Generation Z, Cultural Appropriation Nonsense

                                          Generation Z

Proserpine, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

…If excruciating honesty is the new zeitgeist, it should not surprise us. It is the distinguishing characteristic of the next generation. This is generation Z (born between the mid-90s and the early 2000s) and younger millennials – I’d say the cut-off is around 28. Among their distinguishing features, this generation are far more open in the way they talk about themselves…

But generation Z are more honest about what people do when they go online and are happy to admit it. Yes, they are there for the praise. Yes, they are addicted. Yes, they would be lonely without it. You sense the new attitude is almost a matter of survival. For older people, social media is a place where you arrange to see your friends. For generation Z, it is seeing your friends. It is where they live. They have had to make it fit for humans.

So, while they post curated selfies, they’ll also talk about why they feel pressured to. “I didn’t pay for the dress, took countless selfies trying to look hot for Instagram,” one 18-yearold social media influencer captioned a carefully posed shot. And here is Instagram model Essena O’Neil on one of her popular pictures: “For this post, I pictured myself ‘spontaneously leaping,’” she wrote. “What you don’t see is me getting increasingly irate with my patient boyfriend for “not taking it seriously’.”

In fact, social media influencers fall over themselves to reveal how unhappy and unnatural their lives are. This is Emily Lavinia, a 28-year-old blogger in an interview with the Observer in March: “I actually have ‘imposter syndrome’ and don’t feel that proud. I try to air this idea that I’m incredibly confident – it helps me get to where I am and makes other people believe in you. A lot of it is smoke and mirrors.” And this is Jordan Bunker, a model: “People assume I have a great life and everything is handed to me. I live with my parents and I work from a desk in my room.

Then there is the way they talk about the problems in their lives, particularly on Twitter. They ask each other for advice on contraception or dealing with period pain. They share difficulties in their relationships, and where they have messed up, or been rejected. Most of all, they talk about their mental health – they admit they are suffering from depression and anxiety and find others who share their experiences. If social media has led to more mental health problems, generation Z are working hard to destigmatise them.

The next generation are learning to live in the age of the internet. We tend to call them narcissists. They might respond: “Aren’t we all?”

(Martha Gill, The Observer, 2019)

What a sad article. Addiction to social media, showing off, posting selfies, looking ‘hot’, Essena berating her eminently sensible boyfriend for not taking her ‘spontaneous leaping’ picture seriously, Emily’s ‘imposter syndrome’, difficulties with relationships, rejection, depression, anxiety, mental health problems and narcissism. Where is the humour, the laughter or the good and happy times?

 Apparently, Essena O’Neil quit Instagram in 2015 claiming social media was not “real life” and deleted 2,000 photos, “that served no other purpose than self-promotion.”

Cultural Appropriation

The Merry-Go-Round, Mark Gertler (1891-1939)

Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

Is Gordon Ramsay allowed to cook Chinese food? Is it OK to dress up as Disney’s Moana? Can Jamie Oliver cook jollof rice despite plainly not knowing what it is? Exactly what is cultural appropriation?

To take a glance at Good Morning Britain, the ITV show that never takes its finger off the pulse of Middle England’s clogged arteries, you’d think it’s a question of white people seeking permission to have fun. And in return, new media outlets have guaranteed traffic from anxious millennials by listing things that fall into the category of problematic when white people adopt them (blaccents, bindis and box braids).

Why has cultural appropriation, an imperfect mobilised in imperfect contexts, become such live ammunition for the socially conscious?

…This month, news broke that Inuit singers were boycotting Canada’s Indigenous Music Awards over the nomination of a Cree singer who, it is claimed, utilises specifically Inuit throat-singing techniques without coming from that culture herself.

(Ash Sarkar, The Guardian, 2019)

In 2003 Katherine Jenkins, a Welsh girl who went to a Church of Wales primary school, sang at Westminster Catholic Cathedral, which is in England. That shouldn’t have been allowed on many counts. When she was 17, she, a Welsh girl, went to the Royal Academy of Music in London. How was that allowed? Did she sing in English when she visited the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? How was that permitted? Yes, I really could have fun with cultural appropriation or a bi-product of it.