Is Cancel Culture Canceled?

Disclaimer: This is not a story. This is a think piece inspired by the challenge. I know this doesn’t exactly fit the brief, but I’m posting here if, for nothing else, to get the submission numbers up.

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Listen. I’m a big fan of canceling certain things.

White men? Cancel ’em.

With special attention to Ted Cruz, Britney Spears’ Dad, Jeff Bezos, Josh Hawley, Elon Musk, Woody Allen, David O’Russell, anyone associated with Fox News and anyone who has ever uttered the phrase “not all men” in a serious way.

Racists? Cancel ’em.

Go back into your hidey-holes because your supreme orange leader has retreated into the depths of the Mar-a-largo swamps from whence he came.

Cops? Cancel ’em.

Say their names. George Flloyd, Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, Elijah McClain, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Amir Brooks…and the list goes on. No further comment needed.

Transphobes? Cancel ’em.

JK Rowling, why?! At this point, your patronus is probably just a parrot that shouts “sex is real” over and over again to exhaust your enemies.

Sexists? Cancel ’em.

See white men.

If we’re being serious though, those who use the phrase “cancel culture,” are likely also using “free speech” as a euphemism for “people should be able to say whatever hateful, dangerous lies they want without consequence.” Cancel culture has largely become a bogeyman for those on the right that allows them to spend time arguing over utter nonsense – like whether Mr. Potato Head should be a male potato – rather than having substantive debate over policy that would actually serve their constituents. If said bogeyman was personified, I have no doubt they’d be gender non-conforming and vegan, donate monthly to Planned Parenthood and own a collection of t-shirts that say, “Eat the Rich.” Truly the stuff of the collective conservative nightmare.

The greatest irony here is that conservatives, white nationalists and other extremists are actually trying to use the principle of free speech to undermine the very democracy that grants them such freedom in the first place, a system they so often purport to revere and assert they are attempting to protect. This is particularly prevalent on social media platforms, which again, exist as fairly unregulated public square-type spaces. Their existence is at least in part due to our democratic society (as opposed to say, China, where popular social media platforms are banned or heavily censored), and yet, they are frequently used to destabilize it.

This is where civic republicanism comes in. (Don’t let the term “republicanism” scare you.) This political doctrine posits that individual freedom can actually only be achieved and maintained by the community. In a society where individualism has run amuck like the U.S. – where anti-fact, anti-science, anti-racial equality and anti-gender equality sentiments have been given far too much credence as of late – it becomes harder and harder to maintain a functioning democracy. And just as the challenges plaguing citizens’ right to free speech change over time as cultural norms change, so too will the actions needed to maintain free and fair institutions. Today, this often means having more nuanced conversations and making more careful determinations about what should and should not be protected as free speech, and what constitutes its obstruction, particularly when it comes to electronic forms of communication.

Where it gets tricky is when folks make accusations about supposed attempts to squash free speech that are disingenuous. Here, I’m thinking specifically of the upheaval that occurs when colleges cancel speaker appearances after public outcry (see Milo Yiannopoulos). In these scenarios, there’s typically a swift response from conservative commentators. “Cancel culture strikes again!” they yell, claiming that schools are limiting the free exchange of ideas that is crucial in academia, conveniently ignoring the fact that they otherwise spend most of their time demonizing intellectualism.

It also often seems that outspoken critics are not so much concerned with free speech as they are with giving their own views a public forum. Something tells me that if a speaker was advocating for abortions on demand, the same folks slamming cancel culture now would be out there demanding that the school rescind its offer to the speaker, without any fear of its implications on free speech. The reality is that academic institutions are simply trying to determine the best way to maintain their integrity and proper functioning by asserting that speakers who regularly incite violence and inflame tensions with outright lies shouldn’t be given a platform; they’ve deemed the risk of giving them a public forum too great. And that’s not to say that we shouldn’t examine such organizational decisions and explore the proverbial “slippery slope” to censorship. We absolutely should, but we need to do so in a way that embraces critical thinking, mutual respect and a basic understanding of the concept of free speech in and of itself.

What’s more is that, for all the supposed fear over cancel culture, it actually hasn’t had much of a meaningful impact on political leaders, celebrities, corporations or power structures and institutions. When a celebrity gets “canceled”, for instance, they may endure some public shaming, become the topic of various think pieces or lose sponsors. Other than that, though, most maintain their success and remain comfortably seated with more economic and social capital than many of us could ever dream of. Take the case of Louis C.K. To be blunt and brief, the man cornered MULTIPLE unsuspecting women and jerked off in front of them. Now he is performing at sold out comedy shows across the country while using his appalling, perverted past behavior as fodder for his material. (This also begs the question, who are the people still going to watch this man’s shows? And where is his shame? Somehow, he still parades around with the inflated self-importance like only a mediocre white man can.)

So what do we really mean when we say something is “canceled”?

If we’re talking about attempts to make something more inclusive or call out behavior that marginalizes or brutalizes others, the meaning of canceling something or someone can be two-fold. As British sociologist Stanley Cohen wrote, we may use collective moral panic or public shaming as “warning signs of the real, much deeper and more prevalent condition.” Though the way in which folks may approach it – particularly on social media – may vary, with some being more thoughtful than others, the important piece is that it often signals to a very real and pervasive problem that may only be able to be effectively addressed if it is thrust into the limelight (take the #MeToo movement, for instance).

On the other hand, the distance and anonymity that social media provides can lead to vehement calls for cancellation without much critical thought or empathy, simply because it’s easier to place the blame and ridicule on someone else than to reflect on how we too might be worthy of criticism, and/or how we might be complicit in and benefit from the structures that negatively impact others. It’s simpler and much more comfortable to point the finger than to do the real work of dissecting and atoning for our own sins. And on the Internet, it’s also wildly more entertaining. With memes, GIFs, TikToks, YouTube videos and the like, there are a veritable plethora of avenues with which to express our disdain that will live on in infamy and probably make us laugh while doing it.

One of the great ironies of canceling someone else is that it often seems to evoke the same behavior for which someone is being canceled in the first place. Take, for instance, Taylor Swift recently decrying a sexist joke in the new Netflix show Ginny and Georgia. The lead character, played by Antonia Gentry, a 24-year-old biracial woman, says the following in one episode: “You’ve gone through more men than Taylor Swift.” Is the line sexist? Sure. But is it worthy of calls to “cancel” the show and the actress? Given the otherwise quite progressive content of the show and the fact that the actress likely had little power to change it as a relative unknown in Hollywood, I’d argue no, but that’s beside the point. What deserves attention is the fact that calls to cancel are coming from enraged “Swifties” who have leveraged sexist and racist attacks against the actress in response to her saying a line in a TV show that she didn’t even write.

If these people actually cared about the issue of sexism and not just blind defense of their lord and savior T Swift, we wouldn’t be seeing this kind of commentary. In this case, we see so-called cancel culture creating the very conditions it (insofar as we can even say it is a cohesive movement) purportedly works to dismantle. Not to mention how extra problematic the situation has become with her fans trying to silence a young Black woman with a tiny public platform in comparison to Swift, who is 31 years old, whiter-than-white, has millions of followers and is on the record saying she didn’t want to be labeled a feminist just a few short years ago. And let us not forget that Swift herself was “canceled.” One has to wonder, if it was such a challenging experience for her – as she’s publicly spoken about multiple times – why wouldn’t she have empathy for others facing something similar? Perhaps it has to do with a lack of emotional maturity that we do little to foster in a world where we’re constantly trying to address complex issues in 150-characters or less.

Regularly, we see cancel culture play out among popular “low-brow” media content like a Netflix show, but what about “high art”, as noted in this month’s challenge? It’s interesting that it would be suggested that cancel culture may somehow be responsible for censoring work of any substantive creative significance, when what I think we’re really talking about is not cancel culture at all, at least in its current manifestation. Rather, the calls for banning such work – from books like Beloved and Brave New World to art like the Last Judgement and the Vietnam War Memorial – have most often, if not entirely, been from conservatives and/or Christians (often one in the same) who wish to shield the masses from questioning the dominant world order and discourage critical thinking that might expose their values for what they are – devoid of humanity, logic and nuance – in the name of preserving the structures from which they derive their power, however unearned and egregious it may be.

This is not cancel culture. Rather, it is censorship in its truest form; one that threatens human autonomy and democratic society at every turn. It is laughable hypocrisy. It is religious zealotry at its finest. If these folks are so concerned with women and children, for instance, why are they not actively running campaigns to end underage pornography and child sex-trafficking on Pornhub? Why are they instead screaming at women outside of abortion clinics? If they care so much about freedom of religion with all their incessant talk of the “War on Christmas”, why are they in the streets with tiki torches shouting “Jews will not replace us”? The answer is that they don’t actually give a fuck about any of these purported American values – they only care to preserve and promote their own views – those of white supremacy, racism, sexism and homophobia to name a few. Did anyone hear cries of cancel culture from the liberals (and other generally sane people) when conservatives went nuclear about Ellen DeGeneres coming out on primetime television? How about when they freaked out over an interracial couple in a Cheerios commercial? And god forbid you ever bring up the villainous Dixie Chicks (now just “The Chicks). These people literally invented cancel culture, and now they’re trying to claim its another liberal conspiracy to ban Santa and force men to wear dresses. (I see you Harry Styles, you sexy English teacup, you.)

Certainly, some “high art” may be problematic and worthy of critique, especially older work that we examine in a modern context. Artists are human, and thus, they are not without fault. Their work can be, and often is (at least in part) a product of their time. As society advances and cultural norms shift, so do the ways in which we must consume art. We can recognize the value in Gone With the Wind while also recognizing its racist themes. We can recognize the great direction and production of Hitchcock films while also understanding that his work was often sexist, painting women as the arbiters of evil calamities due to their overly emotional natures and general stupidity. Here, we’re asking people to be media literate – to ask who makes something, why, to what end etc. The same questions should be asked of those who wish to censor creative work – to achieve what purpose? What is the “correct” interpretation of said work that they’d like to sell? (And no, before you ask, the privilege of separating the artist from the art does not extend to Woody Allen, if for no other reason than literally everything he creates is very obviously and inextricably connected to who he his a la objectionable and troubling relationships with young women and children.)

When it comes down to it, the idea that in order for speech to be inclusive, some of it has to be rejected is always going to be a challenging one. And that makes sense, insofar as on the surface, this seems to be a contradiction. What’s missing is a genuine commitment to want to preserve that freedom as opposed to promote one’s own agenda or silence someone else’s. We cannot effectively grapple with the concept of and challenges to free speech if we cannot start on common ground. When liberals and conservatives cannot even agree on observable reality, how can we ever expect to address such a complex issue in any meaningful way? I don’t have the answer, but let’s keep talking about it while we still can.