The Empress: what next?
La Presse’s city reporter Émilie Côté, sparked by the recent news of the Imperial’s closure, looks into what’s up with the Empress in NDG. The answer is: not much. At most, the façade may eventually be saved.
Côté writes: “Et pourquoi la thématique égyptienne (qui pourrait être considérée aujourd’hui comme de l’appropriation culturelle)… ?”
Is it possible to inflict cultural appropriation on a civilization that’s long dead and gone?
qatzelok 17:34 on 2023-12-30 Permalink
Revivals are not a form of necrophilia.
They are symptoms of the bankruptcy of a society’s language of symbols and of its sense of direction.
Kate 18:15 on 2023-12-30 Permalink
Made any new year’s resolutions, qatzelok?
Chris 20:58 on 2023-12-30 Permalink
>Is it possible to inflict cultural appropriation on a civilization that’s long dead and gone?
Of course not, because cultural appropriation is an idiotic concept, period.
But if I wanted to be devil’s advocate: the civilization is *not* long dead and gone, it’s evolved into current Egyptian culture. Is the pre-European-contact Mohawk culture dead and gone, or has it just evolved into what we have today? Dare you culturally appropriate from ancient Mohawk culture?
EmilyG 22:35 on 2023-12-30 Permalink
Cultural appropriation is not an idiotic concept, it’s a form of harm towards marginalized cultures. It’s a real thing that groups of people experience. A lot of white people just don’t get it.
I don’t know if this particular example is cultural appropriation or not. I admit that I don’t know enough about this particular example to say. I don’t mind admitting when I don’t know enough about something rather than shooting my mouth off at something I don’t know much about. Like what a lot of white people do about the topic of cultural appropriation in general.
jeather 23:11 on 2023-12-30 Permalink
Was it, when it was popular as an architectural and design style, appropriation? Probably, from what I understand of the history of the fad. Is a building built then still appropriative 100 years later? Not, I think, based on most definitions of it, though I am willing to hear otherwise.
Kate 00:05 on 2023-12-31 Permalink
> it’s evolved into current Egyptian culture
Chris, I would depose that the arrival of the Roman empire and Christianity, and later and most obviously Islam, caused a profound disconnect between classical ancient Egypt and the present-day culture of that nation.
Is it cultural appropriation to borrow ancient Greek, Roman or Egyptian forms? Should we not be putting columns or domes on buildings? Is it the same thing as somebody wearing an eagle feather headdress at a Halloween party?
qatzelok 00:46 on 2023-12-31 Permalink
@Kate: “Made any new year’s resolutions, qatzelok?”
Consume less sugar and hyper-processed foods of all kinds. You?
Anton 12:22 on 2023-12-31 Permalink
Wait, do I note a note of irony?
Chris 15:58 on 2023-12-31 Permalink
EmilyG, odd (and telling) that you seem to think only white people find cultural appropriation idiotic. This story from a few years ago comes to mind. Worth a read.
Is it ‘cultural appropriation’ when Chinese adapt Halloween? Or was the appropriation when the Americans perverted a Christian feast? Or was it when the Christians twisted a pagan harvest festival? Are we to get our knickers in a knot on every iteration?
Cultures don’t exist in a vacuum, they interact, spread, change. We are all human, and we borrow from each other.
Tim S. 18:14 on 2023-12-31 Permalink
“Or was it when the Christians twisted a pagan harvest festival?” Interesting example, considering that in this case appropriation was a deliberate and extremely successful effort to eliminate the pagan religions and replace them with Christianity.
Personally, I think it’s a kind of case by case thing, and in many cases there is an element of fruitful exchange, but you shouldn’t ignore how the power dynamics between cultures means appropriation sometimes causes real harm. There’s a reason why Ukrainians and Russians are arguing over the origins of borscht.
(Actually, you could argue that the adoption of the term “Russia” by the princes of Moscow was an act of appropriation that has led to millions of deaths over the centuries, but that’s an argument for a different corner of the internet).
EmilyG 19:52 on 2023-12-31 Permalink
Not all mixing or interchange of cultures is “appropriation.” Appropriation is when something is used incorrectly.
It’s a complex topic, and a much-debated one.
Ian 18:50 on 2024-01-01 Permalink
I like to make Indian food and do seek out “authentic” recipes but as a non-Indian I wouldn’t open an Indian restaurant
…. but that Indian restaurants sell Tilkka Masala which was invented in Scotland doesn’t bother me.
As far as decorative motifs, art deco was heavily influenced but the popularity at the time of Egyptology- but specifically ancient Egypt. You could make a better case for appropriation with Picasso and African art or Van Gogh and Japanese prints, but even then is an artistic influence appropriation in the same way as some 19 year old white girl from New Jersey at Coachella wearing a costume store war bonnet? Not really.
We don’t need to get into the “desert of the real” to see that cultural appropriation is not the same as drawing influences from other cultures.
Taylor 19:32 on 2024-01-01 Permalink
I think it’s important to consider the context: this was largely celebratory, reflecting (then) new interest in Ancient Egypt as a consequence of the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
But there’s also the contextual aspect of ‘atmospheric’ theatre design from the era, in which theatres were richly decorated along a consistent theme (inside and out) as a kind of escapism – creating an immersive environment that largely served as kind of entertainment in its own right, something to overwhlem the senses before the entertainment began
They may not have got all the details right (Ancient Egypt didn’t have theatres as we understand them), and AFAIK no egyptologists were consulted (i.e. the ‘hieroglyphs’ don’t mean anything), but with intent being 9/10s of the law, it’s hard to see this as demeaning a culture.
To @EmilyG’s point, if simply using cultural elements inappropriately is appropriation, we could argue things like the Moorish Science Temple movement, an early Black pride/ Black power movement from the US in the early 20th century, might be considered ‘cltural appropriation’ (they moxed a varity of symbols, beliefs, costumes etc), even though these organizations were in fact seeking to return African culture to African Americans, freeing them from oppressive white culture (such as Christianity, which was used as a tool of enslavement).
If someone were to build an “Ancient Egyptian themed” condo or casino today, we might expect them to consult an Egyptologist for accuracy and authenticity, but we wouldn’t necessarily expect them to call up the embassy and ask for permission.