Pop culture pariahs making big comebacks
Disgraced find ways to flourish despite pockets of pushback
In February, comedian Shane Gillis hosted “Saturday Night Live,” five years after he was fired from the show before ever appearing on it, when old podcast appearances in which he’d used slurs were brought to light. During his opening monologue, Gillis showed how he had evolved since then, which is to say, only slightly. In a tame bit about his parents, 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.”
In recent weeks, Ye — formerly Kanye West — has sat at the top of the Billboard albums chart with “Vultures 1,” his collaborative album with singer Ty Dolla Sign. In late 2022, Ye began a public stream
of antisemitic invective that, for a while, effectively imploded his career, leading to the dissolution of his partnerships with Adidas and the Gap. He seemed, for a time, persona non grata. But he, too, has returned to something approaching old form, with a single, “Carnival,” that went to No. 3 on the Hot 100 and a series of arena listening sessions that have been the hallmark of his album rollouts in recent years.
Cancellation was always an incomplete concept, more a way of talking about artists with contentious and offensive personal histories than an actual fact of the marketplace. Except in the most extreme cases, moral failure has never been an automatic disqualifier when it comes to artistic work.
What changed in the years since the beginning of the #Metoo movement is the presumption that strong-enough discursive pushback might indeed lead to actual banishment. That proved to be true in the wake of #Metoo, in which powerful men like Charlie Rose, Bryan Singer and Matt Lauer were effectively cast out of public life after allegations of sexual misconduct. (Most of those facing banishment, or the threat thereof, have been men. Roseanne Barr is perhaps the most high-profile woman to meet that fate, following racist and antisemitic public statements.)
The sense that bad actors could be weeded out at the root was
satisfying liberal fantasy, though. What’s happened instead is the emergence of a class of artists across disciplines — call them the disgraced — who have found ways to thrive despite pockets of public pushback. Their success suggests several possibilities about cultural consumption: Audiences that don’t 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 that perhaps some audiences may have a tolerance — or maybe even an appetite — for offense.
This disgraced group includes country star Morgan Wallen, still ostracized by many for his use of a racial slur in 2021, who nevertheless has spent most of the past three years at or near the top of the Billboard albums chart with his last two releases, “Dangerous: The Double Album” and “One Thing at a Time.”
His is a case of an artist being rescued from moral expulsion and yanked back into the spotlight largely by devotees — Wallen’s music remains at the forefront of mainstream country, and he is its biggest live draw. Country fans put him at the center of the genre — perhaps partly as protest — through sheer force of adulation.
Netflix has become something like a valuesagnostic safe space for comics who traffic in offense, ginned-up or otherwise. It has been the primary platform for Dave Chappelle, whose most recent special, “The Dreamer,” is in large part a metanarrative about his own insistence on antagonizing transgender people and their allies with his previous Netflix specials.
These shows have been popular and received with hostility, in what feels like a return to earlier, messier eras of popular culture. In an indicator that perhaps there is no more moral litmus test, even O.J. Simpson now has a platform: He has been a recurring guest on “It Is What It Is,” a popular online sports talk show hosted by rappers Cam’ron and Mase.
It has become more striking when someone who has been cast aside isn’t warmly reembraced. Take R&B singer Chris Brown, whose career has continued under the shadow of his physical assault of Rihanna, who was then his girlfriend, in 2009. Recently, he was invited to play in the NBA All-star Celebrity Game, and then apparently uninvited, which sent him on a social media tirade against Ruffles potato chips, one of the sponsors.
Even though he has struggled to regain the attention and support of mainstream institutions, Brown remains a reliable hit-maker and collaborator in pop, R&B and hip-hop. For 15 years, he has been suspended between rejection and comeback.
That intermediate space is also where Dababy, who made homophobic comments onstage at a music festival in 2021 and experienced a swift career decline, has been living.
But his rehabilitation tour recently made a stop at the “What Now? With Trevor Noah” podcast, where he discussed how those events shook him up.
Unlike Brown, who has largely declined to face direct conversation about his misdeeds, Dababy appears to have realized that there is no moving forward — and no path back to broad acceptance — without taking on the past.
It’s the only pathway to breaking out of the dual bubbles of your own limitations and your most dedicated, judgment-free fans. It also presents an opportunity to determine what version of one’s self might be viable outside those bubbles.
This has been true of Gillis, whose work mostly appears on “Matt & Shane’s Secret Podcast,” which he co-hosts and which is by far the most popular podcast on the subscription platform Patreon. But unlike others who have been content to remain in their walled-off worlds, Gillis has been inching toward less welcoming spaces.
In September, he released a comedy special on Netflix, which last month announced that
Gillis would deliver a second stand-up special, as well as a scripted workplace comedy.
And then there was “SNL,” which could have very easily never reopened its doors to Gillis, but appeared to make a calculated bet that the buzz and curiosity generated by giving him a stage would outweigh any potential ethical backlash. It was something of a statement of intent for the show, indicating that it was willing to engender a little discomfort and perhaps saw a future for that sort of comedy out in the world.
It also was a test for
Gillis, and during his opening monologue, he made calibrations in real time, as some punchlines didn’t quite land in front of an away-team crowd.
“I don’t have any material that can be on TV,” he joked, and yet there he was.