Cancel Culture — What It Is And How to Serve It
Imagine a usual morning of just an average person who was famous and respected by society the very yesterday but a fallen angel today thrown away by a bunch of strangers on social media.
You are on the Olympus surrounded by 12 beautiful gods and goddesses; flowers are all around, honey and patchouli are in the air. When they ask you to join their pantheon camp, you will say yes. You take a cup of nectar and open your mouth to say a Y-word, but a loud warning horn is bursting out — an alarm is violating the dream of yours expectedly unexpected meaning a new day has already come. You open up one eye, open another one, you still feel honey on your tongue.
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Surely you don’t get up at once — staying under covers even for a little seems to be the best time ever. Before starting the day and your morning routine you, as usual, reach out to your phone laid on the bedside table, and the first thing you see is tons of notifications in dozens of social media apps.
Your heart’s beating faster and faster, your head is throbbing — the tsunami of notifications overtops, and you understand that something goes wrong.
You will wallow in hot water of global hate for some time, but from this exact moment, you will divide your life on Before and After today. Except that there will be no After. You. Are. Canceled.
What do we know about “cancel culture”?
You may say that the Cancel term is something quite untypical to apply to live creatures or companies. We can cancel an annoying service or membership, cancel plans, a trip, or a meeting, but how it is even possible to cancel anyone?
The idea of rejecting (or boycotting, if you want) someone has been spinning up since 2015, prompted by #MeToo and other movements that demanded greater accountability for public figures. Since then, they have penetrated deeply the term into our vocabulary, so it continues to pop up more and more in the headers of all famous newspapers and magazines, and appears more often in day-to-day conversations.
That’s how the vocabularies define the term.
Cancel culture refers to the popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. Cancel culture is generally discussed as being performed on social media in the form of group shaming.
The Cambridge Dictionary says it is:
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.
The intention of canceling someone or something as we know it now has existed for the length of human history but the kid was called boycotting, a backlash or a criticism — the point is quite similar — to punish a public figure or even a company when something controversial or questionable has been said or done.
In 2017, many men and women started to come out about widespread cultures of sexual assault in workplaces and industries, and that was one of the biggest cancel culture twists to follow! The most sensational cases to recall are Harvey Weinstein, a Hollywood producer, who was sentenced to 23 years in jail for rape and other sex crimes, and Jeffrey Epstein, a financier accused of sex trafficking.
If you think they got what they deserved — that’s downright true, and we put all our hands and legs for making them responsible for what they’ve done. But born to court and punish alleged abusers and predators, cancel culture has slightly changed its direction.
These days, a public backlash can be easily triggered by a joke that came out wrong if you happened to make it on social media, for sharing unpopular thoughts of yours, or by something you said or did as an immature teenager a long time ago. The list of people to call out contains the umpteenth number of well-known names like Kanye West for not canceling D. Trump, JK Rowling for repeatedly airing her strident views on transgender rights, Lana Del Rey, being criticized for using anti-feminist lyrics, Stephen King for his tweets when he was questioning the wisdom of basing nominations on diversity rather than the quality of the art, and way more.
Companies Fuel It Up
But there is not only flesh and blood who face withdrawing support — companies can easily lose consumer patronage because of the “wrong-done” by their representative or the wrong appeal and messaging.
When a wave of firings swept across the US, driven by the demand from “cancel culture,” fear has gripped many workers — anyone can be easily fired for simply angering a Twitter mob. And it turns out when something could threaten the company’s sales, values, or reputation, employers don’t wonder and analyze the situation, they don’t protect, but fuel up cancel culture bringing up the verdict to Fire, Cancel, and Disown.
Below are just some of the brightest examples of how companies are catering to the rabble for saving their name, so they hammer in the last nail in the coffin of the back-then successful people.
October 2017 — HBO — Kevin Spacey (sexual assault)
For the House of Cards fans, that was a striking moment when Kevin Spacey, a Hollywood actor, was accused of sexual assault by several actors. HBO didn’t want to stay in the garbage rakes (and still, money is the ultimate goal, after all), so the company easily dropped K. Spacey from his starring role and cut him out from the episodes that were already filmed.
July 2018 — Walt Disney Studios — James Gunn (offensive tweets)
After the right-wing media society resurfaced a series of offensive tweets, James Gunn — a writer-director from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 — made in 2009–2010, the chairman of the Walt Disney Studios didn’t think for too long and severed business relationships with him at once.
Disney’s actions received a lot of criticism from musicians, journalists, entrepreneurs, and actors, but it didn’t help too much. Even Sony decided not to promote the Brightburn horror film, produced by Gunn at San Diego Comic-Con to avoid any backlash from the mass.
A funny fact is that in 2019 when the dust had settled, James Gunn was reinstated by Disney and continued to earn them money. Until the next round, we guess.
September 2019 — SNL — Shane Gillis (offensive comments)
Shane Gillis, one of the three new cast members of Saturday Night’s Life was fired after people found his old, offensive comments — the comedian made derogatory remarks about Asians while chatting with comedian co-host Matt McCusker.
And these cases are just the tip of the iceberg!
Companies have a lot on their plate these days: competitors who don’t sleep, sales to increase, new channels of traffic to conquer, and besides all that, as we now want a business with a human face, they need to build that face.
When handling all the back-breaking stuff and chasing all money in the world, sometimes they choose the easiest way — to obey and adapt. But by throwing everything and everyone under the bus, they roll themselves into even more trouble because their so-called policy will certainly lead to the bleak future without bright and creative individuals who could express themselves and make something extraordinary and provocative — to light up and put upside down. Cancel culture, by metastasizing into the world, discourages people from saying what they think, steals their rights of free speech, and makes others keep silent to avoid any criticism.
an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.
as they state it in Harper’s magazine letter — a letter of justice and open debate — signed by a lot of famous writers, journalists, and academics.
As a result, companies, in the attempt of satisfying each and everyone, will lose their sales at the end of the day. What they should do is setting sights on the principles and values they support and what they criticize.
The deeds of Weinstein and Spacey are horrendous, and we should blame them — this is an example of when cancel culture helped us to call out and remove problematic people from mainstream culture and to exert some control over the world. But the world isn’t just black and white and the battle for all good and against all bad can’t be won simply because the camp of the unsatisfied is always here.
Humoring the desires of the entire universe, companies will lose their individuality, disregard their messaging, and will become just an ordinary one in the crowd. Or, as Aristotle said: “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” That could be a powerful position for some, but do we really want the world like that?
What do you think about it? Share your comments below.
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