Feeling that Tribe Vibe

Appropriation, Appeasement, and Appreciation - The triple A of our current society

Hall’s “West and the Rest”, allows us to understand there is a prevalent ideology within our societies, which works in the favor of the dominant class.

As arts students we are well aware of this, we are also well aware of the fact colonialism
took place
displaced 
and misplaced many lives to the extent that today if you are a colonized race
it’s difficult to face this system
without negative slurs and haste
while your logical and reasonable case
for change is told its void because it has no base.

As if colonization, and the consistent denial of ancestral injustice isn’t enough to burden the Native American of today, naming sports teams after derogatory terms used to describe them for generations isn’t bad enough, refusing to change systems because of breaches to “my freedom of choice” isn’t a horrific everyday reality, MAC cosmetics puts the cherry on the cake  in the trend of Native American marginalization with the launch of their recent “Tribe Vibes” collection.  

Let us first understand the nature of big business and corporations. In the same manner British colonizers established the “New World” (Hall).

Hall claims the “New World” was based on the following characteristics:

-  get hands on the monetary resources of the land
-  claim land as their own
-  convert all the heathens

MAC in their capacity of being a large corporation suspiciously seems to be behaving in a similar pattern:

-  getting their hands on the money of willing make up buyers
-  claim designs and products as their own
-  convert all the non MAC make-up users to being MAC users

The only key difference is while the new world exploited the indigenous society, large corporations take the idea of the new world and repackage it to be known as “globalization” subjecting the entire globe to their ‘profound civilizing methods’  rather than just a particular nation.

While MAC claims they’re paying homage to the Coachella and festival trend we can align this excuse again to British colonizers who claimed to be paying homage to their kingdom and traditions, MAC runs along the dangerous lines of being deemed as culturally appropriative rather than appeasing and appreciating.

Cultural appropriation takes physical elements of a person’s heritage and history to repackage it without social, political, or economical reparations to the original people. It trivializes and generalizes this heritage to only highlight beauty by the dominant group’s standards but also uses cultural “awareness” of the dominant group as justification for them to use it without understanding the context of each symbol. This commodification is deeply upsetting as it not only fails to take into account the history of the culture being appropriated but also dehumanizes the marginalized group and is blind to see they have progressed beyond the initial contact made by the colonizers. The names used within this collection including, “fool's gold”, “call of the canyon”, “painted canyon” are a direct reference to the negative stereotypes of Native American culture, history and society as seen in Early Hollywood mid western films. Not only this but the packaging of each product is a clear reminiscent of authentic Native American design.

Shame on you MAC for trivializing the history of Native American genocide, and how dare you being one of the world’s leading makeup brands lie about the true source of your inspiration assuming the general public would let you slide. Had this line of makeup been for the Native American woman, tailored specifically for their skin tone then possibly we could be talking about the concept of appreciation and appeasement here. But the tones and colour pay off on brown skin tones of this product is a clear indicator this line was created with the intention of selling it to the European skinned woman. Many of us women of colour already find it difficult to find make up which matches our skintone and though these makeup items will be inspired by our cultures their inability to suit our skin only marginalizes us further, creating feelings of “maybe we're not even good enough to portray our own culture”.

Personally what irritates me the most about this story was the fact MAC could have easily taken this idea and made it a point of appreciation for r Native American culture had they done it right. In a similar manner to how they helped develop and naturalize transgender identities by using Caitlyn Jenner as the face of a new lipstick line, MAC being at high levels of influence had every opportunity to use their power to pool in resources to create and market authentic Native American inspired products and could have advertised through Native American models. I guess what this truly comes down to is the key idea of “Corporate social responsibility”, where firms take reasonable measures to present themselves as responsible towards people and their cultures. Due to the implementation of this idea being arbitrary rather than any overarching force regulating and enforcing penalties for such offensive actions, we will continue to see large corporations omit any responsible measures to improve race relations within society.