Appropriate

by Joel Worford

Masha Kotliarenko

It is interesting to me that the conversation around cultural appropriation is often a moral and not aesthetic one. Because as far as I’ve seen, no one really cares when writing the other is done well. Take Rue from Euphoria as an example. Race is not a defining part of Rue’s story — whatever part it plays isn’t mentioned much on screen. Yet I can’t help but think that that is probably for the better. Imagine if every time Rue spoke on her struggles with addiction, Zendaya turned to her costar, scrunched up her face, and said “especially as a black woman!” Such things are exhausting, but what you come to expect from centered writers. An overemphasis on difference will come as a compensation for uncertainty, which is often more grotesque than ignoring it all-together. The film Malcolm & Marie is a perfect example of that same writer/director, Sam Levinson, making a mess of a job that you’d think he knew how to do. John David Washington’s character rants about being a black film director — stomping around the house, critiquing a critique of his work, and soliloquizing — in a way that makes it seem as though he’s just discovered he’s black. When a non-black writer writes a black character, hiccups may be inevitable. But when the character’s identity is rooted in their relationship with black hardship, and said depiction rings false, the work can collapse with the reduction of its main character. Writing the other, when done poorly, makes bad art.

And the problem could end there, if so much of it weren’t released. As per usual, the real issue is at the top. If writers couldn’t find platforms for false stories about black people, we wouldn’t be talking about them. Simple as that. Yet not simple, because the more false stories about black people our popular media presents, the more those falsities perpetuate in the white, sheltered-from-blackness, money-expending majority, and the harder it is for black people, with true stories, to be “relatable” (which is a synonym for “marketable”), hence, we land at the moral issue, which is that — so long as centered writers climb the ladder by publishing stories about marginalized people, marginalized people have a harder time occupying the few spaces reserved for their narratives, which prevents popular America from being exposed to more nuanced views of marginalized communities, and thus, prevents more nuanced views of marginalized communities from reaching popular America. (Racism is a mouthful.)

The Queen’s Gambit is another example of a story that doesn’t really know what to do with its main character’s othering — as a woman in the chess world — so more often than not, ignores it, all together. The most profound instance of sexism in the television show is the camera itself, with its unnecessary lingering over Beth in her underwear, and its portrayal of her mental health deterioration as, what might best be described as, sexy. But the story’s narrative has little to do with misogyny. Walter Tevis, the book’s author — a male writer born in 1928 — probably only had so much to say about the mistreatment of women in the chess world. And Walter Tevis was wise enough to know he shouldn’t guess. As a result, The Queen’s Gambit serves as good escapist fiction, because the world its character exists in is, in an essential way, false. When Beth beats her male competitors, they do not sulk, whine, sneer and sabotage. They congratulate her, and tell her she’s phenomenal. If that is not our world today, it certainly wasn’t our world then. But such a portrayal is much preferable to one where Beth’s whole character must be rooted in her gender, because the author of the story views women in her role as such.

The underemphasis of difference is preferable to the overemphasis when writing the other, because when a centered writer puts specific, rather than general, aspects of themselves into a character — moving race, sexuality, or gender to the back ranks of importance — they are more likely to write a person than a caricature. The near complete lack of racism Rue deals with in Euphoria is unrealistic, but it is also refreshing, because Rue is a black person not wholly defined by her opposition to whiteness. The way black writers refuse to center whiteness, typically, is by insulating their stories within black communities. This is refreshing, as well as realistic, because it mirrors reality while deconstructing a popular belief, which is that black communities operate in comparison/contrast to white ones. It is nice, when reading Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and watching movies like Moonlight, to be reminded this is untrue. With that being said, as a black writer, I would find it difficult to write a story in which a black character is surrounded by white people, and that situation has little to no effect on them. That, for me, would be like telling readers that the color of the sky is green, and never explaining why. Such stories, like Euphoria and The Queen’s Gambit, are, to a lesser extreme, set in worlds that are, in some essence, fantastical. But such a fantasy where the specificities of a character’s identity are given emphasis over the world’s treatment of their generalities can be a breath of fresh air, when it comes from time to time.

Representing a community one is not a part of is impossible. I am a black writer, but I cannot represent a black chess community, because I am not a part of one. If a white chess player and I each tried to write about a black chess community, we would both be working around our identification gaps. I would maybe even argue that mine would be larger. When we make the implication that only black people can write about black people, we reduce black people. The black community is giant and varied, intersecting with many other communities, in ways that both move with and beyond race. I like to believe that I could take a crack at writing about a black chess community, if I were interested in writing about one, by doing my due diligence of research on chess, and drawing from my experience with tennis to make personal the competitive/individualistic aspect. Would I represent that community? No. Could I capture some truth of it? Most likely, yes. And I believe a non-black writer could approach black culture and do the same.

One of the problems with conversations over “representation” are the types of representation people assume the term is referencing. Trauma narratives that set being marginalized as a rage against the center, still, even in critiquing it, acknowledge that center. There is nothing wrong with such stories, I’ve written them, read them, needed them. But such stories are easier to sell than ones where whiteness is not acknowledged — because when the center does not appear, the fear becomes that white people may not “relate.” This fear, in itself, is the heart of the problem, because it assumes, then perpetuates, the profundity of people’s difference, based on arbitrary, general measures that, once the specific enters, leave the forefront.

I’ve miswritten aspects of characters whose marginalized identity wasn’t like my own, and I’ve miswritten aspects of characters whose marginalized identity was. There are times when I see popular conversations over writing the other and feel that we could give writers a little more grace. There are other times when I see representations of my “other” or otherwise (forgive me that wordplay) and wonder “how on earth did that ever gain a platform?” To me, the question is not if it can be done, but how well, and how well it can be done depends on the author’s skill and empathy. I don’t know what good writing is if not an act of empathy. And I see nothing wrong with authors giving it a try. Black and white (maybe a little pun intended) conversations around representation tend to disturb me, but our discussions around the quality of such presentations is necessary. An attempt is not wrong, but a failure is. And there should be community growth and learning in calling failures and successes as such.