Episode 498 - Your culture is MINE now!
Sep 28, 2020
This week we're talking about cultural appropriation, cultural adaption and adoption, also stereotypes and all sorts of related stuff. It was inspired by a newspost from Tantz discussing the recent live action Mulan movie by Disney. Cultural appropriation is when you take an aspect that is sacred or important to one culture and own it yourself: decontextualising it, stripping it off it's meaning, making a cartoon version of it, commodifying it, commercialising or cheapening it in some other way.
Topics and Show Notes
But not all borrowing from cultures is “appropriation”. Cultures mix and share things all the time quite freely and a lot of things that were once appropriated have long been mixed into a made a part of the adopting culture so they're as much of that culture now as anything else… Things like Yoga, which was a part of scared religious practices, was long ago appropriated and turned into an exercise fad. It's part of western culture now.
There's a power relationship involved: a community in a more dominant cultural position doesn't generally mind others “appropriating” aspects of their culture because their culture is everywhere. A community in a less dominant role usually does mind a lot because that's usually the only cultural identity they have, so stealing and misrepresenting it becomes an attack on their existence.
It's also extremely important to remember that you shouldn't really speak for another culture about appropriation. We can inform people that their cultural borrowing could possibly be an issue but it's not our place to criticise someone for appropriation and appoint ourselves as guardians and protectors of another group for two reasons: 1. That's paternalistic an dis-empowering to the people you're speaking for, 2. It might not be a case of appropriation at all, only they can speak for themselves whether it is or not.
The musical feature this week that Gunwallace has given us is theme to the Good Words with Sako, the Beautiful Heart of a Steggo Girl - A quiet, thoughtful, toe-tapper. This is a jazzy little techno number, bouncing away with a cool repeating theme. It’s gentle, intelligent, and elegant in its simplicity. Very Gorillaz.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Tantz's newspost on cultural appropriation and Mulan - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/sep/25/cultural-significance/
Featured comic:
The Impossible Family - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/sep/22/featured-comic-the-impossible-family/
Featured Music:
Good Words with Sako, the Beautiful Heart of a Steggo Girl - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Good_Words_With_Sako__The_Beautiful_Heart_of_a_Steggo_Girl/, by KaijuKid, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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Episode 489 - Continuity
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It's just Banes, Tantz and me today, chatting about the important topic of continuity! How do you maintain it, what continuity errors have you made, what continuity errors have you noticed in media? What's the difference between character continuity, story continuity and chronological continuity? - Something you notice when you watch or read a series in chronological order that was were NOT produced or meant to be viewed that way.
Episode 480 - In Style!
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Styles are a very individual thing. Emma Clare did a great newspost on them last week featuring a pic of Sailor Moon that she drew in her own style. The cover image here features my own version. Pit, Tantz, Banes and I had a good long chat about all the different aspects of style and how you develop them.
Episode 479 - Big ideas in fiction
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My original idea for this Quackcast was: “Genre fiction is the best place to explore ideas, straight fiction doesn't do it as well” What I meant was that diverting from straight reality in fiction makes it easier to conceptualise, simplify and explain complicated ideas to a general audience for a whole number of reasons. There was some disagreement between Tantz and I because I expressed myself poorly so she'd thought that I was saying it was much easier to write SciFi and fantasy (Genre fiction), and it was easier to write about big ideas, while straight fiction wasn't good for that- Which is fair enough! My initial statement is so badly worded that's a valid interpretation! Fortunately Banes and Pit were on hand to smooth things out and explain things properly. Pit mediated between us and Banes conceptualised my concept FAR, far better than I did! Unfortunately you don't get much of that disagreement on the Quackcast. You DO get a bit of it on the PATREON only video however ^_^
Episode 451 - Fans who criticise are are good fans
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Episode 437 - Old Warhorse
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Today we cover the interesting trope of the “old warrior”. This was based upon a newspost Banes came up with last week. He was thinking of Captain Picard in the latest Star Trek series and he also brought up Luke Skywalker from the latest Star Wars movie. The “Old Warrior” makes a really cool protagonist, in this Quackcast we try and discover why that is…
Episode 422 - Positive promotion and controversial characters
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The entire gang comes together today for two topics that were taken from recent newsposts: Emma Clare's Positive self promotion, and Tantz Aerine's Handling Controversial Characters. First up we chat about why it's always a great idea to sell yourself positively, NOT be arrogant or douchey, but rather by talking enthusiastically about what you genuinely love about your work and using that REAL and SINCERE enthusiasm to infect others with your love of what you do. Emma was mainly talking about the way you introduce your comics to friends and family but it definitely applies more broadly to self promotion in general: Don't try and get sympathy through self depreciation (oh, it's not very good…), and don't be an arrogant ass (My stuff is AWESOME!), rather you should just be honest about what you love about it (This story was so FUN to write!).
Episode 408 - The imitation game
Jan 6, 2019
Happy new year! This is the first Quackcast recorded in 2019! Pitface is back too, can you believe it? In this Quackcast we chat about Imitation, based on Amelius's newspost from last Sunday. How do you know if someone has copied your work, just been influenced by it or influenced from the same sources as you, or has actually stolen your work wholesale? And what do you DO about it? Is imitation or someone doing the same thing as your “original” idea, always a bad thing?
