To first understand the term ‘culture vulture’, it is important to be able to define culture and several other terminologies relating to it that will be applied throughout this essay. ‘Culture’ is notoriously hard to define. Raymond Williams, an influential cultural critic, famously stated that ‘culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’. In Keywords (1976), Williams analyzed its various meanings, clarifying that ‘ culture in all its early uses was a noun of the process: the tending of something, basically crops or animals’, otherwise known as ‘agriculture’. The meaning of ‘culture’ developed significantly over the centuries that followed, and ‘the tending of natural growth was extended to a process of human development’ from the eighteenth century onwards, it became important to consider culture in a plural sense to determine the difference between cultures of different nations and periods, as well as ‘specific and variable cultures of social and economic groups within a nation’. According to Williams, there came to be three definitive definitions in use by the twentieth century; (i) a general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development; (ii) an indication of a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, a group, or humanity in general; (iii) a description of the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity. Religion, social structures, class, values, societal position, attitudes, language, economy, manners, customs, behavior, and education are a long list of some factors that contribute to the meaning of ‘culture’, which in turn shape an entire group of people. It is a limitless list, complex, and rich and it forms culture as a social group’s most distinguishing feature; and is generally, a specific part of distinguishing sociocultural groups from others.
A ‘vulture’ according to Oxford Languages, is ‘a contemptible person who preys on or exploits others’. A ‘culture vulture’ is a relatively recent term. Urban Dictionary’s earliest definition of it was in 2003: ‘a scavenger, circling the media, looking for scraps of originality to add to their conceit’, but the most popular (most agreed on) definition of the term was made in 2018, defining ‘culture vulture’ as a ‘person or an organization making a profit using unhonorable practices from a culture they do not care for’. Raymond Williams also mentions the term in his book, Keywords, and stresses that ‘virtually all the hostility has been connected with uses involving claims to superior knowledge and distinctions between ‘high’ art (culture) and popular art and entertainment’, illustrating that culture ‘culturing’ indicates a level of privilege and access which permits people of higher social standing to do so.
To begin to fully be able to understand the term ‘culture vultures’, it is necessary to first define the terms ‘cultural appropriation and ‘cultural appreciation’. Cultural appropriation is, to put it simply, the act of adopting cultural elements of a (minority) group by a group non-native to that culture. The term has evolved from academia, and it is only relatively recently that it began to be used more generally, especially on social media. Though not inherently particularly offensive, it has taken on a more sinister meaning throughout the past decade as people have come to understand that cultural appropriation often takes the form of exploitive cultural theft that contributes to the reinforcement of stereotypes and the continued social and economic oppression of minority groups. Cultural appropriation is a layered and nuanced subject that is difficult to grasp, as definitions can sometimes be too vague and too partial, creating a problem as people begin to contest the difference between what is appropriation versus appreciation, the ‘respectful borrowing’ of culture. Cultural appreciation is an unnecessary term – cultural appreciation is cultural appropriation and recent discourse has reduced both terms to function simply as euphemisms that distort to the point of unintelligibility the very things that people are doing when they ‘appropriate’. ‘Appropriation’ is not an inherently negative term, nor does it suggest a lack of appreciation, and only when it is exploitative, uncredited, and unpermitted that it becomes a problem of culture ‘culturing’.
Marc Jacobs’s SpringSummer 2017 show, for example, featured a predominantly white cast of fashion models including Kendall Jenner, and Bella Hadid, with hair styled in colorful dreadlocks (see Fig. 1). According to Guido Palau, Marc Jacobs’s stylist for the show, the hairstyle was inspired by ‘ravers, acid house, travelers, Boy George, [the singer] Marilyn in the ’80s, Harajuku girls’ – with no mention of the hair’s cultural origins. Furthermore, when inquired about the hairstyle’s cultural roots, the stylist responded that Rasta culture was not an inspiration for the look, ‘No, not at all’. Elle, as well as other influential fashion magazines such as Vogue, and Glamour, among other fashion magazines and blogs, reported Palau’s words, effectively furthering the erasure of Black cultural history. The inspiration appropriation dialogue that followed was characterized by those praising Jacobs for his creativity and ‘inclusivity’ and those who opposed this sense of ‘artistic freedom’, criticizing him of cultural insensitivity and accusing him of racism and lack of inclusivity. The problem with these (appropriation appreciation) terms, is that ‘they have lost whatever explanatory value they had’, and as Minh T Pham explains, ‘appreciation’ gives ‘too much weight to the designers feeling’, allowing space for ‘well-intentioned’ designers and brands to argue for ‘creative freedom’, and on the other hand, ‘appropriation’ reduces the problem to one of utility. This is illustrated perfectly firstly by Guido Palau who, when interviewed by The Cut and questioned about misappropriation stated, ‘I take inspiration from every culture: it’s not homogeneous. Different cultures mix all the time, whilst failing to admit to culturally appropriating Rastafarian culture that had supposedly not been ‘on his mind’. Furthermore, Jacobs’s reply (see Fig. 2) illustrates how the subject of ‘appreciation’ and its general emphasis on personal feelings, ‘I respect and am inspired by people and how they look: I don’t see color or race’, blurs distinctions between crucial power impositions that characterize appropriation versus something that could be considered a cultural exchange. Jacobs’s comparison of ‘you don’t criticize women of color for straightening their hair’ to outrage about white women wearing dreadlocks is a false equivalence, an amalgamation of differing historical context that further obscures the racial power structures obscured by terms such as (cultural) ‘appreciation’.
Minh-Ha T. Pham introduces the idea of ‘racial plagiarism’ in an attempt to address conceptual confusion of the term appropriation appreciation, by proposing a more precise analysis of the material practice, conditions, and effects of this kind of unauthorized copying.’ Racial plagiarism, she explains:
highlights the racial relationships and inequalities that are obscured by terms like cultural appropriation, cultural appreciation, and piracy. In the fashion context, racial plagiarism occurs when a designer copies racial and indigenous styles, forms, practices, and knowledge without permission and without giving adequate (or any) attribution to the source model and community. As with other plagiarism, racial plagiarism covers verbatim: and unacknowledged paraphrasing (a reworked but still recognizable derivative model). Luxury and designer brands going back at least a century in the United States and much further in Europe have routinely engaged in racial plagiarism yet these practices are rarely recognized as copying, much less plagiarism. This is an effect of the default, almost automatic way the media and the public interpret these practices through the binary logic of cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation.
Cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation are, essentially, two sides of the same coin – rather than opposing ideas, simply two interpretations of the same cultural phenomenon; both concepts emphasize the importance of intention, focusing on personal feelings and therefore obscuring the plagiaristic, vulture-like nature of what designers or brands such as Marc Jacobs are doing when they develop looks that mimic other people’s looks and culture, then brand them with their names and claims of originality and ‘creative freedom’, claiming what is essentially plagiarism as original. As a result, the framework of cultural appreciation successfully propagates and maintains white Western men as the embodiment of creativity and ‘innovation’. Cultural appreciation appropriation gives white artists a license to legitimize copying – a privilege that non-white artists rarely get. ‘Inspired’ Black, Asian, and non-white designers, singers, artists, and other creatives are significantly more likely to suffer criticism than admiration. Culture culturing is, after all, an issue of social and economic power, not of legislation.