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Shannon, Chip and Hugo Award winner Erika take a leisurely saunter with Stephen Franklin down the dark alleys of Downbelow as he goes on “Walkabout” to find himself. Along the way they explore just why the heck they couldn’t remember that this episode also has a kick-butt Shadow War subplot, discuss whether Stephen’s walkabout is cultural appropriation gone wrong, and celebrate one Patricia Tallman.
(Congratulations to our friends at Uncanny Magazine for winning the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine! Every member of the editorial staff has appeared on this podcast.)
You can’t appropriate a culture. You can be influenced by one. You can embrace aspects of it, incorporate it into your life. This is how human civilizations have evolved since the beginning. Every culture practice can be traced back to another culture to another culture on and on and on back through the dim history of mankind. Should we be angry because the Japanese like to “appropriate” western clothing or “appropriate” English into their language and marketing? Should the Chinese be angry because the Italians “appropriate” noodles and incorporated it into their cuisine? Should Europeans be angry that Native Americans “appropriate” horsemanship and adapted it to their societies? By that logic, everyone who’s not European stop wearing pants. You’ve culturally appropriated a garment invented by them. Anyone who’s not Hindi, you can’t be Buddhist because that’s cultural appropriation of their religious philosophy. You think Confescuious had great ideas, sorry, that’s cultural appropriation again. Need to stop love Marx because he was a Jew, can’t appropriate the culture he created. I guess if you’re not Greek, you can’t be Democratic. Can’t appropriate from them. Where does the nonsense end?
While discussing Lyta’s piece of Kosh, were any of you compelled to sing “every time you go away, you take a piece of Kosh with you?”