Cancel culture is real and it is weaponized in the arts where the real damage occurs, at the entry and midlevel. Artists who have power and clout who are doing unethical and illegal things are called out publicly (rightly so) but, as you mentioned above, unless their behavior puts them in prison, they often get a chance to redeem themselves. For those with far less power or capital, the damage is done and the professional career is likely over.
It’s basically a public version of being privately blacklisted. It sucks because it doesn’t allow for forgiveness or second chances unless you have the money and connections in the first place. People shun others who are considered tainted.
As we are witnessing with the Lively / Baldoni thing, social media mobbing is used manipulatively by people who understand how to weaponize public opinion. Neither of them have been cancelled yet, but it’s a very interesting example of the mechanisms behind what fuels cancel culture.
People should be called out if they are behaving harmfully, but I also think the court of public opinion is bloodthirsty and enjoys drama.
I’d love to hear more about your description of how cancel culture affects entry and midlevel artists. Who is canceling them? Why? How prevalent is that? Have you read anything good on this subject that you could share with us so we can understand it better?
I have an example of something that happened while I attended my MFA in creative writing a few years ago. It didn't happen to me but I witnessed the attempted cancellation of two creative writing professors by grad students. It was really awful and involved the use of Twitter/live tweeting during graduate level classes to create a social mobbing that disrupted everyone. This, in turn, drove similar antics from other students, who then targeted the said professors for their own grievances (the professors weren't feminist enough or didn't believe in the right kind of feminism, I think was one of the grievances). This lead to a physical confrontation at a bar where a PhD student backed a professor into a corner and harangued her and then went online to publicly shame her via hyperbole (the student claimed online that the professor had hit them and caused a pile on, but then said it wasn't true to friends). The original grad student in question that kicked off the cancelation fervor was angry about feedback he received from a professor on a poem he wrote and publicly accused the professor of racism. The student posted this online and got loads of support, though the other students in the class said that they didn't interpret this feedback he received as what he claimed it to be. The entire thing became a huge ordeal and went on for months, involving administration. It engulfed other professors who took the side of the aggrieved student as well and sounded off online for no other reason than to cancel their professional peers without any real evidence. It was really terrible and culminated in some sort of official grievance filed against one of the two originally targeted professors (the one that was confronted at the bar) because she had taught a poem (which she read to the class) a year prior to all this shit happening that had used a historical slur against African-Americans. And the grad student who had accused the other professor of racism then went after her as well. She had to get a lawyer to retain her job. It was just a fucking awful mess. It made everyone really paranoid and unhappy and the accusers never had to deal with anything. They just went on with their lives afterwards as if it had never happened. I think this kind of stuff happens more than anyone knows, especially in academic settings.
Jesus. Every few years I start to play around in my head about going to grad school, and then I read stuff about contemporary academia that makes me feel very validated in not doing it!
Most students aren’t like this but academia cultivates acolytes and requires conformity. People quietly disagree but will not stick their necks out to push back on this stuff because it’s framed around social justice. If you admit narcissists into your program, this is what can happen.
I forgot another thing that happened. A friend from the program reminded me that he had to get a restraining order against the student who kicked off the cancellations because he chose to speak up against him and support the professors. He identifies as lgbtq+ and is POC. But that didn’t matter. His speaking up for the professors caused him to be bullied, shoved and spat on.
Thank you for sharing all of this. I've heard so many versions of this. It makes even the most liberal people I know determine that college campuses are filled with a broken generation unwilling to be challenged in any way. I'm more generous, but I do think some have confused abuse with self-defense. All that said, I think what's interesting here is I wouldn't have thought to bring up academia in a conversation about cancel culture in the arts. I don't think of students as artists in general, mostly because most of them will never graduate to pursuing the arts as anything more than a hobby. What are your thoughts on that?
Well…it was a graduate arts degree we were pursuing so we were effectively working artists while in the program. It wasn’t a theory based program. I was more than 10 years older than the majority of the students in the program and it was clear some were too young and immature to understand the value of a program like the one we were in. Some of them were very gifted writers. Some were not. Most of the MFA students have not continued to publish as far as I know but that may not mean they aren’t writing. It’s very difficult to get published now. I do think the individuals who started the cancellations are actually narcissists who weaponized social justice to their advantage. And I think that may be what happens unfortunately. But that’s because I have noticed how they have behaved since graduating (it’s always a destructive pattern that causes harm for others).
I'll start by saying that it's one thing to hold people guilty of transgressions (like sexual harassment or assault, and/or creating a hostile/abusive work environment) accountable, in the form of refusing to work with them or employ them. Calling this "cancel culture" is to me disingenuous, because it's a completely appropriate consequence for legitimately bad or harmful behavior. And it also, as you point out, all too rarely sticks.
Then there's the much stickier issue of trying to "cancel" people for expressing views that you find (are perhaps genuinely are) very objectionable. I definitely believe that if you say something dumb or offensive in public or in art, you have to be willing to own whatever backlash is coming to you - if you speak in public at all, you have to prepare yourself for the possibility of pushback. However some of these kinds pile-ons are definitely done in very bad faith, either to intimidate people out of speaking (very frequently women), police people for nonconformity or not toeing the line, or because people just somehow don't think they should have to engage with ideas they find difficult or don't like.
Also, you can't really "cancel" someone like, say, Woody Allen or Polanski entirely. You can hobble their future career, but the past work is out there, and you can't remove its influence even if you recontextualize it. Like, CHINATOWN is CHINATOWN, no matter what you think of Polanski. And MANHATTAN was huge for me, even though certain aspects of it *really* give me the ick.
I don't deny his talent. But I won't let any of my money go into his pocket. I might outlive him - then I'll watch all those movies.
This is how I have made emotional peace with the subject I take too personally for my own good. And I know that in many ways, boycotting punishes all the hundreds of other people who worked on those films. My feeling is that he has been on trial - was not convicted. I still am not convinced of his innocence, but it isn't my job to seize on rumors and start a harassment campaign. I'll just quietly steer clear.
That's very legit! There are people whose work I can't and won't stomach anymore either, and am unwilling to pay for. I'm not sure that's what I'd call "cancelling" though in the sense it's used. That's just making a personal principled decision on what/who you are willing to support.
Great question. I don’t have a great answer. I think it’s an overused term, and like everything else, has become politicized. I am not for censorship, but I also don’t have to support artists I find offensive. I also don’t tell others who they should or should not support, though I try to amplify artists I believe in.
Cancel culture isn't really new. Remember Rob Lowe for a time?
The difference perhaps these days is that celebrities are talking directly to the pubic continually, without press agents or studios filtering their image. Absolutely normal things that we say off the cuff are seized on - and taken out of context - if they ever had a context in the single breath of a tweet utterance - and used to slice people into ribbons and hang them from a pole. I probably said 3 things at lunch this week that - if I were a celebrity - someone could turn against me. I don't think cancel culture is quiet boycotts, I think it is the virtual equivalent of a mob with pitchforks. All the horrible things Picasso said. Thank God he didn't tweet it, because it would have been dam* hard to distinguish the artist from the art.
With regard to Picasso, I've heard more than a few arguments that his disproportionate weight in the conversation of 20th century art pushed many women out of that very same conversation. By extension, arguing that cancellation at the time would've made room for a lot of people whose legacies were diminished by a misogynist's presence. And in turn, a major rethinking today, based on the arguably unfair weight still given to him without any commentary about his misogyny continues to suck up conversation space others deserve. I'm not arguing on behalf of any of that, mind you. But I think it's an interesting argument all the same.
This is a great question, and one that I think it’s quite hard to answer succinctly. I don’t really agree with cancel culture per se because I think the world is not black and white and somebody’s art can be beautiful while they are morally perhaps less so. That’s not to say that our morals should not inform our artistic preferences but more that this should be a personal decision for each consumer rather than some sort of blanket ban. There are plenty of people in the arts whose work I’ve admired about whom I have since found out disconcerting information. It’s up to me to determine the extent to which that tarnishes their other achievements in my eyes. That will be different for different people depending on their own sense of morals and ethics. I personally don’t consider a quickness to judge a moral virtue. I also don’t believe we really understand people or their intentions in many cases so a black and white outlook is not necessarily helpful. I have a lot more to say but I feel like I’m about to tie myself up in knots so I’ll leave it there. Suffice to say, people should consume art as they individually want and not as some monolith of public acceptability dictates.
Everything about the conversation is complicated. Yes, I agree, it should be a personal decision. But, I think people should be informed when they make that decision. Unfortunately, informing people tends to take on the disposition of a mob. In some cases, that's led to the takedown of scum-of-the-Earth-grade abusers like Harvey Weinstein. In others, people who should've been entitled to grow -- or at least have the opportunity to -- have had their professional lives ruined. Perhaps the problem is that we apply the same social pressures to a serial rapist as we do someone who commits more minor offenses...?
When I still believed in gods, my pastor told me that all of the Ten Commandments were equally bad in the eyes of God. I think that was the point where I realized morality and the Bible were not on speaking terms. But I think my former pastor's take on the Commandments is pretty much how everything bad is experienced on social media.
There just seems to be a distinct lack of discrimination. Social media to me often feels like a great wave of hysteria and band wagon jumping, to the extent that the true consideration of the issues at hand is lost.
My daughter observed that people online seem always to be striving to be seen as morally better than everyone else and she finds it exhausting.
Interesting thread, and a question I often wrestle with. I can "undo" Woody by boycotting his films, but I cannot undo the impact his films had on me in younger days, or how his sensibility impacted my sense of humor.
Yes...though Woody's movies have mostly been terrible since Soon-Yi entered the picture, lol. I still go back to the old ones though. I meant undo rhetorically. I think the hardest one for me is Bill Cosby, whose standup I loved as a kid but turned out to be so monstrous.
That dude entered my mind straight away as well. Call me a cynic but for every celebrity, artist of any genre who gets cancelled/exposed, there are 10.000 or more people who are not. That, to me is more worrisome.
We used to be able to celebrate the art without the artist. Thinking of famous composers, authors etc. .. now dead for hundreds of years. What do we really know about them?
What we know about them is that statistically most were problematic human beings by contemporary standards and more than a small percentage were rapists and abusers. Art history is filled with these stories just amongst the researched. The wider historical world can't be any less concerning than the periods we've adequately surveyed.
Look close and you’ll likely find some flaw. Some of my favorite writers were anti semites or misogynists. Brilliant people are often very imbalanced souls. It just goes on and on.
I’m not sure the question as posed is quite what you’re after: it’s entirely possible, for example, for there to be such a thing as cancel culture, and for it to be entirely ineffective in ‘cancelling’ specific people.
I’m not sure that’s true. It’s entirely possible the concept is a cultural construct to begin with and now used to drum up political controversy and support. I find it remarkable that so many concepts that begin as “Leftist” are weaponized by Right Wing media and politicians until the Left also begins to see them as negative ideas. IE, the word “woke”, which even most of my liberal friends now complain about. Personally, I’m interested in the trajectory of these things as manipulated by the media, which eventually strip them of their original media and redefine them.
Until you've witnessed it, it's easy to believe it's just a political concept used by the right against the social justice left. But...it's not. It's usually the left fighting the left in some weird purity ritual where this cancelation really happens. The energy is a whipped fervor that doesn't stop until someone is publicly shamed and shunned, or someone is fired (or almost fired), someone kills themselves or people are forced to move on.
I agree with this very much. I consider myself a leftist but this kind of ideological purity testing pile-on shit makes me mental and it’s one of the reasons I’ve dropped all my social media.
Oh, sure: it’s absolutely possible that’s the case. What I meant was that there’s not necessarily any correlation whatsoever between the question of whether cancel culture exists, and the question of why so many ‘cancelled’ celebrities in the arts seem to be immune to cancellation.
There is if cancel culture doesn't actually exist outside of the media and politicians' messaging, and that's why celebrities never end up successfully canceled...no?
Absolutely. But while you can interrogate the non-cancellation of celebrities by examining the non-existence of cancel culture (because it logically follows that if cancel culture doesn’t actually exist then it will have no real world effect), you cannot interrogate the non-existence of cancel culture by examining the non-cancellation of celebrities (because that could be for a variety of reasons and does not automatically prove the non-existence of cancel culture in and of itself).
This is a difficult and uncomfortable question. My answer will likely be unpopular. I do think it
applies to the arts, and understand cancel culture to mean that you stop supporting someone or something because of information of monstrous behaviour. For example, The Cosby Show is no longer played because Bill Cosby was found to have drugged and raped many women.Yes, his actions make him a despicable human, however, the collective creation of all the actors who made the Cosby Show, should not, in my opinion have been erased. That show was really funny and it was nice to see an African American family portrayed as they were, in a positive light.
I think very few shows have actually been erased from the record, but yes, there are some and I am not a supporter of it myself. You can't erase history. That said, I don't know if I will ever be able to watch Cosby do anything without imagining him raping dozens of women. Because we only know about a fraction of them. I have the same trouble listening to Michael Jackson. I just hear children crying now.
I find canceling behavior to be the final result of decades of lifestyle journalism passed off as criticism but which is built on top of the hollowed corpse of Auteur Theory. Hero worshipping/ PR crucifying the artist instead of analyzing the function and impact of the art not only exposes the artist to manipulation through reputational assault, it deters resources from the art itself, which is the where the value of effort lies. Later this year, I’m publishing a book about a solution to this problem through a New Criticism focusing only on what happens in the camera and editing room, ignoring the biography, drama and egos driving what happened behind the camera.
I look forward to hearing more about this. I have mixed feelings about distinguishing between the two as a rule rather than exploring both sides of the artistic creation. One is how the audience reacts to something (which is what you're describing, I think). The other is how the artist and culture inform the piece. Both change over time, of course. But all this said, I increasingly find myself exhausted by the biography of those behind something. I've even started skipping reading the little descriptions of who painted what at museums until I've considered the artwork on the wall first. I don't want a name changing my opinion of something.
Cancel capacity seems to be far greater and less noticeable online. Algorithms and appointed 'humans in the loop' can mute, shadow-ban and demote in ways almost impossible to detect, often eliminating natural justice of at least letting those affected know what they've done that's considered wrong. Jonathan Cook has written about this following Mark Zuckerberg's announcement of a change in Meta policy - https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/billionaires-dangle-free-speech-like
Considering I feel fear even leaving a reply, whether or not it exists is meaningless, because the threat that it exists is real. The good news is it’s relegated to social media and online assuming no one videos you out of context and posts it. Because IRL you can have conversations with nuance, read body language, and most importantly, keep a closed circuit where randos that you’ve never met, some with agendas and/or inflated egos can’t chime in and ruin you for having an opinion.
I suppose I've never considered that part of the equation. I just do my thing, and trust my intentions will carry the day. But I expect sooner or later that trust will fail me.
First, a plug for Dangerous Fictions by Lyta Gold. I am not done with it yet, but she discusses this topic among other kinds of social panics and questions about how to deal with art. Her Substack is here: https://substack.com/@lytagold
I don't think, largely, cancel culture exists in its bogeyman form. Mostly, it is people attempting to use shame to hold bad actors accountable. It really doesn't work for the people already established outside of really extraordinary circumstances or really bad criminal behavior proven in a court. Shame is not something
The top of the ladder hates this, of course, because we live in a post-accountability age. Most rich and famous people do not suffer for their bad actions in any meaningful form, and they have grown use to that state of affairs. Anyone calling them out, to a certain kind of person, is a psychic injury well-nigh unbearable. And, of course, some people like to make themselves the hero of every story and so like to play up the "damage" done to them by the terrible people who dared point out that maybe you shouldn't be a racist, sexist asshat in your dealings with others in order to appear sympathetic and an "underdog".
People lower down the ladder are afraid of cancellation because they have no power. It's mostly overblown, but there have been instances occasionally of people being fired form work or other associations meaningful to them because they got called out. Almost all of them were examples of poor behavior, but every once in a while, like the "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" kerfuffle, people do get unfairly treated. But those instances are very rare -- you are thousands of times more likely to be fired for expressing sympathy for a union drive than you are for a social media post.
Basically, cancel culture is a term mean to scare people. In the same political correctness -- treating people with basic respect and fairness -- used to be called manners when I was a kid, cancel culture used to be called shame. But because we are applying shame ot groups of people who never used to have to worry about that, at least not form some of the groups doing the shaming, and because we've spent about forty years destroying the concept of accountability, especially for the rich, powerful, and famous, this seems new. It's not -- it's been a part of human societies, for good and ill (I am not trying to claim all shaming is good) probably since Urk and Grog decided it was easier to hunt together than apart.
There's a lot I agree with in here. I'm running out of steam for responding to these comments myself, though. I think the fires in LA have taken it out of me. But that said, you're not the first to bring up the level of power one has impacts what being "canceled" looks like. It's a valuable observation.
I'm about to lock the comments here, as I do after one week with any of my questions. But I wanted to say first: well done, everyone. You've proven you can have a civil, intelligent conversation about a controversial subject on a social media platform. I love this community I've built!
Cancel culture involves people attacking others based on mostly fabricated and demeaning claims against their character, mostly online, taking advantage of the anonymity the Internet provides. This allows them to subvert any charges of libel and slander that they would face if they uttered the same words in a public setting.
I'm a little confused here, so perhaps you can clarify? Things you say on the Internet are no different than what you say in a public setting, at least they are in the US, UK, and Australia where I've lived. You can be sued all the same if you can show harm. I'm also not sure there's any evidence to support the notion that they're mostly fabricated attacks. I could list 25 major instances that were all based on public information or criminal accusations with legal records. I could -- if permitted -- describe three current lawsuits in which people are accused of things that, if it went public, would result in them being canceled. In one instance, I could be a character witness against the accused based on my own experiences with them. I know of dozens of other instances in Hollywood alone of victims opting not to publicly state what happened to them. I have certainly chosen to remain silent about a couple of things that happened to me. I mention all this just because, from my experience, I have seen almost no evidence of false accusations against celebrities and industry types and, if anything, of not enough accusations being made. Just musing aloud here based on personal experience...
I think part of the issue is that the veracity of information can get muddied on line. For someone to actually be cancelled, everyone has to truly believe them worthy of cancellation. When you look at the Johnny Depp/ Amber Heard trial, for example, there was no consolidation of opinion and what the public believes is necessarily moulded by a media with its own agenda so that the situation becomes quite complex. I think where criminal charges are brought and upheld, cancellation is easier and more universal.
There are lots of questions though about how this relates to a person’s artistic output. It is perfectly understandable to not want to give your money to people who have been found to have done wrong, but I’m not sure how easily this sits with art you already know and love. Should that too be excused from your life? Is that person no longer a great artist because they are a bad person? It’s complicated. Also, should cancellation last forever? After all, that’s not how our justice system works. Are we saying it’s different if your career involves fame? I think it’s complicated.
I guess there are two ways of looking at this. One is how palatable someone’s output is to the consumer, and that really is personal choice. I just don’t agree that anyone should tell you what art you are allowed to enjoy based on the actions or reputation of the creator. The second is whether industry should prohibit those people from continuing to work. Unfortunately, I think that just comes down to what will sell rather than morals or ethics.
I think your last paragraph here gets at something a lot of people don't understand. Johnny Depp hasn't been canceled by Hollywood because they find him repugnant. Hollywood has worked with Nazis in the past because it made it money. They don't work with him in the same way because he lost so many fans based on what they learned about him. He's a bad investment now, not worth more than a tiny fraction of what he used to get paid. It's a business decision, not a moral one.
Sign your name to your 'cancel' - open yourself up to being sued for libel. We have courts. Let them do their work. If you have a morality problem with someone, by all means shame them, or write about them, but sign the statement you make. It is way to easy today to hide behind social media anonymity.
When there are no consequences you bring out the worst in people. if you get it wrong, you can't put it back in the box, but unless you sign your name to it, there are no consequences for having made the wrong statement in the first place.
Do a google search with the words ‘cancel culture’ and ‘anonymous’… In all circles; universities, public service, on movie sets, there are examples abound.
Don’t misunderstand me, if you have a serious concern about your safety, or something that has happened to you of course you should be able to file a complaint and have the right to remain anonymous while whatever proper process takes place. That is a given.
What I worry about is the unfounded stuff, where wild accusations are made with no evidence, or substance just because it can be done so anonymously.
I don’t think we disagree here, I just don’t like all the negative traffic we see online, which I will remain convinced would not happen if whoever is making the noise could not do so anonymously.
Cancel culture is real and it is weaponized in the arts where the real damage occurs, at the entry and midlevel. Artists who have power and clout who are doing unethical and illegal things are called out publicly (rightly so) but, as you mentioned above, unless their behavior puts them in prison, they often get a chance to redeem themselves. For those with far less power or capital, the damage is done and the professional career is likely over.
It’s basically a public version of being privately blacklisted. It sucks because it doesn’t allow for forgiveness or second chances unless you have the money and connections in the first place. People shun others who are considered tainted.
As we are witnessing with the Lively / Baldoni thing, social media mobbing is used manipulatively by people who understand how to weaponize public opinion. Neither of them have been cancelled yet, but it’s a very interesting example of the mechanisms behind what fuels cancel culture.
People should be called out if they are behaving harmfully, but I also think the court of public opinion is bloodthirsty and enjoys drama.
I’d love to hear more about your description of how cancel culture affects entry and midlevel artists. Who is canceling them? Why? How prevalent is that? Have you read anything good on this subject that you could share with us so we can understand it better?
I have an example of something that happened while I attended my MFA in creative writing a few years ago. It didn't happen to me but I witnessed the attempted cancellation of two creative writing professors by grad students. It was really awful and involved the use of Twitter/live tweeting during graduate level classes to create a social mobbing that disrupted everyone. This, in turn, drove similar antics from other students, who then targeted the said professors for their own grievances (the professors weren't feminist enough or didn't believe in the right kind of feminism, I think was one of the grievances). This lead to a physical confrontation at a bar where a PhD student backed a professor into a corner and harangued her and then went online to publicly shame her via hyperbole (the student claimed online that the professor had hit them and caused a pile on, but then said it wasn't true to friends). The original grad student in question that kicked off the cancelation fervor was angry about feedback he received from a professor on a poem he wrote and publicly accused the professor of racism. The student posted this online and got loads of support, though the other students in the class said that they didn't interpret this feedback he received as what he claimed it to be. The entire thing became a huge ordeal and went on for months, involving administration. It engulfed other professors who took the side of the aggrieved student as well and sounded off online for no other reason than to cancel their professional peers without any real evidence. It was really terrible and culminated in some sort of official grievance filed against one of the two originally targeted professors (the one that was confronted at the bar) because she had taught a poem (which she read to the class) a year prior to all this shit happening that had used a historical slur against African-Americans. And the grad student who had accused the other professor of racism then went after her as well. She had to get a lawyer to retain her job. It was just a fucking awful mess. It made everyone really paranoid and unhappy and the accusers never had to deal with anything. They just went on with their lives afterwards as if it had never happened. I think this kind of stuff happens more than anyone knows, especially in academic settings.
Jesus. Every few years I start to play around in my head about going to grad school, and then I read stuff about contemporary academia that makes me feel very validated in not doing it!
Most students aren’t like this but academia cultivates acolytes and requires conformity. People quietly disagree but will not stick their necks out to push back on this stuff because it’s framed around social justice. If you admit narcissists into your program, this is what can happen.
I forgot another thing that happened. A friend from the program reminded me that he had to get a restraining order against the student who kicked off the cancellations because he chose to speak up against him and support the professors. He identifies as lgbtq+ and is POC. But that didn’t matter. His speaking up for the professors caused him to be bullied, shoved and spat on.
Here is a good article by Freddie DeBoer: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/do-you-want-cancel-culture-to-exist
Thank you for sharing all of this. I've heard so many versions of this. It makes even the most liberal people I know determine that college campuses are filled with a broken generation unwilling to be challenged in any way. I'm more generous, but I do think some have confused abuse with self-defense. All that said, I think what's interesting here is I wouldn't have thought to bring up academia in a conversation about cancel culture in the arts. I don't think of students as artists in general, mostly because most of them will never graduate to pursuing the arts as anything more than a hobby. What are your thoughts on that?
Well…it was a graduate arts degree we were pursuing so we were effectively working artists while in the program. It wasn’t a theory based program. I was more than 10 years older than the majority of the students in the program and it was clear some were too young and immature to understand the value of a program like the one we were in. Some of them were very gifted writers. Some were not. Most of the MFA students have not continued to publish as far as I know but that may not mean they aren’t writing. It’s very difficult to get published now. I do think the individuals who started the cancellations are actually narcissists who weaponized social justice to their advantage. And I think that may be what happens unfortunately. But that’s because I have noticed how they have behaved since graduating (it’s always a destructive pattern that causes harm for others).
Yeah you definitely can't separate this convo from the question of who has social capital and why.
Ooof, a good one! Complicated one.
I'll start by saying that it's one thing to hold people guilty of transgressions (like sexual harassment or assault, and/or creating a hostile/abusive work environment) accountable, in the form of refusing to work with them or employ them. Calling this "cancel culture" is to me disingenuous, because it's a completely appropriate consequence for legitimately bad or harmful behavior. And it also, as you point out, all too rarely sticks.
Then there's the much stickier issue of trying to "cancel" people for expressing views that you find (are perhaps genuinely are) very objectionable. I definitely believe that if you say something dumb or offensive in public or in art, you have to be willing to own whatever backlash is coming to you - if you speak in public at all, you have to prepare yourself for the possibility of pushback. However some of these kinds pile-ons are definitely done in very bad faith, either to intimidate people out of speaking (very frequently women), police people for nonconformity or not toeing the line, or because people just somehow don't think they should have to engage with ideas they find difficult or don't like.
Also, you can't really "cancel" someone like, say, Woody Allen or Polanski entirely. You can hobble their future career, but the past work is out there, and you can't remove its influence even if you recontextualize it. Like, CHINATOWN is CHINATOWN, no matter what you think of Polanski. And MANHATTAN was huge for me, even though certain aspects of it *really* give me the ick.
I don't deny his talent. But I won't let any of my money go into his pocket. I might outlive him - then I'll watch all those movies.
This is how I have made emotional peace with the subject I take too personally for my own good. And I know that in many ways, boycotting punishes all the hundreds of other people who worked on those films. My feeling is that he has been on trial - was not convicted. I still am not convinced of his innocence, but it isn't my job to seize on rumors and start a harassment campaign. I'll just quietly steer clear.
That's very legit! There are people whose work I can't and won't stomach anymore either, and am unwilling to pay for. I'm not sure that's what I'd call "cancelling" though in the sense it's used. That's just making a personal principled decision on what/who you are willing to support.
I agree. I was going to rattle on about it here in the reply, but posted above.
Great question. I don’t have a great answer. I think it’s an overused term, and like everything else, has become politicized. I am not for censorship, but I also don’t have to support artists I find offensive. I also don’t tell others who they should or should not support, though I try to amplify artists I believe in.
It has definitely been politicized. The people who cry about woke and cancel culture are the ones trying to ban books and erase transgender people.
In general, this is very true.
This is an excellent strategy
Cancel culture isn't really new. Remember Rob Lowe for a time?
The difference perhaps these days is that celebrities are talking directly to the pubic continually, without press agents or studios filtering their image. Absolutely normal things that we say off the cuff are seized on - and taken out of context - if they ever had a context in the single breath of a tweet utterance - and used to slice people into ribbons and hang them from a pole. I probably said 3 things at lunch this week that - if I were a celebrity - someone could turn against me. I don't think cancel culture is quiet boycotts, I think it is the virtual equivalent of a mob with pitchforks. All the horrible things Picasso said. Thank God he didn't tweet it, because it would have been dam* hard to distinguish the artist from the art.
With regard to Picasso, I've heard more than a few arguments that his disproportionate weight in the conversation of 20th century art pushed many women out of that very same conversation. By extension, arguing that cancellation at the time would've made room for a lot of people whose legacies were diminished by a misogynist's presence. And in turn, a major rethinking today, based on the arguably unfair weight still given to him without any commentary about his misogyny continues to suck up conversation space others deserve. I'm not arguing on behalf of any of that, mind you. But I think it's an interesting argument all the same.
This is a great question, and one that I think it’s quite hard to answer succinctly. I don’t really agree with cancel culture per se because I think the world is not black and white and somebody’s art can be beautiful while they are morally perhaps less so. That’s not to say that our morals should not inform our artistic preferences but more that this should be a personal decision for each consumer rather than some sort of blanket ban. There are plenty of people in the arts whose work I’ve admired about whom I have since found out disconcerting information. It’s up to me to determine the extent to which that tarnishes their other achievements in my eyes. That will be different for different people depending on their own sense of morals and ethics. I personally don’t consider a quickness to judge a moral virtue. I also don’t believe we really understand people or their intentions in many cases so a black and white outlook is not necessarily helpful. I have a lot more to say but I feel like I’m about to tie myself up in knots so I’ll leave it there. Suffice to say, people should consume art as they individually want and not as some monolith of public acceptability dictates.
Everything about the conversation is complicated. Yes, I agree, it should be a personal decision. But, I think people should be informed when they make that decision. Unfortunately, informing people tends to take on the disposition of a mob. In some cases, that's led to the takedown of scum-of-the-Earth-grade abusers like Harvey Weinstein. In others, people who should've been entitled to grow -- or at least have the opportunity to -- have had their professional lives ruined. Perhaps the problem is that we apply the same social pressures to a serial rapist as we do someone who commits more minor offenses...?
I think there is a definite lack of nuance, yes.
When I still believed in gods, my pastor told me that all of the Ten Commandments were equally bad in the eyes of God. I think that was the point where I realized morality and the Bible were not on speaking terms. But I think my former pastor's take on the Commandments is pretty much how everything bad is experienced on social media.
There just seems to be a distinct lack of discrimination. Social media to me often feels like a great wave of hysteria and band wagon jumping, to the extent that the true consideration of the issues at hand is lost.
My daughter observed that people online seem always to be striving to be seen as morally better than everyone else and she finds it exhausting.
Yes, as much as I hate to say it, “virtue signaling” is a real thing.
Interesting thread, and a question I often wrestle with. I can "undo" Woody by boycotting his films, but I cannot undo the impact his films had on me in younger days, or how his sensibility impacted my sense of humor.
A really interesting question is whether you should want to undo those things.
Yes...though Woody's movies have mostly been terrible since Soon-Yi entered the picture, lol. I still go back to the old ones though. I meant undo rhetorically. I think the hardest one for me is Bill Cosby, whose standup I loved as a kid but turned out to be so monstrous.
That dude entered my mind straight away as well. Call me a cynic but for every celebrity, artist of any genre who gets cancelled/exposed, there are 10.000 or more people who are not. That, to me is more worrisome.
Very interesting point.
We used to be able to celebrate the art without the artist. Thinking of famous composers, authors etc. .. now dead for hundreds of years. What do we really know about them?
What we know about them is that statistically most were problematic human beings by contemporary standards and more than a small percentage were rapists and abusers. Art history is filled with these stories just amongst the researched. The wider historical world can't be any less concerning than the periods we've adequately surveyed.
Look close and you’ll likely find some flaw. Some of my favorite writers were anti semites or misogynists. Brilliant people are often very imbalanced souls. It just goes on and on.
I’m not sure the question as posed is quite what you’re after: it’s entirely possible, for example, for there to be such a thing as cancel culture, and for it to be entirely ineffective in ‘cancelling’ specific people.
I’m not sure that’s true. It’s entirely possible the concept is a cultural construct to begin with and now used to drum up political controversy and support. I find it remarkable that so many concepts that begin as “Leftist” are weaponized by Right Wing media and politicians until the Left also begins to see them as negative ideas. IE, the word “woke”, which even most of my liberal friends now complain about. Personally, I’m interested in the trajectory of these things as manipulated by the media, which eventually strip them of their original media and redefine them.
Until you've witnessed it, it's easy to believe it's just a political concept used by the right against the social justice left. But...it's not. It's usually the left fighting the left in some weird purity ritual where this cancelation really happens. The energy is a whipped fervor that doesn't stop until someone is publicly shamed and shunned, or someone is fired (or almost fired), someone kills themselves or people are forced to move on.
I agree with this very much. I consider myself a leftist but this kind of ideological purity testing pile-on shit makes me mental and it’s one of the reasons I’ve dropped all my social media.
Oh, sure: it’s absolutely possible that’s the case. What I meant was that there’s not necessarily any correlation whatsoever between the question of whether cancel culture exists, and the question of why so many ‘cancelled’ celebrities in the arts seem to be immune to cancellation.
There is if cancel culture doesn't actually exist outside of the media and politicians' messaging, and that's why celebrities never end up successfully canceled...no?
Absolutely. But while you can interrogate the non-cancellation of celebrities by examining the non-existence of cancel culture (because it logically follows that if cancel culture doesn’t actually exist then it will have no real world effect), you cannot interrogate the non-existence of cancel culture by examining the non-cancellation of celebrities (because that could be for a variety of reasons and does not automatically prove the non-existence of cancel culture in and of itself).
This is a difficult and uncomfortable question. My answer will likely be unpopular. I do think it
applies to the arts, and understand cancel culture to mean that you stop supporting someone or something because of information of monstrous behaviour. For example, The Cosby Show is no longer played because Bill Cosby was found to have drugged and raped many women.Yes, his actions make him a despicable human, however, the collective creation of all the actors who made the Cosby Show, should not, in my opinion have been erased. That show was really funny and it was nice to see an African American family portrayed as they were, in a positive light.
I think very few shows have actually been erased from the record, but yes, there are some and I am not a supporter of it myself. You can't erase history. That said, I don't know if I will ever be able to watch Cosby do anything without imagining him raping dozens of women. Because we only know about a fraction of them. I have the same trouble listening to Michael Jackson. I just hear children crying now.
I find canceling behavior to be the final result of decades of lifestyle journalism passed off as criticism but which is built on top of the hollowed corpse of Auteur Theory. Hero worshipping/ PR crucifying the artist instead of analyzing the function and impact of the art not only exposes the artist to manipulation through reputational assault, it deters resources from the art itself, which is the where the value of effort lies. Later this year, I’m publishing a book about a solution to this problem through a New Criticism focusing only on what happens in the camera and editing room, ignoring the biography, drama and egos driving what happened behind the camera.
I look forward to hearing more about this. I have mixed feelings about distinguishing between the two as a rule rather than exploring both sides of the artistic creation. One is how the audience reacts to something (which is what you're describing, I think). The other is how the artist and culture inform the piece. Both change over time, of course. But all this said, I increasingly find myself exhausted by the biography of those behind something. I've even started skipping reading the little descriptions of who painted what at museums until I've considered the artwork on the wall first. I don't want a name changing my opinion of something.
Cancel capacity seems to be far greater and less noticeable online. Algorithms and appointed 'humans in the loop' can mute, shadow-ban and demote in ways almost impossible to detect, often eliminating natural justice of at least letting those affected know what they've done that's considered wrong. Jonathan Cook has written about this following Mark Zuckerberg's announcement of a change in Meta policy - https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/billionaires-dangle-free-speech-like
I'm going to have to read about this. I haven't spent much time considering it. Thanks for sharing.
Considering I feel fear even leaving a reply, whether or not it exists is meaningless, because the threat that it exists is real. The good news is it’s relegated to social media and online assuming no one videos you out of context and posts it. Because IRL you can have conversations with nuance, read body language, and most importantly, keep a closed circuit where randos that you’ve never met, some with agendas and/or inflated egos can’t chime in and ruin you for having an opinion.
I suppose I've never considered that part of the equation. I just do my thing, and trust my intentions will carry the day. But I expect sooner or later that trust will fail me.
I try to live by the great Herm Edward’s advice he used to tell his players when he was coaching: “don’t press send!”
First, a plug for Dangerous Fictions by Lyta Gold. I am not done with it yet, but she discusses this topic among other kinds of social panics and questions about how to deal with art. Her Substack is here: https://substack.com/@lytagold
I don't think, largely, cancel culture exists in its bogeyman form. Mostly, it is people attempting to use shame to hold bad actors accountable. It really doesn't work for the people already established outside of really extraordinary circumstances or really bad criminal behavior proven in a court. Shame is not something
The top of the ladder hates this, of course, because we live in a post-accountability age. Most rich and famous people do not suffer for their bad actions in any meaningful form, and they have grown use to that state of affairs. Anyone calling them out, to a certain kind of person, is a psychic injury well-nigh unbearable. And, of course, some people like to make themselves the hero of every story and so like to play up the "damage" done to them by the terrible people who dared point out that maybe you shouldn't be a racist, sexist asshat in your dealings with others in order to appear sympathetic and an "underdog".
People lower down the ladder are afraid of cancellation because they have no power. It's mostly overblown, but there have been instances occasionally of people being fired form work or other associations meaningful to them because they got called out. Almost all of them were examples of poor behavior, but every once in a while, like the "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" kerfuffle, people do get unfairly treated. But those instances are very rare -- you are thousands of times more likely to be fired for expressing sympathy for a union drive than you are for a social media post.
Basically, cancel culture is a term mean to scare people. In the same political correctness -- treating people with basic respect and fairness -- used to be called manners when I was a kid, cancel culture used to be called shame. But because we are applying shame ot groups of people who never used to have to worry about that, at least not form some of the groups doing the shaming, and because we've spent about forty years destroying the concept of accountability, especially for the rich, powerful, and famous, this seems new. It's not -- it's been a part of human societies, for good and ill (I am not trying to claim all shaming is good) probably since Urk and Grog decided it was easier to hunt together than apart.
There's a lot I agree with in here. I'm running out of steam for responding to these comments myself, though. I think the fires in LA have taken it out of me. But that said, you're not the first to bring up the level of power one has impacts what being "canceled" looks like. It's a valuable observation.
I hope your friends all come through this okay.
I immediately thought of the Sir Wallace scandal in NZ a few years back
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/sir-james-wallace-faces-being-stripped-of-knighthood-as-questions-arise-about-patrons-connection-to-top-arts-organisations/5RWVRROFQZG2XLE22YARPUDDTI/
This was a seismic event in New Zealand's art literati, but the conviction was necessary and a predator removed from the art culture.
Yeah, I remember this story.
I'm about to lock the comments here, as I do after one week with any of my questions. But I wanted to say first: well done, everyone. You've proven you can have a civil, intelligent conversation about a controversial subject on a social media platform. I love this community I've built!
Cancel culture involves people attacking others based on mostly fabricated and demeaning claims against their character, mostly online, taking advantage of the anonymity the Internet provides. This allows them to subvert any charges of libel and slander that they would face if they uttered the same words in a public setting.
I'm a little confused here, so perhaps you can clarify? Things you say on the Internet are no different than what you say in a public setting, at least they are in the US, UK, and Australia where I've lived. You can be sued all the same if you can show harm. I'm also not sure there's any evidence to support the notion that they're mostly fabricated attacks. I could list 25 major instances that were all based on public information or criminal accusations with legal records. I could -- if permitted -- describe three current lawsuits in which people are accused of things that, if it went public, would result in them being canceled. In one instance, I could be a character witness against the accused based on my own experiences with them. I know of dozens of other instances in Hollywood alone of victims opting not to publicly state what happened to them. I have certainly chosen to remain silent about a couple of things that happened to me. I mention all this just because, from my experience, I have seen almost no evidence of false accusations against celebrities and industry types and, if anything, of not enough accusations being made. Just musing aloud here based on personal experience...
I think part of the issue is that the veracity of information can get muddied on line. For someone to actually be cancelled, everyone has to truly believe them worthy of cancellation. When you look at the Johnny Depp/ Amber Heard trial, for example, there was no consolidation of opinion and what the public believes is necessarily moulded by a media with its own agenda so that the situation becomes quite complex. I think where criminal charges are brought and upheld, cancellation is easier and more universal.
There are lots of questions though about how this relates to a person’s artistic output. It is perfectly understandable to not want to give your money to people who have been found to have done wrong, but I’m not sure how easily this sits with art you already know and love. Should that too be excused from your life? Is that person no longer a great artist because they are a bad person? It’s complicated. Also, should cancellation last forever? After all, that’s not how our justice system works. Are we saying it’s different if your career involves fame? I think it’s complicated.
I guess there are two ways of looking at this. One is how palatable someone’s output is to the consumer, and that really is personal choice. I just don’t agree that anyone should tell you what art you are allowed to enjoy based on the actions or reputation of the creator. The second is whether industry should prohibit those people from continuing to work. Unfortunately, I think that just comes down to what will sell rather than morals or ethics.
I think your last paragraph here gets at something a lot of people don't understand. Johnny Depp hasn't been canceled by Hollywood because they find him repugnant. Hollywood has worked with Nazis in the past because it made it money. They don't work with him in the same way because he lost so many fans based on what they learned about him. He's a bad investment now, not worth more than a tiny fraction of what he used to get paid. It's a business decision, not a moral one.
Sorry- I think I must have confused cancel culture with stalking....
Sign your name to your 'cancel' - open yourself up to being sued for libel. We have courts. Let them do their work. If you have a morality problem with someone, by all means shame them, or write about them, but sign the statement you make. It is way to easy today to hide behind social media anonymity.
When there are no consequences you bring out the worst in people. if you get it wrong, you can't put it back in the box, but unless you sign your name to it, there are no consequences for having made the wrong statement in the first place.
Anonymity is the curse of the current era.
Are people accusing people of things anonymously?
Of course.
Where? I don't see that myself. I'm not aware of anyone who's ever been "canceled" because of anonymous accusations.
Do a google search with the words ‘cancel culture’ and ‘anonymous’… In all circles; universities, public service, on movie sets, there are examples abound.
Don’t misunderstand me, if you have a serious concern about your safety, or something that has happened to you of course you should be able to file a complaint and have the right to remain anonymous while whatever proper process takes place. That is a given.
What I worry about is the unfounded stuff, where wild accusations are made with no evidence, or substance just because it can be done so anonymously.
I don’t think we disagree here, I just don’t like all the negative traffic we see online, which I will remain convinced would not happen if whoever is making the noise could not do so anonymously.