Is It Time To Cancel ‘Cancel Culture’?

The power of the internet means we can almost instantaneously call for the end of celebrities' careers. But is that really a good thing?

Taylor Swift

by Emily Sargent |
Updated on

When a friend asked if I wanted to see Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, I told her no. That, in my view, his work is full of bloodied, beaten women who almost never get to speak – and that subconsciously colours what we think is acceptable in the real world. I was making a moral consumer statement, in making sure that the director wouldn’t get his hands on my £11.90. Which was a good thing, right?

Most of us have felt that righteous glow from exercising our tiny bit of power. Except that, recently, the public has taken exercising its judgement to more of an extreme, increasingly calling for an immediate end to celebrities’ careers after they’ve made a mistake or said something offensive. Dubbed ‘cancel culture’, it’s a phenomenon now coming in for criticism.

Last week, Taylor Swift spoke out about calls on Twitter for her to be ‘cancelled’ at the peak of her public fallout with Kim K and Kanye. ‘When you say someone is cancelled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being,’ she told US Vogue. ‘I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly.’ In the same week, comedian Sarah Silverman revealed she’d been dropped from a film the night before they were due to begin shooting, after a photo resurfaced of her in ‘blackface’ during a 2007 comedy sketch. ‘It’s like, if you’re not on board, if you say the wrong thing, if you had a tweet once, everyone is, like, throwing the first stone,’ she said.

Taylor, in particular, weathered the storm, but there are plenty of other celebrities – Kevin Spacey, Roseanne Barr, comedian Louis CK – whose careers have taken a major downturn as a result of public condemnation (albeit over far more serious allegations). Spacey was actually removed from a Ridley Scott film after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced. ‘People have always been ostracised for transgressing social norms,’ says Dr Huw Davies, a digital sociologist at Oxford University. However, rather than writing letters or switching off our TVs, social media now offers us a far quicker, more direct route to make our feelings known publicly.

Indeed, when it emerged last week that the billionaire investor behind fitness brands Equinox and SoulCycle was hosting a fundraiser for President Trump, the calls to ‘cancel’ were instant. ‘Everyone who cancels their Equinox and SoulCycle memberships, meet me at the library. Bring weights,’ tweeted model Chrissy Teigen. But for all the initial noise when something is so-called cancelled, it’s not necessarily permanent; already comedian Louis CK is back on stage cracking jokes, after admitting masturbating in front of women without their consent. ‘Whether a celebrity is able to come back tells us a lot about his or her status and power in society,’ says Dr Davies. ‘More privileged members of society can subvert or bypass the process altogether, make comebacks on their own terms and even profit from their demise.’

At best, ‘cancel culture’ means people are being held to account for bad behaviour that transgresses our own morality – and that’s why I still won’t be going to see the Tarantino film. Let’s not cancel all of ‘cancel culture’ just yet.

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