Let’s Get Cancelled!
Building off of the last post, let’s talk cancel culture. Apparently I’m feeling spicy this week.
What is cancel culture? If you’re not familiar, cancel culture is the phenomenon of hate and ostracization that happens following an incident involving a person of note, be it a celebrity, politician, etc., and something they’ve done that’s problematic or generally disapproved of by the public. Think: the #MeToo movement. Cancelling someone is the process of stripping away their fame, power, and influence as a consequence of their actions, recent or otherwise. But, most importantly, cancel culture isn’t real.
That’s right, I said it.
Sure, the concept of cancel culture is real enough. You see it everywhere, with some relatively recent examples being Chris Pratt, J.K. Rowling, and Kanye West. The public reaction to disgusting actions on the part of their celebrity idols is immediate, harsh, and loud. But it doesn’t last.
That’s the true problem with cancel culture and why, in my opinion, it’s not real or substantially harmful.
It’s easy to make jokes about being cancelled. It’s easy to make jokes about other people being cancelled. It’s easy to throw cancel culture around like a buzzword to degrade younger generations and their ‘snowflake’ mentality. However, if you think for even one second that the threat of being cancelled is a serious one and that it has the potential to ruin someone’s career, then you haven’t been paying attention.
The immediate backlash following a cancel movement is, admittedly, devastating. To smaller celebrities, less popular and less rich, it can have lasting effects. When you’re talking about the bigwigs though, nothing short of murder will have them at the mercy of the court of public opinion for long (and even then, murder is a case by case thing).
I have a challenge for you. Name one person, one singular person, that has been cancelled and stayed cancelled. Not a recent cancelling, they still need time to bounce back. But one that happened around 2-3 years ago or more. I’ll wait.
Nevermind, I won’t. I’m an impatient bitch.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you managed to name one or two. In response, I offer you the following examples: Kevin Spacey, Chris Brown, the Paul brothers, Snoop Dogg, Roman Polanski, etc. etc.
All of these men (notice how they’re all men? I’m not saying that’s a trend, but where there’s smoke…) were cancelled for one reason or another. Every single one of them has rebounded. Kevin Spacey is doing films again. Chris Brown never stopped making music. The Paul brothers have a successful media and sports career now. Most people don’t even remember that Snoop was on trial for murder. And Roman Polanski? The man has an outstanding warrant in the U.S., and he’s still making films from the safety of another country. And, interestingly, those films are still being shown in the United States. He’s even getting awards for them. What in the back-ass-wards world is that about?
None of the examples have suffered more than temporary or minorly annoying consequences for their actions, despite some of them being convicted criminals. If that’s not enough to prove that cancel culture is bullshit, then I don’t know what is.
Also, just to eliminate any accusations of this being a sexist argument, some women who’ve been cancelled and are doing just fine: J.K. Rowling, Sarah Silverman, Kathy Griffin, Demi Lovato, and pretty much the entire Kardashian/Jenner family. Give it a few months/years and I bet we’ll be adding Ellen DeGeneres to this list.
So, what do we do about it?
As individuals? Not much, unfortunately. You can try to make noise, remind people about the reasons they should or shouldn’t support a public figure, and reflect that opinion through your own media consumption. Will it make a difference? Probably not. Not unless a significant number of people hop on board, but that’s difficult to sustain (see: everything I just talked about). The general public likes to be upset, but we have a short term memory. No lasting change is going to happen in Hollywood, the music industry, politics, etc. unless we find a way to infiltrate the system itself. Being loud can only take us so far. Eventually, people get bored. They get distracted. They stop making noise about one problematic person because everyone else is making noise about someone new. Thus, the cycle continues.
If you’re looking for an answer, I don’t have one. Change, in theory, needs to come from the institution. But the institution isn’t going to change because their system is working. So, then, the public needs to call for change, loudly and consistently, until the institution listens. Except, the public can’t stay dedicated long enough to drive any sort of meaningful changes. Institutions are good at making superfluous placating decisions that don’t have any real effect but make it seem like they’re at least putting in some effort. That’s usually enough to get the public off their back long enough to be distracted by the next thing. Again, the cycle continues.
Sometimes I genuinely wonder if the rules and systems we have in place are too ingrained in our society to change. At some point, fixing the problem means scrapping the whole thing and building from the ground up. You can’t really do that with people. I’m pretty sure that’s considered mass murder.
I don’t have a solid closing for this, which in itself is kind of poetic. A problem we can’t solve and an opinion that has no resolution. Hm. Maybe that very uncertainty is the reason we’re in this mess in the first place.
(If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my room pretending that I’m not having an existential crisis)
