With political correctness and sensitivity becoming more and more important in today’s increasingly interconnected and diverse world, everyone, including celebrities, is no longer able to avoid the political scene, causing a complementary practice to also enter mainstream media: cancel culture, or the act of withdrawing public support from a certain person or business in hopes of causing them to reflect on and change their behavior, indirectly pushing for social change in the process. Ever since it first became popular, cancel culture has managed to make an impact on people from all walks of life, pervading popular culture, the corporate workplace, and even the political scene, and has been regarded with mixed feelings.

While cancel culture has only recently become part of mainstream pop culture, the ideas behind it—withdrawing public support and group shaming—are hardly new, and can be traced back to the Civil Rights Movement, specifically, to the 1950s and 1960s civil rights boycotts. 

Cancelling can be described as “a survival skill as old as the Southern black use of the boycott,” wrote Anne Charity Hudley, chair in linguistics of African America for the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Of course, key differences have emerged between the civil rights boycotts and modern cancel culture, but the idea behind both is the same; even without the political or social power to incite direct change, an individual can still make a difference by withdrawing support and refusing to participate. 

Even with that being said, modern cancel culture is still somewhat hard to define, and in fact, some people don’t see the distinction between cancel culture and simply holding someone responsible. Nonetheless, it can be broadly described as bringing attention to a social issue (or any issue in general, really) and the people who perpetuate it, showing solidarity with others who feel the same, and muting offenders—often through group shaming or boycott. Although the term “cancel culture” has a negative connotation in today’s media because of its empowerment of marginalized groups and its ability to hold powerful people accountable, it’s generally had a positive impact on our culture. 

For one, cancel culture gives members of marginalized groups a voice against those in positions of power. Instead of making an effort to actively compel the offender to atone, people can choose to stay silent or condemn the offender instead, which can often be more effective if a person’s individual influence is already very limited. In a sense, cancel culture can be seen as a solution to cope with the sense of powerlessness that results from lacking the political, social, or professional power to incite change.

“Canceling is a way to acknowledge that you don’t have to have the power to change structural inequality,” Hudley noted. “You don’t even have to have the power to change all of public sentiment. But as an individual, you can still have power beyond measure.”

Additionally, this practice also helps to hold powerful people responsible for their actions. It’s undeniable that celebrities and famous people, in general, have considerably more power than the average person, and with the increased connectivity and engagement that exists in the modern age, they now have even more influence than they did in the past. While this makes it a lot easier and more convenient to communicate to a large audience, it also unfortunately means that any problematic comments, even those that are made out of good intent, are also seen by and affect a lot more people. In this case, being “cancelled” can decrease a celebrity’s clout and bring their attention to social issues, hopefully providing feedback and serving as a wake-up call to guide their future actions. In addition to this, cancel culture also pushes the notion that harmful ideas in pop culture shouldn’t be promoted, which serves to better society as a whole.

Although cancel culture initially began as a way for ordinary people to express their dissatisfaction and disapproval in response to the actions of others, many critics of cancel culture argue that the practice stymies free speech and has devolved into witch hunts. While some of these claims are rooted in reality, most of this criticism reflects the unwillingness of the older generation to accept the cultural shift that’s being pushed by the more progressive younger generation. In the political arena especially, the case against cancel culture has mostly been used for personal gain rather than any meaningful contribution to the preservation of free speech. 

An example of this is, unfortunately, our commander-in-chief and the current state of the party he represents, who have taken a liking to characterizing criticism as cancellation or deep-seated conspiracy, whether it be the boycott of Goya (a company that endorsed Trump), the push to rethink the names of military bases named after Confederate leaders, or felony charges and general condemnation of Mark and Patricia McCloskey (a couple that brandished weapons at BLM protesters walking past their front lawn). 

Additionally, before the 2020 Republican National Convention began, delegates also voted for a resolution describing cancel culture as “grown into erasing of history, encouraging lawlessness, muting citizens, and violating free exchange of ideas, thoughts, and speech.”

The president himself, in a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, also described the “unhinged left-wing mob” as “trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments, our beautiful monuments, tear down our statues, and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control.”

Ironically, as much as he likes to play himself up as a victim of cancel culture, he has also participated in, and in many cases, incited the very practice he denounces. Over the years, he’s called for the boycott of “fake news” and journalists who don’t support him (as well as some that do) and various brands, including Goodyear Tires, Macy’s, and Harley Davidson, as well as cancellations of NFL and NBA players that engage in political activism, most notably, Colin Kaepernick in 2016.

While the actions of President Trump and certain members of the government certainly aren’t representative of every member of the government, it does go to show that some critics of cancel culture aren’t actually dedicated to preserving free speech, and are simply focused on receiving good press and avoiding criticism instead.

To add on to that, Trump also serves as another example of why cancel culture crusades aren’t always just “witch hunts”, as some critics claim they are. While cancel culture can occasionally be over the top for people who still have the room to learn from their actions and make better-informed decisions in the future, Trump, as well as many other celebrities who get cancelled and subsequently blame cancel culture for all their woes, continue to repeat the same problematic thoughts and actions that caused them to get cancelled in the first place. Being cancelled is only meant to be a wake-up call, and if the offender chooses to continue with the same behavior and stay cancelled as a result, it’s no longer a problem of how right or wrong the concept of cancel culture is; rather, it’s about the wrongdoer’s morals and motives. 

Additionally, to perhaps exaggerate its harmful effects, opponents of cancel culture have also drawn comparisons connecting the practice to torture, indoctrination, and ethnocide under dictatorial regimes, including those of Mao and Stalin.

Others have described it as a “mutated McCarthy era” and “a step towards the Rwandan genocide.” It goes without saying, however, that as brutal and vicious as criticism on social media can get sometimes, it is in no way comparable to the genocides, assassinations, political imprisonments, and other heinous crimes that have been committed under the regimes cancel culture has been compared to. Conversely, these hyperbolic comparisons only serve to further marginalize victims impacted by the harmful rhetoric spoken by those that have been cancelled. 

Another argument that opponents of cancel culture often make is that “everyone makes mistakes,” and that it’s wrong and over-reactive to cancel someone based on a single ill-informed action or problematic past actions. Of course, everyone does make mistakes, and everyone is able to reflect on their actions and make changes to their future behavior. It’s also true that some celebrities have suffered undeserved repercussions as a result of excessive social activism and cancel culture. However, it can also be argued that cancel culture doesn’t actually go far enough, because the fact of the matter is that very few canceled celebrities, especially those with a significant social standing and platform, are actually seriously impacted.

In the pop culture scene, for example, Youtuber Jeffree Star is still at the peak of his career and has a following of over 14 million people despite attempts to cancel him for multiple instances of racism. Ellen DeGeneres, after being exposed and cancelled for cultivating a toxic workplace culture on her talk show, has recently returned on the air with few repercussions. Even J.K. Rowling, who has long been criticized for her transphobic beliefs, still has a career and is still selling books. Despite facing charges including sexual misconduct and child pornography, streams of R&B singer R. Kelly’s music actually went up after a documentary detailing the allegations against him was released. Even the #MeToo movement, which led to the ousting of several high-profile celebrities such as Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, was limited in its success. Woody Allen, an esteemed director, is still making movies (Rifkin’s Festival, which he directed, was released just this month) in spite of allegations of sexual abuse by his adoptive daughter, Dylan Farrow, when she was just seven years old. Roman Palonski, despite being a child rapist and literally fleeing the U.S. hours before being formally sentenced, was still given the Best Director Award at the Césars (the French equivalent of the Academy Awards) this year, to which multiple women walked out of the ceremony in protest. 

Despite the controversy surrounding cancel culture, America is most definitely still in a period that lauds free expression; the present could even be considered a golden age for it. Cancel culture has merely emerged as a tool to set the moral standard and hold people accountable, reflecting a change in cultural values. And as people continue to become more interconnected and progressive, one thing is certain: cancel culture is here to stay—for good.

Graphic courtesy of YMI.TODAY