Sorry, whiners, but society has judged Bruno Mars’ cultural appropriation as inherently positive.
To be clear, Mars does engage in cultural appropriation, if you go by Cambridge University’s definition of cultural appropriation as “the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect that culture.”
Put simply, the singer is not an African-American, but he situates his art in traditionally African-American music genres. This is relevant in light of an ongoing social media war sparked by a black journalist, Seren Sensei, who lambasted Mars.
But as I say, our society disagrees. It hasn’t just simply endorsed Mars’ music with its common attention (Bruno Mars is a household name), but with its money, which people are spending on his music at such a rate as to show people regard Mars’ artistic speech as unusually impressive. Most of us do not get paid millions of dollars a year for our creative work, but Mars’ songs have earned him tens of millions of dollars (estimates of Mars’ wealth vary between $40 million and $80 million).
This not to say that the capitalist measure of one moment is the defining measure of an artist’s success. It is, however, one measure of success. Consumers find value in his creative cultural appropriation of traditionally African-American music into new art.
Personally, as a believer in free speech, I think cultural appropriation is almost always positive. But if nothing else, Mars’ bank account proves that a good number of others support what he is doing. If we believe in freedom, we thus have proof that Mars’ cultural appropriation is good.
