Cancelling Cancel Culture

The Cambridge online dictionary defines cancel culture as ‘a way of behaving in a society or group, especially on social media, in which it is common to completely reject and stop supporting someone because they have said or done something that offends you’. And while the idea of offence is slippery, as it skates around direct and indirect harm towards individuals and groups, this is a good starting point for defining cancel culture.

Cambridge even goes on to offer examples of the problems and benefits of this, stating that ‘the main argument against cancel culture is that it doesn’t enable people who have wronged society the opportunity to apologize and learn from their mistakes’. To counter this, it offers that ‘cancel culture has its place - it helps to call out and remove problematic people from mainstream culture’ and that it is ‘our way to exert some control over a world that is increasingly becoming more dangerous and less tolerant’.

But as we attempt to exert control over a dangerous, intolerant world, do we become part of the problem, breeding more intolerance? In a world where those who abuse and malign often hold the power, can cancel culture ever attempt to redress this imbalance?

This year, an open letter which condemned cancel culture was signed by many authors, including JK Rowling. In response, another letter defended cancel culture as a way of dealing “with the problem of power: who has it and who does not”.

Many studies show that in the contemporary Western world, we are more polarized, and less open to debate and tolerance; cancel culture is a symptom of this condition, compounded by the increasing threat of living in a post-truth world, where lies have more power than the truth.

On one hand, cancel culture has at times effectively dealt with sexual offenders and helped to put power in the hands of the previously powerless. Kevin Spacey, as this article outlines, was accused of assault by several actors, some of whom were underage. While none of the offences have been successfully prosecuted, the accusations have seemingly ended his career, as he was dropped from the films and TV shows he was cast in at the time.

In this case, cancel culture acted as punishment where the legal system failed. Rich, privileged offenders worm their way out of conviction, but thanks to cancel culture, their careers will never recover (and rightly so).

But this is not always the case; Louis CK made a successful return to comedy after similar accusations. Plus, accused sexual offenders sit within the British royal family, and in the White House in the US. Abuse, power, and patriarchal tradition seem to go hand in hand. But is cancel culture the answer to this?

The age of technology means that people’s words and actions are more and more easily recorded, saved, and spread. In this new world, if we de-platform anyone who commits a faux pas or slip of the tongue we might all soon disappear into the ether of canceldom. The question is why are societies so willing to ‘cancel’ celebrities over stumbles from their past, but not to hold powerful men accountable for their continuing sexual aggression?

We need to create an environment which embraces learning and change, not one that pushes hostility and inflexibility. The world is changing fast, and if we focus on punishing people for their hiccups and not helping them to learn from them, then we won’t be able to keep up.

Of course, if someone is completely unwilling to face their faults, and ignorant even in the face of direct critique, then we might think about de-platforming them. This is, I think, the dilemma of the contemporary celebrity; with its status comes an astounding platform, which can be used for good or ill. The increasing power that comes with being a celebrity in the age of social media must be wielded with care, as people are more and more influenced by what they see online.

The internet seems to be an impossible place to hold someone accountable for their actions without inciting hyperbolic outcry and ‘cancelling’. This begs the question: does cancelling actually make someone want to change? Or is it just the easy option for everyone else?

Perhaps our increasing tendency towards cancel culture is a result of our increasing political and social instability. We wish to see the self as fixed, because when it is fixed it cannot evade us; we can analyse, react to and perceive it consistently. But this is not the case. People are fluid, changing and elusive.

In attempting to know others, we attempt to know ourselves. By positioning someone as immoral, we also position ourselves in relation to them. Acknowledging that anyone can change in any direction on the moral scale is quite an unsettling proposition. But it seems as though it is the only solution to the culture of intolerance that we live in now.

A BBC article describes Barack Obama’s reaction to cancel culture: ‘In 2019 former US President Barack Obama weighed into the debate about cancel culture, saying it was “not activism”. “If all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get that far,” he told an audience at an event for the Obama Foundation. He added that he got the sense some people felt being as “judgmental as possible” was the best way to force change and cautioned them that the world was “messy” and full of “ambiguities”’.

Cancelling, we might conclude, is people’s way of attempting to order a world that is increasingly messy and fraught. But if we cancel anyone who behaves or speaks in a way that we view as immoral, we are not necessarily contributing to a better world, just categorising an already bad one.

Of course, in discussing cancel culture we tread the line between de-platforming celebrity faux-pas and condemning those who have abused and traumatised. This line is blurred and wobbly, something which I think makes these discussions so nuanced, and the idea of completely cancelling someone for their wrongdoing perhaps not nuanced enough.

Cancelling helps us to end discussion, to avoid addressing the systems that cause people to slip up, speak harmfully, and abuse their power. In my opinion, we need a more productive alternative. It’s so important to call people out when they are harming or offending others, but it’s equally important to create an environment where they can then change.

A series of tweets by Hank Green sum up my thoughts on this topic: ‘I really strongly believe that we should be judged not by how we acted when we were ignorant, but how we responded when we were informed … I think it’s vitally important that we tell creators when they are doing harm. And I have watched some creators react to that by listening and changing, while others have cried a bit in an apology video and then gone right back to making shitty stuff that hurts people’.

For when it comes down to it, we only have control over the present moment, and it is what we do in that moment that matters. If we acknowledge and improve upon our past actions by focusing on what we can do about them in the present, then we can move forward productively.

We live in a world where C-list celebrities are de-platformed for slips of the tongue, but abusers, peadophiles and rapists sit in positions of power. If we want to create a better society, we have to hold people (and ourselves) accountable for their actions, but we also have to be willing to let people change. Perhaps if we cancel cancel culture, we can build a world of understanding, talking and learning, and not of anger and ignorance.