Hipsters, Calaveras, and Cultura: Day of the Dead gets complicated
October 30, 2016 2:03 PM Subscribe
In the past decade, more and more North Americans of non-Mexican origin have begun celebrating some version of el Día de los Muertos. Predictably, this has led to accusations of cultural appropriation. Not so predictably, the targets of the latest complaints are the government officials in Mexico who have just turned the Day of the Dead into a major tourist attraction.
A generation ago, most North Americans of other than Mexican origin knew about the traditions of the Day of the Dead, if at all, largely through the iconography of José Guadalupe Posada; or from exibitions at art museums or folk art sold at gift shops mainly in the Southwestern U.S. But in recent years, sugar-skull face painting and costumes based on Posada's "La Calavera Catrina" have spread far beyond Latino communities. These days, you can find articles promoting "10 Great Day of the Dead Celebrations" in USA Today. The Day of the Dead entered Anglo mass culture when Disney announced production of a DotD-themed animated film eventually titled Coco – and when Disney quickly backed down in the face of savage mockery for their attempt to trademark the phrase "Día de los Muertos" in connection with the movie. And Disney has not been the only target of complaints that face-painted hipsters are colonizing an indigenous culture.
But probably the biggest mass-culture boost for DotD was last year's James Bond film Spectre, which opened with a striking sequence of a Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City – a parade which in fact was only fictional. That is, until the Mexican Department of Tourism and other officials in Mexico City realized that an actual parade could be a huge tourist draw. So this year, they created one, a heavily marketed attempt to give Mexico City a festival to compete with the likes of Rio's Carnival. Commercialization certainly—but is it "cultural appropriation" if it's your own culture?
A generation ago, most North Americans of other than Mexican origin knew about the traditions of the Day of the Dead, if at all, largely through the iconography of José Guadalupe Posada; or from exibitions at art museums or folk art sold at gift shops mainly in the Southwestern U.S. But in recent years, sugar-skull face painting and costumes based on Posada's "La Calavera Catrina" have spread far beyond Latino communities. These days, you can find articles promoting "10 Great Day of the Dead Celebrations" in USA Today. The Day of the Dead entered Anglo mass culture when Disney announced production of a DotD-themed animated film eventually titled Coco – and when Disney quickly backed down in the face of savage mockery for their attempt to trademark the phrase "Día de los Muertos" in connection with the movie. And Disney has not been the only target of complaints that face-painted hipsters are colonizing an indigenous culture.
But probably the biggest mass-culture boost for DotD was last year's James Bond film Spectre, which opened with a striking sequence of a Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City – a parade which in fact was only fictional. That is, until the Mexican Department of Tourism and other officials in Mexico City realized that an actual parade could be a huge tourist draw. So this year, they created one, a heavily marketed attempt to give Mexico City a festival to compete with the likes of Rio's Carnival. Commercialization certainly—but is it "cultural appropriation" if it's your own culture?
As a footnote, two cities with decades-old celebrations loosely based on Day of the Dead iconography and traditions have been confronting the issue of cultural appropriation as those celebrations have grown and changed. Missoula's Festival of the Dead and Tucson's All Souls Procession both grew from initiatives by artists to find a local way of memorializing those in the community who had died. Both have had a hard time establishing that they are not just "Day of the Dead" parades. This year Missoula decided to abandon free face-painting, and sponsor's of Tucson's event do their best to say that ASP is not a "Day of the Dead" parade.
posted by Creosote at 2:09 PM on October 30, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by Creosote at 2:09 PM on October 30, 2016 [9 favorites]
This has the potential to lead to a fraught discussion, especially because it concerns questions over whether something "is or is not" cultural appropriation, so I'll just lead off with some previous discussions on MetaTalk:
Improving cultural appropriation threads
We need to have a discussion about racism.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 2:10 PM on October 30, 2016 [13 favorites]
Improving cultural appropriation threads
We need to have a discussion about racism.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 2:10 PM on October 30, 2016 [13 favorites]
I grew up with Day of the Dead as an attempt to bring multiculturalism into (tacitly white) schooling, and with large numbers of Salvadoran and Honduran kids who happily celebrated the day and the privileged, if temporary, space it put them in. They took that space even though they didn't actually celebrate Day of the Dead at home.
I have two small contributions:
1) The appropriation discussion also happens among (young, educated) Mexicans, for several reasons, which I'm not seeing in the links (although there are a bunch, so I may have missed it.)
First, there's a geographic/center-periphery type of appropriation, because Día de Muertos is not perceived as a pan-Mexico holiday historically, but rather from several states in the center of Mexico. Morelos and Michoacán are usually the states listed at the "center", at least from the perspective of Jalisco. And Mexico City is certainly multicultural within Mexico, but the people in structurally privileged positions are largely whiter and much less indigenous than the rest of the country. All that matters deeply.
Second, Día de Muertos is much more of a day to go to the graveyard and hang out with the fam and the ancestors, than it is a day for a parade and smoke bombs and whatever. So the Mexican discussion is very much about commercialization and the appropriation of tradition by capitalism. There is certainly a racial/indigeneity aspect to appropriation, since again, the beneficiaries are whiter and less indigenous.
I'd suggest that we recognize a very subtle cultural politics at work, since the translation of the holiday in the US and the politics of the DF parade are linked but non-identical phenomena.
2) The "los" baffles me: Day of the Dead or Día de Muertos, but *not* "Día de los Muertos." Wikipedia says the "los" results from an English back-formation, without citation, but you see it/hear it even among heritage speakers from the US who would have heard the name in Spanish. Is English back-formation so powerful that it corrects aural language learning on a wide basis? If so, wow.
posted by migrantology at 2:38 PM on October 30, 2016 [49 favorites]
I have two small contributions:
1) The appropriation discussion also happens among (young, educated) Mexicans, for several reasons, which I'm not seeing in the links (although there are a bunch, so I may have missed it.)
First, there's a geographic/center-periphery type of appropriation, because Día de Muertos is not perceived as a pan-Mexico holiday historically, but rather from several states in the center of Mexico. Morelos and Michoacán are usually the states listed at the "center", at least from the perspective of Jalisco. And Mexico City is certainly multicultural within Mexico, but the people in structurally privileged positions are largely whiter and much less indigenous than the rest of the country. All that matters deeply.
Second, Día de Muertos is much more of a day to go to the graveyard and hang out with the fam and the ancestors, than it is a day for a parade and smoke bombs and whatever. So the Mexican discussion is very much about commercialization and the appropriation of tradition by capitalism. There is certainly a racial/indigeneity aspect to appropriation, since again, the beneficiaries are whiter and less indigenous.
I'd suggest that we recognize a very subtle cultural politics at work, since the translation of the holiday in the US and the politics of the DF parade are linked but non-identical phenomena.
2) The "los" baffles me: Day of the Dead or Día de Muertos, but *not* "Día de los Muertos." Wikipedia says the "los" results from an English back-formation, without citation, but you see it/hear it even among heritage speakers from the US who would have heard the name in Spanish. Is English back-formation so powerful that it corrects aural language learning on a wide basis? If so, wow.
posted by migrantology at 2:38 PM on October 30, 2016 [49 favorites]
I'm not bothered as a Mexican by white people in my life who've taken to the idea of skulls with flowers. I like them on an aesthetic level, not just a cultural level. But there's a difference between that and saying you're celebrating a holiday that you only like because it looks cool. I don't celebrate that holiday myself because I'm not Catholic and that wasn't a part of my upbringing.
Despite not celebrating it, it's been a large part of developing my relationship with death after my father passed away in 2014. And I begin to feel like the fascination with this is because American people don't know how to deal with death. There aren't existing traditions with Halloween anymore that really work with that. Just costumes. People are looking for something more authentic, and unfortunately trying to find it in the wrong places.
posted by Sequence at 2:44 PM on October 30, 2016 [50 favorites]
Despite not celebrating it, it's been a large part of developing my relationship with death after my father passed away in 2014. And I begin to feel like the fascination with this is because American people don't know how to deal with death. There aren't existing traditions with Halloween anymore that really work with that. Just costumes. People are looking for something more authentic, and unfortunately trying to find it in the wrong places.
posted by Sequence at 2:44 PM on October 30, 2016 [50 favorites]
I am still deciding if I will go to the Mission procession on Wednesday. It starts just a few blocks from my house, and I do look forward to seeing all the altars at Garfield park.
But the last few years, with all the change here in this neighborhood, the procession has increasingly felt like a "come see my awesome costume and makeup skills" event, and less and less like space to remember people we have loved and lost and to acknowledge our own impermanence. It bothers me a lot - it's a culture that's not being so much appropriated as erased. I miss the more solemn nature of it.
I kind of hope it's rainy. Not too rainy, because I don't want anyone's altar to be damaged, but rainy enough to thin the procession crowd some.
posted by rtha at 3:04 PM on October 30, 2016 [10 favorites]
But the last few years, with all the change here in this neighborhood, the procession has increasingly felt like a "come see my awesome costume and makeup skills" event, and less and less like space to remember people we have loved and lost and to acknowledge our own impermanence. It bothers me a lot - it's a culture that's not being so much appropriated as erased. I miss the more solemn nature of it.
I kind of hope it's rainy. Not too rainy, because I don't want anyone's altar to be damaged, but rainy enough to thin the procession crowd some.
posted by rtha at 3:04 PM on October 30, 2016 [10 favorites]
Man, I've known about the Day of the Dead for decades, and I lived in Austin, which has plenty of people from Latin America (and hipsters) and. at no point, did I ever think "this is for me." I can see other people enjoy their traditions and celebrations without wanting to take those traditions home with me.
I will celebrate my dead in my own way, and respect others' right to do the same.
And I cringe every time I go into Starbucks and see their "Day of the Dead" cookies. Yeesh.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:06 PM on October 30, 2016 [6 favorites]
I will celebrate my dead in my own way, and respect others' right to do the same.
And I cringe every time I go into Starbucks and see their "Day of the Dead" cookies. Yeesh.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:06 PM on October 30, 2016 [6 favorites]
There aren't existing traditions with Halloween anymore that really work with that. Just costumes.
Halloween never was about death. It's an old Irish holiday that dates pre Christianity and is the night the veil is thinnest between worlds. It's about hiding from evil spirits through costumes and bonfires or, alternatively, a night for witching and mischief. Trick or treating came later and was a way for the poor to beg for materials for the fires and holiday. That evolved into mischief night. But Halloween has never been about honoring ancestors, it's always been about evil spirits and the end of the year/ summer mostly. Celts mostly believed in the circle of life anyway, so quite different. I think, despite Christianity that belief still lingers many places.
I grew up knowing all the old witch stuff for Halloween, stuff you did at midnight, going to bonfires, re-lighting the house fires after midnight, telling fortunes, playing pranks etc. None of that translated to the US holiday which is it's own thing now I guess having to do with costumes and fun. Which is fine, it's getting dark and dreary and parties are good for that.
posted by fshgrl at 3:10 PM on October 30, 2016 [12 favorites]
Halloween never was about death. It's an old Irish holiday that dates pre Christianity and is the night the veil is thinnest between worlds. It's about hiding from evil spirits through costumes and bonfires or, alternatively, a night for witching and mischief. Trick or treating came later and was a way for the poor to beg for materials for the fires and holiday. That evolved into mischief night. But Halloween has never been about honoring ancestors, it's always been about evil spirits and the end of the year/ summer mostly. Celts mostly believed in the circle of life anyway, so quite different. I think, despite Christianity that belief still lingers many places.
I grew up knowing all the old witch stuff for Halloween, stuff you did at midnight, going to bonfires, re-lighting the house fires after midnight, telling fortunes, playing pranks etc. None of that translated to the US holiday which is it's own thing now I guess having to do with costumes and fun. Which is fine, it's getting dark and dreary and parties are good for that.
posted by fshgrl at 3:10 PM on October 30, 2016 [12 favorites]
don't even bother and just take their money- Ireland.
If the money were actually going to go in the right places, I'd be more sanguine. My little town is full of young white women who sell crafty stuff on etsy and in little boutiques and oh how the skulls do sell!
posted by allthinky at 3:13 PM on October 30, 2016 [3 favorites]
If the money were actually going to go in the right places, I'd be more sanguine. My little town is full of young white women who sell crafty stuff on etsy and in little boutiques and oh how the skulls do sell!
posted by allthinky at 3:13 PM on October 30, 2016 [3 favorites]
I'm one of the white American appropriators of the Day of the Dead. It wasn't intentional. We had twins, and one died very early. Day of the Dead is just a few weeks after the anniversary of her death.
There's a neighborhood center near us that does a big celebration, and over the years as our daughter has gotten older we've gotten more involved with that celebration, as a way of remembering her sister. My wife and I don't go in for the face paint (our kid does), but we have an altar at home and have our own family traditions around it.
I've had some friends die in the last few years, and Day of the Dead has become a way in which I remember them, too. I'm conflicted and uncomfortable about the appropriation aspect. I'm white and nonreligious, with no rightful claim to the day. So far I've dealt with that by not thinking about it too hard, which isn't super great.
posted by gurple at 3:37 PM on October 30, 2016 [29 favorites]
There's a neighborhood center near us that does a big celebration, and over the years as our daughter has gotten older we've gotten more involved with that celebration, as a way of remembering her sister. My wife and I don't go in for the face paint (our kid does), but we have an altar at home and have our own family traditions around it.
I've had some friends die in the last few years, and Day of the Dead has become a way in which I remember them, too. I'm conflicted and uncomfortable about the appropriation aspect. I'm white and nonreligious, with no rightful claim to the day. So far I've dealt with that by not thinking about it too hard, which isn't super great.
posted by gurple at 3:37 PM on October 30, 2016 [29 favorites]
I begin to feel like the fascination with this is because American people don't know how to deal with death. There aren't existing traditions with Halloween anymore that really work with that. Just costumes. People are looking for something more authentic, and unfortunately trying to find it in the wrong places.I'm pretty sure for most Americans, it's just that the face makeup is a cool costume. I don't think any of them look at it as a day of remembrance / family connection. Growing up in the Philippines, it was entirely about going to the town cemetary to hang out with your extended family and refresh the flowers on everyone's gravestone while listening to the nth rendition of that crazy story about your wild great uncle from that one time. The closest equivalent that I think of it in America is actually Memorial Day if you're from a military family.
posted by bl1nk at 3:39 PM on October 30, 2016 [6 favorites]
> I've had some friends die in the last few years, and Day of the Dead has become a way in which I remember them, too. I'm conflicted and uncomfortable about the appropriation aspect. I'm white and nonreligious, with no rightful claim to the day.
I don't know if I would consider you - anyone not of Mexican heritage - engaging with Day of the Dead in this way as appropriative (but I'm also not Mexican so...). Intent isn't magic, but it does matter, and to me, at least, behavior matters even more, and it's the people treating it like a cocktail/costume party bug me so much. I'm not Mexican, and I'm not Catholic or any other kind of religion, but I deeply appreciate the space that a holiday like this can provide for those of us who want and need a community in this way.
posted by rtha at 3:46 PM on October 30, 2016 [16 favorites]
I don't know if I would consider you - anyone not of Mexican heritage - engaging with Day of the Dead in this way as appropriative (but I'm also not Mexican so...). Intent isn't magic, but it does matter, and to me, at least, behavior matters even more, and it's the people treating it like a cocktail/costume party bug me so much. I'm not Mexican, and I'm not Catholic or any other kind of religion, but I deeply appreciate the space that a holiday like this can provide for those of us who want and need a community in this way.
posted by rtha at 3:46 PM on October 30, 2016 [16 favorites]
About 15-20 years ago I was in Michoacan during the Day of the Dead. In a small city on a lake called Patzcuaro. Apparently the area seemed to be a fairly well known touristy spot during Day of the Dead among Mexicans in Mexico. I didn't see a parade, but there was a bustling fiesta in one of the smaller towns around the lake that I enjoyed quite a bit. The town was quite small, and the local families gathered at their cemetery family plot was immediately noticeable, and a nice spectacle to witness. It wasn't solemn in the cemetery. But not a wild party, either. Seemed more like a nighttime family reunion kind of atmosphere. Neither my, not the other tourists presence seemed to be a bother to anyone, and the town was small enough that it would have been difficult to avoid the cemetery without avoiding the fiesta. And in fact the town looked to have monetized the day quite well on their own. This was repeated at several of the towns around the lake, with taxis and buses providing transport for anyone wishing to see what there was to see.
I have some long lost roots in Michoacan, so I found it an especially meaningful and pleasant experience, different from the celebration I'm familiar with in my home of Los Angeles, where it melds with Halloween easily.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:11 PM on October 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
I have some long lost roots in Michoacan, so I found it an especially meaningful and pleasant experience, different from the celebration I'm familiar with in my home of Los Angeles, where it melds with Halloween easily.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:11 PM on October 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
A generation ago, most North Americans of other than Mexican origin knew about the traditions of the Day of the Dead, if at all, largely through the iconography of José Guadalupe Posada; or from exibitions at art museums or folk art sold at gift shops mainly in the Southwestern U.S.
I'll be real honest with you: I only found out about any of those because I was interested in the mythology behind Grim Fandango.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 4:27 PM on October 30, 2016 [16 favorites]
I'll be real honest with you: I only found out about any of those because I was interested in the mythology behind Grim Fandango.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 4:27 PM on October 30, 2016 [16 favorites]
I've had some friends die in the last few years, and Day of the Dead has become a way in which I remember them, too. I'm conflicted and uncomfortable about the appropriation aspect. I'm white and nonreligious, with no rightful claim to the day.
I'm also not Mexican, but I can also say what I do appreciate about your approach is that you've engaged with the community in your approach of the holiday. I think what white people sometimes don't grok about cultural appropriation - and this is true of a lot of stuff around race, actually - is that there isn't an objective definition that can be cleanly separated from context. We can set global rules based on context that we can expect to apply more-or-less uniformally across North America: residential schools, model minority assimilation strategies, the history of blackface, etc. But that doesn't mean that the nuances of context can't be defined on a local level by communities coming to consensus - you frequently see this when white people are invited to wear cultural costumes to weddings, or to attend cultural celebrations.
I mean, the bottom line is that when you're dealing with race, you're dealing with people, not abstract politics. Now that you've shared your story and your intent not to do harm, it's hard not to emphasize, and that counts for something. Contrary to what a lot of white people say around this subject (yes, you can tell I'm touchy about it), the intent is not to shut down a conversation - in fact, I love conversation around race and I only fall into stating the hard-line rules about it when that's not possible. It's just that the conversation needs to be framed less around placing an important piece of culture in the center with "winning" or "losing" access to it based upon whether they can justify benefit of the doubt in their behavior (spoiler: they always manage), and more about asking the culture at hand, "can I engage, and what's the best way to do this non-problematically?" while letting them have the power of autonomy.
posted by Conspire at 4:29 PM on October 30, 2016 [20 favorites]
I'm also not Mexican, but I can also say what I do appreciate about your approach is that you've engaged with the community in your approach of the holiday. I think what white people sometimes don't grok about cultural appropriation - and this is true of a lot of stuff around race, actually - is that there isn't an objective definition that can be cleanly separated from context. We can set global rules based on context that we can expect to apply more-or-less uniformally across North America: residential schools, model minority assimilation strategies, the history of blackface, etc. But that doesn't mean that the nuances of context can't be defined on a local level by communities coming to consensus - you frequently see this when white people are invited to wear cultural costumes to weddings, or to attend cultural celebrations.
I mean, the bottom line is that when you're dealing with race, you're dealing with people, not abstract politics. Now that you've shared your story and your intent not to do harm, it's hard not to emphasize, and that counts for something. Contrary to what a lot of white people say around this subject (yes, you can tell I'm touchy about it), the intent is not to shut down a conversation - in fact, I love conversation around race and I only fall into stating the hard-line rules about it when that's not possible. It's just that the conversation needs to be framed less around placing an important piece of culture in the center with "winning" or "losing" access to it based upon whether they can justify benefit of the doubt in their behavior (spoiler: they always manage), and more about asking the culture at hand, "can I engage, and what's the best way to do this non-problematically?" while letting them have the power of autonomy.
posted by Conspire at 4:29 PM on October 30, 2016 [20 favorites]
Good luck with keeping the US from turning your cultural traditions and religious holidays into college drinking events Mexico. We suggest you don't even bother and just take their money- Ireland.
The St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City is older than the United States.
posted by Diablevert at 4:39 PM on October 30, 2016 [8 favorites]
The St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City is older than the United States.
posted by Diablevert at 4:39 PM on October 30, 2016 [8 favorites]
This part struck me as interesting:
There are spaces for ancestor reverence on the Christian liturgical calendar. There are spaces for remembrance of different kinds on the United States federal holiday calendar. There are, if you choose to go there, spaces on the Hallmark calendar should we wish to claim those for our departed parents and grandparents. There are spaces we can claim for the saints (broadly defined) of our labour and civil rights movements. We have plenty of Eurocentric spaces for reverence and remembrance.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:52 PM on October 30, 2016 [11 favorites]
And the urge to colonize is born when your own land and resources have been taken over by the greedy and your cultures have been bankrupted. Halloween has a rich history as an indigenous European holiday that celebrated many of the same themes as Day of the Dead, but you have let it be taken over by Wal-Mart. Now it’s about plastic decorations and cheap polyester costumes and young women having permission to wear sexy clothes without being slut-shamed and kids indulging on candy. November first finds piles of plastic and synthetic junk headed to the landfill to liter the earth. You have abandoned Halloween, left it laying in the street like a trampled fright wig from the dollar store. Take back your holiday. Take back your own indigenous culture. Fight to reclaim your own spirituality.Partly because earlier today I attended my UU Church's All Soul's Day service, and I'm still dealing with the absence of my sister from earlier this year.
There are spaces for ancestor reverence on the Christian liturgical calendar. There are spaces for remembrance of different kinds on the United States federal holiday calendar. There are, if you choose to go there, spaces on the Hallmark calendar should we wish to claim those for our departed parents and grandparents. There are spaces we can claim for the saints (broadly defined) of our labour and civil rights movements. We have plenty of Eurocentric spaces for reverence and remembrance.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:52 PM on October 30, 2016 [11 favorites]
The St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City is older than the United States.
As is Mardi Gras.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:11 PM on October 30, 2016
As is Mardi Gras.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:11 PM on October 30, 2016
The St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City is older than the United States.
I'm not sure what point you were trying to make. I suggest looking up the history of those early parades.
There wasn't one in Ireland till the thirties and it was copying the US ones for tourists as described above. Not a local thing
posted by fshgrl at 6:08 PM on October 30, 2016 [5 favorites]
I'm not sure what point you were trying to make. I suggest looking up the history of those early parades.
There wasn't one in Ireland till the thirties and it was copying the US ones for tourists as described above. Not a local thing
posted by fshgrl at 6:08 PM on October 30, 2016 [5 favorites]
> But Halloween has never been about honoring ancestors
Well, in its pre-Christian roots, no. But I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say never, since in the context of Western Christianity, Halloween definitely exists in conjunction with All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, which fall on November 1st and 2nd respectively and are traditionally for the veneration of the dead.
Any argument that runs along the lines of "Halloween was once for the veneration of the dead but that has been lost" may not be technically accurate for the reasons you laid out, but you could easily substitute "All Souls' Day" for "Halloween" in that sentence and it would become true (at least for regions influenced by Latin and Anglican Christianity.)
posted by a mirror and an encyclopedia at 6:32 PM on October 30, 2016 [3 favorites]
Well, in its pre-Christian roots, no. But I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say never, since in the context of Western Christianity, Halloween definitely exists in conjunction with All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, which fall on November 1st and 2nd respectively and are traditionally for the veneration of the dead.
Any argument that runs along the lines of "Halloween was once for the veneration of the dead but that has been lost" may not be technically accurate for the reasons you laid out, but you could easily substitute "All Souls' Day" for "Halloween" in that sentence and it would become true (at least for regions influenced by Latin and Anglican Christianity.)
posted by a mirror and an encyclopedia at 6:32 PM on October 30, 2016 [3 favorites]
In fact, that probably accounts for the timing of Día de Muertos as well, right? The celebration itself is of course indigenous and pre-Christian but the Church has a way of aligning existing traditions with its liturgical calendar.
posted by a mirror and an encyclopedia at 6:41 PM on October 30, 2016
posted by a mirror and an encyclopedia at 6:41 PM on October 30, 2016
As someone of immediate Mexican descent, I don't like it--I also don't like white women dressing as Frida Kahlo either--but then I will call people out on it as I do on Cinco de Mayo. Again, half of me is white so sorry that those holidays suck so hard you have to poach from my Hispanic family.
posted by Kitteh at 7:02 PM on October 30, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 7:02 PM on October 30, 2016 [7 favorites]
There wasn't one in Ireland till the thirties and it was copying the US ones for tourists as described above. Not a local thing
When I read your original comment, I assumed you were referring to St. Paddy's, suggesting that Americans had transformed an authentic Irish holiday into a deracinated college piss up.
I think Americans have transformed an authentic Irish-American ethnic pride celebration into a deracinated college piss up.
posted by Diablevert at 7:42 PM on October 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
When I read your original comment, I assumed you were referring to St. Paddy's, suggesting that Americans had transformed an authentic Irish holiday into a deracinated college piss up.
I think Americans have transformed an authentic Irish-American ethnic pride celebration into a deracinated college piss up.
posted by Diablevert at 7:42 PM on October 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
Just wanted to note Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947) here.
posted by doctornemo at 7:47 PM on October 30, 2016
posted by doctornemo at 7:47 PM on October 30, 2016
I think Americans have transformed an authentic Irish-American ethnic pride celebration into a deracinated college piss up.
Although, I suspect that's true of all white American holidays, with the exception of Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas which are our "get drunk and yell at our relatives" days.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:22 PM on October 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
Although, I suspect that's true of all white American holidays, with the exception of Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas which are our "get drunk and yell at our relatives" days.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:22 PM on October 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
earlier today I attended my UU Church's All Soul's Day service
My super-hippie UCC church has altars in the north and south transept and the back corners of the nave, and people are encouraged to write notes to their dead or bring pictures, and there's time for people to share their stories. I have always loved that the Latinx members of our congregation lead this service and encourage people.
Appropriation is something I think about a lot, living in the SF Bay Area. We have plenty of friends who celebrate lunar new year. I'd love to do so too, but my only claim to it is, "I live someplace where a lot of people are descended from cultures where lunar new year is a big deal, and the parades and celebrations are hella awesome."
Is this a necessary stage in any pluralistic community? Trying to figure out the line between participation and appropriation?
posted by sobell at 8:38 PM on October 30, 2016 [3 favorites]
My super-hippie UCC church has altars in the north and south transept and the back corners of the nave, and people are encouraged to write notes to their dead or bring pictures, and there's time for people to share their stories. I have always loved that the Latinx members of our congregation lead this service and encourage people.
Appropriation is something I think about a lot, living in the SF Bay Area. We have plenty of friends who celebrate lunar new year. I'd love to do so too, but my only claim to it is, "I live someplace where a lot of people are descended from cultures where lunar new year is a big deal, and the parades and celebrations are hella awesome."
Is this a necessary stage in any pluralistic community? Trying to figure out the line between participation and appropriation?
posted by sobell at 8:38 PM on October 30, 2016 [3 favorites]
At least for this gringo SW native, Day of the Dead stuff was just kinda always in the background; I think the first time I saw a Posada print was on the cover of "Milagro Beanfield War," and I remember thinking something along the lines of "oh it's like a sugar skull with a mustache!"
In the last few years I've seen a ton of the imagery popping up in trade/logos in the Mid-Atlantic, for instance in the 3-Stars logo. Not sure how to feel about that.
We used one of the Posada Calavera series on an album cover, and I felt awkward enough to ask a Mexican buddy if he thought it was culturally insensitive, since no one in the band is actually Mexican. (FWIW he didn't have a problem with it).
posted by aspersioncast at 8:46 PM on October 30, 2016
In the last few years I've seen a ton of the imagery popping up in trade/logos in the Mid-Atlantic, for instance in the 3-Stars logo. Not sure how to feel about that.
We used one of the Posada Calavera series on an album cover, and I felt awkward enough to ask a Mexican buddy if he thought it was culturally insensitive, since no one in the band is actually Mexican. (FWIW he didn't have a problem with it).
posted by aspersioncast at 8:46 PM on October 30, 2016
Without saying it's the perfect way to navigate anything, my personal guide is usually: "Have I been invited?"
If I've been invited to share in a religious or cultural events by someone from that community at the family level -- that's pretty clearly OK. At the group or civic level, same idea, assuming a little attention is paid to who is doing the inviting and on what terms.
That's for participating at all -- how you participate respectfully is a different question.
In the Bay Area it's pretty common for non-Hindus to celebrate Diwali if you work in a tech company. In San Francisco, it's pretty common for Lunar New Year to be a big school celebration and for all kids and families to be invited.
Day of the Dead seems to be on a bit of a cusp here locally -- I definitely get a sense that some of the local celebrations are encouraging participation from folks outside the community, and I also get the sense that there's some pushback.
posted by feckless at 8:50 PM on October 30, 2016 [10 favorites]
If I've been invited to share in a religious or cultural events by someone from that community at the family level -- that's pretty clearly OK. At the group or civic level, same idea, assuming a little attention is paid to who is doing the inviting and on what terms.
That's for participating at all -- how you participate respectfully is a different question.
In the Bay Area it's pretty common for non-Hindus to celebrate Diwali if you work in a tech company. In San Francisco, it's pretty common for Lunar New Year to be a big school celebration and for all kids and families to be invited.
Day of the Dead seems to be on a bit of a cusp here locally -- I definitely get a sense that some of the local celebrations are encouraging participation from folks outside the community, and I also get the sense that there's some pushback.
posted by feckless at 8:50 PM on October 30, 2016 [10 favorites]
Regarding the comparisons to Halloween, I'm Jewish, so I honestly have no idea: how much does Halloween (as part of Allhallowtide) figure into modern Christian practice, esp. in the US? I have never heard any of my Christian friends reference it as having intersected in that way - which doesn't mean that it's not a thing that happens, just that I'm personally ignorant of how it comes up.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:51 PM on October 30, 2016
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:51 PM on October 30, 2016
My husband and I went to the recent Hollywood Forever event, and I'd say that the entire audience was in tears during the Jenni Rivera Hologram tribute. Her parents and kids were there, and while the Hologram might have been sponsored by a beer company, it was incredibly moving.
posted by Ideefixe at 9:05 PM on October 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Ideefixe at 9:05 PM on October 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
In San Francisco, it's pretty common for Lunar New Year to be a big school celebration and for all kids and families to be invited.
I'm wondering if this is how my kid will grow up just assuming that Lunar New Year and Dia de los Muertos are things she celebrates. Her school and church experiences are such where these events are observed and celebrated, so they're part of her formative culture, I guess?
I still think it's superweird to go into a Target and see a boatload of disposable decorations and partyware with sugar skull motifs. But my Mexican girlfriends tell me they're excited to be able to find this stuff -- one was like, "I'm Mexican, I love Target's housewares, why wouldn't I like this?"
posted by sobell at 9:06 PM on October 30, 2016 [12 favorites]
I'm wondering if this is how my kid will grow up just assuming that Lunar New Year and Dia de los Muertos are things she celebrates. Her school and church experiences are such where these events are observed and celebrated, so they're part of her formative culture, I guess?
I still think it's superweird to go into a Target and see a boatload of disposable decorations and partyware with sugar skull motifs. But my Mexican girlfriends tell me they're excited to be able to find this stuff -- one was like, "I'm Mexican, I love Target's housewares, why wouldn't I like this?"
posted by sobell at 9:06 PM on October 30, 2016 [12 favorites]
" I honestly have no idea: how much does Halloween (as part of Allhallowtide) figure into modern Christian practice, esp. in the US? "
Pretty much not at all for mainstream Christian denominations. (Evangelicals it may come up in their strong opposition to it.) Mainstream Christian denominations in the US have largely (but not entirely) pursued a strategy of separating religious celebrations from the commercial capture of those celebrations, and then taking a both/and strategy. Like, I functionally celebrate Christmas as two separate holidays -- a Catholic holy day observance (which my family does on Christmas Eve), and a commercialized civic-American celebration (which my family does on Christmas Day). Similarly, we have religious Easter observances and secular Easter bunny stuff, and they don't really have anything to do with each other except the date. So, Halloween -- fun kids' holiday of modern American culture that loosely grows out of All Saints (among other roots), but totally disconnected from my All Saints Holy Day of Obligation, uh, obligations. In general I did not find this confusing as a child, and my kids do not find it confusing now. (I'd say Halloween/All Saints are far more separated (in the US) than Christmas or Easter just because All Saints is a fairly minor religious observance in the grand scheme of things and limited to more high-church denominations.)
(I live around the corner from my parish church, they hold a trunk-or-treat and the parish rectory gives out full size candy bars on Halloween night, so there's no religious opposition to the secular holiday for my parish.)
This was also a fairly common strategy among religious minority groups in England and Scotland, especially when Anglicanism was the official religion but minority practice was tolerated -- which may be why many American immigrants from there adopted it as a strategy: accept the majority rule for the holiday and don't make a huge thing about it, but retain the religious practice separate and relatively uncontaminated. (It was also intriguingly common -- I wouldn't say "frequent" but it occurs especially in more rural areas -- among colonial Jewish settlers in the British colonies that became the first 13 states; in several, Jewish settlers often joined the Anglican Church either mandatorily (to receive various citizenship-type rights) or because of the social advantage of belonging to what might be the only local social outlet (and definitely the most elite one), and maintained their Jewish practice quite openly but separately and as a "family" practice as opposed to a civic one.)
Where I live, we have a pretty large Mexican immigrant community (but the majority are from Jalisco, where I guess it's less of a thing?), but it's mostly up to the parishes and public school PTAs whether they observe it or not, and generally it's led by the parents. One of my kids' schools does it and the other doesn't. My parish doesn't do Dia de Muertos but DOES do Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec 12). Cinco de Mayo seems a little more popular as an expression of ethnic heritage, around here.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:13 PM on October 30, 2016 [12 favorites]
Pretty much not at all for mainstream Christian denominations. (Evangelicals it may come up in their strong opposition to it.) Mainstream Christian denominations in the US have largely (but not entirely) pursued a strategy of separating religious celebrations from the commercial capture of those celebrations, and then taking a both/and strategy. Like, I functionally celebrate Christmas as two separate holidays -- a Catholic holy day observance (which my family does on Christmas Eve), and a commercialized civic-American celebration (which my family does on Christmas Day). Similarly, we have religious Easter observances and secular Easter bunny stuff, and they don't really have anything to do with each other except the date. So, Halloween -- fun kids' holiday of modern American culture that loosely grows out of All Saints (among other roots), but totally disconnected from my All Saints Holy Day of Obligation, uh, obligations. In general I did not find this confusing as a child, and my kids do not find it confusing now. (I'd say Halloween/All Saints are far more separated (in the US) than Christmas or Easter just because All Saints is a fairly minor religious observance in the grand scheme of things and limited to more high-church denominations.)
(I live around the corner from my parish church, they hold a trunk-or-treat and the parish rectory gives out full size candy bars on Halloween night, so there's no religious opposition to the secular holiday for my parish.)
This was also a fairly common strategy among religious minority groups in England and Scotland, especially when Anglicanism was the official religion but minority practice was tolerated -- which may be why many American immigrants from there adopted it as a strategy: accept the majority rule for the holiday and don't make a huge thing about it, but retain the religious practice separate and relatively uncontaminated. (It was also intriguingly common -- I wouldn't say "frequent" but it occurs especially in more rural areas -- among colonial Jewish settlers in the British colonies that became the first 13 states; in several, Jewish settlers often joined the Anglican Church either mandatorily (to receive various citizenship-type rights) or because of the social advantage of belonging to what might be the only local social outlet (and definitely the most elite one), and maintained their Jewish practice quite openly but separately and as a "family" practice as opposed to a civic one.)
Where I live, we have a pretty large Mexican immigrant community (but the majority are from Jalisco, where I guess it's less of a thing?), but it's mostly up to the parishes and public school PTAs whether they observe it or not, and generally it's led by the parents. One of my kids' schools does it and the other doesn't. My parish doesn't do Dia de Muertos but DOES do Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec 12). Cinco de Mayo seems a little more popular as an expression of ethnic heritage, around here.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:13 PM on October 30, 2016 [12 favorites]
sobell: In my congregation, it's explicitly a reference to the traditional Catholic and Anglican liturgical calendar.
Sticherbeast: It depends. A lot of American Christianity is driven by a reformationist wave that considered the Church of England to be too Catholic in its liturgy and liturgical calendar. Many conservative protestant groups consider anything not explicitly referenced in the Bible to be "ungodly." I think it's still mentioned on the Episcopal and Methodist calendars, but might not be explicitly celebrated.
Wikipedia suggests that it's more commonly observed by European Protestant churches than American.
I was a bit snarky in the use of the pagan term of ancestor reverence up above. My point was that the "The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed" (the Catholic term) is something within European cultural history and WASPy types (like myself) don't really need to appropriate how that exists in Mexican history and practice. Non-Christians of a pagan/polytheist persuasion also have access to a fair bit of scholarship and research about religious ancestor worship from Germanic, Greek, and Roman sources. Humanists of a religious persuasion could just pick a memorial day and create a meaningful religious structure.
Now that I rephrase it that way, I'm reminded of some of the complaints regarding "Plastic Medicine Men," and some comments from ethnic Buddhists on similar appropriation. Why not look to nature-centered spirituality or liberation spirituality as expressed in our own cultural traditions? And beyond that, is it really ethical for white people to make asstons more money than religious POC as translators and marketers?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:54 PM on October 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
Sticherbeast: It depends. A lot of American Christianity is driven by a reformationist wave that considered the Church of England to be too Catholic in its liturgy and liturgical calendar. Many conservative protestant groups consider anything not explicitly referenced in the Bible to be "ungodly." I think it's still mentioned on the Episcopal and Methodist calendars, but might not be explicitly celebrated.
Wikipedia suggests that it's more commonly observed by European Protestant churches than American.
I was a bit snarky in the use of the pagan term of ancestor reverence up above. My point was that the "The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed" (the Catholic term) is something within European cultural history and WASPy types (like myself) don't really need to appropriate how that exists in Mexican history and practice. Non-Christians of a pagan/polytheist persuasion also have access to a fair bit of scholarship and research about religious ancestor worship from Germanic, Greek, and Roman sources. Humanists of a religious persuasion could just pick a memorial day and create a meaningful religious structure.
Now that I rephrase it that way, I'm reminded of some of the complaints regarding "Plastic Medicine Men," and some comments from ethnic Buddhists on similar appropriation. Why not look to nature-centered spirituality or liberation spirituality as expressed in our own cultural traditions? And beyond that, is it really ethical for white people to make asstons more money than religious POC as translators and marketers?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:54 PM on October 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
I still think it's superweird to go into a Target and see a boatload of disposable decorations and partyware with sugar skull motifs.
What's weird about that? If not Target, then where should these items be sold? What's notable about the decorations being disposable?
Like - my wife is Chinese. I'm typing this message right next to a small pile of empty lai see. You know, traditional red envelopes that are stuffed with money and given to people on special occasions, including the new year. These envelopes are disposable. (It would be weird if they weren't!) They were bought from a corner store nearby. If Chinese people were much more common around these parts, then I bet Target would stock them, too. They're part of a cultural tradition, of course, and yet they are also just as materially mundane as a Hallmark Christmas card. If anything, that's part of what makes all traditions special: when my wife and I hand out red envelopes, we are doing so as part of day-to-day life in the real world, paper goods and all. We're not actors in a play, we're people performing culture. That's how you know it's still alive: few believe more passionately in Christmas than a little kid making a construction paper Christmas tree.
Anyway, I can't and won't speak for what Day of the Dead means to the people who celebrate it. My point is generally that I'm surprised when other people find it notable that, say, a beer company sponsored a Day of the Dead event. Well...why not? All kinds of cultural events from around the world have business sponsors.
...
(I'd say Halloween/All Saints are far more separated (in the US) than Christmas or Easter just because All Saints is a fairly minor religious observance in the grand scheme of things and limited to more high-church denominations.)
Thank you for the excellent response...this had been my impression, but I didn't want to pretend to have personal knowledge.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:58 PM on October 30, 2016 [9 favorites]
What's weird about that? If not Target, then where should these items be sold? What's notable about the decorations being disposable?
Like - my wife is Chinese. I'm typing this message right next to a small pile of empty lai see. You know, traditional red envelopes that are stuffed with money and given to people on special occasions, including the new year. These envelopes are disposable. (It would be weird if they weren't!) They were bought from a corner store nearby. If Chinese people were much more common around these parts, then I bet Target would stock them, too. They're part of a cultural tradition, of course, and yet they are also just as materially mundane as a Hallmark Christmas card. If anything, that's part of what makes all traditions special: when my wife and I hand out red envelopes, we are doing so as part of day-to-day life in the real world, paper goods and all. We're not actors in a play, we're people performing culture. That's how you know it's still alive: few believe more passionately in Christmas than a little kid making a construction paper Christmas tree.
Anyway, I can't and won't speak for what Day of the Dead means to the people who celebrate it. My point is generally that I'm surprised when other people find it notable that, say, a beer company sponsored a Day of the Dead event. Well...why not? All kinds of cultural events from around the world have business sponsors.
...
(I'd say Halloween/All Saints are far more separated (in the US) than Christmas or Easter just because All Saints is a fairly minor religious observance in the grand scheme of things and limited to more high-church denominations.)
Thank you for the excellent response...this had been my impression, but I didn't want to pretend to have personal knowledge.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:58 PM on October 30, 2016 [9 favorites]
I'm pretty sure for most Americans, it's just that the face makeup is a cool costume. I don't think any of them look at it as a day of remembrance
This hasn't been my experience. Our white-non-Hispanic family has usually had a little ofrenda, though it has always included late beloved pets, which may not be kosher.
My mom grew up in SoCal in the 1940s when the Mexican border was so porous as to be almost non-existant. Our ofrenda and its photos and marigolds are pretty much our only acknowledgement of the holiday though, unless you count all our skeleton ...vignettes? Those little wooden or plaster skeleton figurines & scenes you can buy all over the place in San Diego and Tiajuana, many of which are humorous.
As a side note, Mom has told me that even back then Mexican immigrant families as well as Chicano families were having to be strict about not letting their own kids merge Halloween with Day of the Dead.
posted by small_ruminant at 10:08 PM on October 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
This hasn't been my experience. Our white-non-Hispanic family has usually had a little ofrenda, though it has always included late beloved pets, which may not be kosher.
My mom grew up in SoCal in the 1940s when the Mexican border was so porous as to be almost non-existant. Our ofrenda and its photos and marigolds are pretty much our only acknowledgement of the holiday though, unless you count all our skeleton ...vignettes? Those little wooden or plaster skeleton figurines & scenes you can buy all over the place in San Diego and Tiajuana, many of which are humorous.
As a side note, Mom has told me that even back then Mexican immigrant families as well as Chicano families were having to be strict about not letting their own kids merge Halloween with Day of the Dead.
posted by small_ruminant at 10:08 PM on October 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
"My point was that the "The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed" (the Catholic term) is something within European cultural history and WASPy types (like myself) don't really need to appropriate how that exists in Mexican history and practice. "
On another hand (not like THE other hand opposing your point but rather as an extension of your point), as the US Catholic Church becomes more Spanish-speaking and less English-speaking, there's been a big push from the Spanish-speaking parts of the US Church to recognize, incorporate, and celebrate Latin American traditions (particularly Mexican traditions). Like, the celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is really important to a lot of Mexican-American Catholics, and having it recognized and celebrated in Mexican ways, not in Anglo-Irish* ways, has been really important to a lot of Mexican-American Catholic communities as a sign of acceptance and religious brotherhood/community, and to have the Anglo-Irish parishioners also enthusiastically embrace those traditions as part of their faith heritage as well. It's increasingly common to see OLG candles or icons in Anglo-Irish Catholic homes and you almost expect an OLG statue at every parish of any size. But in other situations someone might have OLG icons in an appropriative way. So, similarly with Dia de Muertos in Catholic communities in the US, it's complicated and sensitive and there are multiple forces at work. In some Mexican-American-Catholic communities, they may want their Anglo-Irish-American-Catholic neighbors to join the celebrations for Muertos and that may be an extremely important symbol of equality of community; in others, they may want them not to and find it invasive and appropriative; in others, they may find Muertos too much of a syncretic/folk tradition to belong in the churchy world. (In conclusion, humans are a rich tapestry of varying opinions on complex cultural issues.)
*Anglo-Irish here means not literally English and Irish but the English-speaking Catholic Church with a largely Irish-descended hierarchy and priesthood that predominated in the US in the 20th century, which has a particular cultural flavor that has dominated American Catholic discourse and liturgy but US Catholics are increasingly sensitive to not assuming it as "default" but recognizing its cultural specificity, and that's the term often used.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:17 PM on October 30, 2016 [16 favorites]
On another hand (not like THE other hand opposing your point but rather as an extension of your point), as the US Catholic Church becomes more Spanish-speaking and less English-speaking, there's been a big push from the Spanish-speaking parts of the US Church to recognize, incorporate, and celebrate Latin American traditions (particularly Mexican traditions). Like, the celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is really important to a lot of Mexican-American Catholics, and having it recognized and celebrated in Mexican ways, not in Anglo-Irish* ways, has been really important to a lot of Mexican-American Catholic communities as a sign of acceptance and religious brotherhood/community, and to have the Anglo-Irish parishioners also enthusiastically embrace those traditions as part of their faith heritage as well. It's increasingly common to see OLG candles or icons in Anglo-Irish Catholic homes and you almost expect an OLG statue at every parish of any size. But in other situations someone might have OLG icons in an appropriative way. So, similarly with Dia de Muertos in Catholic communities in the US, it's complicated and sensitive and there are multiple forces at work. In some Mexican-American-Catholic communities, they may want their Anglo-Irish-American-Catholic neighbors to join the celebrations for Muertos and that may be an extremely important symbol of equality of community; in others, they may want them not to and find it invasive and appropriative; in others, they may find Muertos too much of a syncretic/folk tradition to belong in the churchy world. (In conclusion, humans are a rich tapestry of varying opinions on complex cultural issues.)
*Anglo-Irish here means not literally English and Irish but the English-speaking Catholic Church with a largely Irish-descended hierarchy and priesthood that predominated in the US in the 20th century, which has a particular cultural flavor that has dominated American Catholic discourse and liturgy but US Catholics are increasingly sensitive to not assuming it as "default" but recognizing its cultural specificity, and that's the term often used.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:17 PM on October 30, 2016 [16 favorites]
As someone of immediate Mexican descent, I don't like it--I also don't like white women dressing as Frida Kahlo either--but then I will call people out on it as I do on Cinco de Mayo. Again, half of me is white so sorry that those holidays suck so hard you have to poach from my Hispanic family.
This is where it gets pretty weird, and yet this attitude seems to get some traction, often it seems, in proportion to how far removed from the culture one is. To the point that non-Mexican white folks seem to feel it most.
I'm also someone of immediate Mexican descent. And yet, Day of the Dead is really kind of a vestigial piece of culture for many of the people like me where I'm actually from (the US), and as likely to be a part of local culture. I have no ownership of the celebration, and despite my name, and color of my skin, I was as much an interloper when I was partaking of the celebration in Michoacan. Calling someone out would be pretty precious on my part since it's not something I directly observe. Hell, Cinco de Mayo is far more a US celebration than Mexican. I have no ownership of these things.
And it starts to piss me off because my daughter, half coming from a line of people descended from England who settled in Pennsylvania over a century ago, someone who would fit in perfectly well with the branch still in Pennsylvania, came home today with her face painted like a skull, part of a dance folklorico troupe. What business does this guera have, dressed in traditional Mexican garb, face painted like a skull, dancing traditional folk steps? Does it matter that she is better versed on culture than me? Speaks better Spanish than me? Is it necessary that you fully scrutinize her intentions before giving your approval? Or does she need to produce her 23andme profile?
And it's not like the local Mexican culture was ever insular or exclusionary. Catholic churches in the area have been integrating Mexican culture since before California was a state. Mexican communities aren't like the Amish. The cross pollination has taken place over the course of decades, and continues. Certainly, there are some who want to claim it as exclusively theirs, despite being freely shared. Hipster adoption of Day of the Dead is matched only by hipster demands of ethnic authenticity.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:39 PM on October 30, 2016 [30 favorites]
My family is from a small village in Michoacan. Most of my elder relatives are there including my 104-year old grandmother.
My mother has grown up with this tradition all her life. She's told me all about the procession to the graveyard, the mariachis playing, kids running around and playing practical jokes on each other. It has always been, as she tells it, a day not merely to remember the dead, but to actually be with them, to attempt to blur the boundary between life and death, if only for a moment.
I've asked her about this before, about what she thinks of these celebrations in the US. I know my mom and her answer was predictable. She says it is wonderful that others not only appreciate but understand our traditions. But it is important they take time to understand what this is really about and understand the history and the cultural context before diving in with the facepaint.
Of course, understanding what Day of the Dead is about is not to easy. Heck, even Mexicans struggle with it. It is not, as others have pointed out, a pan-Mexican tradition. It is fair to say that that metropolitan elite in Mexico City does not have a clear grasp of it. The Mexican writer Octavio Paz essentially wrote a book, the Labyrinth of Solitude, which attempts to unravel some of the major strands of the Mexican psyche.
Mexicans have a unique concept of Death. It is a fusion I think of Mexican indigenous ideas with Western European ideas. But, fundamentally, Death is an extension of Life not its opposite. And it is the great equalizer of men. What do things really matter? We are all going to the same grave.
There is a popular Mexican song called Puño de Tierra. I've linked to the video which may be interesting to see from a cultural perspective. Despite all the riches of this life, in the end we all die and all we will take with us is a fistful of dirt. This is the main theme.
At most Mexican parties I go to with my family, there is a point in the night where most of the party-goers have that drunken glint in their eye and then someone puts on either this song or that of many other songs in this vein. Everyone knows the lyrics and starts singing along. It is actually joyful - a reminder for many of the preciousness of life and of these moments.
This same combination of joy and sadness is there in Day of the Dead. It is a solemn occasion but also a joyous occasion. It is a quiet Spanish Christian mass and also a frenzied pagan ritual. It is both Pre-Columbian and medieval European. In short, it is Mexican.
posted by vacapinta at 3:26 AM on October 31, 2016 [38 favorites]
My mother has grown up with this tradition all her life. She's told me all about the procession to the graveyard, the mariachis playing, kids running around and playing practical jokes on each other. It has always been, as she tells it, a day not merely to remember the dead, but to actually be with them, to attempt to blur the boundary between life and death, if only for a moment.
I've asked her about this before, about what she thinks of these celebrations in the US. I know my mom and her answer was predictable. She says it is wonderful that others not only appreciate but understand our traditions. But it is important they take time to understand what this is really about and understand the history and the cultural context before diving in with the facepaint.
Of course, understanding what Day of the Dead is about is not to easy. Heck, even Mexicans struggle with it. It is not, as others have pointed out, a pan-Mexican tradition. It is fair to say that that metropolitan elite in Mexico City does not have a clear grasp of it. The Mexican writer Octavio Paz essentially wrote a book, the Labyrinth of Solitude, which attempts to unravel some of the major strands of the Mexican psyche.
Mexicans have a unique concept of Death. It is a fusion I think of Mexican indigenous ideas with Western European ideas. But, fundamentally, Death is an extension of Life not its opposite. And it is the great equalizer of men. What do things really matter? We are all going to the same grave.
There is a popular Mexican song called Puño de Tierra. I've linked to the video which may be interesting to see from a cultural perspective. Despite all the riches of this life, in the end we all die and all we will take with us is a fistful of dirt. This is the main theme.
At most Mexican parties I go to with my family, there is a point in the night where most of the party-goers have that drunken glint in their eye and then someone puts on either this song or that of many other songs in this vein. Everyone knows the lyrics and starts singing along. It is actually joyful - a reminder for many of the preciousness of life and of these moments.
This same combination of joy and sadness is there in Day of the Dead. It is a solemn occasion but also a joyous occasion. It is a quiet Spanish Christian mass and also a frenzied pagan ritual. It is both Pre-Columbian and medieval European. In short, it is Mexican.
posted by vacapinta at 3:26 AM on October 31, 2016 [38 favorites]
On the "What do Christian churches do around Halloween?": My church had a Halloween carnival on Wednesday for the kids. I think we're doing All Saints Day next Sunday. But the big thing yesterday, and for probably most mainline Protestant denominations, is Reformation Day, which is also October 31.
You are approximately 100% guaranteed to hear "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" on the Sunday before Halloween at every mainline church I've been to. With a bonus selection from the Genevan Psalter if you're Presbyterian.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 4:55 AM on October 31, 2016
You are approximately 100% guaranteed to hear "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" on the Sunday before Halloween at every mainline church I've been to. With a bonus selection from the Genevan Psalter if you're Presbyterian.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 4:55 AM on October 31, 2016
Día de Muertos is much more of a day to go to the graveyard and hang out with the fam and the ancestors...
It has always been, as she tells it, a day not merely to remember the dead, but to actually be with them, to attempt to blur the boundary between life and death, if only for a moment.While taking an analytical class about documentary filmmaking back in the 1990s I was lucky enough to see a guest lecture/slide presentation by an American who had been to Mexico photographing various Day of the Dead observances (both the preparations beforehand and the candlelit family gatherings at cemeteries), and what he presented was absolutely what migrantology and vacapinta described; a wonderful, intimate, loving tradition that is so much more than sugar skull/festive skeleton decorations. I'm really glad that those slides were my first exposure to the observance, because Day of the Dead imagery has crept into American pop consciousness these last couple of years without any of that context.
This is where it gets pretty weird, and yet this attitude [anger over cultural appropriation] seems to get some traction, often it seems, in proportion to how far removed from the culture one is. To the point that non-Mexican white folks seem to feel it most.I'd say that MetaFilter is probably the exception to the rule with regards to white American sensitivity about cultural appropriation; my own non-Mexican white reaction to Day of the Dead style imagery popping up everywhere the last couple of years is that it's tacky and unfortunate, but in my neck of the woods (rural whitebread New England) I doubt many people would have more than the vaguest notion that those colorful skulls and skeletons have anything to do with a Mexican observance called Day of the Dead, nor that Day of the Dead is not simply "Mexican Halloween."
posted by usonian at 6:08 AM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
as the US Catholic Church becomes more Spanish-speaking and less English-speaking, there's been a big push from the Spanish-speaking parts of the US Church to recognize, incorporate, and celebrate Latin American traditions (particularly Mexican traditions).
OTOH, there's also been a different kind of cultural insensitivity that assumes "Latin American traditions" is a monolithic thing. I have Cuban, Peruvian and Colombian (etc.) Catholic relatives and friends... and surprise! Mexican traditions aren't their thing! There's been a lot of a kind of casual racism in which they're expected to be interested in Our Lady of Guadalupe, quinceañeras, and the Day of the Dead, none of which they celebrate.
posted by Jahaza at 8:13 AM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
OTOH, there's also been a different kind of cultural insensitivity that assumes "Latin American traditions" is a monolithic thing. I have Cuban, Peruvian and Colombian (etc.) Catholic relatives and friends... and surprise! Mexican traditions aren't their thing! There's been a lot of a kind of casual racism in which they're expected to be interested in Our Lady of Guadalupe, quinceañeras, and the Day of the Dead, none of which they celebrate.
posted by Jahaza at 8:13 AM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'd written about my relationship with Dia de Muertos in the past...I minored in Spanish when I was an undergrad, and I developed a great appreciation for rock en espanol and South American writers like Roberto Bolano. Paying attention to culture helped me put into perspective the things I learned in my classes. Our assignment one year was to attend a DLM party as a guest and write about what we saw, and the celebrations I attended in JP and at Harvard resonated with me on a cultural and a personal level. (My father died under horrible circumstances when I was young, and DLM gave me a small outlet for my grief.)
One of the parties I attend as frequently as I can make them are the Peabody Center/Harvard University DLM observations. They do a great job of putting the holiday into perspective for people who didn't grow up in cultures that observed DLM, and seeing my friends' bands, adding notes to community shrines, and enjoying pan de muerto were ways to observe the holiday while respecting community boundaries. The one thing that bothers me about the Harvard party is that they encourage attendees to dress as calaveras. This is a party in New England, and the party attendance skews White and affluent. I tend to put calavera makeup into the same category as war bonnets, in the sense that it serves a specific purpose for people from Central and South American backgrounds, but that I as a White person should not ever don that makeup. I really wish that if other White people wanted to take part in the holiday, they would maybe do their research and know what is acceptable and what is not. :sigh:
posted by pxe2000 at 8:53 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
One of the parties I attend as frequently as I can make them are the Peabody Center/Harvard University DLM observations. They do a great job of putting the holiday into perspective for people who didn't grow up in cultures that observed DLM, and seeing my friends' bands, adding notes to community shrines, and enjoying pan de muerto were ways to observe the holiday while respecting community boundaries. The one thing that bothers me about the Harvard party is that they encourage attendees to dress as calaveras. This is a party in New England, and the party attendance skews White and affluent. I tend to put calavera makeup into the same category as war bonnets, in the sense that it serves a specific purpose for people from Central and South American backgrounds, but that I as a White person should not ever don that makeup. I really wish that if other White people wanted to take part in the holiday, they would maybe do their research and know what is acceptable and what is not. :sigh:
posted by pxe2000 at 8:53 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
My family and I were in sabbatical last year, in Slovenia and Mexico. One of the things I'm really glad my kids could see was Halloween/all saints day celebrated outside the US. In Slovenia, as near as I could tell, the tradition is that you buy a red memorial candle for everyone you know who has died and put it in their grave. So graves will have 3,4,...,8,12 candles, lit, on all the graves. The main cemetery in Ljubljana on November 1 was astonishing.
And of course, all the little convenience stores had racks of memorial candles for weeks in October, and the big grocery stores had entire aisles of memorial candles. Like Christmas lights here in the states.
I'm sorry we weren't in Querétaro for Día de muertos, though.
posted by leahwrenn at 9:23 AM on October 31, 2016 [4 favorites]
And of course, all the little convenience stores had racks of memorial candles for weeks in October, and the big grocery stores had entire aisles of memorial candles. Like Christmas lights here in the states.
I'm sorry we weren't in Querétaro for Día de muertos, though.
posted by leahwrenn at 9:23 AM on October 31, 2016 [4 favorites]
I wonder how much social justice discussions online would be less fraught if they were less focused on individual acceptability (which often comes down to "it depends, due to a variety of local factors") and more focused on punching up at big commercial enterprise. That MGM, Disney, and Fox have done, or will do big-budget cinema Day of the Dead productions and how that influences commercial marketing seems like a bigger force than individual young adults in facepaint. After all, the homogenization of Christmas in both a secular and religious context in America was largely driven by commercial forces.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:31 AM on October 31, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:31 AM on October 31, 2016 [5 favorites]
I wonder how much social justice discussions online would be less fraught if they were...more focused on punching up at big commercial enterprise...After all, the homogenization of Christmas in both a secular and religious context in America was largely driven by commercial forces.
Big commercial enterprises are merely the contemporary megaphone which amplify the cultural salience of a given tradition. Whatever powerful institions exist in a society will act as that megaphone. Why do we have Christmas trees? Because Prince Albert was German. Why is Christmas a mid-winter festival at all? Because the Catholic Church needed to compete with Saturanalia. The reasons Christmas got homogenized is because mass media exists. It's Coke and it's MGM and it's Macy's but it's also Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens and Clement Clark Moore and Tchaikovsky. I don't think you can wall off culture from commercialism, and say one is precious and special and meaningful and the other is tawdry and shallow and trite. Things which are successfully commercialized are so because they tap into cultural values and help people express them, and only remain traditions so long as they do so, in all their special, tawdry, trite, expressive, moving, meaningfulness. God help us, there are millions of children in America right now forming deep sentimental associations with the goddamn Elf on a Shelf, and will probably be repeating a ritual invented in a 2004 children's book for their own kids in 20 year's time.
posted by Diablevert at 10:09 AM on October 31, 2016 [7 favorites]
Big commercial enterprises are merely the contemporary megaphone which amplify the cultural salience of a given tradition. Whatever powerful institions exist in a society will act as that megaphone. Why do we have Christmas trees? Because Prince Albert was German. Why is Christmas a mid-winter festival at all? Because the Catholic Church needed to compete with Saturanalia. The reasons Christmas got homogenized is because mass media exists. It's Coke and it's MGM and it's Macy's but it's also Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens and Clement Clark Moore and Tchaikovsky. I don't think you can wall off culture from commercialism, and say one is precious and special and meaningful and the other is tawdry and shallow and trite. Things which are successfully commercialized are so because they tap into cultural values and help people express them, and only remain traditions so long as they do so, in all their special, tawdry, trite, expressive, moving, meaningfulness. God help us, there are millions of children in America right now forming deep sentimental associations with the goddamn Elf on a Shelf, and will probably be repeating a ritual invented in a 2004 children's book for their own kids in 20 year's time.
posted by Diablevert at 10:09 AM on October 31, 2016 [7 favorites]
>
2) The "los" baffles me: Day of the Dead or Día de Muertos, but *not* "Día de los Muertos." Wikipedia says the "los" results from an English back-formation, without citation, but you see it/hear it even among heritage speakers from the US who would have heard the name in Spanish. Is English back-formation so powerful that it corrects aural language learning on a wide basis? If so, wow.
A Mexican friend living in the Bay Area was also baffled by this; she was kind of appalled at it as misuse of the language. In San Francisco it seems to have had the "los" as long as anyone living in our neighborhood can remember (not that I've canvassed everyone). If you find any deeper etymology I'm very interested in learning about it.
posted by gingerbeer at 10:30 AM on October 31, 2016
2) The "los" baffles me: Day of the Dead or Día de Muertos, but *not* "Día de los Muertos." Wikipedia says the "los" results from an English back-formation, without citation, but you see it/hear it even among heritage speakers from the US who would have heard the name in Spanish. Is English back-formation so powerful that it corrects aural language learning on a wide basis? If so, wow.
A Mexican friend living in the Bay Area was also baffled by this; she was kind of appalled at it as misuse of the language. In San Francisco it seems to have had the "los" as long as anyone living in our neighborhood can remember (not that I've canvassed everyone). If you find any deeper etymology I'm very interested in learning about it.
posted by gingerbeer at 10:30 AM on October 31, 2016
> Pretty much not at all for mainstream Christian denominations. (Evangelicals it may come up in their strong opposition to it.) Mainstream Christian denominations in the US have largely (but not entirely) pursued a strategy of separating religious celebrations from the commercial capture of those celebrations, and then taking a both/and strategy. Like, I functionally celebrate Christmas as two separate holidays -- a Catholic holy day observance (which my family does on Christmas Eve), and a commercialized civic-American celebration (which my family does on Christmas Day). Similarly, we have religious Easter observances and secular Easter bunny stuff, and they don't really have anything to do with each other except the date. So, Halloween -- fun kids' holiday of modern American culture that loosely grows out of All Saints (among other roots), but totally disconnected from my All Saints Holy Day of Obligation, uh, obligations. In general I did not find this confusing as a child, and my kids do not find it confusing now. (I'd say Halloween/All Saints are far more separated (in the US) than Christmas or Easter just because All Saints is a fairly minor religious observance in the grand scheme of things and limited to more high-church denominations.)
Interestingly, I agree with all of this except for the first sentence. I mean, in my (Protestant) experience the secular holiday of Halloween was definitely separate from the religious holiday of All Souls' Day, but Halloween was totally acknowledged as a cultural holiday, with somewhat of a dotted line to the religious holiday. Our youth group (I grew up United Methodist, but this goes for many other Protestant churches in my area) put on a "haunted house" for the little kids around Halloween (very mild spooky rooms sort of thing), passed out March of Dimes cards to collect pennies while trick-or-treating, etc.
posted by desuetude at 11:29 AM on October 31, 2016
Interestingly, I agree with all of this except for the first sentence. I mean, in my (Protestant) experience the secular holiday of Halloween was definitely separate from the religious holiday of All Souls' Day, but Halloween was totally acknowledged as a cultural holiday, with somewhat of a dotted line to the religious holiday. Our youth group (I grew up United Methodist, but this goes for many other Protestant churches in my area) put on a "haunted house" for the little kids around Halloween (very mild spooky rooms sort of thing), passed out March of Dimes cards to collect pennies while trick-or-treating, etc.
posted by desuetude at 11:29 AM on October 31, 2016
I'm not Mexican, and I'm not Catholic or any other kind of religion, but I deeply appreciate the space that a holiday like this can provide for those of us who want and need a community in this way.
I think that's it for me as well - we spend so little of our time talking about death and our dead or recognizing that death is a part of life that it strikes me that having a day or few days where we do this could be really worthwhile.
I was raised a non-Anglo Catholic, while not Mexican, I was exposed to celebrating La Toussaint (All Saints' Day) & Le jour des morts (what we call All Souls' Day). Every year at this time, my great grandmother, and to a lesser extent, my grandmother would get flowers for the graves of their relatives and light special candles. Especially for people who had recently died. Sometimes masses would be said in honour of the deceased. This tradition was more or less abandoned by my Boomer parents but I've always thought it a valuable tradition. There is something really powerful about the idea of families coming together, not at a time of grief but of celebration, at the graves of their loved ones, reconnecting and remembering their dead ancestors. The brief moments we spend at a family funeral, when we even have time to make it to one, is so fleeting that there is hardly enough time to process grief and loss or enough of a space to express love & renew connections. I hope that whatever appropriation happens with Día de Muertos that some of those ideas that make it a powerful cultural tradition filter down to the "hipster" level.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:34 AM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
I think that's it for me as well - we spend so little of our time talking about death and our dead or recognizing that death is a part of life that it strikes me that having a day or few days where we do this could be really worthwhile.
I was raised a non-Anglo Catholic, while not Mexican, I was exposed to celebrating La Toussaint (All Saints' Day) & Le jour des morts (what we call All Souls' Day). Every year at this time, my great grandmother, and to a lesser extent, my grandmother would get flowers for the graves of their relatives and light special candles. Especially for people who had recently died. Sometimes masses would be said in honour of the deceased. This tradition was more or less abandoned by my Boomer parents but I've always thought it a valuable tradition. There is something really powerful about the idea of families coming together, not at a time of grief but of celebration, at the graves of their loved ones, reconnecting and remembering their dead ancestors. The brief moments we spend at a family funeral, when we even have time to make it to one, is so fleeting that there is hardly enough time to process grief and loss or enough of a space to express love & renew connections. I hope that whatever appropriation happens with Día de Muertos that some of those ideas that make it a powerful cultural tradition filter down to the "hipster" level.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:34 AM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
Big commercial enterprises are merely the contemporary megaphone which amplify the cultural salience of a given tradition. Whatever powerful institions exist in a society will act as that megaphone.
Sure, my point was that there was no single American tradition for Christmas until the 20th century across all religious groups and immigrant ethnicities, well maybe the late Victorian era at the earliest. It wasn't even the biggest holiday on the American cultural calendar. That megaphone pushed a diverse set of practices to the margins of American culture.
So what happens when MGM, Fox, Disney, Target, etc., pick Day of the Dead as the semiotic shorthand for Mexican culture, even to the extent of inventing practices that did not previously exist?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:39 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
Sure, my point was that there was no single American tradition for Christmas until the 20th century across all religious groups and immigrant ethnicities, well maybe the late Victorian era at the earliest. It wasn't even the biggest holiday on the American cultural calendar. That megaphone pushed a diverse set of practices to the margins of American culture.
So what happens when MGM, Fox, Disney, Target, etc., pick Day of the Dead as the semiotic shorthand for Mexican culture, even to the extent of inventing practices that did not previously exist?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:39 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
So what happens when MGM, Fox, Disney, Target, etc., pick Day of the Dead as the semiotic shorthand for Mexican culture, even to the extent of inventing practices that did not previously exist?
If Mexican Americans think that Target's Day of the Dead party favors are cute, they will buy them, and Target will continue to sell them. If Mexican Americans think that Target's Day of the Dead party favors are tacky crap, they won't buy them, and Target won't sell them. You can invent all the traditions you like; they won't stick unless people buy into them, and they won't buy into them unless they resonate with them. The people are Regina George, the corporations Gretchen Weiner. I think the Elf on a Shelf is tacky as shit, but the mofos sell like hotcakes. Clearly some people find them a charming embodiment of certain folk traditions vis-a-vis Christmas. It was the same with Santa Claus; all it took was one really popular poem and twenty years or so later what had been a Dutch tradition becomes part of the standard American Christmas. Because people liked it.
I mean, I dunno, maybe there were some 90-year-old Knickerbockers looking at Coke promo posters in the 1930s and tsking away because Coke's version of Santa wasn't their version. There's a loss there, no doubt about it, and a sorrow. But also an inevitablity, I think. Pretty impossible to stop people from liking things. To a large degree, I think when a you start seeing a cultural marker that's unique to a specific subculture reflected in the larger culture, it's a sign of the growing influence of that subculture, its power, that people become aware of it, admire it, want to participate in it.
posted by Diablevert at 12:40 PM on October 31, 2016 [5 favorites]
If Mexican Americans think that Target's Day of the Dead party favors are cute, they will buy them, and Target will continue to sell them. If Mexican Americans think that Target's Day of the Dead party favors are tacky crap, they won't buy them, and Target won't sell them. You can invent all the traditions you like; they won't stick unless people buy into them, and they won't buy into them unless they resonate with them. The people are Regina George, the corporations Gretchen Weiner. I think the Elf on a Shelf is tacky as shit, but the mofos sell like hotcakes. Clearly some people find them a charming embodiment of certain folk traditions vis-a-vis Christmas. It was the same with Santa Claus; all it took was one really popular poem and twenty years or so later what had been a Dutch tradition becomes part of the standard American Christmas. Because people liked it.
I mean, I dunno, maybe there were some 90-year-old Knickerbockers looking at Coke promo posters in the 1930s and tsking away because Coke's version of Santa wasn't their version. There's a loss there, no doubt about it, and a sorrow. But also an inevitablity, I think. Pretty impossible to stop people from liking things. To a large degree, I think when a you start seeing a cultural marker that's unique to a specific subculture reflected in the larger culture, it's a sign of the growing influence of that subculture, its power, that people become aware of it, admire it, want to participate in it.
posted by Diablevert at 12:40 PM on October 31, 2016 [5 favorites]
The one thing that made The Book of Life (the Fox DLM movie) acceptable to me personally was that the above-the-line crew and the voice cast were mostly Mexican or came from countries that observed the holiday. If a major studio was going to make a film about DLM, or with DLM as its backdrop, having a Mexican producer and writer/director means a lot. I'm sure the Mexican community could get into deeper criticism, but because it came from within the community, I'm willing to give it credit.
posted by pxe2000 at 12:43 PM on October 31, 2016
posted by pxe2000 at 12:43 PM on October 31, 2016
Diablevert, I feel like you're missing the point here. Just because similar things happened in the past to Christmas and Halloween does not make it ok now. Lots of reprehensible shit seemed fine and dandy to our ancestors.
Moreover, your comment completely sidesteps the role of appropriation in this discussion by pretending that only Mexican-Americans will be buying Target's decorations. The whole concern about commercialisation here is an extension of the concern about appropriation. It's not about Mexican-Americans shopping at Target, it's about *white* Americans going to see a Disney movie and then going out to buy Target decorations because oh em gee what a cute and funky little tradition that I will now make my own with no understanding of the context!
posted by tobascodagama at 12:47 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
Moreover, your comment completely sidesteps the role of appropriation in this discussion by pretending that only Mexican-Americans will be buying Target's decorations. The whole concern about commercialisation here is an extension of the concern about appropriation. It's not about Mexican-Americans shopping at Target, it's about *white* Americans going to see a Disney movie and then going out to buy Target decorations because oh em gee what a cute and funky little tradition that I will now make my own with no understanding of the context!
posted by tobascodagama at 12:47 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
Where I was going with this comment is that I think social-justice conversations often get bogged down into debates about the individual callout. While an individual person wearing an inappropriate costume probably needs an education, they're rarely that influential in the vast scheme of things.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:11 PM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:11 PM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
Global culture and mass media cause local cultures to homogenize over time. Commercialization can accelerate that process, but it's going to happen regardless. The homogenization of local traditions is sad, but the idea that it's something that needs to be fought against strikes me as condescending,not unlike Westerners deciding that non-contacted tribes in the Amazon should continue to be isolated, lest they're forcible assimilated and lose their unique culture. It ignores the free agency of the people to decide whether or not they'd like to assimilate.
posted by Green Winnebago at 1:29 PM on October 31, 2016
posted by Green Winnebago at 1:29 PM on October 31, 2016
Global culture and mass media cause local cultures to homogenize over time. Commercialization can accelerate that process, but it's going to happen regardless. The homogenization of local traditions is sad, but the idea that it's something that needs to be fought against strikes me as condescending,not unlike Westerners deciding that non-contacted tribes in the Amazon should continue to be isolated, lest they're forcible assimilated and lose their unique culture. It ignores the free agency of the people to decide whether or not they'd like to assimilate.
I don't know that's necessarily the case. I think mass media can provide opportunities for cultural diversity. It's historic failure to do so is entirely due to the ethnocentrism of a small (relatively) group of people whose decisions can be examined and discussed, not some inevitable mythological invisible hand of the market. There's a double-standard in this discussion where individual consumers are fully accountable for what they buy, but the actions of corporate agents get waved away as some rudderless stochastic regression.
A central question in all this is who, in fact, actually benefits? To what degree does cultural diffusion alleviate oppressive disparities? In the ugly history of cultural imperialism, the appropriated artists and designers have often been economically disenfranchised as well. The designs were mass produced half-way around the world and marketed as authentic. It's worthwhile to question to what degree that diffusion is a dialogue vs. a cash grab.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:31 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
I don't know that's necessarily the case. I think mass media can provide opportunities for cultural diversity. It's historic failure to do so is entirely due to the ethnocentrism of a small (relatively) group of people whose decisions can be examined and discussed, not some inevitable mythological invisible hand of the market. There's a double-standard in this discussion where individual consumers are fully accountable for what they buy, but the actions of corporate agents get waved away as some rudderless stochastic regression.
A central question in all this is who, in fact, actually benefits? To what degree does cultural diffusion alleviate oppressive disparities? In the ugly history of cultural imperialism, the appropriated artists and designers have often been economically disenfranchised as well. The designs were mass produced half-way around the world and marketed as authentic. It's worthwhile to question to what degree that diffusion is a dialogue vs. a cash grab.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:31 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's been really interesting to me to see the calavera face paint become suddenly popular here in the US. I don't remember seeing it before this year, really, and it isn't a Día de Muertos tradition as far as I know. The skull decorations go on the sugar skulls.
That said, I'm white, non-Hispanic, and I'm a Spanish teacher. I've always done a Día de Muertos activity or lesson in my classes where we mimic the traditions. I've made ofrendas, done papel picado (never again omg. You don't know what frustration is until you have to clean up a million little bits of tissue paper during your 10 minute class break), and brought in pan de muerto. I have a ceramic skull that I painted to look like a calavera. The university I'm teaching at now is doing a Día de Muertos activity on Wednesday where mostly white Anglos and non-Hispanic black people will be invited to do similar - the activity will be run by a Colombian because she is the club advisor.
Having said that, it has literally never occurred to me to do any of that outside of a classroom context. I've never even been motivated to dress up like Frida Kahlo. I dunno. To me, that would feel like I had some sort of personal connection with those images and cultural history, apart from, "I study it and I like it". So.
posted by chainsofreedom at 2:34 PM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
That said, I'm white, non-Hispanic, and I'm a Spanish teacher. I've always done a Día de Muertos activity or lesson in my classes where we mimic the traditions. I've made ofrendas, done papel picado (never again omg. You don't know what frustration is until you have to clean up a million little bits of tissue paper during your 10 minute class break), and brought in pan de muerto. I have a ceramic skull that I painted to look like a calavera. The university I'm teaching at now is doing a Día de Muertos activity on Wednesday where mostly white Anglos and non-Hispanic black people will be invited to do similar - the activity will be run by a Colombian because she is the club advisor.
Having said that, it has literally never occurred to me to do any of that outside of a classroom context. I've never even been motivated to dress up like Frida Kahlo. I dunno. To me, that would feel like I had some sort of personal connection with those images and cultural history, apart from, "I study it and I like it". So.
posted by chainsofreedom at 2:34 PM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
As a footnote, two cities with decades-old celebrations loosely based on Day of the Dead iconography and traditions have been confronting the issue of cultural appropriation as those celebrations have grown and changed...sponsor's of Tucson's event do their best to say that ASP is not a "Day of the Dead" parade.
I was at some of the very early 90s versions of Tucson's All Souls Procession and it was a genuinely spooky/scary/freaky art parade, and nothing like what now passes as (happy face paint!) Americanized Day of the Dead.
The Procession has changed a lot over the years, however, as more and more of the community got involved. My current view it that it's a lovely grassroots community event that I avoid, like most other community events, because I can't stand large crowds.
posted by Squeak Attack at 3:19 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
I was at some of the very early 90s versions of Tucson's All Souls Procession and it was a genuinely spooky/scary/freaky art parade, and nothing like what now passes as (happy face paint!) Americanized Day of the Dead.
The Procession has changed a lot over the years, however, as more and more of the community got involved. My current view it that it's a lovely grassroots community event that I avoid, like most other community events, because I can't stand large crowds.
posted by Squeak Attack at 3:19 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
I still think it's superweird to go into a Target and see a boatload of disposable decorations and partyware with sugar skull motifs.
What's weird about that? If not Target, then where should these items be sold? What's notable about the decorations being disposable?
Returning back to this, it was weird to me to see Day of the Dead merchandise cheek-by-jowl with plastic black cats and candy-corn lights. I find it novel and unusual to witness the mainstream retailing of a holiday in action, but that's my own thing. I'd be equally likely to stop in my tracks if Target started carrying ceramic dragon decorations and red oval paper lanterns right next to the Valentine's Day tat. There is nothing particularly wrong with having the internal reaction that "Wow, this is new. I'm not sure if it's good or not? Let me see what's driving my reaction to this." Then again, I don't think "weird" is bad -- for me, it means novel or unusual, and I apologize if any pejorative is read into my word choice; I did not mean for that to be the case.
I was commenting on the ever-widening and diversifying commodification of holidays, and how that does or doesn't throw one's own ideas about appropriation into the forefront of one's thoughts.
posted by sobell at 4:09 PM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
What's weird about that? If not Target, then where should these items be sold? What's notable about the decorations being disposable?
Returning back to this, it was weird to me to see Day of the Dead merchandise cheek-by-jowl with plastic black cats and candy-corn lights. I find it novel and unusual to witness the mainstream retailing of a holiday in action, but that's my own thing. I'd be equally likely to stop in my tracks if Target started carrying ceramic dragon decorations and red oval paper lanterns right next to the Valentine's Day tat. There is nothing particularly wrong with having the internal reaction that "Wow, this is new. I'm not sure if it's good or not? Let me see what's driving my reaction to this." Then again, I don't think "weird" is bad -- for me, it means novel or unusual, and I apologize if any pejorative is read into my word choice; I did not mean for that to be the case.
I was commenting on the ever-widening and diversifying commodification of holidays, and how that does or doesn't throw one's own ideas about appropriation into the forefront of one's thoughts.
posted by sobell at 4:09 PM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
"Second, Día de Muertos is much more of a day to go to the graveyard and hang out with the fam and the ancestors, than it is a day for a parade and smoke bombs and whatever. So the Mexican discussion is very much about commercialization and the appropriation of tradition by capitalism. There is certainly a racial/indigeneity aspect to appropriation, since again, the beneficiaries are whiter and less indigenous. "
We caught a Lyft to the mall for part of my costume on Saturday, and our driver was from Jalisco.
When my wife and I, and earlier, my family, celebrated the Day of the Dead, it's very much in the tradition of Memento Mori and the lingering Catholicism of my grandparents. We build an altar in the home that includes personal items and photos, flowers and sweets, and spend some time thinking and remembering the dead. For our driver, his memories of Day of the Dead were about everyone in the community coming out to the graveyards and coming together as families. It was a lot more social, a lot more communal, and exterior. From that point of view, concerns about commercialization make a lot more sense.
Most years, I go down and photograph the Dia de los Muertos at Olvera Street, which usually has both Aztec and Mexican ceremonies (bad timing this year, what with the first on a Tuesday). It's a collision of earnest religiosity, kitsch camp, Catholic and various syncretic traditions, activists and hipsters, and is as much a Danse Macabre as any "authentic" Day of the Dead celebration.
"but then I will call people out on it as I do on Cinco de Mayo. Again, half of me is white so sorry that those holidays suck so hard you have to poach from my Hispanic family."
I like Cinco de Mayo a lot as a way to recognize Mexican-American support of the Union in the Civil War, but I don't think that's very clear from the Tecate billboards in my neighborhood. But that's another holiday where the history of it isn't what most people think, and one where complaints about appropriation are complicated — like, part of the point of the holiday was to have white people celebrate Mexican-American contributions to the American polity as part of increasing Mexican-American political representation and power. It became uncool and waned until Chicanos and Chicanas revived it as a festive celebration of Chicanx identity, then got swallowed by international beer companies looking for ways to reach the Hispanic market.
But if you ask a rando on the street, they'll tell you it's Mexican independence day.
posted by klangklangston at 6:52 PM on October 31, 2016 [4 favorites]
We caught a Lyft to the mall for part of my costume on Saturday, and our driver was from Jalisco.
When my wife and I, and earlier, my family, celebrated the Day of the Dead, it's very much in the tradition of Memento Mori and the lingering Catholicism of my grandparents. We build an altar in the home that includes personal items and photos, flowers and sweets, and spend some time thinking and remembering the dead. For our driver, his memories of Day of the Dead were about everyone in the community coming out to the graveyards and coming together as families. It was a lot more social, a lot more communal, and exterior. From that point of view, concerns about commercialization make a lot more sense.
Most years, I go down and photograph the Dia de los Muertos at Olvera Street, which usually has both Aztec and Mexican ceremonies (bad timing this year, what with the first on a Tuesday). It's a collision of earnest religiosity, kitsch camp, Catholic and various syncretic traditions, activists and hipsters, and is as much a Danse Macabre as any "authentic" Day of the Dead celebration.
"but then I will call people out on it as I do on Cinco de Mayo. Again, half of me is white so sorry that those holidays suck so hard you have to poach from my Hispanic family."
I like Cinco de Mayo a lot as a way to recognize Mexican-American support of the Union in the Civil War, but I don't think that's very clear from the Tecate billboards in my neighborhood. But that's another holiday where the history of it isn't what most people think, and one where complaints about appropriation are complicated — like, part of the point of the holiday was to have white people celebrate Mexican-American contributions to the American polity as part of increasing Mexican-American political representation and power. It became uncool and waned until Chicanos and Chicanas revived it as a festive celebration of Chicanx identity, then got swallowed by international beer companies looking for ways to reach the Hispanic market.
But if you ask a rando on the street, they'll tell you it's Mexican independence day.
posted by klangklangston at 6:52 PM on October 31, 2016 [4 favorites]
"There's a neighborhood center near us that does a big celebration" -- gurple, I'm sure there are many community centers all over the country that celebrate this, and yet when I read your comment I thought "I bet gurple is in Seattle," and I'm pretty sure I know which center, too. :) The one I lived two blocks away from for 20 years until last month.
The event there is open and actively welcoming to the entire community, of all ethnic backgrounds. And generally people seem to treat the day respectfully. The center has a big dinner, free to everyone (and I thought the food was always good), and a a ceremony to open the ofrenda exhibit. There is also some music and some children's activities, and there are sugar skulls to be eaten. :) The ofrendas are a very sobering display, and they aren't only created by those of a Mexican background.
I'm sad that I'm not in Seattle any more and won't be able to attend this year. I miss my old community. But I'm in a new community now that is similarly diverse. (I must say that the neighborhood I just moved from is gentrifying at lightning speed. Yikes.)
posted by litlnemo at 11:19 PM on October 31, 2016
The event there is open and actively welcoming to the entire community, of all ethnic backgrounds. And generally people seem to treat the day respectfully. The center has a big dinner, free to everyone (and I thought the food was always good), and a a ceremony to open the ofrenda exhibit. There is also some music and some children's activities, and there are sugar skulls to be eaten. :) The ofrendas are a very sobering display, and they aren't only created by those of a Mexican background.
I'm sad that I'm not in Seattle any more and won't be able to attend this year. I miss my old community. But I'm in a new community now that is similarly diverse. (I must say that the neighborhood I just moved from is gentrifying at lightning speed. Yikes.)
posted by litlnemo at 11:19 PM on October 31, 2016
I think it is a little odd to being told I'm doing Halloween wrong and that my ancestors had some sort of different way of doing that has been corrupted...But please don't try to make my culture fit with an imaginary purist idea of how you think I should have acted.
Can you be more specific about which comments here you're reacting to? Because I'm very confused!
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:33 AM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
Can you be more specific about which comments here you're reacting to? Because I'm very confused!
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:33 AM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
Squeak Attack, I infer that that person is referring to this quoted paragraph.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:11 AM on November 1, 2016
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:11 AM on November 1, 2016
Yeah, but I don't get from that quote to that rant. Like, at all.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:33 AM on November 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by tobascodagama at 11:33 AM on November 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
Oh, thanks, Sticherbeast.
I think CBrachyrhynchos didn't cite which of the many links in this thread they had pulled that from, so I hadn't read it too closely because I prefer to see these pull quotes in context. Anyway, I'm a little less confused now. : ) Carry on everyone!
posted by Squeak Attack at 12:54 PM on November 1, 2016
I think CBrachyrhynchos didn't cite which of the many links in this thread they had pulled that from, so I hadn't read it too closely because I prefer to see these pull quotes in context. Anyway, I'm a little less confused now. : ) Carry on everyone!
posted by Squeak Attack at 12:54 PM on November 1, 2016
The first line of this People Magazine article contains the best typographical misprint of the month! It's otherwise really good and informative, though.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 7:39 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 7:39 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
The first line of this People Magazine article contains the best typographical misprint of the month!
Metrospirituals.
posted by lazuli at 7:59 AM on November 3, 2016
Metrospirituals.
posted by lazuli at 7:59 AM on November 3, 2016
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