Cultural Appropriation, Blog Post #2

Sturken and Cartwright describe cultural appropriation as "the process of "borrowing" and changing the meaning of cultural products, slogans, images, and fashion (83).” In simpler terms, one can take a product, image, slogan, and manipulate it in such a way that the dominant or preferred reading is now different from the original reading the producer intended. This sort of cultural appropriation is often used to convey a meaning that is typically in conflict or disagree's with the original reading, or an "oppositional reading(55)."

Often cultural appropriation is "key to political art (83)." An example of cultural appropriation in modern times would be a cover photo of President Barack Obama on the cover of Newsweek...

This image, not so subtly makes Obama look similarly to the Hindu God Kali. Kali is notorious for her many arms, and for also being the God of Death and Destruction. Though this text may read, "God of All Things", the way the image has been manipulated/appropriated provides the reader with context to take a wholly different meaning from it. This image happens to also "oppose the dominant ideology"(83), another common feature of cultural appropriation that was mentioned earlier.

Sturken and Cartwright also note, the dominant reading is no more accurate that any other reading of a product, image, slogan, ext. This is because a meaning "is not inherent in images...rather meanings are the product of complex social interactions among image, viewers, and context (55)."
Due to this notion, the theme I took from this chapter was of the individuals make the meaning, the image does not. Furthermore, there is no true, or inherent meaning in a photo, we as people make of it what our personal culture has taught it's dominant meaning is.

The ad campaign I chose was for Volkswagen, the slogan being, "Small Wonder."

The dominant reading of this image would likely be something along the lines of how the Volkswagen Beetle is an amazing car for it's small size. This would likely be the connotative meaning of the image/slogan. It is straight forward and to the point, without the slogan, this would simply be an image of an automobile.
However, when this slogan is paired to an image of my brother-in-law holding his newborn daughter, both the image as well as the slogan are given new meaning.

"Small Wonder"

This photo now has much more punctum. Before the slogan was applied, the signifier of the image was a young man holding a newborn. We do not know the relation of circumstances of the photo. When the slogan is applied thought, the new meaning draws of theme's of love, family, fatherhood, and many other heartwarming feelings. The new photo now has cultural appropriated meaning as well as connotative mean about the wonder and joys of new life.