Journal Six - Bare and Ethical

From what I understood in the Arolas’ text, bare repetition is exactly recreating something to a t or repeating a tradition just like it has customarily been performed; for example, a Civil War reenactment or Noh theatre. The Noh theatre style in Japan serves as an example of bare repetition since the generations who have practiced it since the 1400s have kept the Noh theatre culture so close to its roots and traditions. Training to become a performer on the Noh stage today has remained virtually unchanged since the start of the practice. Noh actors still begin training at a young age, all roles stil wear masks, Noh actors still fulfill the positions of shite, waki, kyogen, and hayashi, and Noh performance spaces all over Japan still maintain the traditional four sectioned stage established in the fifteenth century.

An ethical assemblage, however, sounds like a respectful remix where elements are taken from one assemblage and applied to another with acknowledgement to the element(s)’ original assemblage. Let’s look at the Broadway musical Into the Woods. Stephen Sondheim combined the tales of various Grimm brothers’ characters and combined them into one universe, converging their paths and stories while adding new elements. Sondheim pulls the characters’ names, central story concepts, and even some of the brutality found in the original Brothers Grimm fairy tales and plops them on stage, paying homage to the brothers and creating structure with these consistencies but also adding a new dimension to the stories with music and the intertwining of stories.

Hurtful assemblages should be immediately acknowledged and an explanation about why the assemblage is hurtful must be communicated to the creator as soon as possible. Sometimes people make hurtful assemblages out of ignorance. Do FSU students realize they’re culturally appropriating Seminole culture when they wear headdresses and particular patterns of face paint to football games? Usually no, they just think it’s something cute to wear to a sporting event. In reality, we must recognize this action as taking an important aspect of another peoples’ culture, in this case the Seminole people’s, and making it our own, disrespecting its significance in Seminole culture as students purely use it for aesthetic. However, we must be wary to not automatically assume any assemblage channeling a culture different than that of the creator’s is harmful, as he or she may be adopting those specific cultural aspects and applying them in a respectful manner.

Fair use would be applicable to ethical assemblages, as they adopt ideas of other assemblages but communicate these ideas in a different way or use them as a foundation for new ideas.