you know that it will be advertised all over the world and taken for the truth.
Yeah, this is a really good point. I think this is why the dominant culture has power just because it's better known. For example, no matter how many refrigerator magnets and t-shirts and bumper stickers have cheap, exploitative images of Jesus on them, every single person who sees one is going to recognize it as Jesus, an important religious figure, 2,000 years of Christian history, etc. People can rip off the image as Jesus as much as they want, but the original idea is so famous and has so much power that it outweighs all the appropriations of it.
But on the other hand, when people start selling the images of the Easter Island heads on t-shirts and coffemugs, there's not as much cultural power behind the idea. So the appropriation, like you said, gets more advertised than the reality, and so taken as the truth.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2006-06-02 06:41 pm (UTC)you know that it will be advertised all over the world and taken for the truth.
Yeah, this is a really good point. I think this is why the dominant culture has power just because it's better known. For example, no matter how many refrigerator magnets and t-shirts and bumper stickers have cheap, exploitative images of Jesus on them, every single person who sees one is going to recognize it as Jesus, an important religious figure, 2,000 years of Christian history, etc. People can rip off the image as Jesus as much as they want, but the original idea is so famous and has so much power that it outweighs all the appropriations of it.
But on the other hand, when people start selling the images of the Easter Island heads on t-shirts and coffemugs, there's not as much cultural power behind the idea. So the appropriation, like you said, gets more advertised than the reality, and so taken as the truth.
So yes! I like your thoughts. *grins*