After a weekend flareup between Barstool Sports and Jemele Hill of ‘The Atlantic,’ not to mention a flurry of so-called “Karens,” it’s time to get on the same page about canceling.
Canceling: It’s not just for plans and subscriptions anymore.
Depending on who you ask, it’s either the absolute worst fate that could befall a person or an easily avoidable unforced error. And although the term implies an absence, canceling has been a constant presence in the national conversation for years.
Just recently, YouTubers Jenna Marbles and Shane Dawson were canceled, reality show stars Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute were canceled, Justin Bieber and Lana Del Rey were canceled, a surly trio of Karens was canceled, and at this very moment, media personalities Dave Portnoy and Jemele Hill are being canceled. Or as The New York Times succinctly put it in a 2018 headline, everyone is canceled.
Since each of those people mentioned above is going through something entirely different, though, it’s ridiculous to suggest they are all experiencing the same phenomenon. The idea of canceling someone has become so thoroughly weaponized, villainized, conflated, and diluted, that nobody seems to know quite what it means—and what it doesn’t mean—anymore.
A working definition of ‘canceled’
Although I do not claim to be the end-all be-all authority on the definition of being canceled, as someone whose job involves spending all day on Twitter—the Coliseum of Cancelation—I might have a better idea than some.
Being canceled is what happens when a well-liked public figure is revealed to have acted so unconscionably, it creates a breach of trust and a sense of betrayal. Fans fade away, enemies are emboldened, corporate partnerships dissolve.
The damage, however, is restricted to reputation and financial opportunity, rather than legal consequences.
When crimes are committed and charges filed, it becomes something more. Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby weren’t canceled, for instance; they were convicted of being sex criminals.
Sometimes the canceling is very much literal, as was the case with Roseanne Barr. Although she was already an unstable QAnon believer, she still enjoyed the status of a refurbished sitcom star in 2018, before a beyond-the-pale racist tweet got her show scuttled from ABC’s schedule. When someone is canceled, though, they don’t lose their right to work ever again. Mel Gibson was nominated for an Oscar a decade after he got canceled. Although Louis CK lost a movie, several TV deals, and his welcome in many comedy clubs after his sexual misconduct accusers went public in 2017, he still tours and releases standup specials. He simply no longer enjoys the benefits of an unsullied reputation.
Much of the time, though, getting canceled actually just amounts to a stint in the penalty box—or even less.
Sorting through the overuse of “___ is canceled”
Beloved food writer Alison Roman got canceled last month for talking out of turn about Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo, and she seems to have legitimately grown as a person because of it, downgrading her cancelation to a mere extended dragging.
Contrary to what Bill Burr said in his last special, Bryan Cranston wasn’t canceled for playing a man confined to a wheelchair in a film, because only a narrow minority of people were upset with him for doing that.
Shane Gillis wasn’t canceled when Saturday Night Live rescinded an offer for him to join its cast last fall. The show either inadequately vetted him, or underestimated how many comedy fans would be upset by the trail of racist jokes he’d left all over a series of recent podcasts. Either way, Gillis simply lost a highly valued job offer during a probationary period when more information about the applicant came to light.
Similarly, Amy Cooper and all other viral Karens didn’t get canceled—because they never had a perch of national renown from which to be knocked. These people went from becoming unknowns to social pariahs for behaving poorly in full view of the public.
Confederate generals aren’t being canceled when protesters tear down tear their statues. Those generals canceled themselves when they went to war against America to preserve slavery and lost. The protesters are merely correcting a historical imbalance, and unburdening those who have to live near a monument to a war criminal who very well may have fought to keep their ancestors enslaved.
Cancel culture is not just mob rule
A great example of the confusion around cancellation, though, is what happened over the weekend with Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. The confrontational, proudly problematic jabberjaw incurred some blowback when The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill retweeted a video with newly released footage of Portnoy saying some racially charged things. (He compares Colin Kaepernick to Osama bin Laden and uses the n-word while singing along to a Ja Rule song.) Portnoy, who is no stranger to controversy, tweeted in response, “Memo to the cancel cops. I knew this was coming before you did. And I’m ready. You don’t cancel me. I cancel you.”
He’s semi-right on both counts.
Since Portnoy is a Trumpian figure who thrives on adversarial situations and crossing boundaries of good taste, he can’t lose the reputation he already has. To be canceled is to be found out; to go from neutral or positive associations to negative ones. Portnoy could conceivably say something so beyond the pale that advertisers desert Barstool Sports completely, but it would take more than what is in the video, even if what is in the video might seriously taint someone else’s career.
As for the second part of Portnoy’s claim, “I cancel you,” the publisher’s Twitter minions are engaged at the time of this writing in an effort to damage Jemele Hill’s career by digging up old tweets.
They will not be successful.
What the Barstool squad is doing is a bad-faith attempt to give a supposed Social Justice Warrior a taste of her own medicine—not because they are offended by her tweet from 2009, in which she uses a derogatory term for transsexuals, but because they just want to get her in trouble. It’s exactly what far-right activist Mike Cernovich temporarily did to both James Gunn and Sam Seder in recent years. Rather than a legitimate reaction to a perceived slight, it’s the harnessing of the mechanism of cancelation to smite one’s enemies. Ironically, the people who seem most aggrieved about so-called cancel culture tend to be the only ones attempting to damage reputations and bottom lines just to settle scores, rather than stand on principles.
The words “cancel culture” are thrown around so much now to describe a climate of hypersensitivity where everyone is scared to say anything, lest the steely, ever-shifting gaze of the mob point arbitrarily their way. But this is a mischaracterization. What people call “cancel culture” is merely the possibility of consequences where they used to not exist. The chance of becoming a pariah was always part of the social contract. It just used to be harder to enforce.
It used to be that publicists could squash even the most damaging rumors. It used to be that social media didn’t exist to help amplify the powerless and prove the popularity of an opinion. It used to be that women were less likely to be believed. It used to be that casual racism was far more acceptable.
All of these changes have happened fairly recently, and society will one day be a more equitable place because of it.
If there’s some whiplash along the way because of how quickly it all happened, well, that’s just what progress feels like sometimes.
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June 30, 2020 at 05:43PM
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What it really means to be "canceled" in 2020 - Fast Company
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