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.

______________________________________________________________________

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. 

Rambling Notes on Being Nuyorasian in Berlin

My facebook feed is full of friends in America proclaiming #BlackLivesMatter and #Justice4Liang and most recently, the whole debacle of #OscarsSoWhite. I’m following the stories but here in Berlin, the battle for racial justice is in a galaxy far far away. 

Yes, the refugee crisis is everywhere and racism is definitely part of the problem. But refugees are newcomers fleeing from war or famine or extreme poverty; they’re not citizens battling for justice and equity within entrenched systems. In Europe, the race issue is over having enough pieces of cake to give out, while in America, the bakers are wondering why they just get crumbs.

Obviously, I don’t face the discrimination that refugees confront here. People don’t think I’m dirty or looking for a handout. But being Asian-American has its own weirdness in Berlin. I think this has a lot to do with how few Asians there are. People from the Middle East are the only sizeable minority and they’re only 9% of the 3.5 million people in the city. Asians are just 3% of the population. There is no Chinatown. And Germany never had an Asian colony so there isn’t a history with all its inherent baggage.

On the one hand, this is rather liberating. There isn’t really any fetishization of Asian women here. Germans don’t look at me and see a geisha sex kitten, ready to dispense koan-like wisdom and a tea ceremony. And my added American-ness just confuses them. It seems no one knows what to make of me; an Asian-looking woman with some kind of vintage style who speaks perfect English. I definitely don’t look like I work in a nail salon. I also don’t look much like a student. “I’m so surprised,” a rather drunk friend of a friend kept repeating after every sentence I said. I’ve seen a room full of lonely guys check out every girl in the room but their eyes pass right over me like I’m a table or a chair. It’s definitely not the States, where a recent study of 25 million OKCupid members showed that Asian women are the most desired race of women in online dating. Because, you know, geisha sex kitten.

At times, I rather miss being fetishized. Well, it’s not all that pleasant being looked at from the ass-end of a telescope, but at least you’re looked at. In New York, I often found myself in an intense political conversation and then caught the guy beaming at me with a paternal look that seemed to say, “Aww, it’s so cute. It’s even talking.” Here, the look is more one of utter consternation, “Ack, it’s talking?!! In English??? What is it?!” I wonder which is worse. Or how this compares with Asia, where the general reaction is skepticism tinged with disapproval.

But while there isn’t much of a fetish for Asian women, that’s not to say there aren’t Asian stereotypes in Berlin. I danced at a Chinatown-themed party on New Year’s Eve. All the white bartenders dressed in cheongsams with chopsticks in their hair. I had an interesting conversation with a white guy trying to ignore that he was all done up like Madame Butterfly with a kimono, white face, and slanty-eyed makeup. I think I must have been the only one to notice or care that the only Asian music at the so-called Chinatown party was J-pop.

My feelings about cultural (mis)appropriation are very very mixed. I’m not always offended. It’s the other way around too: I see Asians all the time trying really damn hard to be Americans through some token surface means. They bleach their hair blond, wear blue contact lenses, get a nose job. Or they wear baseball caps backwards and low-hanging pants. For Asians, it does seem to come from some kind of inferiority, as if by dyeing their hair or wearing that hat, they can assume a power they wish they had.

For Europeans aping Asians, it’s definitely the other way around. Here are white people, with all their privileges, trying to find a way to be “other.” They wear Native American feathered bonnets and get all tribal or they put on blackface like this lady attempting to bring attention to those poor African tribes. It's a misplaced magnanimity, thinking they can embrace another culture by adopting traditional dress or other surface representations. The line here is kind of fuzzy. Painting your face another color and taping your eyes in a slant and dancing around a teepee: no no no. But antique kimonos are beautiful and I'm glad some other people appreciate them as long as they're not bowing and shuffling like they're Princess Yum Yum in the Town of Titipu. It's interesting to me; this desire to be the “other.” Most people who come from marginalized communities will basically agree that it sucks and if there was a way to erase all the marks of being "other" and still be true to yourself, then YES PLEASE.

I guess this is what I find hardest to relate to: Germans are not underdogs. I’m generalizing very much of course -- and things were different fifty years ago for half of the country -- but at this particular moment in time, Germans don’t know what it means to live with limited opportunities. It’s rather enviable, actually. There isn’t an entrenched class system here like in England, so they don’t know what it means to be on the bottom even in an economic structure. And women are not considered the low end of the social heap here. Germans can choose to identify with the poor or with outcasts of various sorts, but it’s a choice. They can drop that shitty end of the stick anytime they want. This is part of why I think Germans can't sing the blues.

Sadly, my opportunities are a lot more limited. Yes, having good English and being articulate does give me a freedom that some immigrant Asian-Americans may envy, but being Asian and a woman is definitely a handicap if you want to be taken seriously as a writer or director. It's nearly impossible to get past the gatekeepers. You’re constantly fighting cultural stereotypes that relegate you to a tiny dusty unobtrusive corner of the playing field. 

What’s interesting is realizing how much I am defined by this, like a painting created from negative space. My whole life, I’ve resisted stereotypes about my gender and ethnicity: I’m not a math whiz or a model minority or an immigrant or subservient or kawaii. But without these expectations to oppose, I have much less of a defining edge. I know what I’m not, but I’m not sure what I am.

It’s also interesting that I find myself a bit on the opposite end of my stance in America. Back in New York, the great majority of Asian-Americans in the arts are second generation and college educated. Most of them have only been in Asia a few times. Most of them barely speak the language. I’m different in that I do have language skills and my mother is a barely educated immigrant from a rural area. So in New York, I’m often bringing attention to working-class immigrant Asian-America. But here in Berlin, the general stereotype is that Asians work in restaurants and nail salons and speak very bad German and no English. Being Little Miss Mary, I find myself reminding everyone that the model minority is real and I’m (sort of) it. 

But in Berlin, "second generation" and  "model minority" are really foreign concepts. Am I Asian? Am I American? How can I be both? I suppose maybe liminality is what this rambling article is ultimately about. Not to toss a high-faluting five syllable word around, but liminality is such an interesting idea in terms of mixed ethnicities and diasporas. 

The idea was first applied by an anthropologist in the early 1900s to the middle state of rituals. Now it’s also applied to societies and history and individuals. It’s the state of being between things. It’s the moment when something is being dissolved and something else is being created. The anthropologist Victor Turner argues that liminality is a state of great tension that can’t remain for too long. That might be obvious but it’s an important thought. Another interesting thought is the liminal being, a creature between two different states. In fiction, that would include shape shifters, tricksters, and cyborgs. And in reality? Teenagers, transsexuals, people of mixed cultures. 

We’re the people at the threshold. We are the future. Everyone else just has to get used to it. All that racist hostility in America? Howls of a dying beast. It's inevitable that one day, everyone will be of mixed cultures and race will be totally moot. Until then, my mutant powers of invisibility seem to have developed a weird and interesting tangent here in Berlin. I wonder if there's any use for it.