Product Code Database
Cancel culture is a cultural phenomenon in which an individual thought to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner is Ostracism, , Shunning or fired, often aided by social media. This shunning may extend to social or professional circleswhether on social media or in personwith most high-profile incidents involving Celebrity. Those subject to this ostracism are said to have been "canceled".
The term "cancel culture" came into circulation in 2018 and has mostly negative connotations. The term " call-out culture" is used by some for the same concept.
Some critics argue that cancel culture has a chilling effect on public discourse, that it is unproductive, that it does not bring real social change, that it causes discrimination, or that it amounts to cyberbullying. Others argue that the term is used to attack efforts to promote accountability or give disenfranchised people a voice, and to attack language that is itself free speech. Still others question whether cancel culture is an actual phenomenon, arguing that boycotting has existed long before the origin of the term "cancel culture".
While the careers of some public figures have been impacted by boycottswidely described as "cancellation"others who complained of cancellation successfully continued their careers.
By 2015, the concept of canceling had become widespread on Black Twitter to refer to a personal decision, sometimes seriously and sometimes in jest, to stop supporting a person or work. According to Jonah Engel Bromwich of The New York Times, this usage of the word "cancellation" indicates "total disinvestment in something (anything)". After numerous cases of online shaming gained wide notoriety, the use of the term "cancellation" increased to describe a widespread, outraged, online response to a single provocative statement, against a single target. Over time, as isolated instances of cancellation became more frequent and the mob mentality more apparent, commentators began seeing a "culture" of outrage and cancellation.
In October 2017, sexual assault allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein led to the cancellation of his projects, his expulsion from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and legal consequences, including a conviction on charges of rape and sexual assault. These events contributed to the rise of the MeToo movement movement, where individuals shared their own allegations of sexual assault, leading to the cancellation of the careers of those accused. In November 2017, comedian Louis C.K. admitted to sexual misconduct allegations and, as a result, his shows were canceled, distribution deals were terminated, and he was dropped by his agency and management. After a period away from show business, Louis C.K. returned to work in 2018 and won a Grammy award in 2022. However, many people in the entertainment industry said that it was inappropriate to support his career or award him a Grammy due to his past misconduct.
Conversations about "cancel culture" increased in late 2019. In the 2020s, the phrase became a shorthand nom de guerre employed by spectators to refer to what they perceived to be disproportionate reactions to politically incorrect speech. In 2020, Ligaya Mishan wrote in The New York Times:
"The term is shambolically applied to incidents both online and off that range from vigilante justice to hostile debate to stalking, intimidation and harassment. ... Those who embrace the idea (if not the precise language) of canceling seek more than pat apologies and retractions, although it's not always clear whether the goal is to right a specific wrong or redress a larger imbalance of power."
"Call-out culture" has been in use as part of the #MeToo movement. The #MeToo movement encouraged women (and men) to call out their abusers on a forum where the accusations would be heard, especially against very powerful individuals.
In the book The Coddling of the American Mind (2018), social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, argue that call-out culture arises on college campuses from what they term "safetyism"a moral culture in which people are unwilling to make tradeoffs demanded by the practical or moral concerns of others. For safetyism, see Keith Hampton, professor of media studies at Michigan State University, contends that the practice contributes to political polarization in the United States but does not lead to changes in opinion. Cancel culture has been described by media studies scholar Eve Ng as "a collective of typically marginalized voices 'calling out' and emphatically expressing their censure of a powerful figure". Cultural studies scholar Frances E. Lee states that call-out culture leads to self-policing of "wrong, oppressive, or inappropriate" opinions. According to Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan professor of media studies, canceling someone is a form of "cultural boycott" and cancel culture is the "ultimate expression of agency", which is "born of a desire for control as people have limited power over what is presented to them on social media" and a need for "accountability which is not centralized".
Some academics have proposed alternatives and improvements to cancel culture. Clinical counsellor Anna Richards, who specializes in conflict mediation, says that "learning to analyze our own motivations when offering criticism" helps call-out culture work productively. Professor Joshua Knobe, of the Philosophy Department at Yale, contends that public denunciation is not effective, and that society is too quick to pass judgement against those they view as public offenders or personae non gratae. Knobe says that these actions have the opposite effect on individuals, and that it is best to bring attention to the positive actions in which most of society participates.
Former US Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia wrote in a 2021 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy article that cancel culture is a form of free speech, and is therefore protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. According to Scalia, cancel culture can interfere with the right to counsel, since some lawyers would not be willing to risk their personal and professional reputation on controversial topics.
In 2023, American conservatives and Transphobia activists engaged in a boycott of Bud Light over its hiring of Trans woman TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney. The incident is seen an example of cancel culture and consumer backlash. The Harvard Business Review cited the incident as an example of an attempt to "resonate with younger, more socially-conscious audiences", but that it "generated downstream adjustments from retailers and distributors" that negatively hurt the product's performance. It highlighted the incident as making consumer brand marketing departments fearful of taking a stand on social issues.
Ng defines cancel culture as "the withdrawal of any kind of support (viewership, social media follows, purchases of products endorsed by the person, etc.) for those who are assessed to have said or done something unacceptable or highly problematic, generally from a social justice perspective especially alert to sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, racism, bullying, and related issues."Ng 2020: 623. Ng, E. 2020. "No Grand Pronouncements Here... Reflections on Cancel Culture and Digital Media Participation." Television & New Media. 21(6): 621-627. There are different perspectives on the morality of cancellations. On the one hand, there is the view that cancel culture imposes punishments that are not proportional to the offenses or alleged offenses.See Norlock, Kathryn J. 2017. "Online Shaming." Social Philosophy Today 33: 187-197.[1] See also Thomason, Krista. 2021. "The Moral Risks of Online Shaming," in Carissa Véliz, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 145-162. [2] This is closely related to John Stuart Mill's criticism of public shaming: he argued in On Liberty that society "practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself."Mill 1991: 9. Mill, J.S. 1991. On Liberty and Other Essays. Edited by Gray, J. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martha Nussbaum similarly says that cancel culture represents the "justice of the mob," but this alleged justice is not "deliberative, impartial or neutral."See Nussbaum 2004: 234. Nussbaum, Martha. 2004. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. On the other hand, there are those who defend the value of shaming as constructive, if done right; people who defend this view maintain that cancel culture often shames people counter-productively but that it can be tweaked or altered in order to be a valuable tool for people's improvement.See Campbell 2023. Campbell, Douglas R. 2023. "Cancel Culture, Then and Now: A Platonic Approach to the Shaming of People and the Exclusion of Ideas," Journal of Cyberspace Studies 7 (2):147-166.[3] For instance, holding people accountable for things that they have done wrong can be a powerful way of correcting bad behavior, but it has to be paired with a belief in the possibility of redemption.See, again, Campbell 2023. People who take this approach often agree with Plato that shame is an important feeling that can lead to moral improvements.Plato's Gorgias is a key text in this case. See Tarnopolsky, C (2010). Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato's Gorgias and the Politics of Shame. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Everyone in this debate agrees that it is important to avoid what Nussbaum calls a "spoiled identity": to have a spoiled identity is to have the public image of someone who is irredeemable and unwelcome in a community.See Nussbaum 2004: 230, 239.
Pope Francis said that cancel culture is "a form of ideological colonization, one that leaves no room for freedom of expression", saying that it "ends up cancelling all sense of identity". Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, states that social activism does not just involve going online or going to a protest to call someone out, but is work entailing strategy sessions, meetings, and getting petitions signed. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak included cancel culture, where one group "are trying to impose their views on the rest of us", among the contemporary dangers of the modern world.Sunak, R., PM speech on security: 13 May 2024, accessed 26 May 2024
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek states that, "cancel culture, with its implicit paranoia, is a desperate and obviously self-defeating attempt to compensate for the very real violence and intolerance that sexual minorities have long suffered. But it is a retreat into a cultural fortress, a pseudo-'safe space' whose discursive fanaticism merely strengthens the majority's resistance to it."
Lisa Nakamura, a professor at the University of Michigan, describes cancel culture as "a cultural boycott" and says it provides a culture of accountability. Meredith Clark, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia, states that cancel culture gives power to disenfranchised voices. Osita Nwanevu, a staff writer for The New Republic, states that people are threatened by cancel culture because it is a new group of young progressives, minorities, and women who have "obtained a seat at the table" and are debating matters of justice and etiquette.
A response letter, "A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate", was signed by over 160 people in academia and media. It criticized the Harper's letter as a plea to end cancel culture by successful professionals with large platforms who wanted to exclude others who have been "canceled for generations". The writers ultimately stated that the Harper's letter was intended to further silence already marginalized people. They wrote: "It reads as a caustic reaction to a diversifying industry—one that's starting to challenge diversifying norms that have protected bigotry."
Historian C. J. Coventry argues that the term is incorrectly applied, and that the label has been used to avoid accountability for historical instances of injustice. Another historian, David Olusoga, made a similar argument, and argued that the phenomenon of cancellation is not limited to the left. Indigenous governance professor and activist Pamela Palmater writes in Maclean's magazine that, "cancel culture is the dog whistle term used by those in power who don't want to be held accountable for their words and actions—often related to racism, misogyny, homophobia or the abuse and exploitation of others."
Sarah Manavis wrote for the New Statesman magazine that while free speech advocates are more likely to make accusations of cancel culture, criticism is part of free speech and rarely results in consequences for those in power who are criticized. She argues that social media is an extension and reincarnation of a longer tradition of expression in a liberal society, "a new space for historical power structures to be solidified" and that online criticism by people who do not hold actual power in society tends not to affect existing power structures. She adds that most prominent people who criticized public opinion as canceling still have highly profitable businesses.
A poll of American registered voters conducted by Morning Consult in July 2020 showed that cancel culture, defined as "the practice of withdrawing support for (or canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive", was common: 40% of respondents said they had withdrawn support from public figures and companies, including on social media, because they had done or said something considered objectionable or offensive, with 8% having engaged in this often. Behavior differed according to age, with a majority (55%) of voters 18 to 34 years old saying they have taken part in cancel culture, while only about a third (32%) of voters over 65 said they had joined a social media pile-on. Attitude towards the practice was mixed, with 44% of respondents saying they disapproved of cancel culture, 32% who approved, and 24% who did not know or had no opinion. Furthermore, 46% believed cancel culture had gone too far, with only 10% thinking it had not gone far enough. Additionally, 53% believed that people should expect social consequences for expressing unpopular opinions in public, such as those that may be construed as deeply offensive to other people.
A March 2021 poll by the Harvard University Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll found that 64% of respondents viewed "a growing cancel culture" as a threat to their freedom, while the other 36% did not. 36% of respondents said that cancel culture is a big problem, 32% called it a moderate problem, 20% called it a small problem, and 13% said it is not a problem. 54% said they were concerned that if they expressed their opinions online, they would be banned or fired, while the other 46% said they were not concerned.
A November 2021 Hill/HarrisX poll found that 71% of registered voters strongly or somewhat felt that cancel culture went too far, with similar numbers of Republicans (76%), Democrats (70%), and independents (68%) saying so. The same poll found that 69% of registered voters felt that cancel culture unfairly punishes people for their past actions or statements, compared to 31% who said it did not. Republicans were more likely to agree with the statement (79%), compared to Democrats (65%) and independents (64%).
In a January 2022 Knight-IPSOS Study involving 4,000 participants, most Americans surveyed said that some speech should be prohibited. Specifically, they stated that "a variety of private and public institutions should prohibit racist speech". However, most also noted that these same institutions should not ban political views that are offensive.
A March 2022 New York Times/Siena College survey of 1,000 Americans found that 84 percent of adults said it is a "very serious" or "somewhat serious" problem that some Americans do not speak freely in everyday situations because of fear of retaliation or harsh criticism. The survey also found that 46 percent of respondents said they felt less free to talk about politics compared to a decade ago, and that only 34 percent of Americans said they believed that all Americans enjoyed freedom of speech completely.
|
|
