Is reading this comic cultural appropriation?

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I’m from America and don’t have any Swedish or Finnish heritage but I read the Moomin comics. I write and illustrate comics as a hobby and have a lot of respect for Tove Jansson as an artist and writer.

I’m also concerned that when I watch BBC it’s also cultural appropriation because I’m not from the UK.

No, that would be a ridiculous over-extension of the concept.

"Cultural appropriation" is a meaningless concept to begin with.

And, like Funeral said, you're taking the already silly concept, are taking it to even sillier lengths.

The BBC wouldnt have an American franchise called BBC America, and they wouldnt show BBC shows on American public TV if the BBC didnt want Americans to watch it.

The Beatles, the Stones, and the Kinks, "appropriated" rocknroll from Americans like Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly. And Picasso was influenced by African tribal masks when he invented cubist painting. Your American school teacher "appropriates" Islamic Arab culture every times she/he gives you an algebra lesson. And your pastor "appropriates" the God of the ancient Hebrews every time he gives a sermon.

You're taking a really flippant position on it, but it's not an entirely unreasonable consideration.

There's plenty of serious and reasonable examples of culture being misappropriated in ways that don't sit well with the people from whom it's been appropriated from and it's behaviour with a long tradition in in the west - just look at Orientalism to how long it's been going on.

There's times where it can do genuine damage, like when a people's defining cultural concepts are only known from contact with some grossly distorted mockery because that will end up warping how people understand that culture.

Like, when people throw the word pow wow around to refer to a meeting of important people say like in the workplace it actually does a degree of harm to people wanting to understand wtf a pow wow actually is because they start off with a completely misinformed understanding of what it is and what it means to the people for whom they have value.

That is a thing. Distortion of other cultures. Like Hollywood showing war bonnets on the heads of warriors of tribes 2000 miles away from the Dakota tribe (the only tribe that actually wore war bonnets- and only chiefs wore them). The movie meme is like showing every White European descent person, like myself, walking around wearing the Iron Crown of Lombardy.

So if that sorta thing is under rubric of "cultural appropriation" then it can be a real issue.

That's not quite accurate about war bonnets, these Cree men would probably say something to the contrary.



They're associated with the Plains in general but they often get smeared into a generic tipis and totem poles stereotype.