memorycomeswhenmemorysold:

ladyxgaga: Video of Gaga performing “Venus” and “Applause” on Japan’s Smap x Smap. Interview here. Note: The stage Gaga performed on was designed for her by the Japanese set designers of Smap x Smap. Gaga collaborated with the Smap x Smap team to ensure an authentic and respectful homage to Japanese culture and to show her Japanese fans how much she appreciates being a part of their world. If you feel the need to start a discussion about cultural appropriation, please learn the difference between appropriation and appreciation. Better yet, don’t try to speak for the Japanese people who invited Gaga to their country and encouraged her to take part in their culture. What authority does a white woman have where she has to make an homage to Japanese culture when her experience and interests in Japanese culture are superficial and stereotyped? Why not just perform in the domains of her art without it appropriating concepts? She might have good intentions but this feeds into the exposure Japanese culture gets in mainstream culture.

What authority do you, a non-Japanese person, have over the Japanese designers of this performance? Who are you to call this appropriation when this is what the Japanese set designers of Smap x Smap wanted her to do? What you and many Tumblr people don’t understand is that partaking in a culture is not automatically appropriation. It is not appropriation when someone uses part of a culture while inside of that culture with people of that culture.

What you are literally doing is talking over the Japanese people who put together this performance for Gaga. You are silencing them because you feel you know what’s appropriation more so than the people of the culture you claim Gaga is appropriating. But hey, you’re white and a man so your superiority complex isn’t surprising.