Wednesday News: Audiobook evolution; the Met Gala and damaging stereotypes; the oldest song in the world
Publishing Newsappropriation / Asia / audiobooks / China / Greece / History / Met Gala / music / publishing / racism / Singapore / stereotypes25 Comments
Audiobooks: Where They’ve Been & Where They’re Headed – A pretty interesting interview with Michele Cobb, executive director of the Audio Publishers Association. While some may think of audiobooks as merely a tangent of the print publishing industry, that isn’t the case. In addition to unique and ever-evolving technologies, there are specific production characteristics that render independent performances. And another way the industry is distinguished from traditional publishing is its focus on fostering direct connections to readers, especially in terms of understanding what we want in regard to audiobooks.
What’s Next for Audiobook Publishers
Last fall the Audio Publishers Association hit the streets to talk to potential audiobook listeners, taking the AudiobookMobile — a sort of food truck for audiobooks — on the road to libraries, book festivals, and Baltimore Comic Con. In the blazing heat we gave out popsicles and audiobooks — introducing new people to the joys of reading with their ears. This year the APA will be focusing on research to expand its knowledge of consumer behavior and look for more clues in the race to entice more listeners.With that focus on finding new potential listeners we are asking ourselves, ‘What else would people like to hear?’ –Book Business
Met Gala 2015: There is no excuse for red carpet racism – I was so glad to see this piece by David Li go up last night, because as soon as I saw the headdress Sarah Jessica Parker was wearing I had to click away from the pictures of the event. Between the baldly stereotypical outfits intended to recognize the event’s “China: Through the Looking Glass” theme and the competition between Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, and Kim Kardashian to see who could wear the least and get the most attention, the whole scene felt more than a little embarrassing. I wasn’t completely sure whether some of the outfits weren’t intended to be costumes, and where is the line between honoring a culture and perpetuating damaging stereotypes? It’s complicated, but as Li notes, the appropriation evident in some of those costumes is problematic on a number of levels, not the least of which is the way in which Asian cultures seem particularly vulnerable to uncritical use of certain stereotypes. I mean, if we want U.S. college fraternities to stop having these types of parties, why is it okay for Hollywood?
While some found Sarah Jessica Parker’s Phillip Treacy headpiece to be the night’s dramatic pièce de résistance, in my eyes, I saw blatant racism: the spot-on Asian Dragon Lady stereotype. Parker probably didn’t realize, then, that she was setting Asian women back 75 years to the 1930s to the first derogatory “dragon lady” portrayal. The original term was used to describe strong Asian women but was a pejorative that made them into villains. –Mashable
Reports from the Field– Speak Test: The Silencing of the Racialized Body – And speaking of problematic stereotypes, this essay by poet Lo Kwa Mei-en is particularly poignant and relevant, as she writes about her experience as a naturalized U.S. citizen who was still being treated like an outsider by her U.S. graduate school program. In addition to the way cultural, national, geographic, linguistic, and ethnic differences between Asian countries are often elided in the U.S., and the tension between the United States as a country, “America” as an exclusionary euphemism for “white” (especially white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant), the myth of the ‘model minority,’ and the exoticization/eroticization of the Asian female body, especially, there is a lot to unpack and think about in these stereotypes, and Mei-en addresses a number of these issues from her personal experience.
I learned how certain powerful, dangerous, vulnerable writers could help me survive a world that would erase me. There is much I am unsure of, but not this: feminist poets, storytellers, and artists have given me the gift of creative survival. Survival, for me, has been defined by shame for many years. But every time I read a powerful poem, story, or book, or attempt to write one, I am gifted the chance for shame to evolve, even if slowly, into a location of purpose and—dare I say it—hope. For me, hope is both joyful and frightening, because it is neither a closed circle/cycle nor a straight line. It by necessity invokes the unknown from out of our collective knowledge of trauma. It is only by the generosity of feminist writers and artists that I may navigate hope at all.–VIDA
Hear the “Seikilos Epitaph,” the Oldest Complete Song in the World: An Inspiring Tune from 100 BC – This is so cool. A complete musical composition from 100 BC. I definitely recommend the first rendition and suggest passing on Hank Green’s disconcerting boy-band adaptation.
Last summer, we featured a Sumerian hymn considered the oldest known song in the world. Given the popularity of that post, it seems we may have long underestimated the number of ancient-musicophiles on the internet. Therefore, we submit today for your approval the Seikilos epitaph, the oldest known complete musical composition — that is to say, a song that our 21st-century selves can still play and hear in its intended entirety, more or less as did the ancient Greeks who lived during the first-century (or thereabouts) era of its composition. –Open Culture
Interesting article on audiobooks. My life would have been very different without the wonderful addition of audiobooks to my drive time over the past 25+ years. Will they finally have arrived in the public lexicon when spell check quits trying to make audiobook two words? ;-)
I guess I’m blind because the headdress SJP wore, to me, was an ugly fashion statement piece that looked absolutely ridiculous on her. I wasn’t even thinking racism.
I have to admit I thought many of the outfits worn at the Met Gala were in bad taste. I hadn’t thought racist as much as cliche.
I’ve been slightly obsessed with the red carpet fashions from the Met Gala this week, and I have so many feelings about them! I’m mainly working through them on one of my other favorite blogs, GoFugYourself.com, where they are going through the looks and having some interesting conversations in the comments about cultural appropriation as well as fashion. There were so many clueless missteps, though also some gorgeous fashions.
I LOVED Fan Bing Bing’s dress!! If you haven’t seen it, google it — it’s so incredible! I thought it was the best of the night. I also really liked Rihanna’s, and I thought it was so cool that she went with a Chinese designer — Guo Pei, who is also the designer of that stunning gold dress that is shown in the exhibit itself.
I read somewhere that Anna Wintour actually approves everyone’s outfit in advance… The fact that she actually APPROVED some of these dresses — and not only that, but that she herself wore a dress covered in poppies like some high-fashion ode to the opium trade — just befuddles and disgusts me. I don’t get it.
We’ve come a long way from the 1930s when calling a woman “strong” was a pejorative. I didn’t see any “dragon lady” in SJP’s headdress and I suspect if she was intending to convey “dragon lady” it was probably a positive homage as in “I’m a strong dragon lady” not a negative one.
Different cultures can have different formulas for asking for something. When there’s a difference in politeness/formula, people can misunderstand. When I was in the Peace Corps, I got a letter from someone who was in an important position in an agency where I worked. When I started to read it, it was so flowery, I thought it was a love letter and I’m reading thinking, OMG, I DON’T need this, what am I going to say. The flowery formulas took up a whole page, the point of the letter was on the top of page two before continuing on to a lengthy sign off.
The point of the letter boiled down to butt out of my business. (Lots of people wanted to use PC volunteers to grind their own axes and it took me a while to figure when to not take the bait).
I think the writer of the Met gala article undermined his own argument by using bad illustrative examples of what he was trying to say. He derailed his own argument because I don’t think he made a strong enough effort to explain the distinction between homage/costume (esp. how China is represented in Western culture/style/fashion/cinema which is what the theme for the night really was) and appropriation/yellow face. SJP is arguably the former while Jenner is mostly the latter.
And he lost me further by playing oppression Olympics and drawing a bad analogy between literal black face and what was happening at the Met.
Even worse, he doesn’t even mention Lady Gaga who inexplicably seems to be getting a pass on her weird Ming the Merciless make-up job.
@Tina:
Love the “Ming the Merciless” reference….to funny! But in all serious I agree with you completely.
The Met Gala is supposed to be weird because it’s a semi-masquerade thing with art as the veneer, so I was disappointed in the people who decided to be normal, because boring.
And Anna Wintour isn’t exactly a) the most sensitive person ever, culturally or otherwise and b) prone to giving a rat’s ass about anything that isn’t about HER. And the Met Gala is HER deal, and you dress to catch HER eye.
What I saw may or may not have been pleasing to MY eye, but a good portion of it was pop art, on the level of Andy Warhol (like Katy Perry’s dress).
I got the cultural appropriation thing. I liked the headdress as an art piece. I thought it was par for the course for Wintour et al. Why anybody’s shocked by this (or her), I don’t know.
“the oldest complete song in the world” The songs of Indigenous peoples all over the world were just excluded.
@wendy: It’s not the oldest song *full stop* – it’s the oldest song that “our 21st-century selves can still play and hear in its intended entirety, more or less as did the” people for whom and by whom it was composed. Which, unfortunately, excludes much music that is older than this particular song. And, as happened with this particular tune, it may be that at some point another relic will be revealed that provides the information for a new song that meets this criteria.
Re the Met Gala clothing/costumes: If, say, Anna Wintour or SJP or even Lady Gaga (and I definitely found her outfit offensive) showed up wearing a full headdress in the Native American style, plus a suede fringed dress and some kind of moccasins (and I’m intentionally referring to items that are disconnected from national affiliations and often presented as a stereotypical “Indian” costume), would it be okay?
My first association when I saw that SJP headdress was a pretty significant incident at my university when a fraternity advertised for a party with the “Indian” equivalent of some of those outfits.
I do think there were some outfits (like the Moschino dresses) that were more “inspired” than anything else, and in a creative, non-appropriative way. And I definitely think there’s a line between homage and appropriation that was not uniformly crossed by Gala-goers. Which is one of the reasons I avoided the term “racism” in my own description of the piece, and tried to focus on stereotypes and appropriation. But I do agree with Li that when it comes to Asian stereotypes, they are often less critically evaluated than certain other appropriative contexts.
But I didn’t say it was okay, or that appropriating one culture over another is less okay than another. I just said this is par for this crowd’s course. I would even go so far as to say (in Lady Gaga’s case) that appropriation is her schtick, and the more outrageous/offensive the better.
@Moriah Jovan: I wasn’t responding specifically to your comment (although I agree with you on your reference to the Moschino dresses). I read through the comments and decided to go with my general thoughts after reading them. Which was probably a mistake, but there it is.
@Robin/Janet: I don’t regard myself as the most culturally sensitive person in the world but the SJP headpiece seemed culturally appropriative to me.
What is “culturally appropriative?” Why can’t we be inspired by some great style from another culture? Sure, someone is in an outfit, as Janet/Robin mentioned, that looks more like a Halloween costume than fashion, there’s a problem.
But suede jackets with fringe have entered general American fashion, as have moccasins, turquoise jewelry, Navajo-style rugs/blankets, etc.
If the Western world, which tends to drive global fashion can’t use influences from other cultures, then we’ll move to a global culture where non-American/European styles are marginalized and eventually forgotten.
@SAO: I don’t know where the line is. But whereever it is, I shouldn’t be the one to draw it. I’d venture to say that the white majority shouldn’t be the ones to draw it.
I think the headdress SJP is wearing isn’t a sacred religious object like a Native American headdress. And she isn’t dressing to ‘pass’ as an Asian person nor is she wearing something that has a specific or profound meaning to the culture as just a piece of body decoration.
This is why I think the linked article fails, because the writer doesn’t explain *why* what she is wearing is appropriation. Basically she is wearing a headdress in the shape of a flame. But what does that mean exactly? Meanwhile I’ve read another article where the writer explains that the tassels on the headdress are reminiscent of what brides wear at their wedding (like a wedding veil) but the headdress itself looks more like the headdress on one of the mascots, Huanhuan, that was created specifically for the Beijing Olympics. Huanhuan represents the Americas. According to that article, many of the Chinese commenters discussing the headdress seem to agree that is most likely the inspiration for it. If that was indeed her inspiration for the headdress, then it actually seems quite apt.
@SAO: I have to agree with you on this. Fringe on suede jackets goes back to the old west and maybe beyond, I don’t know. I do know I was wearing stuff like that when I was a kid. If we don’t ‘borrow’ from other cultures in our fashions, if we are all the same bland fashion statement, there will eventually be no cultural things to borrow from because they’ll all be buried beneath a mountain of bland.
Thanks for the link to David Li’s article Robin/Janet.
This whole thing is so deep, you could probably make another long post regarding influences and origins of certain cultural stereotypes. I’d like to add that if readers Google Anna May Wong (Chinese Actress in early Hollywood), then the inspiration behind the whole dragon lady style of dress becomes clearer. Long story short, some of the costumes worn for the Met were appropriations of caricatures that were originally created by and for old Hollywood.
Anna May Wong’s career is both fascinating and sad, as the one role she truly wanted went to an actress who was not of Chinese ancestry but made up to look Chinese on film (eventual Oscar winner Louise Rainer, for her role in Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth) . It’s also important to note that early comic books and also TV serials loved to play off this Hollywood invented Chinese caricature, which wasn’t limited to just females. Two examples are Flash Gordon’s Ming the Merciless and Fu Manchu.
I’m glad David Li spoke up, even with the flaws in his article. Too often silence is mistaken for acceptance in today’s society, so it’s gonna take time. But its important to at least talk about it, whether there’s agreement or not.
I will also add, that it wasn’t just white actors and actresses who played Chinese characters. Juanita Hall, a talented African American actress played Bloody Mary in South Pacific (becoming the first African American to win a Tony award for the role) and also Auntie Liang in Flower Drum Song.
@theo:
Context matters. Cat’s-eye makeup and Dragon Lady headresses might be interesting fashion borrowings at, oh, the Oscars red carpet, but these costumes were worn to an event explicitly celebrating the theme of “China: Through the Looking Glass.”
I’m not a big fan of suede fringes on any outfit, but I hope we can all agree that they would become an implicit — and offensive — political statement if they were worn to, say, the opening of a museum exhibit on “Native American Heritage.”
Here’s another article which (I think) does a better job of making the point: http://fashionista.com/2015/05/met-gala-2015-offenders
@hapax: If you go back to my original post near the beginning, I thought the headdress was just an ugly fashion faux pas. I had no idea they were dressing in costume and racism was the farthest thing from my mind. My comment that you quoted was my response to SAO’s comment and again, was neither racially or politically motivated.
And I must just not either be politically savvy enough or it doesn’t strike a racism chord in me enough to think that wearing native American anything to a museum opening for same exhibit would be offensive but then, I grew up participating in rodeos and wild west shows as a child and those kinds of things were worn by all of us regardless of nationality. I suppose that makes me politically incorrect too.
So, my question becomes this, I guess: what is politically correct to wear because over the centuries, many cultures have incorporated others cultural things into their dress so where do we draw the line? Spring runways are often filled with designs based on other cultures. Do we shoot the designer? Boycott them? I don’t know. I’m asking.
I had no idea this was a costume affair but whether it was or not, I thought the headdress was awful. I thought nothing beyond that. Knowing now that this was all supposed to be costumed, I still think it’s awful. And knowing these were all perpetuated by those same above designers, they’re still awful. The only designs I thought were attractive at all were those that were mainstream. So I’m stupid or clueless, I guess.
@theo: I have no reason for thinking you either “stupid” or “clueless”. Without knowing the thematic context, how else was to judge the fashions on display except by whether one liked them?
But, as both articles pointed out, it was quite possible to pay homage to the theme, and incorporate into high fashion “borrowings” from Chinese (and other Asian) cultures in a stylish and respectful way — and made a point of highlighting the attendees who succeeded spectacularly (e.g. Fan BingBing).
I don’t pay much attention to Hollywood. And I’m not sure what everyone expected. The women get dressed up in garish, over-priced gowns. The men seem to follow them around. They do their thing; get their faces on TV, or in this case, the internet, and make even more money. The really pressing issue is not how they got dressed up and displayed stereotypical ideas about Asia, but why we spend so much time gawking at them. Yes, we could be talking about other things like feminism, sex-slave trafficking, terrorism, poverty, depression, and equal opportunity. Sorry to comment off-topic, but Hollywood gets zero attention from me.
@Georgia Carter Mathers:
I don’t think your comment is off-topic.
Imho most of the things you mentioned, like feminism, sex-slave trafficking , poverty, equal opportunity and depression could also be used in a discussion to show how Asian women are sexualized and stereotyped, and have been over the years, with some of the outfits and quotes from the Met Gala as examples. Robin/Janet’s link and Hapax’s link contain quotes and photos that could be very useful in such a discussion.
I recall when a major clothing manufacturer was blasted for lingerie featuring catalogue models made up/inspired by Geisha’s, the company ended up pulling the ad due to the backlash by a diverse community of opponents, so its interesting how some things get a pass while others don’t.
I think its important not to underestimate how powerful Hollywood was and still is in shaping some people’s perceptions of not only other cultures, but societal behavior.