Shōgun, the FX series set in feudal Japan, knocked it out of the park at the Emmys last week, winning 18 trophies, including categories like directing, acting, and costume design. It was nothing short of a triumph.
The success of Shōgun is a rebuke to those who have tried to stymie and muzzle artistic output in the name of cultural appropriation. Given all the flashpoints over artistic or cultural expression in the last four years, such as removing classic books in public libraries, or almost removing dwarves from the upcoming remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, all in the name of the debate over cultural appropriation seems almost quaint in 2024.
In 2017, however, cultural appropriation was a big issue.
It was the year that The Walrus magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jonathan Kay, resigned after a controversy related to cultural appropriation. In conversation with the Toronto Star, Kay wrote the following:
“If a black author wants to write a First Nation story, or an Asian author wants to write a Hispanic protagonist, we should find room for that and start from the presumption that they’re going to do so respectfully,” Kay said. “Only when it’s obvious that they have bad motives should we call them out for cultural appropriation.”
Clavell had spent years in the Pacific as a prisoner of war of the Japanese Empire during World War II, and decades later, devoted two years to painstakingly researching and studying the history of feudal Japan before writing the novel. Once released, Shōgun became a best-seller and was well-received by audiences, much like the television series today.
The series was mostly filmed in British Columbia, and cast with mostly Japanese actors. Strict attention was paid to aspects like costume and set design, scripting, and swordplay with the katanas, while Japanese specialists were consulted every step of the way to ensure accuracy.
The show has been praised for “its respect for the smallest details of the country’s culture and politics,” and the result was one of the best swords-and-armor dramas since Game of Thrones’ first four seasons. It is little surprise that Shōgun was a massive hit in both the United States and Japan, for all the reasons listed above.
Contrast that with the second season of Netflix’s “African Queens,” which essentially used Cleopatra and Ancient Egypt as a platform to graft on modern American culture wars about race and multiculturalism. Most provocatively, the show asserted that Cleopatra was a black pharaoh.
The Ancient Egyptian skin colour controversy is truly one of the most useless debates that continues to find life in the hearts and minds of race-obsessed Westerners.
Ancient Egypt has absolutely nothing in common with modern conceptions of race.
Black and white supremacists still disingenuously refuse to see Ancient Egypt for what it was, a civilization of both the Mediterranean and Africa, which is a far more racially diverse continent than people not born in Africa are willing to conceive of it as.
Invaders of Ancient Egypt, from what is today Sudan and Greece, resulted in a list of pharaohs who, unsurprisingly, looked much like the different populations of the modern Mediterranean. There were certainly long lines of pharaohs that we would call black in the 21st century, and the evidence for that is about as ironclad as you can get from evidence dating back almost three millennia.
Cleopatra is not among them, and the evidence that she was mostly of the same Macedonian Greek ethnicity as her predecessors who annexed Egypt with Alexander the Great is far more conclusive than the crumbs of evidence suggesting otherwise.
Nonetheless, Netflix ran with those crumbs to produce a poorly written, confused show that cannot figure out whether it wants to resemble a documentary or “House of the Dragon.”
If offensively inaccurate shows must exist, they should at least be well-produced to avoid irritating both the subject culture and the average viewer. Instead, African Queens’ second season was savaged by both, with Egyptians taking particularly sharp umbrage at the American fanfiction about their country’s history.
It was everything that Shōgun was not, and it paid a price.
Consult with the subject cultures extensively, cast appropriate actors for the roles, and make sure it is well-written, directed, and produced, and the result will be a timeless classic like FX’s Shōgun, in which just a single episode was directed by someone born in Japan.
One of the greatest strengths of Shōgun is how well it transports the viewer back hundreds of years ago to an unfamiliar culture. The show and the book it was based on were both made for a western audience and readership, and such works of art are often the exciting entry point for learning about other cultures.
Creativity should not be limited by something as arbitrary and retrograde as race or culture. If you are an Irish-Canadian and want to write a book set in Colombia, go right ahead. If you are a Lebanese-Canadian from Montreal and want to produce and direct a drama series for the CBC set in the pre-colonial Pacific Northwest, that is worth funding if the script and pitch are sound.
The entrenchment of anti-creative and anti-human tendencies under the guise of combating “cultural appropriation” is an abomination that should be snuffed out, or brilliant shows like Shōgun will continue to be rarities.
Given the state of Netflix’s pseudo-historical productions, we could use some more Shōguns.
National Post