Note: The following transcript is a recreation of the verbal narration in the video essay, and has not been edited for MLA citation purposes, nor have any grammatical or other errors that might be in the text been corrected.
Cancel culture: something my friends and I have casually joked about for a couple years now. But for us it’s gradually stopped being funny when some of our favorite, or rather, ex-favorite, Internet celebrities and artists start having accusations brought up about them. You watch as their image begins to crumble, the art suddenly ages decades.
The entertainment industry wasn’t always like this―at least from my memory when I was younger. Sometimes, offensive humor and stereotypes in the media was just a creative choice or an ignorant accident. If there was a controversy, it was handled by some PR teams and swept quietly under a rug. That was until the #MeToo movement, which changed the landscape of American media. Millions of people, mostly women, began to share their stories of sexual harassment. Many expressed their solidarity for the movement.
In Kylie Holman’s essay, “Can You Come Back from Being Cancelled?” she explores the #MeToo movement as a distinct cultural moment. Holman shares that a #MeToo tweet provided legitimacy to claims and gave voice to those looking to share their stories, effectively giving power to the people to cause real change where the government has failed. Cancel culture was born out of “cancelling” of the acceptance of sexual assault during the #MeToo movement. Holman states that cancelling someone can be viewed as a sort of “citizen justice,” or “norm enforcement tool.” This all sounds nice on paper and to some extent can be helpful in the most extreme cases. However, cancel culture has devolved into a culture plagued by fear of making a mistake in a world where what’s ‘politically correct’ is constantly changing, a culture plagued by performative activism and ‘wokeness.’ And most importantly, a culture that isn’t even close to bringing us towards the change everyone desires.
Artists have always tried to weave social commentary into their artwork, but with cancel culture being so new and being very close to home for some, there’s not as much artwork to look at. But, this one stopped me in my exploration of the following question: How do artists deal with an audience and culture inching towards political correctness? To what extent is wokeness different from awareness and the push for genuine change?
In doing research for this video, I was shocked to find legitimate definitions of “woke.” The Cambridge Dictionary and Merriam-Webster defines wokeness as “a state of being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality.” Whereas, the Urban Dictionary defines wokeness as “self-righteousness, masquerading as enlightenment.” Now, is the Urban Dictionary the most reliable source? No. No, it is not. But the Urban Dictionary and Merriam-Webster definitions provide relevant insight as to the spectrum of opinions or stances artists might take when exploring cancel culture. Throughout, we’ll be looking at how effective or ineffective these artists are at showcasing the spectrum.
Take BoJack Horseman, for example. Bojack Horseman is a Netflix tragicomedy about a beloved ’90 sitcom star, BoJack Horseman, who tried to revive his washed-up career with his memoir. As the series goes on, we learn about the child abuse BoJack faced, as well as how his constant self-destruction hurts himself and those around him.
In “The Stopped Show,” BoJack must deal with his latest PR crisis, choking his co-star to near death. Throughout the episode, we watch how everybody on BoJack’s team tries to do damage control. BoJack goes on an interview to explain that the video wasn’t that bad, despite everyone knowing how terrible it actually was. This episode takes into account all the perspectives and responses of those involved: the cancelled, the cancelled’s team, the journalists, and the audience. In fact, the most interesting aspect of this episode is the reaction of BoJack’s co-star, Gina.
GINA: People know me because of my acting, and all that goes away if I’m just the girl who got choked by BoJack Horseman.
BOJACK: I can’t lie about this.
GINA: I don’t want you to be the most notable thing that ever happened to me. I don’t want you to be the question I get asked in interviews for the rest of my life.
It’s a great moment showing who the victim truly is in the situation. In the case of the whole series, the real victims are those hurt by BoJack’s actions. Regardless of BoJack’s mental state or the trauma he went through, we may pity him and he may even pity himself, but he isn’t the victim. This illusion of awareness, the wokeness, covers a really ugly truth in “Hollywoob.” The layers of complexity is added because of the portrayal of our victims.
Other works tackling this issue take different approaches to the question of who’s the person most severely affected by cancel culture. In Dave Chappelle’s comedy special, Sticks and Stones, it’s the cancelled―specifically, Kevin Hart.
CHAPPELLE: It was, it was Kevin Hart’s dream to host the Oscars. That’s what he told me.
Here, he presents cancel culture as celebrity hunting season. To him, it’s not a matter of whether said celebrity deserved it or not―he doesn’t blame the LGBTQ community for being upset with Kevin Hart―rather, how unreasonable the backlash is in the form of jokes. It makes all the controversies he’s talking about and our reactions to them sound pretty absurd, and, as a result, funny. Granted, this special is presenting the core of these controversies as awareness. But what makes this ineffective is really we only have one lens to look at cancel culture with. This could just be a part of the standup medium: of course, you’re going to get the point of view of the comedian.
So, let’s take another contained comedy: South Park. Specifically, “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson.” Randy is essentially outcast by society for saying the N-word on Wheel of Fortune, and spends the entire episode coping with this in his new identity as “N-word Guy.” We also see how someone like Cartman, Stan, and Randy deal with the idea of tolerance throughout the rest of the episode. While Stan struggles to understand why his friend, Token, is still mad at Randy for what happened on Wheel of Fortune, Randy’s struggle can be best summed up in this scene. Here, Randy is so committed to erasing his identity as “N-Word Guy” that he creates an African American scholarship foundation, and this is the speech he gives:
RANDY: You really . . . you really don’t know how hard it is to be constantly reminded of something lame that happened in your past. I mean, I just want to move on from what happened on Wheel of Fortune, you know, and when people call me [“N-word Guy,”] they’re bringing up a painful chapter of my history and all the negativity that went along with it. You just can’t imagine how that feels.
We’re not really meant to pity Randy, though, because we’re too busy laughing at his own ignorance and, at times, pure stupidity. If anything, Randy sees himself as a victim, as he’s experiencing prejudice that is, to him, unjustified. The problem, for Randy, is that he’s being identified by a mistake that he’s made, so when he isn’t immediately forgiven for the incident on Wheel of Fortune, and he’s still constantly branded for said mistake, he falls into a classic Hollywood trope of white victimhood.
In the essay, “Performative Wokeness/White Victimhood: The Hypocrisy of Celebrity Villainization of Paparazzi”―that’s a mouthful―Vanessa Diaz discusses how early Hollywood films depicted white people as victims of sexual violence from men of color. Although this trope isn’t explicitly played out here, the idea is similar: white person as a victim of some attack by people of color. It’s really refreshing to see how creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone pick at the absurdity of this trope in context. The episode does a pretty great job at showing the different aspects of tolerance and the state of self-pity cancelled figures can often fall into. However, there’s not much empathy directed towards Randy, Cartman, Stan, or even the various Black people obviously offended by Randy: we’re not getting a Gina moment here.
It seems like BoJack is one of the few shows that try to draw attention or empathy towards the person not being cancelled. However, in the same episode, this kind of comes into question when a poorly-made sex robot who runs an entertainment company, Mr. Fondle, has a sexual harassment controversy and loses his job. It’s an absurd joke, but it actually provides another perspective on cancel culture that appears to be common. It’s this idea that cancel culture is a state of overreaction, or at least very reactionary and emotionally-driven in nature.
A great example of this is Aziz Ansari’s pizza swastika story in his stand-up special Right Now. Ansari shares a controversy about a pizza restaurant that got heat for an employee making a pizza that supposedly looked like a swastika.
ANSARI: You think your opinion is so valuable, you need to chime in on shit that doesn’t even exist.
And while the general theme of Ansari’s special is that we all do bad things and we’re trying to be better people, the need to chime in is an interesting aspect of cancel culture to point out.
Oftentimes people hear stories like the pizza swastika one with even fewer context. Take this interview with Trevor Noah:
INTERVIEWER (Zeinab Badawi): For example, you said, “My mother, Black South African, was saying, get me a white guy, get me a white guy. Well, my father was white Swiss, of course―he liked chocolate.”
Without any context, of course those jokes sound offensive. Someone tuning into this interview could hear just that part and assume the worst of Noah.
NOAH: The most important thing with comedy is context. Without context, no conversation is complete.
It’s what creates that fear of saying something wrong because while someone’s intention and maybe the context is good, someone could lose their livelihood. And to add icing on that cake, there are no redemption arcs. Moreso the idea that the cancelled has no idea how to re-enter society, and the audience, the people who outcast that person, have no idea what it means to redeem that person. And sometimes, even if the cancelled is genuinely trying to be redeemed, it’s hard to see them as somebody who was genuinely changed.
Cancel culture seems to be taking a sort of out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of approach. And this is pretty evident in The Morning Show, a genre series about a morning news show working through a sexual misconduct scandal with one of their co-anchors, Mitch Kessler, played by Steve Carell. The vibe of the first two episodes seems to be that everyone involved with The Morning Show, especially co-anchor Alex, played by Jennifer Aniston, are the victims of this mess Mitch dragged everyone into, and reasonably so. It gets to the point where Mitch is basically asked to disappear in the second episode. No one is trying to redeem or understand Mitch’s point of view, and maybe that’s the cold reality of cancel culture. Maybe he doesn’t even deserve it yet.
Ironically, redemption is one of the most interesting arcs to watch in both fiction and reality, especially when redemption arcs are pulled off well. Shows like Red Table Talk have slowly transformed into places for celebrities to come on and have a shot to redeem themselves. In a YouTube video by Tee Noir where she criticizes the show, she makes a great point about redemption:
TEE NOIR: They should’ve talked about Olivia’s plan for restitution. Is she fighting for rules to go in place where this stuff can’t happen anymore? Is she fighting for a stricter code of ethics?
I think this is really important because it introduces the idea that in order to be redeemed, you have to put some action behind your words. Not just any action, but actions that actively contribute to your unlearning and helping those who were hurt by your cancellable actions. But there’s still the question of the line someone must cross over to re-enter society.
Cancel culture comes from a good place―a desire for change and to bring awareness to social issues which a lot of these works acknowledge. And yes, there are definitely some people out there who should not have a platform. But cancel culture has become somewhat of a―
ANNA AKANA: I don’t know about you, but I’m very tired of this circle jerk of righteousness.
Yeah, that. And having looked at these works, it’s made me realize, if power is being given back to the people, then we need to have a better way of doing things. We have to try and set up some sort of checks and balances instead of giving everyone the death penalty. Because I can only imagine a world that cancel culture is proposing. And I’m not entirely sure if it’s one I want to live in.
Works Cited
Akana, Anna. “Why We Can’t Accept Cancel Culture.” Youtube Commentary Video. Youtube. Youtube, Feb 24 2021. Web. April 4 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2c1hXl3NWU
Daily Dose Comedy. “Trevor Noah Standing Up Against Cancel Culture and Defending Comedy!” Youtube Interview. Youtube. Youtube, Dec 20 2020. Web. April 6 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an3G7F6k6GU&list=WL&index=4.
Holman, Kylie J. Can You Come Back from Being Cancelled? A Case Study of Podcasting, Cancel Culture, and Comedians during #MeToo, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Ann Arbor, 2020. ProQuest,http://proxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/can-you-come-back-being-cancelled-case-study/docview/2427301602/se-2?accountid=12768.
Tee Noir. “‘Red Table Talk’…Needs Work.” Youtube Commentary. Youtube. Youtube, Dec 20 2020. Web. April 6 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw6hH0v700s
Vanessa Díaz (2020) Performative Wokeness/White Victimhood: The Hypocrisy of Celebrity Villainization of Paparazzi, Women’s Studies in Communication, 43:4, 363-368, DOI: 10.1080/07491409.2020.1833635. https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080%2F07491409.2020.1833635.
“With Apologies to Jesse Jackson.” South Park, created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Season 11, Episode 1, 2007.
“Xerox of a Xerox.” Bojack Horseman, created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Season 6 Episode 12, 2020.
“The Stopped Show.” Bojack Horseman, created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Season 5 Episode 12, 2018.
“A Seat at The Table.” The Morning Show, created by Jay Carson, Season 1 Episode 2, 2019.
Right Now. Directed by Spike Jonze, performance by Aziz Ansari, 2019. Netflix.
Sticks and Stones. Directed by Stan Lathan, performance by Dave Chapelle, 2019. Netflix.