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Woo hides behind Cultural Sensitivity

gumboot

lorcutus.tolere
gumboot
Joined
Jun 18, 2006
Messages
25,327
Annoying article in the News today:

Kidman plays didgeridoo, offends Aborigines

Aussie actress Nicole Kidman has angered Aboriginal groups after playing a didgeridoo on a German television show.
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Okay, sounds like open and shut political correctness, right? White woman tries to play black man's instrument?

The Oscar winner made an appearance on German show Wetten, Dass...? over the weekend and tried to play the instrument which, according to Aboriginal custom, women are forbiddden to play - claiming it makes them infertile.
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Um...what?

Richard Green, an award-winning Aboriginal actor and screenwriter, was furious with the incident, saying it is "guaranteed" to make the actress infertile.

"People are going to see Nicole playing it and think it's all right," he told the newspaper.

"It bastardises our culture. I will guarantee she has no more children. It's not meant to be played by women as it will make them barren."
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Okaaay.

Anyone else think of cases in which the shield of "cultural sensitivity" is used to push ridiculous woo beliefs? Comments on such things?

Personally I think it's utter nonsense. I don't believe any culture has any sort of exclusive claim to anything that relates to their culture.
 
The image of Nicole Kidman blowing into a large tube has me aroused.
 
Anyone else think of cases in which the shield of "cultural sensitivity" is used to push ridiculous woo beliefs?
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From what you've presented, I don't necessarily agree that the goal was to promote woo beliefs under a shroud of cultural sensitivity. (eta: I agree he has woo beliefs, and that he is culturally sensitive--I just haven't seen evidence that he's using cultural sensitivity to hide woo activism--if that's what you meant.)

I agree that no culture has an exclusive claim to anything that relates to their culture, but I don't understand specifically how that fits in here--did anyone make this case?

In my view, Kidman has a right to play the instrument, and Green has a right to criticize her based on a sexist cultural viewpoint. He has a right to be offended by Kidman, just as I have a right to be offended by his sexism and idiotic belief that a woman who plays a didgeridoo will not be able to have children.
 
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The stupid thing is that as I understand it from some anthropologists I've spoken to in the past, there are some Aussie Indigenous cultures that don't have this rule about women not playing the didg. The truth is that there is no such thing as a single Aboriginal megaculture. It's about as culturally rich as Europe, as far as languages, foods, dances, traditions etc. go - which is a fantastic thing, when you think about.

Athon
 
From the article linked in the OP:
Allen Madden, from Sydney's Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, said Kidman's stunt was ill-advised.
"I presume she doesn't know, otherwise she wouldn't be playing it," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
"But [I would have thought] the women on that set would have told her. Baz should know something about it, after working with those traditional fellas on the film."
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Madden was more tolerant. Green sounds like an ass and a maroon. What's the big deal?

White woman tries to play black man's instrument?
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I don't really see where race plays into this--it's a cultural and gender issue, no? Do you think Green would be OK with an African American woman or Aboriginal woman playing the didgeridoo?
 
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Alot of woo is very cultural. Heck, all woo is cultural.

Even if that culture is the inane, whitebread, narcissistic, psychobabble-filled 20th/21st century American/Western World culture that produced white people in yoga pants and teas being accepted as the cure for everything from headaches to back pain.

That's still a culture.
 
jimtron said:
I don't really see where race plays into this--it's a cultural and gender issue, no? Do you think Green would be OK with an African American woman or Aboriginal woman playing the didgeridoo?
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I don't think race has anything to do with it, but I think ethnicity does. I could be wrong, of course. :)
 
gumboot said:
Annoying Anyone else think of cases in which the shield of "cultural sensitivity" is used to push ridiculous woo beliefs? Comments on such things?
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Eh?

You live in NZ and ask that question?

Helen Clark, always happy to hold the agnostic tag, arranged for a whole ****ing highway to be moved because of a taniwha. Did Helen say, "I'm sorry, your beliefs that an invisible being lives in that pond and will endanger traffic are absolute balls"?

Or did she slobber all over the kaumatua as she told Transit to redesign the highway at a stated cost of $30k?

The worst thing about that one is that when it's come to moving both Jewish and Pakeha graves for the sake of a motorway, they just let them diggers roll!
 
jimtron said:
But you said:
My point is that this is not a black/white racial issue. It's more cultural than anything.
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Yes, that's exactly what he said. When I read it I understood it as a metaphor, comparing her rendering of the instrument to the commonly held belief that white men can't play basketball, Larry Bird to he contrary notwithstanding. It seems to me he was just using it humorously, pointedly and idiomatically, not literally, to make the point. I think everyone can agree while it's certainly a sexist and cultural position, it's not a race position.
 
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arthwollipot said:
Kennewick Man.
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Indeed. I was just about to say something about that when you preceded me by a mere 7 hours. Yes, we have the same sort of things here in the US concerning our aborigines, the American Indians. They claim the right to not have their ancestors dug up and inspected by scientists, even when a firm tribal connection cannot be established. Inasmuch as nearly all native North and South Americans can claim anyone dug up who is over 10,000 years old is almost certainly an ancestor or closely related to someone who is, or who cannot be proven not to be, that leaves almost no archaeological query which encounters bones untouched.
 
What bugs me are the people who find out that one of their great-grandparents was Native American and suddenly self-identify with a culture they have no connection with. I'm not talking about trying to learn more about their heritage, but about those who make absurd claims about spirituality and history. The American Indian Movement has a lot of big offenders here. Also see the invented controversy over the word "squaw."

BUT I think you have to sympathise with some of the motives behind embracing ancient woo. After all, many people value connections with their past and woo connections may be all the activists had.
 
This reminded me of an incident in 2007 in which a noted Aboriginal didgeridoo player was prevented from playing in Broome (north-west Western Australia) due to a local ban on the instrument...

" 'The ancient Aboriginal instrument should be banned in Broome because it featured in ceremonial performances and was not even traditional to the Broome area,' said Neil McKenzie. "

Oddly, you could still play guitars and virtually any other instrument you could think of in Broome, despite them also not being traditional to the area.

The things are sold by the hundreds of thousands in souvenir shops around the country - to anyone who wants one.

But where does it end? I have made didgeridoos from bamboo (and bamboo didg's are commercially available). Bamboo is not the traditional material so, theoretically, these are no more didgeridoos than wooden recorders are. Could Nicole play one of these with impunity?

Are Aboriginal men allowed to play harps since these have been depicted in Christian artwork being played by angels?

Links to Broome story here and here
 
qwints said:
What bugs me are the people who find out that one of their great-grandparents was Native American and suddenly self-identify with a culture they have no connection with. I'm not talking about trying to learn more about their heritage, but about those who make absurd claims about spirituality and history. The American Indian Movement has a lot of big offenders here. Also see the invented controversy over the word "squaw."
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Squaw is the phonetic spelling of an eastern Algonquian Indian morpheme, meaning "woman," that appears in numerous Algonquian dialects variously spelled as
squa, skwa, esqua, sqeh, skwe, que, kwa, ikwe, etc.

As an English language loan-word, used as a noun or adjective, its present meaning is an indigenous woman of North America, regardless of tribe.

The term has been considered offensive, frequently so since the late 20th Century.
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One wonders whence the offence.



Question: should I be offended if someone refers to me as amigo, since that is not the word for friend in my language? What about "hombre?"

DR
 
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