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- Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!spool.mu.edu!agate!rsoft!mindlink!a710
- From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
- Subject: Re: Cultural Appropriation and the New Age
- Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
- Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1992 18:13:22 GMT
- Message-ID: <18912@mindlink.bc.ca>
- Sender: news@deep.rsoft.bc.ca (Usenet)
- Lines: 19
-
- On the issue of merchandising other cultures' artifacts, I recall a day in
- 1983 when my family and I visited the newly reopened Chen Family Temple in
- Guangzhou (Canton); the temple had been badly vandalized during the Cultural
- Revolution, but was now completely refurbished as a kind of museum. It was
- indeed gorgeous, and many of the exhibits were splendid--particularly the
- carved inkstones. But at least one case displayed exquisitely reproduced
- images of E.T., presented just as prominently as the Chinese works of art.
-
- From this experience I drew a couple of lessons--that bad taste unites all
- humanity in iron bonds of kitsch, and that some culture isn't worth
- appropriating, period.
-
-
- --
- Crawford Kilian Communications Department Capilano College
- North Vancouver BC Canada V7J 3H5
- Usenet: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca
- Internet: ckilian@first.etc.bc.ca
-
-