One of the frustrating things about this discussion is the lack of a coherent definition of what "canceling" actually means. Bill Maher's cancellation quickly resulted in his own HBO show that he's hosted for almost 20 years. Or, to pick a more contemporary example, Dave Chapelle talks about being canceled from sold-out arena stages. It seems like everyone wants the "cool" factor of being a controversial figure without generating any actual controversy.
Here's my extremely hot take. Almost all cancellation is of net benefit. It doesn't matter if you're cancelled over a lie or a disallowed opinion, all that matters is that you have stopped being a famous person with a platform. Almost no one famous is worth listening to about things that matter, and cancellation is the penalty that famouos people incur for talking about things that matter.
I draw an exception for comedians, who are famous for how worth listening to they are.
It continues to amaze me that folks on the US Right are in perpetual outrage about cancel culture when Right-wingers are basically never "cancelled." Merely temporarily inconvenienced.
Books are being banned in schools across the country. Janet Jackson lost her career because of a Super Bowl performance. Kaepernick took a knee and had elected leaders screaming for him to be fired and threatening any NFL owners who even thought about hiring him as a quarterback again. Muhammad Ali lost the best years of his boxing career due to his political and religious beliefs.
That's what being canceled looks like.
Gina Carano was "cancelled" until she got her next gig within a month. Dave Chapelle was "cancelled" over transphobic comments only until he made yet another Netflix standup.
What if a comedian loses his audience because views of his come to light that his audience doesn't support? It's no longer profitable for him to go on tour, or for studios to offer him roles on tv, etc.. Is that cancel culture or not? I'd argue that it's cancelling, but not the "bad" kind.
If you say it's not cancel culture when a majority of people change their mind about someone, then you're saying that almost by definition cancelling is when a small minority of people have the power to deplatform someone who missteps. So, it's not accurate to say that "the left is ok with cancel culture" (for instance) since only a small group of people are going it who are not representative of the larger population.
Exactly how many irreverent comedians who achieved significant success and are not really accountable to anyone, telling it like it is, have been cancelled by the cancel culture?
Cosby, TJ Miller, Louis CK, Jeffrey Tambor, James Franco, ...? A good list of people who did morally reprehensible things of varying degrees, from illegal to merely opening their employers to civil liability, and in my mind, they should be "cancelled." Maybe you can argue some of these, I don't think so.
Azis Ansari? I don't know how tranchant his "speaking truth to power" has ever been, but he did a Netflix special this year, and I would need pretty compelling evidence to believe that's your smoking gun. I predict he'll be just fine in a few more years.
Kevin Hart? Maybe. Again, not much of a politically-motivated comedian, but getting removed as Oscar (?) host was damaging. Nonetheless, it looks like he had 5 movies/specials in 2019 and has work scheduled for 2020. Besides the car crash, I think he'll be alright.
Dan Harmon (like James Gunn) was a political hit job and didn't go anywhere.
Am I missing anyone?
Outside of e.g. #metoo, some people didn't like Dave Chappelle's recent Netflix special. I'm not a fan of him "punching down" at trans people myself, but, I don't think it's anything he hasn't said before. Nonetheless it was trending in the top five for most of last month, I think he is, and will continue to be, doing fine.
I just don't see where people attribute all this power to "cancel culture." Chik-fil-A, Nike, ..., all doing just fine despite on-going boycotts from "cancel culture."
Being canceled isn't even a real thing. It's just a phrase people use because they have to have consequences when they show their true selves. Some group of people don't agree with you? Show me an example of being canceled then
That said, I think “canceling” has more meaning behind it than you might think.
Bill Cosby was an inauthentic and visible symbol of the black middle class and “canceled” among media types because his messy real life persona clashed with his clean cut image. Age didn’t factor in. I think many also had an ax to grind.
These days, to be “canceled”, I think you have to be profoundly inauthentic and ultimately accept the blame when the Twitter mob comes. Plenty of media figures have woven their careers to even embrace the image of fighting the Twitter moral police.
A lot of the people who get “cancelled” can reverse their behavior. You’re changing the definition of the new meaning of cancel culture by saying he can just stop doing what he’s doing. The point should be no one should be cancelled just for doing things that others might not like while not being violent or advocating for it.
Cancel culture is not really a thing, as much as comedians like to talk about it (on huge platforms like netflix).
People are speaking with the only thing companies give a damn about- money. They want people to be held accountable for things, and are actually willing to put money where their mouth is. If you disagree with that, then you disagree with free market capitalism.
It's not even really political, as people on both sides get "canceled"- I mean, occasionally get held accountable for their actions. There are dumb instances (like Al Franken, Aziz Ansari, Jeffrey Tambor) and others where people jump the gun, but overall I can't say it's really a bad thing. People need to be held accountable for their actions, end of story.
As the saying goes: if you see shit everywhere you go, check your shoe.
We only notice the most obvious instances of cancel culture. Those are attempts to cancel someone popular. If he had an audience of 2 people (or 3 including his mom), nobody would be talking about it now.
It's less that people are mob or anti-mob so much as pro their mob and anti the other mob. Don't forget that cancel culture is not an entirely left-wing phenomenon.
Plenty of the same people who rail against SJWs and leftists cancelling people would have no problems with cancelling Bill Maher, the Dixie Chicks or Colin Kaepernick.
“Canceling” means removal of support and denouncement of a public figure, justified or not. In Bill Cosby’s case, it was absolutely justified, as he himself admitted to his wrongdoings. What issue do you have with that term being used to describe what happened?
Be charitable, he could be talking about the Dixie Chicks or anchors that were fired for questioning the Iraq war. Or for the biggest example of modern cancel culture, Kaepernick's firing after targeting by the president.
Not to put words in OP’s mouth, but I think they were using “cancel” descriptively, not pejoratively. I don’t think there was a suggestion he didn’t deserve to be cancelled, just that he was.
Being 'cancelled' in academia and entertainment is a very real thing that happens to artists, but more notably, as I mentioned, suppresses tons of content across the board that won't even get pitched otherwise.
While some people do overstate it, it's definitely real.
Those who diminish it are the fascists of our generation.
Sean Penn (far left activist) and Conan O'Brien (staunch centre left advocate, public supporter of Hillary Clinton etc.) publicly decried the problem as 'Stalinist' - strong words. In their experience, in private conversation in Hollywood people are freaked out about the oppression, while a few virtue signal here and there publicly while towing the party line, everyone is thinks it's nuts.
Stephen Pinker (staunch centre-left, respected academic) has spoken out about this, and faced a 'cancellation' of his own for merely suggesting publicly that the issue with policing in America is more a general problem as opposed to specifically a racial problem. The 'mob' came for him and tried to have his participation on various boards 'cancelled'.
A long list of thinkers, including the likes of Chomsky himself, had to come out and publicly admonish the 'cancellers' (mostly on the far left) for the systematic problem.
It's without modern precedent.
There's a 'civil war' between generations at the NYT (Editorial) about what constitutes 'fair'.
The 'outrage mob' has a measurable effect on academia and especially creative culture.
Producers just don't want to risk a project being annulled, and so they go out of their way to 'sanitize' efforts left and right.
The Wachowski sisters (then brothers) were 'condemned' for 'Cloud Atlas' where they dared to have people of different classes, genders and races, play various characters - frankly in attempt to display the common humanity within all of us (not some arbitrary bit of ugly humour) - though the outrage wasn't enough to hurt them, it's become a 'no go zone' for content in 2022.
Actors playing characters of different source origin i.e. someone 'non Japanese' playing a character from Anime, actors playing historical figures, actors playing arbitrary fictional characters of questionable origin etc. etc. - it's all a minefield, scaring producers away from anything.
30 Rock, made by your typically socially progressive groups, had several episodes pulled.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Go ahead and re-watch 'Superbad' - it could not be made today, it wouldn't even get pitched. Every scene is 'off message' - arbitrary bits about crude porn, jokes involving trans people, 'period' gags. It was always a bit 'outrageous' but that kind of humour will risk too much ire and so it's out. Even the actors just wouldn't want to risk being on the wrong side - look at Seth Rogen's most recent work, it's like a 180 degree shift.
Institutional entities that have been around for some time, notably 'make money' and notably have their own production ability - South Park and Family Guy, basically get a free pass.
But most people in entertainment and academia do not have power like 'Dave Chapelle' or institutional protection like 'South Park' or respect of 'Stephen Pinker' - so they 'stay on message' and 'away from controversy' or else the script does not get approved. And FYI even the people turning it away aren't ideological about it 'it's just business' and an accommodation of the outrage mob, fickle advertisers etc..
The 'outraged' a fairly small group, with a sizeable group of allies particularly among Gen Z, which can be noted in the continuous public furor over ostensibly 'terrible person', JK Rowling. The way they go on about here is medieval.
While I don't think our campuses are overtly hostile, the issue does linger.
People now realize that they can assert their opinions and hold people accountable, whereas in the past other people may have just shrugged and gone "well, that's just how it is".
In the case of the article you linked, the first example of "canceling" was someone walking out of a classroom after requesting a song to not be played. This is not unreasonable given the R.Kelly allegations and documentary.
The second example of "canceling" is literally just deciding to ignore someone, and make other people aware of it and reason behind it. How on earth is that a new phenomenon? She had a valid reason too!
The third example with James Charles is also not unreasonable, and by "canceled" they really mean "people got upset and didn't want to watch his videos anymore". Are you seriously going to argue that if I get upset with someone, I should continue to watch their videos? That's not canceling someone!
So I'm going to repeat it: Cancel "culture" is not really a thing. People from these last two generations are more vocal about their beliefs. And good for it.
I think people get confused because many on the right use cancellation to refer to both firing people who have done something that's truly vile, as well as those who have been fired for simply having an unorthodox opinion. E.g. Harvey Weinstein vs. James Damore.
I think you are being disingenuous if you are denying that cancel culture is a thing. There is a long list of people who’ve been cancelled or have attempted to be cancelled and finding that list is a quick Google away. Examples include: JK Rowling, Dave Chapelle, Matt Damon, etc. the list is a mile long. Some cancellation attempts are more successful than others depending on how famous they are. But the key is that a large mob of people banded together and tried to get them deplatformed, usually using common language like “do better”, and calling them things like “fascist”, “bigot”, “racist”.
Additionally, those are just examples of people in the public sphere, there are tons of videos and other examples of online of students shouting down professors or guest speakers, calling them "fascists", demanding they be fired, literally cancelling speakers with opposing views. I mean there's just a lot of evidence online, very easy to Google. I can link it here if that's helpful, but I worry that the people who don't already know about this problem will probably just ignore the links since they were already willfully ignorant up to this point.
Of course there are examples of right extremes, nobody here is denying that, we’re talking about the extremes of the left and how they are having a chilling effect on scientific research.
For the record, I am not a Republican and I am not a Democrat.
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