culture vulture
English
Alternative forms
- culture-vulture (dated)
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈkʌlt͡ʃə ˌvʌlt͡ʃə/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈkʌlt͡ʃɚ ˌvʌlt͡ʃɚ/
Noun
culture vulture (plural culture vultures)
- (informal, humorous) A person with an inauthentic and rapacious, possibly forced, interest in the arts. [from early 20th century]
- 1920, The Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 39, p. 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.
- 1920, The Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 39, p. 241.
- (informal, derogatory) A creative maker who copies rather than creates original work.
- (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.
- 2020, Robin Throne, Indigenous Research of Land, Self, and Spirit, 135.