Page 127 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

10 | Cultural Appropr at on

CoLLECTivE aPProPriaTion: rELigion
Cultural appropriation often reflects resistance to or the projection of an al-
ternative solution to the massive power that is wielded by government, indus-
try, and religion, and other social institutions. Let us consider the supremely
important case of big religion. Because faith has proven to be so important to
so many people in nearly every world culture, religious ideology, institutions,
and iconography—often in mediated form—have become familiar objects avail-
able as popular resources for cultural appropriation. Some examples can help
illustrate how this works. Catholics everywhere make their own nontraditional
Catholicism, often to the horror of Church authorities. In Latin America, for
example, people have invented various hybrid local religions composed of tra-
ditional Vatican dogma and liturgy, but also reflecting local customs, beliefs,
superstitions, and rituals, including African voodoo. In recent years, many Latin
American Catholics have adapted and transformed Catholic ideology, author-
ity, rules, and rituals to better fit their own personal, group, and cultural ori-
entations in massive processes of “collective appropriation.” The “Black Saints”
were created by African slaves and their progeny in Brazil in order to make the
bible more ethnically relevant, as another example, and Venezuelan residents of
a poor Andean village have replaced Jesus on the cross with a local hero, a medi-
cal doctor who saved many lives in the area a century ago. All these particular
images gain power and popularity because they are picked up and circulated
by the mass media, also known as the “cultural media,” and become part of the
common consciousness.
A particularly striking example of collective cultural appropriation in the
realm of religion in Latin America is the Santa Muerte (Saint of Death) move-
ment in Mexico. This social movement was started by poor people who felt
their spiritual and social needs weren’t being sufficiently met by the traditional
Church. To develop an alternative faith, people appropriated virtually all of the
main symbols of Catholicism. Most importantly, the Virgin Mary, a cultural
symbol of great importance to Catholics everywhere but especially within the
Mexican interpretation of the religion, was transformed into La Santa Muerte,
the “saint of death.” She appears as a skeleton cloaked in a shroud. That particular
symbol was created because one philosophical tenet of the movement is that
only in death do all people truly become equal. Only then, at the imagined mo-
ment of meeting God, can poor people become properly recognized and val-
ued. Other religious symbols have been culturally appropriated too, often for
less serious reasons. Madonna popularized the cross as a decorative object for
her shows and videos, and the Jewish Kabala became a symbol of her celebrity
lifestyle. Goth rocker Marilyn Manson made religious iconography, including
the cross, part of his purposefully “demonic” stage show.

inTEnTion

Not all instances of cultural re-signification are intentional or even consciously
recognized by those who do the work. Homeless people in the United States, for
example, have turned supermarket shopping carts into personal storage vehicles.