Cancel culture takes the fun out of life, says comedian John Cleese | Hacker News Reader

Cancel culture takes the fun out of life, says comedian John Cleese

reuters.com

28 pointsRickJWagner21 comments

Cleese's 1987 monologue on "extremism" is delightful and well worth the two minutes it takes to watch:

What we never hear about extremism is its advantages. Well the biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel good because it provides you with enemies. Let me explain. The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies and all the goodness in the whole world is in you. Attractive isn't it? So if you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway, and you therefore enjoy abusing people, then you can pretend that you're only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons, and that if it wasn't for them you'd actually be good-natured and courteous and rational all the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLNhPMQnWu4

I came up with a good analogy the other day for "cancel culture" as a renewal more than a destructive tendency, and it's an analogy baked into the name so partly intended despite easily forgot. We already have a "cancel culture": every season we cancel a few TV shows so new ones get a shot. In more than a century of radio and TV show cancellations we haven't yet run out of "fun", have we? We keep finding new sources.

This other sort of sociopolitical "cancel culture" seems nearly as effective (or not) as radio/TV cancellation: shows still show up in rerun in syndication sometimes, it doesn't stop (and isn't really intended to stop) people with tapes/DVDs at home from enjoying rewatches. Even early shows in TV show history were sometimes re-edited for syndication to remove jokes intended for a live audience that didn't always land or that needed a context that syndication could not provide. (Today sometimes shows going to syndication need re-editing because the show doesn't have the rights to original broadcast music.)

While there are of course extreme proponents of "cancel culture", a lot of it does boil down to certain forms of "audience" dissatisfaction and a request to maybe air a new "pilot", see if a new series is waiting in the wings ready to wow the audiences. That's not to take the "fun out of life", but to find new sources of fun in life.

The analogy sucks because there's a huge disconnect between how you portray cancelling and what happens in reality.

I don’t live in a culture where culture wars are a big thing, probably due to prosperity and a high degree of homogeneity. But because I consume US and UK media, I’m aware of the term “cancel culture”.

The questions I have are:

(1) Can someone direct me to evidence it actually exists in a way that was tangibly different to the past? I have a suspicion that a large part of power is about whose voice gets heard, and someone was always getting “cancelled”. I ask this question as the demographic that complains most about cancel culture (mine incidentally) is quite narrow!

(2) Is “cancel culture” an aggressive form of product-market fit? Ie if your wares aren’t attractive, you’re forced to iterate (twitterate?) those views until they find a market.

I tend to agree with the suspicion that this is nothing newu but I'd advice against making assumptions about cultures you're not a part of. I don't think it's lack of prosperity, inequality or heterogeneity that's driving any of this.

Personally, I don’t believe it is any different now than it was before. The issue is that it’s not liberals and progressives being ostracized anymore.

20 years ago, we had Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the army, which was cancel culture written into institutional policy.

40 years ago, people were “cancelled” merely by being born dark skinned, and by law would never take prestigious jobs, or even eat in the front of a restaurant, or walk around after dark in certain towns.

Now conservatives are feeling the heat of American culture, which has always been direct prescriptive when it comes to right and wrong, in or out. It’s not that anything has changed, but you are hearing new voices calling out in complaint.

Also don't forget red scare / mccarthyism. Cancelled any semblance of socialism being instituted, even though universal healthcare was called for by many leaders back in the 50s/60's including Eisenhower and JFK.

Is cancel culture a real thing among comedians, as in are there real-life examples of comedians who got canceled because of edgy jokes?

Lewis C.K. and got cancelled because of unwanted sexual acts, similar to other actors. It had nothing to with his humor or acts.

And it's hard to describe Louis CK as "cancelled" when he's still touring to packed audiences.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/03/11...

Lenny Bruce comes to mind [0]. Granted, he was from an era where legal restrictions on free expression were much more stringent whereas cancel culture today is more of a market phenomenon.

https://www.thefire.org/first-amendment-library/special-coll...

Shane Gillis, not sure with how his career has been faring since the SNL fallout. Dennis Miller somewhat but he's still getting work. I'm not sure whether Michael Richards fits.

Lenny Bruce?

Canceling the wrong humor and or statements is a theme in autocratic behavior and I think if you cannot see how media scraps content that could even remotely seen as sexist/racist/controversial, you have to be willfully blind to it. People doing it aren't progressives, they are just the next generation of conservatives. The article actually gives an example. What about that?

I don't know what Lewis C.K. did, I thought he was on the other "side" of that argument actually.

The parent asked a reasonable question and you ranted about identity politics and called them willfully blind.

Went to the Front Page, quickly got cancelled. I guess Cleese might be hitting a nerve.

It'll take more tries, but eventually the fourth one will stay up.

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