Cultural Appropriation In Culture

Cultural appropriation is the decontextualizing of marginalized cultures and their traditions both individually and systematically. The concept is important as the involvement in cultural appropriation adds to harmful stereotypes, as well as encourages Eurocentric beauty standards, such as dreadlocks being seen as 'dirty ' when in fact dreadlocks on afro-textured hair are in fact clean, but on other hair types, to create the imitation of dreadlocks, the hair needs to be damaged and does in fact become dirty and moldy. It is also exploitative, as the culture that it originates in does not profit. History must not be forgotten either, One group can not historically exploit the other, homogenize or romanticize them to the point of dehumanization, then turn around and profit off the group. Appropriation removes context and …show more content…
The main Sky person character, Clarke, is even caked with darker skin when she symbolically joins the Grounders. The grounder aesthetic revolves around 'exotic ' cultures to portray the Grounders as different and strange. This encourages the cultural hegemony, the Sky people are the ones with science and medicine, the narrative of the entire show revolves around them settling into a new place, and fighting off those that already live there - some of the Sky People were were even imprisoned for wanting to leave. The grounder culture is vilified and othered in an attempt to contrast them with the sky people. it is a violent act to use elements of another 's culture as background noise while framing them in a inhumane light. Dreadlocks, bindis, Moari facial tattoos are all costumes that are being used to set the Grounders up as the other. This othering is a form of orientalism that commodifies a culture. The homogenizing of different cultures, mostly native and black, aspects create the image of a exotifying and strange