Orientalism and the Kimono Wednesday Protests - Literature review Example

Orientalism and the Kimono Wednesday Protests

Orientalism refers to the way of coming to terms with the Orient, which is based on the Orient’s special position in the European Western experience. The Orient, in this case, is used to refer to Europe’s richest, greatest and oldest colonies, and the sources of their civilization and languages (Valk, 2015, p.379). Orientalism is a representation of the ideological and cultural mode of discourse that supports the institutions, doctrines, colonial bureaucracies and the old colonial styles. Orientalism is a significant issue that one should not assume to be nothing serious in today’s social setup but just a number of myths and lies (Said, 1978, p. 3). The Kimono Wednesday, an event held at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, was alleged to have some aspects of Orientalism and discrimination against the Asian Americans. Some Asian Americans together with their supporters held protests against the Kimono Wednesday event, terming it as discriminatory and possessing some sense of Orientalism.

According to the BBC News article, there was uproar on social media about the Kimono Wednesday event that led to the cancellation of the event by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The news article reports that the protesters had labeled the event culturally bias and contained some aspects of racism. As reported by the BBC news article, the museum officials announced the cancellation of the Kimono Wednesday event that was previously scheduled to take place until July 29. The Kimono Wednesday event required every visitor to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to channel his or her Camille Monet by posing with the Claude Monet’s La Japonaise (BBC News, 2016, p.1). The visitors posed in front of the La Japonaise while imitating the replica of the Kimono Monet’s wife, Camille in the painting.

The Kimono Wednesday event was soon regarded as promoting aspects of Orientalism and discrimination. The protesters argued that the event propagated racial stereotypes and promoted cultural appropriation. Some protesters stood with the signs beside the visitors who continued on the Kimono (BBC News, 2016, p.1). Amnes, who was one of the organizers of the protests, lamented that the event was a cultural appropriation despite many participants trying to prove that they were not racists. Some protesters also expressed their concerns about the under-representation of the Asian Americans whom they argued were forced into lesser categories such as the quiet and the geisha students. Despite the earlier attempts by the protesters to have the event canceled, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts continued the event by releasing a memo stating that the event was not racist in any way. However, the pressure on the social media and some parts of the streets of Boston pushed the MFA management to cancel the event on a statement released on their website by the Directorate. In the report release, the management sent an apology to all the people and the visitors who might have been offended by the event (BBC News, 2016, p.1).

The author presents the possible causes of the buildup of the protest looking at the possibilities of the Kimono event having some aspects of cultural appropriation and orientalism characterized by racial discrimination. The protesters’ claims linking the Kimono event to being a form of the present day violence and discrimination against the Asian Americans by the Japanese is also examined in details. However, other authors argue that the event was solely meant to give the visitors an experience of the Japanese Kimono painting in a different way and promote cultural diversity, a statement that has been disputed by the protesters of the visitors regarded the Kimono event as a form of typecasting the Asian American people. During the first night of the promotion, a small protest started outside the museum and later continued as three protestors confronted the museum with ant-Kimono placards (Valk, 2015, p.381).

Some important issues must be considered in analyzing the Kimono Wednesday event. The first concern revolves around the worst scenario that the museum produced and event that promoted racism or an event that was at least culturally exploitive and insensitive (Valk, 2015, p.382). These claims are grounded on the argument that the promotion of racial stereotypes and cultural appropriation makes part of the Western imperialist project seeking to colonize the cultures of the non-European people. The imperative is represented by the statements such as Stand Against Yellow Face and the Stop Orientalism campaigns staged by the protesters. Orientalism was used to display the conceptual framework used in understanding the historical depictions of the Orient and as the original concept underpinning the demonstrations (Gilbert, 2016, p.126). Orientalism represented the continued post-colonial influence that occurred even after the colonies had gained independence. The event factored in the concept of Orientalism and argued that the Japanese wanted to undermin the cultures of the Asian Americans. The protestors had a valid reason in linking the Kimono event to a form of Orientalism considering the previous argument.

However, a further scrutiny of the event would reveal other complication that may rule out the arguments of the protestors. First, the assumption that the Boston Museum was disseminating racial stereotypes and cultural appropriation could be wrong because of various reasons (Gilbert, 2016, p.128). The latter is because the La Japonaise as presented by the Boston Globe is a representation of the Monet poking fun of the nineteenth-century campaign, the Japonisme. The Japonisme movement consisted of a European obsession with Japanese art, which resulted from the decision made by the Tokugawa Shogunate to start an international business with Western countries. If Monet was making fun of the practices of cultural appropriation, then his critique of the Japanese culture is lost in the protest that does not presume awareness of these protests.

Furthermore, simply putting on the Kimono does not cross the cultural appropriation threshold as argued by the protesters. Trying the Kimono would be a more intimate way of interacting with the garment including its feel, materiality, and weight (Gilbert, 2016, p.129). However, the museum got involved in the controversy by encouraging the visitors to take photos while putting on the Kimono, a move that other people viewed as promoting cultural appropriation. The encouragement of the visitors by the museum to take pictures wearing Kimono and sharing on social media created a wrong image of luring the visitors to pretend to be people who might have traditionally worn a Kimono (Gilbert, 2016, p.132). The latter can be considered as a cheap consumption of culture, which is problematic as the protesters argued. However, the protestors failed to understand that the event took place without the information about the origin, the uses and the historical significance of the garment. Therefore, the visitors who posed with the Kimono were ignorant of the cultural significance of the garment and just enjoyed the event oblivious of the allegations.

According to Gilbert (2016, p.132), the protestors failed to understand the motive of the event and were too fast to describe the event as racist. For example, one of the demonstrators stated that the event wanted the visitors to the museum to view Asian Americans and Africans in cages. The statement is inappropriate and set to mislead the public about the event. The term racist refers to the attempt of employing or advancing the economic, political and social practices to reduce another person intentionally to a set of signs that are mainly physical features aimed at making him feel less human. The author argues that there is no connection between the definition of being a racist and the events that unfolded at the Kimono Wednesday program. The woman mimicked in the Kimono is Camille Monet, who is representing one of the ridiculous European postures coupled with fascinating Japanese art and culture. There are also many stereotyped images of the Asian Americans used by the protestors to conflate the Japonisme. The megalomania employed by the protesters is wrong since they fail to understand that the Japanese are not the same as the others such as Laotian, Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai people. Unlike these people who were colonies, the Japanese were a colonial power. For example, in the late nineteenth century, the Japanese provided their arts for Western consumption and significantly contributed to the circulation of the arts in the markets (VALK, 2015, p.383). Several facts underlying the establishment of the Kimono event were omitted by the protesters since they could not defend their claims of racism and orientalism of the event on factual grounds. Instead, the protesters showed a lot of confusion when they were asked to comment on their arguments.

The worst aspect that comes out of the protests is that culture is a precious object that should be kept and only exposed to the people designated as the best of the appropriate cultural handlers. It is a shared understanding that culture is precious but according to the Boston demonstrators, they emphasize that the non-Westerners should be the regulators and guards of the cultural representation. That is to say, culture and art should be kept precious and should not be made available for others in a more productive way or use. The protest was only an opportunistic move that the non-Westerners took to pin down the Japanese and the Boston Museum management of being racist as it holds no grounds as per claims it presented. Besides, the event did not discriminate others from participating and was only meant to make the locals and the visitors experience the Japanese culture and art in a different way.