Why I don't blame Beyonce for Cultural Appropriation!
I usually don't fall into the whole FOMO craze but my gut and all these sometimes overbearing voices in my head long so eagerly to join in the debate about the new Coldplay music video featuring Beyonce portraying a bollywood actress. It's almost a week since it's debut and the song titled "Hymn for the Weekend" managed to spark intense controversy accusing Beyonce of cultural appropriation. Now I'm an undeniable beyhive and I believe even for those of whom are not so enthusiastic about the Queen B will painfully agree that the video is beautiful, infact I would just like to give props to the director (on the low of course). But this is the part where I'm morally obliged to separate my position as a beyhive and cross over to the critic side of myself and address the seriousness of appropriating culture.
Coming to analysis of the video here's what I think. At first understanding, the video was shot in Mumbai. Pay attention to the cheaper options that could have been taken to alternately shoot the video in some location in New York or came up with some technical manipulation in the studio of some fake backgrounds or whatever, but no, this video was shot in the actual region of dedi people giving precise representation of the culture and beauty of it. We can at least give props for that respect. Also, given people's different views some argue that there may be a confusion between cultural appropriation and culture appreciation. Cultural appropriation according to the urban dictionary is the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of a different culture usually by the predominant to the minority. The two can be quite frustrating in classifying the difference.
Albeit the argument that the music video denigrates the South Asian culture so deeply that it attempts to squeeze the many rituals and traditions in a mere 4 minutes is disrespectful to the culture itself is something I don't agree with because that implies no time will ever be great enough to present any culture, neither do Bollywood movies themselves in this case of reasoning.
Now that does not mean I don't think there's anything wrong in this video. Infact, India should have never been a thing, there are countless ideas that could have been applied as themes of the video that have nothing to do with flying out of their country or appropriating any culture for that matter. BUT one of my main problems is the fact that it's Beyonce who has to take the fall for this. It's her whose face is globally painted as the despicable *appropriater, not taking into account or giving full responsibility to all the parties that were involved in bringing a concept of a Bollywood movie star into life. No, not even Coldplay themselves. Infact I read this article where the band was only mentioned when referring to the song title. In this case, she's actually a victim. Number one, it's not her song- she's featuring, secondly, she did not come up with the concept and yes she did agree to it but that can be due to the level of conviction it was presented in. Eg. "Hey B, you'll be portraying this beautiful bollywood actress draped in Indian jewellery, basically selling yourself as a princess in this castle of India representing the art and culture" then BAM, Bey just got soled, wouldn't you? I mean there's nothing suspicious or hard-hitting that would need approval from her conscience from that.
Putting myself in the shoes of people of India, hell yes I'd be furious that some British boys and American songstress just came to my country, borrowed my culture and were able to get away with selling that content. At the end of the day that is someone else's culture, those clothes, that bindi that must've been fun to wear for a minute is something that most South Asian people cannot just take off at the end of the day or when the director yells "Cut"! On another hand, I do believe that borrowing from other cultures isn't just inevitable, it is potentially positive. We inherit so much from a whole vast of cultures that we're sometimes not aware. So much of that is evident on styles of fashion, food, music and dance. It's a common unconscious human exchange. Of course there are some aspects of culture too sensitive and religious that should be respected by the outsiders, and there are instances in the video that fall in that category as well as most moments that show appreciation hence I don't believe director Ben Mor would go about visually denigrating his own culture for the world's criticism. It was all in good intentions.
But I'm only a teenager with an opinion, feel free to school me on some convincing thought.
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