HUM 221: Commodification, expropriation

Two key concepts in our study of Native American cultural expression this semester are commodification and expropriation.

Of the two, commodification is the easier to define. It means just about what you'd expect it to by analyzing the word roots: It's making a commodity out of something, turning it into something that can be bought and sold. If you get great-grandma's old butter churn down out of the attic and sell it to an antique dealer, you're commodifying it. To some degree, it's inevitable in a market ecomomy. It can get to be a problem, however, if the buyer isn't sensitive to -- or aware of -- its original use. Or when religious values hold that some things shouldn't be sold. Some Iroquois masks, for example, are used only in healing rituals. To offer them for sale would violate Iroquois spiritual and religious traditions. (The word also applies to espresso stands, apparently. Follow this link to see how Starbucks "commoditizes" its retail outlets, at least according to one company exec.)

Expropriation is a little tricker. Basically, it means taking an art form out of its original culture. If a homeowner from Chicago buys great-grandma's butter churn and turns it into a lamp stand, for example, he's expropriating the art form -- turning it into something different. If a white college gymnast performs American Indian dances as halftime entertainment an athletic event, he's expropriating them and turning them into something different by removing them from their culture. Like commodification, some degree of expropriation is inevitable in a free market society. Elvis Pressley and Emimem both made music history by expropriating African American art forms. Again, however, it can be controversial.

Here's a passage from Chicago gospel singer Mahalia Jackson's autobiography that shows a common reaction to expropriation and commodification by more traditional artists.

One evening not long ago I was in New York City doing some shopping. As I walked down a street in Greenwich Village where I like to go look for peieces of ebony statuary, I suddenly heard this singing with a gospel beat.

I looked in the door of a nightclub and there was a Negro girl with her hair bleached red-blond swinging a gospel song that I had first heard as a little girl in a Holiness Church in New Orleans. The place was packed with white people who were laughing and eating and drinking and hand-clapping. Barteners were beating out the rhythm of the song on church tambourines and waitresses were even using tambourines as trays to serve drinks!

It was a sight and made me so sad and so sick that I'll never forget it. The dignity of a colored church and of all religion was being debased so that a few people soulc make some fast money.

When they take gospel singing into nightclubs and put out "pop gospel" records, they are blaspheming against the Holy Ghost. I make two kinds of gospel song records -- one for Negroes who like to tap their feet, and one for those who like religious songs sung to them. But I would never sing a song to be laughed at or to help sell a bottle of whiskey! (105-08).

Not everyone would agree with Mahalia Jackson here. In fact, some evangelists prefer to go out in the world to spread their message. But her attitude is common, and I think it has to be respected.

At the same time, I have to wonder about those ebony statues Jackson was shopping for in Greenwich Village. They sound to me like an African art form; if they were, and they were on sale in New York, there had to be some expropriation and commodification going on. Maybe the key to it, all way around, is respect.

Works CitedJackson, Mahalia, and Evan McLeod Wylie. Movin' on Up. New York: Hawthorn, 1966.