A Gold Coast makeup artist has apologised for creating an Indigenous North American Halloween look that featured a bleeding bullet wound on the chest.
The artist, known for her realistic work, was asked by a client to create the grisly depiction for a “Dead Disney” Halloween party at the weekend but received several complaints after posting a pic of the final product on her Instagram Story.
The image has since expired but the Queensland makeup artist wants to make it clear she would “never promote racism.”
“I apologise endlessly for not seeing it from that perspective initially and nothing more than a Halloween look, but my eyes have been opened and I can empathise with how it may be offensive to some,” she wrote on her Instagram Story.
“I’m definitely not racist, I’m Asian and being from a minority in a westernised country I’ve obviously experienced it in my life and would never intend that on anyone.”
Blackface, Native American headdresses and face paint, and geishas are often appropriated at Halloween through costumes and caricature.
Aaron Nyerges, a lecturer in American studies at the University of Sydney, said it’s “laudable” the makeup artist apologised and the incident should be a lesson.
Nyerges also added that images like this can be unsettling not just for Indigenous Americans but also for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
“Aboriginal Australians, I know, still today carry the burden of remembering ancestors that were shot by settlers in colonial wars,” he told HuffPost Australia.
“We all have a responsibility to approach this history seriously, and not aestheticise, trivialise or distance ourselves from it. A good example of ‘Disneyfication,’ this costume trivialises a painful colonial history that still affects Australians and Americans alike.”
Professor Yin Paradies, who specialises in race relations at Deakin University, said reinforcing negative stereotypes about other cultures can be minimised through considerate costume choices.
“This costume belittles, mocks and makes fun of the widespread massacre of Native Americans during earlier periods of colonisation,” he told HuffPost Australia.
“This should be offensive to anybody who has an issue with mass murder. It is profoundly insulting in the context of the ongoing racism and inter-generational trauma experienced by Indigenous peoples around the world.”
Paradies describes cultural appropriation as “the adoption of elements of one culture by members of another culture in a way that is offensive, discriminatory or harmful.”
“Halloween is a time to dress up in fantastical and grotesque ways that are about anything but everyday people. If you wear blackface or Native American headdress on Halloween, this is reinforcing stereotypes about African or Native Americans as less than or other than human by making fun of members of these societal groups.”
Paradies suggested “sticking to costumes based on fantasy or animal themes means that there is little danger of being racist”.
from Huffington Post Australia Athena2 https://ift.tt/31RvHiP
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