Sir Buzz

There is this great Indian folk tale about a tiny man with a huge beard and appetite. He helps the son of a soldier who helped an unhappy tigress, it's a great story and i like it a lot. It along with several other stories in Tales of the Punjab really inspired me to do a series of illustrations on the book, which admittedly is already well illustrated, but i like drawing dangnabit. Anyway i was telling a Buddhist Friend about it, and he dosn't think that I should. He says it's not my culture i shouldn't borrow from it.(I only mention the Buddhism because I think it's funny considering the history of Buddhism)

I said "Yes, i agree cultural appropriation is a problem, but these are folk tales. "

and he says "Yeah exactly."

Maybe i look at folk tales differently but it seems to me that they are stories that can be told to anyone and changed as they are told. There are of course exceptions. The oral traditions of native tribes, specifically Australian and American are well guarded and only for the ears of certain people, but the stories of Eurasia and Africa are so much more interchangeable. Egypt used to trade gods with the Greeks for Poseidon's sake!

So long story short, i ain't doing it anymore cause he could be right, (I ain't no anthropologist/major in cultural studies) but at least i got to draw Sir Buzz.