The Cultural Appropriation War in Berlin Burlesque

The cultural appropriation debate in Berlin burlesque is blowing up in a very ugly way. (See below for the long back story...) I’ve been staying out of the conversation because I’ve been busy trying to survive and it’s just way too much, but I feel like I should perhaps chime in, being one of the only Asian-American performers in continental Europe.

What I see is a huge gap in understanding. At the cultural appropriation panel during Berlin Burlesque Week, I wanted to talk more about the history in the U.S. which has led to the current climate in the states. I am pretty certain, for instance, that most people in Europe don't know about the 1965 immigration act that got rid of the quota system and allowed more brown people to come to the U.S. so that now, in most of the major U.S. cities, the "minorities" are actually the majority. Non-hispanic whites are less than half the population in NYC (42%), LA (29%), Chicago (31%), and Miami (12%).

So while the U.S. is backwards in a lot of ways (healthcare, education…) it is ahead of Europe when it comes to race relations. We now have more than 60 years – 2.5 generations – of brown people born in the U.S. who are articulate and empowered enough to demand an end to being erased and belittled. We are also 2.5 generations after the Black Power Movement that began in the 1960s and Wounded Knee in 1973. The U.S. is at a transitional point where the old white, male, Anglo Saxon power structures are getting dismantled because, to be honest, the future is already here and it’s brown.

Europe isn’t there yet. We have to remember that Europe is where white people come from. It’s still largely homogenous. Germany is 89% European; Berlin is 82% European. Germany and Italy barely have a colonial history. This is all rather new to them.

(And let me digress a moment to clarify that I am speaking from the perspective of someone from the diaspora. There is a difference between Asian-Americans and Asians from Asia. Asians from Asia did not grow up treated as a barely literate outsider in a place that they were born. They were never belittled or humiliated for looking different. They were never told to go back to a country that they had barely any connection to. They were never a minority.)

So there’s that… and there’s the differences in how burlesquers view burlesque.

I think a lot of the problem is that burlesque isn’t entirely understood as an art form. In theatre, there is a long process of development called Research & Development (R&D). We do this in burlesque too, but we are much less articulate about it. I mean, we dream up the act, look around to make sure others aren’t doing the same thing, create a costume, rehearse, do a test run in front of an audience, and tweak it until we are satisfied. That’s much the same process as R&D in theatre. But in theatre, the research bit includes dramaturgy: delving into the history and social context, trying to be clear in your perspective, and precise in what you are trying to convey. That’s what I think a lot of burlesquers are missing: the understanding that they are on a visible platform and they have a responsibility as to what they are saying.

To be fair, burlesque is in such a funny place. I mean, at the root of it all, we are all making money by taking off our clothes. And a lot of European burlesquers are very commercial, with a rigid old-school idea of burlesque being a glamorous showgirl stripping off her glamorous costume. (My first big culture shock in Germany was hearing a burlesque dancer say, "Burlesque is not funny.") But the difference between stripping and burlesque is that a stripper is trying to get a rise out of a guy who can’t stick it in her, so he sticks a buck in her g-string instead. Whereas  in burlesque, the man (or the audience) is not the central impetus.

Yes, the performer directly teases the audience without any pretence of a fourth wall (which is one of the prime differences between burlesque and theatre). But a burlesque performer is not really trying to sexually arouse the audience. They are onstage to empower themselves and by extension empower others. The very word “burlesque” means to satirize or make fun of something. The power of burlesque is that a performer – usually a woman – is onstage declaring what they themselves think of sexuality or beauty or gender norms. For centuries, this has been taboo, with women being projected upon and told how to behave, how to dress, how to be attractive. Burlesque uses all the old colours in the palette to paint a radically different picture. The most common storyline is to take a stereotype and smash it to itty bitty bits. What many of the performers who are taking on a cultural trope don’t understand is that they are actually reinforcing the stereotypes and belittling a culture. This is the opposite of what burlesque is supposed to be about. This is the opposite of what an artist is supposed to do.

The painful arguments that are going on now can be an amazing moment for a sea change in Berlin burlesque. The whole world still looks toward Germany for its cabaret, little realizing how much of it was eradicated by the Nazis. Germany is still haunted by the extermination of Weimar Cabaret, cut off in its prime, at a time when it was important that it existed. And it was important because it was the opposite of glamorous or pretty; it was dark, sardonic, defiant, grotesque, and often a caustic social critique. The Nazis shut down the most subversive cabarets and turned the others into toothless state varietés that were nothing more than glorified dinner theatres. That’s where things still were in 2004 when the neo-burlesque movement arrived in Berlin.

Now that a decade has passed, it’s time that Berlin burlesquers consciously pick up the baton of their predecessors. Instead of digging its heels in the sand and maintaining the status quo, Berlin burlesque can blaze new paths as they once did in the 1930s. But to do this, we have to embrace burlesque as an art form and realize that we have a responsibility as artists to see where we've come from, understand where we are in the continuum, and pave the next part of the path.

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The background to this essay is two recent incidents of blackface in European burlesque: one in 2016 and then another at the Toulouse Burlesque Festival in 2017. Since then, there's been an escalating debate about cultural appropriation in European burlesque. It's been very heated, with a lot of Europeans dismissing cultural appropriation as nothing more than censorship. 

Then at the last Berlin Burlesque Festival, the main producer did a Silk Road act, where she donned a hodgepodge of various Asian garb. The outcry resulted in a Berlin burlesque community meeting addressing cultural appropriation and then a Cultural Appropriation Panel Discussion during Berlin Burlesque Week. (Note that Berlin Burlesque Week is different from Berlin Burlesque Festival.) 

A few of the black dancers at the Panel Discussion mentioned that they felt unsafe at some European festivals, which led the organizer of Berlin Burlesque Week to start making a list of unsafe festivals. One of these was the Berlin Burlesque Festival. The producers of Berlin Burlesque Festival retaliated by defending their position, citing Equity's cultural appropriation policy. Equity Burlesque UK responded by reprimanding them for "distort[ing] the meaning of Equity's guidelines." Now the European burlesque community seems to be dissolving into a cacophony of shouts and accusations.