Cultural Appropriation In Día De Los Muertos

As the world develop and culture globalization, often people cross the fine line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation. ‘Cultural appropriation’ refers to the adoption or use of the elements of another culture’s practices by members of another culture (Young, 2010). Examples of appropriation include the partaking of the traditions, food, fashion, songs, festival and language of others. For decades, it has been a controversial debate topic and issue around the world. With many different categories of cultural appropriation present, in this essay, its focus is on the cultural appropriation in festival, as is the case in Día De Los Muertos, a festival celebrated in Mexico. It will then explain how cultural appropriation in festival
It is often celebrated from 31 October to 2 November where ofrendas, or altars are decorated with sugar skull, flowers, food, candles and photos to remember their loved ones. On the Day of the dead celebration, Mexicans would dress in fancy clothes with skeletons and skulls symbols printed and put on skull face painting (Devash, 2016). Although this might be spine chilling and difficult to understand, for people who are not familiar with the Latin America culture, on why such symbols are used, skulls and skeletons play a very important role in the Day of the Dead (McKeown, 2016). McKeown (2016) reinforce that the skeleton and skull used during the Day of the Dead is very different from the ones used in Halloween. In Día De Los Muertos culture, skull has a uniquely positive
The two events are greatly different in tone and tradition. Halloween is a dark night of horror whilst Day of the Dead is a festival of life-affirming joy (Ward, 2016). Despite the difference, during Halloween, sight of people selling and wearing Day of the Dead inspired costume can be seen, especially in the UK. Duell (2016) pointed out an oft-invoked example of Asda, a British supermarket retailer, selling Day of the Dead inspired costume and labelling them as ‘Halloween Day of the Dead skeleton costume’. This has caused many to express their displeasure of how Asda cherry pick things from the Day of the Dead culture without understanding the culture before they appropriate them. For some people, it's just a pretty outfit or symbol to be wore and use during Halloween. However, in the view of the Mexicans, it is an important symbol to them where tradition is practiced in their communities. To the Mexicans, they felt that their culture was being disrespected and offended.

Unlike other festival, where steps have already been taken and rules implemented to minimize cultural appropriation, for example head dresses are being banned in Montreal’s music festival, there is still no specific effort done for cultural appropriation of the day of the dead. In order to stop cultural appropriation of the Day of the Dead, similar to other festival, fine could