‘CANCEL CULTURE’ BE #CANCELLED?
Should FEATURE It highlights bad behaviour, but it may also stifle progress
Earlier this month, there was one party that everyone was talking about – the #Jodiecomer Isoverparty. Jodie Comer, you say? The star of Killing Eve, who regularly uses her platform to voice support for the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as a number of LGBTQ+ campaigns, and keeps her insults and indignities to the small screen. What could SHE have done to offend anyone? Well, scandalously, Jodie had recently started dating American lacrosse player James Burke, who was rumoured to be a Republican – and a Donald Trump fan, at that.
Instantly, some keyboard warriors brandished their pitchforks, reading Jodie her last rites before decrying all over Twitter that she was very much over. In modern-day speak, Jodie had been “cancelled”.
Weeks later, it’s safe to presume that there’s another celebrity’s name on the chopping block, who’s inevitably done something to offend someone and is now seeing their very existence denied. We might be witnessing real change in society, as protests take to the streets and inequality gets challenged in the
workplace and at home, but online, intolerance is at an all-time high. Take one misstep, and you’re #cancelled – the online mob have decided your career is over, and they’re telling the world with a hashtag. We’ve become so prejudiced against prejudice that we’ve started to rise up in arms against anything that doesn’t fit into our constantly changing box of what’s “woke” and what’s broke. And in recent months – with lockdown keeping us indoors and the fear of coronavirus sending our anxieties soaring – it seems that “cancel culture” has become our common language.
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Jodie isn’t alone. This year, a never-ending slew of celebrities have been #cancelled, after being accused of everything from the trivial to the legitimately contemptible. Some recent people on the chopping block include Gal Gadot for orchestrating a naff, celeb-filled video urging people to see the bright side of a pandemic, Halle Berry for considering playing the role of a trans man, and Florence Pugh for racial appropriation after wearing her hair in braids.
Let’s be clear, some people are guilty as charged – you will never find us arguing against the cancelling of the likes of Harvey Weinstein and R Kelly. But does lumping them all in the same category help our cause? Should Florence Pugh ever be in the same “cancelled” breath as a monster like Weinstein? And, by denying a person’s right to express themselves – rather than calling them out for their problematic views – are we simply silencing debate and, ultimately, progress?
Ashley “Dotty” Charles thinks so. Over the past two years, the BBC Radio 1Xtra presenter has been on a mission to unpick the tricky nature of cancel culture – after becoming fed-up with the never-ending barrage of online yelling that was often stifling debate. The result is her newlyreleased book Outrage: Why Everyone Is Shouting And No One Is Talking, which explores the often trigger-happy way in which some people are getting riled up online, and how cancelling someone either gives them more fuel for their fire (hello, right wing troll,
Katie Hopkins) or drowns out the important issues that need attention. In other words, she wants her readers to save their outrage for the things that really matter: systemic racism, misogyny, police brutality, homophobia. And rather than typing out 280 characters of hate, she urges us to take our campaigning beyond social media.
Speaking to heat, Dotty tells us that the problem is the lack of nuance. “We react loudly and with so much outrage to everything – we’ll react to a major political issue in the same tone as we will to Jamie Oliver’s jerk rice recipe,” she says, referring to when the
Naked Chef got cancelled after being accused of culturally appropriating the traditional Jamaican marinade. “So, when a moment really warrants loud noise, it’s difficult to move the needle, because we’ve already been at that place. We’ve created so much noise that it’s difficult to be heard when necessary. You end up lumping Jodie Comer into the same conversation as slave owner statues!”
What’s more, Dotty tells us, “We’re creating a world where there’s no room for error or saying anything wrong – you have to exist on this tightrope that satisfies public opinion, and if you stray to the left or right, you fall off. That terrifies me.”
‘We react with so much outrage to everything’
One person who you’ll probably have heard about when discussing cancel culture is JK Rowling. This year, she’s been #cancelled yet again after doubling down on controversial comments comparing gay conversion therapy to gender reassignment surgery, which many saw as transphobic. She was also one of the 150 signees of a recent open letter “on justice and open debate”, slamming cancel culture. Her views have been condemned as crass, clumsy and just plain wrong by many writers and academics, as well as Daniel Radcliffe, but did #Jkrowlingisoverparty and #Jkrowlingiscancelled actually do anything to advance the conversation around trans rights? Not quite. All it did was see Rowling receive some truly vile abuse, while sales of the Harry Potter books actually spiked.
But what is it that has made us more combustible than usual?
According to clinical psychologist Linda Blair, it’s a very real sign of the times. “Black or white thinking is all about high anxiety,” she tells heat, highlighting a global pandemic as the reason we’re all so damn tetchy. “When we suffer high anxiety, there is no binary: it is or it isn’t. We’re trying to offload, so we pick on anything. That subconsciously seems like a safe thing to do, because we don’t see the repercussions… but it’s not safe for the people on the receiving end.” Instead, she tells us, “Call out the idea, rather than attacking the person. And make a counter case, rather than hitting cancel.”
Ultimately, while cancel culture’s heart is in the right place, its zero-tolerance policy often leads to a lot of noise, and a lot less discussion. The trick, says Dotty, is knowing when to step away. “I use social media, but I no longer let it use me,” she says. “I take from it what I need, and then I go off and look into things in more depth.”
Then, of course, if the issue still grates, by all means, call it out and open the debate. Hash it out, instead of dismissing it with a hashtag. n