Cultural Appropriation in the Arts

"Good artists, great artists steal" is a popular and seemingly effective mantra for artistic creativity. In an increasingly global world, artistic stealing often involves one culture incorporating characteristics of another into their works. Some call it culutural appreciation, while some call it cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation comes with a moral dilemma. On one hand, it allows for the spread of cultures and allows for different ways of thinking to intersect, which can merge and widen perspectives. On the other hand, the result of cultural appropriation is often seen as essentialism, or reducing an entire culture into a few characteristics perceived by the appropriating culture. Cultural appropriation also encompasses the sociological stratification problem of a majority group (typically white) profiting at the expense of minority or socially harmed groups. 

This dilemma can be seen with musical groups like The Beatles, whose use of Indian timbres and melodies spread awareness of a previously lesser known musical style to the rest of the world, while simultaneously reducing that awareness to a fairly limited perception while profiting off of the portrayal of that perception.

Ultimately, the line between what is and isn't morally permissible is neither well-defined, nor is it in a fixed location. Looking at cultural appropriation through the field of performance studies, while examining it through the lens of the linguistic field of translation, may provide a better understanding the moral terrain of cultural appropriation and essentialism. By looking at this issue as a matter of cultural translation, we can look at not just the resulting performance or the intent behind it it, but also the process that defines the performance.

This method sees the incorporation of one culture into another as a sort of cross-cultural performance and evaluates the process of that performance based on linguistic translation theories.
As different theories provide different emphases in regards to the target and source languages, these theories shed light on the ways in which a cross-cultural performance engages with a source culture, providing a better means of evaluating whether a cultural tranlastion is ultimately additive or reductive to the source culture.