What is cancel culture? And does it help or make things worse?
It is a form of censorship that often leads to excommunication where the goalposts for moral perfection are constantly changing and anyone who fails to live up to the new standard is vilified and abused by the masses, especially online.
I have personal experience with cancel culture. In 2017, I was cancelled no less than three times — once for saying the Royal Family was a bunch of assholes who were responsible for killing Princess Diana, another time for saying that yellow fever is not as big of a problem as internalized racism and white worship among Asian Americans, and a third time for pointing out the blatant misogyny among Asian men in online spaces.
Right now I’m in the middle of someone trying to cancel me over my series of book events, Decolonize Your Bookshelves, by saying that I’m “erasing Native Americans” and that if I don’t include Native American works in my events, I am “nothing more than just empty words” and “a settler on their lands.” It is true that Filipino Americans are settlers on stolen lands. I never said we weren’t. But it can’t be denied that 1) the Philippines has obviously been colonized and 2) you can’t lay a copyright claim to words like colonize and colonization when it’s been the experience of so many people throughout the world.
Getting cancelled sucks. You end up self-censoring. You don’t want to write anything even remotely close to controversial for fear of stirring up the fervor of the masses again. It’s also expensive — you have to get your online presence “scrubbed” in case some of those threats of harm are actually serious. In some cases, if you’re dealing with an onslaught of slander or libel, you might need to hire a reputation defender to help clean up your online presence. It is liberal America’s attempt to police culture, draw lines around what ought to be acceptable in humor and sexuality and conduct. Canceling “cancel culture” has been a popular theme since “cancel culture” started, which was probably sometime in 2016. (Emma Grey Ellis, Wired)
Call-outs began as a utopian ideal, a way of extracting justice and change without cops or courts. But then came the internet. Activist Loretta Ross wrote about this recently in the New York Times: “My experiences with call-outs began in the 1970s as a young black feminist activist,” she wrote. “I sharply criticized white women for not understanding women of color. I called them out while trying to explain intersectionality and white supremacy.” Forty years later, after watching call-outs migrate from in-person to online, Ross has come to the conclusion that this trend isn’t just counterproductive but actually toxic. (Katie Herzog, The Stranger)
Pushing for moral change can be complicated. If you’re too gentle and subtle in your push, nothing will happen. But if you’re too aggressive and constantly move the goalposts, people will push back.* And that pushback will end up going in the complete opposite direction of progress. It will go all the way to the right or even the far right. Nobody likes to be lectured or told what to say, think or feel.
*Side note: I think constantly moving the goalposts is part of the strategy for the so-called woke. It makes it easier for them to pick on people.
So what is the difference between cancellation and critique?
That is the big problem. No one seems to agree.
One thing is for sure. If you follow someone’s story closely as it unfolds, you can ascertain whether it’s criticism or cancellation depending on how abusive the language gets.
Legit critique is liberal — like arguing that Dave Chappelle’s latest Netflix special was bad or didn’t work for specific reasons. Illegitimate critique is illiberal, which is arguing that her work shouldn't even exist or that her arguments shouldn't be made or that she should be de-platformed forever. One problem with cancel culture is that there is no statute of limitations or mechanism for renewal. Once you’re cancelled, it can have long-lasting economic, social and emotional effects. Some people never recover. (Katie Herzog, The Stranger)
Guilty until proven innocent is the new rule.
The new rule is that once you’re called out on something, you’re guilty until proven innocent. Anyone who comes to your defense gets blacklisted too. This goes against every judicial principle in this country. And all it takes is one mistake to get cancelled. But one mistake just isn’t enough to define a person’s character. The demand for moral perfection from everyone is ridiculous, especially when the goalposts keep changing. People who participate in cancel culture are just acting morally superior and self-righteous. It’s not progressive. It’s not at all liberal. It’s overzealous. In fact, it’s pretty damn fascist.
Our woke mentality is America’s new Puritanism. Instead of a handy list of sins written thousands of years ago, modern sins are ever-changing. A joke that was deemed progressive a decade ago is retroactively condemned as hate speech. (John Gabriel, Welcome to America, the land of the perpetually whiny and offended)
There is no reason anymore for these callouts except that it’s the ultimate virtue-signaling. People who participate in these callouts have no intention in justice or equality or making the world a better place. It’s all for social media clout and for in-group approval. Being woke and calling out people for being “wrong” = being a good person in their world.
Being cancelled on Twitter, then, is an event that belongs to an alarming lineage of severe intolerance, cruel persecution, official condemnation, and vindictive upheavals. The list of weighty precedents is endless. Nelson Mandela was cancelled. Martin Luther King Jr. was cancelled. The Beatles were cancelled. Lenny Bruce, of course, was cancelled. Vladimir Nabokov, D.H. Lawrence, and James Joyce were all cancelled. Twenty unlucky Puritans were cancelled at Salem. Galileo was cancelled. Joan of Arc was cancelled. Jesus was cancelled. Socrates was cancelled. (Osita Nwanevu, The New Republic)
Cancel culture is stifling art.
Artists get cancelled too. Anyone familiar with Young Adult (YA) Twitter knows all about this.
In “The Toxic Drama of YA Twitter,” New York Magazine’s Kat Rosenfield writes, “Young-adult books are being targeted in intense social-media callouts, draggings, and pile-ons — sometimes before anybody’s even read them. Many members of YA Book Twitter have become culture cops, monitoring their peers across multiple platforms for violations. The result is a jumble of dogpiling and dragging, subtweeting and screenshotting, vote-brigading and flagging wars, with accusations of white supremacy on one side and charges of thought-policing moral authoritarianism on the other.” One author and former diversity advocate described why she no longer takes part: “I have never seen social interaction this fucked up. And I’ve been in prison.”
Books and their authors get canceled for being ableist, for heterocentrism, for being “potentially triggering” to survivors of eating disorders, for stereotyping, or for the more serious labels — being racist and bigoted. And for what? Writing a character that is unlikable, even if it’s one that grows and learns valuable life lessons? Some lessons are meant to be uncomfortable. And yes, redemption is possible. This is young adult fiction we’re talking about here.
Despite demands from readers for more diversity, many times authors will do away with including a POC or marginalized character for fear of the backlash from writing outside of their identity. It turns out the real risk isn’t excluding diversity, it’s including it. The irony. Once again, how does any of this help?
So much of this same gate-keeping happens in the entertainment industry. Filmmakers and comedians are especially susceptible to being cancelled if their content is deemed insufficiently woke. To be clear, I’m talking about movies that explore the perspectives of outsiders such as JoJo Rabbit and Joker. I’m not talking about movies that are just plain cringeworthy like Sixteen Candles, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Ace Venture: Pet Detective. I’m also referring to comedians who have made a name for themselves criticizing the current cultural/political climate such as Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock, not straight up offense humor like Andrew Dice Clay.
“I always thought one of the best things cinema was capable of doing was of sympathizing with the marginalized and misunderstood, but I guess that viewpoint is out of fashion now.” (Jessa Crispin, Is politics getting in the way of assessing which films are actually good?)
Does art have an obligation to be moral and validating? I don’t think so. I think it’s impossible. I believe art is the perfect way to explore a lot of ideas, even dark or morally ambiguous ones. Cancelling art is just another form of censorship. Take a look at this list of banned books in the US and tell me we wouldn’t be missing out on some wonderful stories and perspectives if they ceased to exist.
#MeToo
Some of the most damning public cancellations came from the #MeToo movement. Any man who went on a bad date or had an embarrassing flirtation was suddenly vulnerable to the mobs of newly empowered internet mobs looking for the next person to take down.
While many of the accusations were factual, serious and straight up criminal (Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, and Kevin Spacey), others were too grey area and didn’t require the kind of public scrutiny that followed (James Franco and Aziz Ansari). Others turned out to be completely false (George Takei, James Gunn and Johnny Depp).
It wasn’t just the men that were being accused and hunted either. Anyone critical of the movement was accused of being a supporter of rape culture and a misogynist, even women. They were seen as betraying their own gender in this neverending game of thrones where everyone jockeys for the title of Most Oppressed and all the social capital that it affords in liberal circles.
While most of the concerns brought up in #MeToo were valid, it’s important to realize that no movement is perfect and all of them should be open to criticism if they are truly dedicated to helping others.
Cancel culture is abuse.
I’ve seen all the arguments in favor of it. I’ve seen people defend it and call it accountability, not cancellation. I’ve seen social justice advocates claim that “cancel culture isn’t real.” That critics of cancel culture “just want to continue to be bigots and not be held accountable for their words and actions.” They are wrong. It does exist. It doesn’t allow for healthy disagreement. It has nothing but scorn for those who can’t keep up with the constantly changing socio-political climate. It’s abuse and it’s immoral.
*Coming soon…since America is quickly sliding towards fascism, I am working on another blog post addressing how cancel culture and identity politics are connected (due to the failure of identity politics to allow for any sort of productive discourse), how they completely take away from what’s important and how they ultimately benefit the right more than the left.
Recent Posts
I usually do a write up of the events I’ve organized or hosted and my most-read articles at the end of the year. This was an unusual year (obviously, there is no need to go into it here) so I didn’t bother. Instead I want to highlight a project of mine that I am particularly proud of — it’s my new podcast show, Unverified Accounts, that I cohost with my frequent collaborators, Chris Jesu Lee and Filip Guo. If you're a big movie/TV/book buff, have leftist sympathies, but can't stand 'wokeness' dumbing down our culture, then we're the podcast for you. So far in our 25 episodes, we’ve covered a range of contentious topics.