Cultural Appropriation

Let's start by understanding what is the meaning of Cultural Appropriation

Starting with the basic, the act of cultural appropriation usually carries racial, colonial and socioeconomic implications. Cultural appropriation define by involves of using one cultural's elements by others which is does not belong to them.It is often use without any real understanding of the original culture or the meanings behind these activities. The cultural artifacts are used and covered into "meaningless" pop-culture or turn its meaning into something completely different it originally have. (Bruce & Pratima, 1997)

Western pop music, we often seen some of the music videos or tones used referring to appropriation. We can see that some western pop music are using costume or accessories to help with the whole concept of the music or album. The combination of other chorus and musical instrument. Where they get ideas or inspiration from other's culture, as an example a music video from  Katy Perry "Dark house" playing with dark magic.

The scene shown in the video "Dark house"

As you can see in this music video, the fashion and background making everything looks or feels like inspired by Ancient Egypt (Jacobson, 2014).The colorful costumes, makeup and striking visual effects putting Egyptian culture into a artistic theme that attempts to manipulation a civilization by constructing it through fantasy (Clifton, 2014). 

Reference 
Bruce H. Ziff, Pratima V. Rao (1997) Borrowed Power. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey [Online]. Available at: https://books.google.com.my/books?id=BhAhb2lf49oC&pg=PP5&dq=cultural+appropriation+&lr=&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q=cultural%20appropriation&f=false. [Accessed at 11 June 2017 ]

Clifton, D (2014) 5 Reasons Katy Perry Is Pop Music's Worst Cultural Appropriator. [Online]  Available at: https://mic.com/articles/95444/5-reasons-katy-perry-is-pop-music-s-worst-cultural-appropriator#.d8dthpMiN [Accessed at 11 June 2017 ]

Jacobson.I (2014) Katy Perry's 'Dark Horse' Video Is 32 Seconds of Controversy. [Online]. Available at: https://www.bustle.com/articles/15512-katy-perrys-dark-horse-video-is-32-seconds-of-controversy [Accessed at 11 June 2017 ]

Rogers,A. R (2006) 'From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation' Available at: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/rar/papers/RogersCT2006.pdf.  [Accessed at 11 June 2017 ]

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Mah, S (2014) More than a night of harmless fun: Hawaiian cultural appropriation [Online]  Available at: http://thesheaf.com/2014/01/23/more-than-a-night-of-harmless-fun-hawaiian-cultural-appropriation/. [Accessed at 11 June 2017 ]