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I'm....... confused, conflicted, I don't know

Discussion in 'General Support and Advice' started by RavenTheRat, Jan 2, 2016.

  1. RavenTheRat

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    Okay, so I'm going to talk about cultural appropriation.

    Latley, I've been coming across this subject a lot. For example, there are two movies coming out soon, The Forest and Gods of Egypt, that people are calling "whitewashed", and I recently discovered a youtube channel called Social Repose (he's become my new favorite male goth youtuber) who wears a black headdress that resembles an Indian headdress- a lot of people are calling it cultural appropriation.

    The thing is, when I saw the trailer for The Forest, I thought "Hey, this movie looks really interesting!" and me and my friend made plans to see it. When I saw the trailer for Gods of Egypt, I thought "I NEED to see this! Egyptian mythology is one of my greatest passions, and this looks like a really out of the box movie!" And when I started watching Social Repose's videos I thought "He's really funny! And DAMN I love those gloves. I actually just need those gloves. Right now."

    It never occured to me, until I went into the comments section of the videos/trailers, that anything was "white-washed" or culturally appropriated. I never noticed.

    Does that make me..... a bad person? I don't know. Because in all truthfullness, I'm not so sure about those claims. I mean..... I just don't know. I feel like nowadays, everyone is so easily offended. NOW- if someone FROM the culture the issue is revolving around was insulted, then I wouldn't question that there was a problem, but looking at the comments claiming appropriation or white-washing, the people making those claims were all white and never spoke of a relation to the culture. I just.... I don't think that they should be getting insulted for another culture. Because what do they know about it? And just... I feel like you can't say anything anymore without pissing someone off.

    Please don't think I'm trying to be disrespectful- I really try to be good to people. I despise rascism and discrimination, and I would stand up for anyone in a milisecond, whether I know them or not. I'm not really a big fan of Christianity, but if someone was bullying someone for being Christian I would defend them without a second thought. I try so hard not to judge others and to give everyone a chance no matter what they look like....

    I just.. feel like I'm wrong. And then I get angry at myself for feeling like the idea of one person wearing an article of clothing or the race of actors in a movie somehow insults or injures an entire culture is.... not silly, but I feel like the world has bigger problems. And as for privelege..... I don't know. Maybe I'm just stupid. Maybe I just don't know what it feels like to be discriminated against. I just feel like such a terrible person, but no matter how much I try it just doesn't make sense to me.

    Help? This is seriously making my anxiety skyrocket.
     
    #1 RavenTheRat, Jan 2, 2016
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2016
  2. IDont Say Aboot

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    Relax, you are still a great person!

    I totally agree with you that people are too easily offended in our times. That's why I don't give two craps about being "politically correct" however it is bad when a movie gets whitewashed. But it's also bad when a movie has bad acting. Go ahead and watch the movie, it doesn't mean you're a bad person. And maybe whitewashing and bad acting are different, but neither of them mean that a movie can't be an overall good one.

    WARNING: the next paragraph is not relevant to this post... I just noticed that.

    Sometimes it's kind of entertaining to see how easily people get offended... Also just sad. Once I mentioned cosplaying nick fury... And the whole room went silent. I would even say that in some cases people are racist in their attempt to not be racist. Saying that a white person can't cosplay a black person s like saying that white people and black people are so inherently different that you can't even pretend to be a certain character who happens to be black.
     
  3. loveislove01

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    I also don't really understand the cosplay thingy, for the most part. In anime, most characters are white- and the ones I choose to cosplay are too. I haven't seen a person of color as a lead role in an anime I enjoy. I'm Indian, I cosplay white characters, so I don't see why people have something against white people cosplaying people of color- however I do get how things such as blackface (used initially to degrade African Americans) is wrong and offensive.

    Whitewashing in films and all, it's an issue- but it doesn't make the whole movie bad. It's not offensive, I just think we should continue to try promoting diversity.

    And I could care less if someone was wearing Indian attire! I find it really cute, and I'd ask them where they got it and I'd appreciate that they're showing an interest to a part of Indian culture!

    I'm very much against racism, but I don't agree with most cultural appropriation.