culture vulture

• culture-vulture (dated)

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlt͡ʃə ˌvʌlt͡ʃə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlt͡ʃɚ ˌvʌlt͡ʃɚ/

culture vulture (plural culture vultures)

1. (informal, humorous) A person with an inauthentic and rapacious, possibly forced, interest in the arts. [from early 20th century]
   • 1920, The Canadian Historical Review, volume 39, page 241:

     […] -- unless of course “culture” is thought to be something decoratively added when all else has been accomplished, the fairy on the Christmas tree: an approach which opens wide the way for culture-vultures and peddlars of arty gentility, upon whom “culture” sits (to misuse an image of T. S. Eliot's) like a silk hat upon a Bradford millionaire.

   • 1970 March 9, "The Culture Vulture's Swoop through Dry Dock Country", New York Magazine, vol. 3, no. 10, 13.

     Around 59th and Lexington, where Dry Dock Savings Bank is located, pickings are lush for the purple-pantsuited culture vulture.

   • 1984, Elizabeth Mary Wilkinson; Michael Hamburger, Goethe Revisited: A Collection of Essays:

     […] we can see that this is a man of the living theatre who was not interested in a culture-vulture audience.

   • 2001, Christine Olga Kiebuzinska, Intertextual Loops in Modern Drama:

     […] a failed composer who thinks himself to be Webern's successor, and his pretentious wife, a culture vulture.

   • 2008, Susie Whalley; Lisa Jackson, Running Made Easy:

     Be a culture vulture by going to the ballet, opera or a classical concert.

   • 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, pages 151, 152:

     A through northbound service to Finsbury Park […] was the 'Theatre Express'. It was meant to serve theatre-goers who lived on the main-line stops beyond Finsbury Park, say, Enfield. […] But there weren't enough culture vultures in places like Enfield to justify the service.

2. (informal, derogatory) A creative maker who copies rather than creates original work.
3. (derogatory, slang, social justice) Someone who engages in cultural appropriation. [from ca. 1990]
   • 2020, Robin Throne, Indigenous Research of Land, Self, and Spirit, 135.

     However, a different indigenous researcher sees the use of restorative justice circles by nonindigenous people as being more of culture vultures and taking culture applicable to them and ignoring a brutal history of abuse, oppression, and genocide.

   • 2022, Mike D'Errico, Push: Software Design and the Cultural Politics of Music Production, Oxford University Press, page 43.

     Think about Diplo, EDM producer-DJ and oft-accused “culture vulture,” whose modus operandi involves applying Western, Eurocentric, and Americanized EDM styles to samples from global dance music communities.