Cancel culture
Cancel culture, also called call-out culture, is a cultural phenomenon in which people criticize an individual thought to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner, and call for the target to be ostracized, boycotted, shunned or fired. This shunning may extend to social or professional circleswhether on social media or in personwith most high-profile incidents involving celebrities. Those subject are said to have been "canceled". While the careers of some public figures have been impacted by boycottswidely described as "cancellation"others who complained of cancellation successfully continued their careers.
The term "cancel culture" came into circulation in 2018 and has mostly negative connotations. Some critics argue that cancel culture has a chilling effect on public discourse, that it is unproductive, that it does not bring real social change, that it causes intolerance, or that it amounts to cyberbullying. Others argue that the term is used to attack efforts to promote accountability or give disenfranchised people a voice, and to attack language that is itself free speech. Still others question whether cancel culture is an actual phenomenon, arguing that boycotting existed long before the origin of the term "cancel culture".
Origins
The 1981 Chic album Take It Off includes the song "Your Love Is Cancelled", which compares a breakup to the cancellation of TV shows. The song was written by Nile Rodgers following a bad date Rodgers had with a woman who expected him to misuse his celebrity status on her behalf. "Your Love Is Cancelled" inspired screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper to include a reference to a woman being canceled in the 1991 film New Jack City. This usage introduced the term to African-American Vernacular English, where it became more common.By 2015, the concept of canceling had become widespread on Black Twitter to refer to a personal decision, sometimes seriously and sometimes in jest, to stop supporting a person or work. According to Jonah Engel Bromwich of The New York Times, this usage of the word "cancellation" indicates "total disinvestment in something ". After numerous cases of online shaming gained wide notoriety, the use of the term "cancellation" increased to describe a widespread, outraged, online response to a single provocative statement, against a single target. Over time, as isolated instances of cancellation became more frequent and the mob mentality more apparent, commentators began seeing a "culture" of outrage and cancellation.
In October 2017, sexual assault allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein led to the cancellation of his projects, his expulsion from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and legal consequences, including a conviction on charges of rape and sexual assault. These events contributed to the rise of the #MeToo movement, where individuals shared their own allegations of sexual assault, leading to the cancellation of the careers of those accused. In November 2017, comedian Louis C.K. admitted to sexual misconduct allegations and, as a result, his shows were canceled, distribution deals were terminated, and he was dropped by his agency and management. After a period away from show business, Louis C.K. returned to work in 2018 and won a Grammy award in 2022. However, many people in the entertainment industry said that it was inappropriate to support his career or award him a Grammy due to his past misconduct.
Conversations about "cancel culture" increased in late 2019. In the 2020s, the phrase became a shorthand nom de guerre employed by spectators to refer to what they perceived to be disproportionate reactions to politically incorrect speech. In 2020, Ligaya Mishan wrote in The New York Times: "The term is shambolically applied to incidents both online and off that range from vigilante justice to hostile debate to stalking, intimidation and harassment. ... Those who embrace the idea of canceling seek more than pat apologies and retractions, although it's not always clear whether the goal is to right a specific wrong or redress a larger imbalance of power." "Call-out culture" has been in use as part of the #MeToo movement. The #MeToo movement encouraged women and men to call out their abusers on a forum where the accusations would be heard, especially against very powerful individuals.
Academic, philosophical, and legal perspectives
An article written by Pippa Norris, a professor at Harvard University, states that the controversies surrounding cancel culture are between those who argue it gives a voice to those in marginalized communities and those who argue that cancel culture is dangerous because it prevents free speech and/or the opportunity for open debate. Norris emphasizes the role of social media in contributing to the rise of cancel culture. Additionally, online communications studies have demonstrated the intensification of cultural wars through activists that are connected through digital and social networking sites. Norris also mentions that the spiral of silence theory may contribute to why people are hesitant to voice their minority views on social media sites and fear that their views and opinions, specifically political opinions, will be chastised because their views violate the majority group's norms and understanding.In the book The Coddling of the American Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, argue that call-out culture arises on college campuses from what they term "safetyism"a moral culture in which people are unwilling to make tradeoffs demanded by the practical or moral concerns of others. Keith Hampton, professor of media studies at Michigan State University, contends that the practice contributes to political polarization in the United States but does not lead to changes in opinion. Cancel culture has been described by media studies scholar Eve Ng as "a collective of typically marginalized voices 'calling out' and emphatically expressing their censure of a powerful figure". Cultural studies scholar Frances E. Lee states that call-out culture leads to self-policing of "wrong, oppressive, or inappropriate" opinions. According to Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan professor of media studies, canceling someone is a form of "cultural boycott" and cancel culture is the "ultimate expression of agency", which is "born of a desire for control people have limited power over what is presented to them on social media" and a need for "accountability which is not centralized".
Some academics have proposed alternatives and improvements to cancel culture. Clinical counsellor Anna Richards, who specializes in conflict mediation, has stated that "learning to analyze our own motivations when offering criticism" helps call-out culture work productively. Professor Joshua Knobe, of the Philosophy Department at Yale, contends that public denunciation is not effective, and that society is too quick to pass judgement against those they view as public offenders or personae non gratae. Knobe says that these actions have the opposite effect on individuals, and that it is best to bring attention to the positive actions in which most of society participates. Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia wrote in a 2021 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy article that cancel culture is a form of free speech, and is therefore protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. According to Scalia, cancel culture can interfere with the right to counsel, since some lawyers would not be willing to risk their personal and professional reputation on controversial topics. In 2023, American conservatives and anti-trans activists engaged in a boycott of Bud Light over its hiring of transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney. The incident is seen an example of cancel culture and consumer backlash. The Harvard Business Review cited the incident as an example of an attempt to "resonate with younger, more socially-conscious audiences", but that it "generated downstream adjustments from retailers and distributors" that negatively hurt the product's performance. It highlighted the incident as making consumer brand marketing departments fearful of taking a stand on social issues.
Ng defines cancel culture as "the withdrawal of any kind of support for those who are assessed to have said or done something unacceptable or highly problematic, generally from a social justice perspective especially alert to sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, racism, bullying, and related issues." There are different perspectives on the morality of cancellations. On the one hand, there is the view that cancel culture imposes punishments that are not proportional to the offenses or alleged offenses. This is closely related to John Stuart Mill's criticism of public shaming; he argued in On Liberty that society "practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself." Martha Nussbaum similarly says that cancel culture represents the "justice of the mob", but this alleged justice is not "deliberative, impartial or neutral." On the other hand, there are those who defend the value of shaming as constructive, if done right; people who defend this view maintain that cancel culture often shames people counter-productively but that it can be tweaked or altered in order to be a valuable tool for people's improvement. For instance, holding people accountable for things that they have done wrong can be a powerful way of correcting bad behavior, but it has to be paired with a belief in the possibility of redemption. People who take this approach often agree with Plato that shame is an important feeling that can lead to moral improvements. Everyone in this debate agrees that it is important to avoid what Nussbaum calls a "spoiled identity": to have a spoiled identity is to have the public image of someone who is irredeemable and unwelcome in a community.