Is There Now Space for Social Pariahs?
In February, the comedian Shane Gillis hosted the TV show “Saturday Night Live,” five years after he was fired from the show before ever appearing on it, when old podcast appearances in which he had used slurs came to light. Mr. Gillis showed how he had evolved since then, which is to say, only slightly. He fondly recalled spending time with his mother when he was younger, noting sweetly, “Every little boy is just their mom’s gay best friend.”
Also recently, Ye — formerly Kanye West — sat at the top of the Billboard albums chart with “Vultures 1,” his collaborative album with the singer Ty Dolla Sign. In 2022, Ye began a public stream of antisemitic invective that, for a while, imploded his career, leading to the dissolution of his partnerships with Adidas and the Gap. But he, too, has returned to something approaching old form, with a series of arena listening sessions.
The #MeToo movement once brought the presumption that strong pushback might lead to the banishment of artists with contentious and offensive personal histories. But what has happened in the years since the movement began is the emergence of a class of artists — call them the disgraced — who have found ways to thrive despite pockets of public pushback.
Their success suggests several points about cultural consumption: Audiences that do not care about an artist’s indiscretions can be more sizable than the ones that do; those who publicly agitate on these matters might be privately relenting; or perhaps, some audiences may have a tolerance — or maybe even an appetite — for offense.
Some public figures have been laundering unsavory business practices behind crowd-pleasing gimmickry — say, Elon Musk, whose Tesla Cybertruck, essentially a bulletproof emoji on wheels, counteracts news of his degradation of Twitter, now X. Mr. Musk knows it is possible to exist in the world in multiple ways at once, and that the goofiest and most palatable version often gets the most attention.
While others who have faced public scrutiny for their behavior remain in their cloistered marketplaces (like Louis C.K.’s selling his comedy specials on his website), the disgraced but embraced artists exist in the mainstream — and maybe, by some measurements, are the mainstream. Netflix has become a values-agnostic safe space for comics who traffic in offense. It has been the primary platform for Dave Chappelle, whose most recent Netflix special, “The Dreamer,” is a metanarrative about his own insistence on antagonizing transgender people and their allies with his prior Netflix specials.
These shows have been both popular and received with hostility, in what feels like a return to earlier, messier eras of popular culture.
In September, Mr. Gillis released a comedy special on Netflix, which recently announced that he would deliver a second stand-up special, as well as a scripted workplace comedy.
And then there was “Saturday Night Live,” which appeared to decide that the curiosity generated by giving Mr. Gillis a stage would outweigh any backlash. It was something of a statement of intent, indicating that it was willing to engender
Celebrities who had been disgraced make a comeback.
discomfort, and perhaps saw a future for that sort of comedy.
It also was a test for Mr. Gillis, and he made calibrations in real time, as some punchlines did not quite land well. “I don’t have any material that can be on TV,” he joked, and yet there he was.