Sometimes, with the utmost kindness and respect, you want to buy a well-meaning activist a cup of tea and explain that if he ever managed to rebuild the world the way he wants, it would only get duller, sadder. lonelier and more suspicious.
The last culture warrior in need of a calming concoction and a pep talk is Dr Emily Zobel Marshall, ‘Lecturer in Post-Colonial Literature’ at Leeds Beckett University.
Emily has gotten into Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit. This is not because Peter is a thief, a vandal, a disobedient knave who, when ordered to go blackberrying with his brothers, sneaks out to vandalize Mr. McGregor’s orchard, falls into a watering can, and turns up in home with a lost jacket. he having taken an overdose of stolen parsley.
No: Peter’s fault is that the stories about him and his peers are “cultural appropriation,” according to Dr. Zobel Marshall.
Although Peter, like Jemima Puddle-Duck and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, may seem ‘quintessentially English’, these stories are ‘more than inspired by’ similar fables told by African slaves toiling on American cotton plantations in the 19th century. .
In a recent article on The Conversation website, Dr. Zobel Marshall notes that Potter, as a child, loved stories of the ‘trickster hero’ Brer Rabbit.
The last culture warrior in need of a calming concoction and a pep talk is Dr Emily Zobel Marshall, ‘Lecturer in Post-Colonial Literature’ at Leeds Beckett University.
Peter’s fault is that the stories about him and his peers are “cultural appropriation,” according to Dr. Zobel Marshall.
For centuries in African oral traditions, this cunning rabbit outmaneuvered its most physically powerful enemies. American journalist Joel Chandler Harris, using an African-American pen name, ‘Uncle Remus’, first published stories about the Brer Rabbit in the 19th century. Marshall believes that many of Potter’s tales are stolen from these Uncle Remus books. The cunning rabbits that best the farmers reflect, he says, “the violence, resistance and survival tactics of life on the plantation.”
Even Potter herself admitted in a letter that one of her Peter Rabbit stories, The Tale Of Mr Tod, had a “major flaw”. . . his impression of Uncle Remus’.
To make matters worse, the Potter family fortune historically came from cotton, woven in Manchester and gathered by slaves in the American Deep South in the early 1800s. This partly explains his youthful reading of Uncle Remus.
As Dr. Zobel Marshall puts it damningly: “His stories owe a debt to the Brer Rabbit stories.” . . that must be fully recognized.’
Although Dr. Zobel Marshall is quite convincing in her claims, her essay seems designed to stir outrage and cultural divide and, I suppose, provide a fresh dose of white guilt (she herself is of Martinican and British descent). ).
However, what I find most frustrating is that she is a respected expert in this kind of cross culture. The scholar should know that, like the folk tunes that crossed from Celtic shores to the Appalachian mountains to Bob Dylan’s basement concerts in New York in the early 1960s, stories are not proprietary. deprived of anyone
Emily has it for Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit writes LIBBY PURVES
Although Peter, like Jemima Puddle-Duck (pictured) and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, may seem ‘quintessentially English’, these stories are ‘more than inspired by’ similar fables told by African slaves toiling on the plantations of American cotton in the 19th century.
I feel the same for all those who decry ‘cultural appropriation’: that modern sin of improperly borrowing a story, dress, custom or design from another society. It’s been applied to everything from costumes to poetry to yoga, and those who fret tend to bristle when the culture that picks it up is often more “dominant” than the other.
To them, it is wrong for a Western woman to wear a sari or Chinese jacket, but it is perfectly fine for an Indian lawyer or African businessman to wear a pinstripe suit, an odd outfit created by the 19th century British and European commercial . classes
Or take music. For the culture police, it is commendable that Chi-chi Nwanoku CBE leads the ethnically diverse Chineke! orchestra playing Mozart, but questionable for white rockers or jazzmen to capture the rhythms developed by blacks.
Similarly, they look with distaste at the British atrocity of chicken tikka masala, but would never be infuriated by an Indian chef’s shepherd’s pie. It’s a peculiarly contemporary and condescending way of separating us all from one another. The literary world today is terrified of allowing authors to create Black, Asian or Latino characters unless they themselves enjoy the ‘lived experience’ of those races. Publisher anxiety around these issues is only getting worse.
Face it, there’s something about these small, agile, lawless animals hiding underground, appearing to steal your carrots, that appeals to the universal human desire to duck, dive, and outwit the strong.
Twelve years ago, in more innocent days, I wrote a novel, Regatta, in which I tried to delve into the feelings of an underprivileged black girl from south London, amazed to see the open sea for the first time, and feeling the ripple of water. salty around the toes. Now it would probably be censored.
Of course, mockery is never correct (‘blacking out’ or parodying ethnic voices) and is very rude to begin with. But most of what is condemned as “cultural appropriation” is better described by other words: admiring imitation, respectful enjoyment, empathy, flattery, camaraderie.
Take that away and we will all live mentally and culturally in cramped, stifling, cramped spaces, fearful of anything new, unknown, and strange.
If we don’t borrow and play with other people’s stories, we will never accept that members of other races and cultures are people with the same rights, joys, and desires as we do. Seeing outside of your own routine is a human need, and no one should try to deprive us of it.
Which brings me to another point that Dr. Zobel Marshall might well consider.
Looking at the rabbits, he might face east. There is a popular Chinese saying: ‘A cunning rabbit has three holes.’ Indian legends also feature cunning rabbits. The Central American Zapotecs had their own wily rabbit, as did the Cherokee Native Americans, long before Africans were shipped by the millions to that continent, bringing their Brer Rabbit stories with them.
Folk tales are a universal possession. Humans have always passed them down, tweaking them for fun and moral lessons. Beatrix Potter brilliantly illustrated them, gave them clothes and a seductive background.
You can go back even further: to the 6th century BC. C., when the Greek author Aesop wrote his fables. There they are again, those vulnerable but crafty rabbits.
Face it, there’s something about these animals (small, agile, and lawless), prowling underground, popping up to steal your carrots, that appeals to the universal human desire to duck, dive, and outwit the strong.
Similarly, mice have a quality that makes humans, who sometimes feel weak and helpless, enjoy stories where the mouse wins.
Beatrix Potter has the little hard-working rodents finishing a suit overnight for the Tailor of Gloucester. In Aesop, the mice form a council of war, while another rescues a lion by gnawing on a trapper’s net.
I think you could land anywhere on earth and there would be someone telling you a story about a rabbit, a mouse, a fox, or a cat. We have lived alongside them for millennia, admiring their adaptability, learning from their weaknesses and cunning in helping us cope with our own most difficult lot.
Folk tales are a universal possession. Humans have always passed them down, tweaking them for fun and moral lessons. Beatrix Potter brilliantly illustrated them, gave them clothes and a seductive background.
So why apologize? Why sow fear and division and deadly caution that hampers human creativity?
Have that relaxing cup of tea, Dr. Zobel Marshall, and think about these things.
