Cancel The Civil War
Added 2019-09-27 07:26:21 +0000 UTCThere’s an article floating around on the internet (I know I shouldn’t respond to these things) about the civil war in comedy. It’s in The Hollywood Reporter here)
My first instinct is that comedians can’t have a civil war. That would require at least two marginally unified forces (I know civil wars often have more than two sides but they have at least two sides that can gather something like a fighting unit, and I’m suggesting comedians are bad at sides).
For the most part we can’t even unionise or unite for self interest. Comedians are very very often pathological outliers. It’s the best thing and the worst thing about the personality type that finds itself drawn to comedy: they’re not usually box tickers, and they’re not a big fan of standing in line for stuff.
My jewish granny used to say “two Jews, three opinions” (the dialectic tradition in Judaism is a gorgeous fighty thing, and if you’ve not been exposed to it, I highly recommend you read at least a page or two of this). This saying goes for comedians too - maybe it’s one reason I ended up in that tribe. I feel like at least for me it’s “one comedian, heaps of opinions” and I quite like that, though of course it can descend into relativism, amorality and nihilism for some.
But certainly you can be uncomfortable with the tendency for bandwagon jumping and the randomly assigned severity of social media reputation pile-ons, and also fiercely argue that comedy times change and hack offensive jokes don’t fly as well with today’s educated comedy audiences, while also defending the right to free speech and protected spaces for outrageous art.
THE THING ABOUT CANCEL CULTURE
That I don’t see getting discussed much is its essential randomness. It feels unfair whether you believe people should be held accountable for their past actions through the medium of public opprobrium or not.
Whether somebody is held to account, and how much damage they receive to their professional life or public image is assigned according to the currents of social media algorithms; having a popularity contest for a public (metaphorical) stoning feels unfair. Whether someone is inadequately or disproportionately “dragged” on twitter for anything from a peccadillo to a crime depends on the same ineffable quantities as whether a video clip goes viral. Surely nobody can be happy with that as an outcome, even if you see cancel culture as the purest manifestation of an urge towards justice?
There’s a reason that our legal system (at least the Aus and U.K. parts I’ve studied) aims to have sentencing for crimes to be clearly understood and proportionate. You’ve heard the phrase “cruel and unusual”, but it’s the unusual part that’s relevant here.
We punish people for crimes inside a democracy, but even courts with a jury abdicate the democratic process in the pursuit of justice. The stylised form of the courtroom doesn’t allow everyone to have an opinion on how a criminal ought to be treated, and there are very good reasons for that.
See youse around!
If you’re in LONDON, come see my shows on Sunday: 7pm MYTHOS at the Albany for the Objectively Funny Festival, and 8.15 Savage and then MYTHOS at the Camden Comedy Club
Comments
I am deeply disturbed by the absolutism that is inherent in this (cancel culture), the twitterati reactiveness and some of the populist commentary (from any side). A few isolated historical comments or actions that are demonstrably different from current comments and actions should not be sufficient reason for a complete change in beliefs or attitudes. The area of this that gets me most conflicted is about historical criminal activity for which a punishment has been assigned and performed. (And thus the crime is closed and the person should not experience ongoing punishment.) if this criminal behaviour was interpersonal (for instance GBH, theft with menace, assault, etc), is there hope for redemption? Should there be? Justice is not a simple concept. The devil, as always, is in the detail, and this concept has almost nothing except detail.
CrispnCrunch
2019-09-28 03:12:58 +0000 UTCEveryone should have the right to reply. If you've done something dickish in the past it and you uphold those actions you're still a dick. If you regret them and understand why it's wasn't good then you have some redeeming attributes. Jameela Jamil said it far more eloquently on the Daily Show yesterday.
2019-09-27 15:50:17 +0000 UTCIm not sure what brought this on. But im locked and loaded captain alice. Lets get em
2019-09-27 12:55:04 +0000 UTCJust 100% agree with these observations!
Lars Ivarsson
2019-09-27 08:51:49 +0000 UTCThe other thing I’ve noticed about this whole cancel culture thing is how often the supposedly cancelled aren’t really cancelled at all. Bill Maher has been cancelled several times though he still has a show and does gigs all year. Louis CK was cancelled but is still performing all over the place (I find this especially interesting because if he had any normal persons job, and did what he did, he’d have been fired immediately without any controversy at all). Kevin Hart was cancelled but his movie career seems fine. My point is that a lot of the people complaining about this are very rich and very powerful people who feel entitled to say and do anything they want without any type of criticism. When Maher tells a joke that doesn’t land (because he’s basically been doing the same stale act since the early 90’s) on his show he gets mad. And I’m not talking jokey mad, but really upset. He feels entitled to laughs, and if people don’t than it’s clearly the audience whose in the wrong. I wonder how much of the outrage against cancel culture is just old comedians angry they can’t adapt to a new audience. Anyway, that’s probably enough thoughts for one night. Love your stuff, keep up the good work. (Sorry for the rambly nature of this, it’s late and I can’t sleep due to nightmares.)
Mike
2019-09-27 08:05:49 +0000 UTCI’ve sort of vacillated on “cancel culture” for awhile now. I think the problem is it’s nuanced and we humans don’t do nuance very well, we’re much better at “it’s the greatest thing ever!” Or “burn it with fire!” I live in Iowa here in the US and there was an incident recently where a kid at football game was holding a sign asking for beer money. The story got picked and it turned into the guy raising money for a children’s hospital with Bush beer doing matching donations. A reporter for the Des Moines Register looked back through the guys tweets and found two racist jokes he’d posted when he was 16. Bush and the register broke ties with him, and the guy was fairly gracious about the whole thing. Then, the people in the state all went bananas, outraged about the so called “cancel culture” with everyone attacking the reporter mercilessly on social media (he’s since frozen his account) and vowing to not drink Bush beer. In this situation who was guilty of cancel culture, Bush and the reporter or the people who cancelled the cancellers.
Mike
2019-09-27 07:45:32 +0000 UTC
