Recently, global netizens discovered an entertainment company that decided to educate their future idol members about Cultural Appropriation.
DeepStudio Entertainment started a project called YOURS in which they have viewers and netizens vote for the members for their next girl group through social media. They have been continuously posting videos on their Youtube channel YOURS as they pick out seven trainees for the final group.
The YouTube channel shows various different content such as trainee evaluations, audition, and also education that the trainees undergo. Recently, their recent education topic caught the interest of the international netizens as the company educated the trainees about Cultural Appropriation.
The girls sat down at a conference room as they were taught about Cultural appropriation. They stated that one of their fans from their fandom 'Myme' suggested on their Discord chat that the girls should learn about this topic.
The topic was explained clearly using simple illustrations and photos. The example of hairstyles was used to give a clear understanding of cultural appropriation.
Many international netizens are praising the agency for taking the time to teach the proper definition of cultural appropriation and stated that they highly value education on their trainees.
They claimed they are educating the trainees to try their best to not hurt anyone. DeepStudio Entertainment also asked the netizens to suggest other topics the trainees should be taught about showing a different approach to rearing an idol group.
Netizens have commented, "This is what all companies should be doing: educating their trainees. I'd really love it if you girls could talk about Indian culture, native American culture, middle eastern culture (and maybe African culture) who are highly culturally appropriated in K-pop, especially Indian culture these days. Thank you so much!", "I’m glad you’re educating yourselves about this. It’s definitely a step in the right direction :)", and "This cool that they are making them aware of cultural appropriation."
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Anthropologists - the people who study human habits, societies, cultures, and how they change and adapt - do not talk about "cultural appropriation". They reject the term because it's not a scientific concept and has not been sufficiently proven to exist according to the high standards set by science. The term is highly problematic since it's poorly defined and vaguely limited. And yet it has become popular because people jump on new ideas which fit their world-view, without caring much about figuring out what these ideas are based on. Now companies spread it in training sessions, despite it not standing up to scientific scrutiny.
Instead anthropologists talk about "cultural diffusion", the idea that it's natural that all cultural ideas are the result of interaction between people and them being borrowed and copied by others. So the very process of how a culture is formed is based on people sharing and getting inspired by what they've seen others do. It's natural, and anthropologists do not describe it using the negative term "appropriation".
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