From village healers to global brands, witches have long cast their spells over commercial transactions.
K-pop band BTS and their company, Big Hit, have donated money to Black Lives Matter. Most bands and companies in the industry have not made any sort of statements.
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
The Hollywood actor’s controversial role in a perfume ad has drawn criticism for ‘cultural appropriation’. But it’s not as simple as that.
Cio-Cio-San (centre) during a dress rehearsal of Opera Australia’s Madama Butterfly at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney in 2019. Works such as this are attracting criticism from some modern audiences.
Stephen Saphore/AAP
Opera companies around the world are grappling with an ever-widening gap between a repertoire frozen in time and an increasingly critical audience.
Mexicans representing indigenous soldiers and the French army, re-enact the battle of Puebla during Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Mexico City.
AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo
Kirby Farah, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The holiday honors a 19th-century battle between the French and the Mexican armies that, strangely enough, may have influenced the outcome of the US Civil War.
Composer William Barton in 2013. Indigenous composers have long been working in the field, but the contribution of Indigenous music and culture to Australian composition deserves greater recognition.
David Crosling/AAP
Some covers are recorded as a nod to the legacy of the original, only to end up becoming the definitive version of the song.
The restaurants that tend to win awards in Australia are predominantly run by white owners serving European food. Why don’t people of colour get the same attention in the kitchen?
Tracey Nearmy/AAP
Non-Indigenous writers, if they wish to engage ethically with Indigenous culture, must learn to respect it as a form of property grounded in kinship and country.
Writing is an act of imagination - but when it comes to imagining other people’s lives, it pays to do your research.
Shutterstock.com
Writing based on observation and empathy is one thing; but interviewing the people whose experiences you aim to depict - and showing them your work - is quite another.
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in New York.
really short via Flickr
The celebrity chef is being accused of cultural appropriation over his latest product. But what is ‘jerk’ food and why the uproar?
Tony Albert Girramay/Yidinji/Kuku Yalanji peoples. Australia Qld/NSW b.1981.
Mid Century Modern (series) 2016
Pigment prints | 24 works: 100 x 100cm (each)
Collection: The artist. Courtesy: Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney
White people hugely influence the Aboriginal art world – but that can be a good thing, according to the artists.
A sculpture of William Ricketts looms over those of Arrernte and Pitjantjatjara men at the sanctuary in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges.
Chris Haych/flickr
A mossy sanctuary in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges houses 92 sculptures, mostly of Arrernte and Pitjantjatjara men, women and children. They are steeped in primitivism, yet the park is a popular tourist attraction.
The cultural appropriation debate has flared after an American teenager wore a qipao, a Chinese-style dress, to her prom. But the meanings around the dress are complicated.
The Trump administration recently reduced the size of Bears Ears in Utah, opening millions of acres to mining and other uses. This threatens Indigenous heritage and can be seen as a form of violence.
The Rolling Stones performing in Hamburg during the ‘No Filter’ European tour: the band’s legacy is entwined with the pioneers of black American music.
Morris Mac Matzen/Reuters
Pinching musical phrases and stylistic approaches has always been a part of art making and can be a respectful exchange. But shallow, ill-informed appropriation only perpetuates tired stereotypes.
When does parody spill into insensitive cultural appropriation? While Chris LIlley is probably OK to appropriate the upper North Shore culture of Ja’mie (pictured), he’s on dodgier ground with Jonah from Tonga.
Princess Pictures, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Home Box Office (HBO)
In our pursuit of a world that is safely and entirely OK, must humour be cleansed of its original sin of cultural appropriation and insensitivity? It depends whether we are ‘laughing up’ or ‘laughing down’.