Cultural misinterpretation

The tendency to misinterpret what a certain culture does or believes in, this is common for people and even myself at some point or another to misinterpret a culture based on certain things we discover or like. To put it this way, this is like thinking some communities and cultures are irresponsible for having stray dogs around when in reality these pets are actually owned they’re allowed to roam at will and lead semi-independent lives.

This might be part of their culture, sometimes motivated by beliefs and attitudes that dogs are dirty so they’re kept outside to roam if they will it. Likewise, some people don’t feed their cats and dogs much since they believe they should continue hunting animals as that’s how they’re used for. Another culture that gets misinterpreted a lot by foreigners is Japan.

Japan’s sometimes misinterpreted as the land of wacky people, even though in reality most of them are normal just like you and me and sometimes seen as the land of anime even though not all Japanese necessarily watch or like anime. Then again, that could be me reading up on translated Japanese reports on stray dogs which made me realise that not all Japanese care about anime.

If there are Japanese people who don’t care about anime in any way, it’s not that anime isn’t any less a part of Japanese culture it’s just one facet of it but one that gets magnified by foreigners even if it’s something not all Japanese necessarily care about (there are Japanese who care about sports, animals and the environment when it comes to invasive species).

One example of cultural misinterpretation in fiction would be The Sentinel where an anthropologist named Blair Sandberg convinces a police officer (Jim Ellison) to use his powers in the same way a shaman or sentinel does with their heightened senses, along with the spirit animal thing. When it comes to actual Amazonian indigenous communities, they never believed in it. They never have an idea of it.

The Guatemalan and Mexican Mayans do know recognise the importance of animals in their cultures but they never have a spirit animal, neither do the Navajo and that the Navajo associate coyotes with witchcraft due to a belief they have. Spirit animals seem like a gross misinterpretation of indigenous and non-Western attitudes to animals, some of them aren’t even the same.

I even said on my blog that since Africans aren’t that culturally homogenous, they’d have different attitudes to animals as well within their respective cultures. Some African cultures, communities and countries associate dogs with witchcraft, some don’t and some associate cats with witchcraft, some don’t. This is what you get for looking up on the different African communities and countries.

This is also probably the same with Native Americans (I’m using this to encompass those who live south of the border and beyond) where they may not even have the same attitude towards the same animal depending on the community and country they come from as well as the sort of person they are. There’s one Oneida Iroquois story that has a dog witch, which does indicate an association of dogs with witchcraft.

But for others, dogs are seen as tools against witches (though that could be me knowing African cultures, but this could be applied to indigenous cultures as well). The use of spirit animals by non-indigenous people, while amusing, is a gross misinterpretation of the varying indigenous attitudes to and beliefs about animals (or rather certain animals) and why it can be anti-indigenous.

That’s why I think cultural misinterpretation is bad, in the sense that it twists what certain aspects of a certain culture to fit a certain lens. Western anime fandom’s real bad with this, believing that all Japanese like anime regardless of the Japanese people who care about other things like stray dogs, hunting, bullying in football and invasive species in general.

Likewise, The Sentinel’s bad with indigenous cultures especially when it comes to what Amazonian indigenous communities believe in. While there’s some talk about how bad the Western romanticisation of Japan is and gets, not much is written about The Sentinel’s racism. (Though it could be said that these fans are too distracted by the two white men pairing, the near lack of talk about indigenous people makes one wonder if fans actually knew about them.)

Cultural misinterpretation is bad because it distorts what a culture believes in and does, that’s why it’s problematic when it comes to approaching a culture different from one’s own and why people need to be more informed about and exposed to different cultures to better understand them as they are.

Misinterpreting indigenousness

There’s a tendency to misinterpret non-Western, non-white cultures or any culture not familiar even I myself am guilty of this practice on a few occasions. For instance, there’s a tendency for people to regard Africa as one culture, one country disregarding that Africa has several countries and many cultures as well as having had many kingdoms and empires before (Hausa, Coptic, Ghana, Mali, Yoruba, Akan/Ashanti and Igbo). Even attitudes to animals differ from culture to culture, some African countries and cultures tolerate cats some don’t.

This is also true for indigenous cultures the world over but especially in the New World where there’s a tendency to regard them as things of the past, sexualised, owners of casinos, living in the countryside or reservations and primitive. In actuality, there’s room for indigenous Americans (both North and South) who’re up to date with modern things (there’s one Cree athlete who sews clothes and I do know two Native Americans who are geeks), live in cities and stuff. And there’s the tendency to equate Native Americans with all things mystical, but this doesn’t just misinterpret their beliefs.

It also disregards Native Americans who aren’t into those things, in fact some of them are even Christians. One example of a pop culture artefact that misinterprets indigenous and tribal beliefs is The Sentinel; this programme has a cult following that was more prominent in the mid 1990s up to the early 2000s and it centres on a police officer with heightened senses and an anthropologist who points out that tribes believe in a sentinel or somebody with heightened senses. From what I remember reading, there’s not much of a conception of such.

From what I remember reading up on the various Amazonian communities and tribes, they don’t have much of a conception of it either. While I should forgive those fans and writers for not knowing any better, the fact that this misinterprets indigenous beliefs is telling. Not only do they not do the research, they also never encountered any indigenous person who believes in it. Yet this isn’t talked about that much, to the point where it may’ve been hand waved by fans.

Suspension of disbelief is one thing, misinterpreting a culture’s another matter. This is like thinking all Japanese like anime, but it disregards the Japanese who don’t like it and a larger number who simply don’t care anyways. (I went to Japanese language websites to look up on stray dogs, so this coloured my perception and made think realise not all Japanese care about anime.) This is racist in that it simplifies an entire culture to just a few parts which may not be a thing for all people.

Misinterpreting cultures is bad because while this is naive and uninformed at best, it risks misinforming people about what a country or culture is like and that some people of that community, country or culture may not necessarily do all things. That’s like saying all Chinese eat dogs when in fact there are Chinese who don’t and some who do care deeply about them. Or all black people listen to hip hop, disregarding those who don’t and that there are black people who play guitars.

There goes the problem with what I call cultural misinterpretation, which misinterprets what a culture does, what the people do and what they believe in.