's charging people for these tattoos, presumably; is it ethical to defraud people as long as they don't know you're doing it?

Either we're all one race, human, or we're not. If we're one race, then all culture belongs to everyone. If we're not, then there can be, for example, no American Buddhists or Muslims except immigrants -- those religions belong to other cultures and we have no right to appropriate them. In fact we probably shouldn't let foreginers into our country; our culture might contaminate them. And where do we get off eating other cultures' food, especially when we often modify them to suit our own tastes? More seriously, atrocities become justifiable and even inevitable, because "those people over there" are still Other rather than Us. Is this really what you want to argue for?

I wanted it to be true, but posted it anyway. I rather like t-shirts bearing things like 'Eat my Dust' and 'Positive Design for Negative Living' and so on. It's the same warm feeling I got when either Rod or Tod Flanders wore a Butthole Surfers t-shirt once on the Simpsons.

Bring it on! Now let's be egalitarian about this, I want to see a craze for Arabic script sweeping the States! No, thought not.

[privileged whitey] aw heck, i dunno, i thought the article was funny.[/privileged whitey]

this merely seems to me to be a variation of the classic urban folklore story of the drunk sailor who asked for a tattoo of "louisa" and got "loser" instead. i am personally acquainted with several skin artists and i would say that universally they share a disdain for stupid tattoo requests, and also an aversion to irresponsible tattooing. the vast majority will forego the money and send someone straight out of their shop if they think the person's request is one they will regret later.

if i'm going to get something in futhark on my chin, i'm going to the library to look that shit up! word.

There's a whole lotta American abstract expressionist art that wouldn't exist with some kind of fetishization of Asian calligraphy. Franz Klein, Jackson Pollack, Willem DeKoonig, etc... We've been into it for 60+ years; why stop now?

And where do we get off eating other cultures' food, especially when we often modify them to suit our own tastes? More seriously, atrocities become justifiable and even inevitable, because "those people over there" are still Other rather than Us. Is this really what you want to argue for?

It's a question of respect, and of course there are degrees and shades of gray. When I blend up a peanut sauce, it doesn't matter that I know which global cuisine inspired the ratio of soy sauce to vinegar that's trickling down my throat. When Madonna mimics Hindi mudras on MTV in search of a 'fresh' image to sell a new record, she's dislocating and diluting a cultural practice without providing any context or offering anything in return. That's disrespectful. She's reifying -- and cashing in on -- the distance between this white blond mother of God and those exotic dark dancing women in the far east.

Adam, I was referring to China, not Japan, but in any case..

I feel like language is not ethnic, it's not nationalist, it's a worm like virus, as burroughs believed, that does not belong to anyone.

the way we treat language is fetishistic, because look at how writers "fall in love" with language, and how we script everything, we totally hold it up as some truth giver.

there's no truth in words. it's how you use them. and we use them as a fetishist does, it's no matter at all.

and my thoughts may be non sequitur, true. but there's not hing wrong with that.

Dai ichi, or whatever,

you realize that's Chinese script and not Japanese right?

you realize there's a difference, eh?

I beg your pardon. If I conflated cultures foreign to Normal Rockwell's America as a shorthand for discussing the other, I was remiss.

I was surprised to hear historian Noel Ignatiev repudiate -- no, dismiss the idea that language can be a means of oppression. It feels deeply intuitive to me. Maybe I should study history, and maybe Noel should study poetry. Would we change our minds?

It's Kanji, i.e., a Japanese language pictogram of Chinese origin. I don't know if it is also valid Chinese, do you?

I do.

care to chat on the phone, and speak a bit?

which do you prefer, mandarin or cantonese?

And Adam, yes, Norman Rockwell's America. Right, exactly how I like it. Love that whitebred America. It's so....eh....bland?

Dai Ichi,

from what I can tell it looks like the cantonese character set for Weirdo. i could be off.

When the dominant majority appropriates elements of other cultures in a manner which divorces them from their original meanings and people, it's uniquely problematic. This is not a pet project of randomWalks, it's an axiom.

I agree completely, Adam, and it's part of the reason I love rW. Nevertheless, it strikes as me as sanctimonious and disingenuous on your part to use "peanut sauce" as an example of the kinds of appropriations that you (we?) do not need to question. So if I come to your house dressed in a Tibetan skirt to eat sesame seed noodles you have prepared, I'm somehow more of a "fetishizing colonialist" than you are? The line you draw is very abitrary.

What offended me most about the original post is the presumption that the "fetishization of culture" is something that "stupid white people" do to "misunderstood non-white non western culture." How condescending. I wonder how my Ecuadorian cousin would feel, knowing that her penchant for Indian fabrics means something different from mine.

But I do think there's a line, and I don't think it's difficult to locate. I think it's absurd to suggest that food can be appropriated in a harmful way, and equally absurd to suggest that, say, sacred symbols and rituals cannot.

I think it's absurd to suggest that food can be appropriated in a harmful way

Really? I definitely think it's harmful. J. Wong has spoken and written very eloquently about the cultural crossroads of the kitchen. Why is that experience less vulnerable to being misremembered or diluted than any other?

But can't food in either the way it is prepared or eatened occasionally be part of a ritual or sacred in its own right?

Some meals are more than just meals. And if we simply take that recipe and turn it into a snack for ourselves bereft of its intended context, is that not the same thing?

I'm not saying that to be facetious either, but merely to point out that I don't think it's as stark as you're arguing.

I posted the article knowing it was a spoof, and without any intention to suggest that one should not appreciate cultures other than your own. I agree with Adam, lines can be drawn, and when it comes to food, it's at the Chicken Tikka Masala Pizza that my compatriots love so. Re the tattoos, everyone has a right to make a dickhead of him or herself, and I for one would not get a kanji tattoo and expect my Japanese-speaking friends not to be bemused, even if I knew what it meant. My problem is with selective borrowing of things which ultimately reinforce your own cultural assumptions e.g. I think 'Asian culture' is mystical, ergo I go and get the idiogram for 'female' (or whatever) on my arm. And yeh, I do think many people love things they find 'exotic' and end up fetishising them. C.f. glut of Americans in Transylvania, running round with Romanian hats and beards and violins and wearing kilims and pretending they ain't like those damn tourists. Similarly, white Brits who think they're advancing an anti-racist argument by stating that women from the Indian sub-continent wear such lovely-coloured clothes and therefore brighten the place up.

Minna-san!

Criminy. It's like the "Engrish" debate all over again! w00t!

BTW, Kanji characters were appropriated by the Japanese from the Chinese - who knows if they asked permission - for more, see here: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_kanji.htm

- so the appropriation of these symbols by others shouldn't be so offensive.

As an extreme text fetishist, I am pleased to clothe myself in whatever symbols, glyphs and characters to express the wonderful oscillations of human thought, intent and emotion. My thanks to all humans for the inventions of their various communications platforms.

I feel an avalanche of Snow Crash coming on.

I feel like language is not ethnic, it's not nationalist, it's a worm like virus, as burroughs believed, that does not belong to anyone.

This might be true of language's inherent properties, which are little without our efforts, but surely it can be used to reinforce ethnic or nationalistic perceptions. It doesn't exist in a vacuum and it's naive to act as if any more than a tiny fraction of the world's population sees it the way you and Burroughs do.

Why did Ignatiev say language is not a means of oppression?

He didn't even entertain the idea. I was really surprised. I guess (he might have said something to the effect, or maybe I assumed) he thinks ideas are independent of language and can be expressed adequately in any language. I think cultural values weigh so heavily on words that it's not always possible to escape from certain constricted perspectives. I hope that makes sense.

I totally support what Adam is saying, which is why I feel that this rube of an article Gwen posted only shows that the people getting tatooed aren't fetishists of language, they are fetishists of a cultural idea. And they are the ones being oppressed, because they're getting laughed at.

and golden, i am so so so sure that what burroughs and I believe (or the amount of people who believe what that says) is not the issue.

The issue is language has no inherent properties, that's why it supports and is crushed by cultural weight.

If you can handle my abstract defense for only the slightest bit...

I'm saying that humans are made of such more complex stuff than language, but we have fetishized language as being the only way to communicate, that even if you got rid of language, there'd be oppression. our fetishization of language is what leads to more oppression. we have to find a way to de-fetishize it. take meaning out of language and then, like the dadaists, show the intricate nature of the panagea of human experience.

cheers. (oh, i hate that cheers thing)

To use an example:

Try explaining your idea without language.

See how you oppress language!

Leave it alone I tell you!

Leave language out of this!

Is it me or is the word "fetishize" being overused, especially since it's not a real word.

fetishize

Yuh-huh! It's in the dictionary! (said in schoolboy voice)