Cancel culture:
speaking truth to power,
or mob intimidation?
That's next on Keep It Social.
♪ ♪
What's up, y'all?
I'm Paris,
and this is Keep It Social.
"Cancel culture."
What is it:
holding public figures
accountable,
or a form of bullying
and intimidation?
Many celebrities have
faced "cancellation."
The latest is J.K. Rowling,
the author of the Harry Potter
book series.
 She came under fire
 for tweeting an article
 with a caption that was
 perceived as offensive
 by the transgender community.
 She later doubled down
 on those tweets and issued
 a 3,600-word essay
 explaining herself.
 But fans of the series,
 as well as various members
 of the Harry Potter cast,
 including Daniel Radcliffe,
 were quick to condemn
 her actions
 and distance themselves
 from the author.
So, to talk more about this,
I'm joined
by my darling cohost Terrence.
What's up, Terrence?
How you doing?
I'm well.
How are you today, Paris?
I'm hanging in there.
And, Terrence,
we are joined today
by Abby Olheiser,
who's a senior editor
covering Internet culture
with MIT Technology Review.
She joins us from D.C.
Hi, Abby, how are you?
I'm great.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you for being with us.
And we're also joined by
Aja Romano,
who's a culture reporter
at Vox in New York.
How are you, Aja?
Great. Happy to be here.
Thanks for being with us.
So, Aja, let's start with you.
Was J.K. Rowling canceled?
That's a big, big question.
Um, J.K. Rowling, of course,
is a huge, huge author.
She is beloved by millions
and millions
of Harry Potter fans.
And, like, currently
she has, like,
15 million Twitter followers.
You know, so, um, it takes a lot
to cancel someone
of that stature.
But, but this is a lot
that we're talking about.
We're talking about a very,
very influential
children's author making very,
very transphobic tweets
 and a very, very long
 transphobic,
 very defensive essay
 doubling down on those tweets,
um, that already comes after
months of ignoring criticism
and, and sort of
heartbroken pleas from fans
to listen and show empathy
for trans people
and for their own experiences
and so forth.
And I think all of that
culminates in what feels like
a very, very heavy cultural
rejection of her, you know.
And I think this gets
into the question of:
what do we mean when we say
some... someone is canceled?
I think a lot of people want to,
to assume that it means
you want to cancel
someone's career,
you want to cancel, like, their,
their presence in society.
You want to basically
ostracize them.
I think of it...
(laughs)
I-I kind of think of it as,
like, that Black Mirror episode,
the Christmas episode
where Jon Hamm gets, like,
like, blacklisted
from the-the universe,
so, like, people can,
like, block him
from their-their vision.
You know?
I think that's what
a lot of people think
cancel culture is
supposed to be.
But I tend to think of it more
as, like, a boy--
like a consumerist reaction
to someone that you have
essentially decided
doesn't deserve to be
on your, your cultural radar
anymore.
So you essentially say you,
you're going to stop
consuming their work.
You're essentially going
to boycott them.
And if that happens
on a collective scale,
then we're talking about, um,
possibly, from here on out,
Rowling's cultural--
like, Rowling's work
just doesn't get that much
cultural attention.
Um, she'll still continue
to have a following,
she'll still continue
to have fans,
but her work will be,
I think, just--
retroactively as well
as-as moving forward--
will be considered in a much,
much different light
than we did before.
I mean, that's interesting
because you say that
we're not gonna be able
to talk about Rowling
without mentioning this, right?
And so, for me, I wonder...
So, I'm gonna tell you
where I have kind of arrived
on cancel culture,
and then we can litigate that
all day long.
(laughs)
So, for me, I guess...
I want to say yes,
it's productive to just, like,
block these people out
and, like, silence them
and not talk about them,
not talk about anything
they're doing,
but in so many ways,
I feel like that prevents us
from really... offering
constructive criticism
and contextualizing
what they're saying
and using that, uh,
for his-historic context.
I almost kind of...
An example of this
came up for me this week
with, um, some of the...
You know, there's this huge
debate over monuments right now.
Over controversial monuments
to people
like Christopher Columbus,
Robert E. Lee, et cetera.
And so one monument in Boston
was beheaded--
the Christopher Columbus
statue--
and someone, um,
by the name of Arielle Gray,
a journalist in Boston,
had written...
She felt like the statue
should stay as beheaded
to help us contextualize
the history
and help us understand why
these things are problematic.
In so many ways, I feel that way
about cancel culture.
I feel like that helps us
to continue to hold
these people accountable
and not forget
what they have done
that was bad, right?
Uh, but I don't know.
(laughing):
Uh, you feel free to disagree.
I feel like, um, one of the
tricky things about talking
about cancel culture is that
it is a term that means
so many different things
to so many different people,
and can be manipulated easily
because of that. Right?
So, in, say, more conservative
media, often cancel culture
is talked about
as this unstoppable force
of, like, progressive
mob activity that is
out to ruin the lives
of, you know,
particularly, like, white
conservative Americans. Right?
But it means something
entirely different
when you get into
more progressive circles
where this is actually
happening, and there's
more of a nuance to it,
where what you're talking about
is accountability work
in a lot of ways. Right?
Where, um, you know,
with Rowling is
a really good example,
where I think when you're
looking at the Rowling kind of
cancellation that happened,
it's important to remember that
she has a lot of queer,
particularly trans
and non-binary fans.
It is a prominent part
of the fandom.
And so some of this is her
fandom holding her accountable
for things she has said that are
hurtful or traumatizing to them.
Right? So it's, on the one hand,
you have this conversation
about real hurt
and people who are using
the Internet to hold
powerful people accountable
for the consequences
of what they say.
And then, yes, on the other hand
you have kind of
the behaviors of mob activity
on the Internet,
which can get out of hand
and can strip nuance.
But I think it's very important
to pay attention
to what we prioritize.
And are we prioritizing,
kind of, these questions
about the ways in which
cancel culture
might be not perfect over
trauma, right, for instance?
And so it's-it's so tricky
because all of these things are
valid to discuss,
but we always risk kind of
paying attention to one thing
too much and shifting
the conversation away
from things that are
impacting real people.
I think it's important, too, to
understand that cancel culture
originated as a concept
in black social media
within the black community.
And the black--
and the black community, as they
essentially coined this idea,
were using it, um...
The best I can explain it,
like, you can think of it
as, like, uh, an extension
of the boycotts
that happened
in the civil rights movement.
You know, like, it's not, um,
it was never about punishment,
individual punishment, it was
about a collective action
to say, both as individuals
and as a community,
"We recognize that
we don't have much agency
"over your cultural platform,
um,
but the power
that we do have," um,
as one person
that I talked to told me,
"was the power,
the power that we do have
is to ignore you," you know?
And it's about, it's a...
in that context,
it was about a reclamation
of agency.
Um, and I think in Harry Potter,
it's-it's a really,
like almost a...
For me, it's even hard
to see it as cancel culture
because, like, I myself am,
like, I've been
in the Harry Potter fandom--
very, very deeply involved
in the Harry Pot-- Potter fandom
and was for at least
a decade more.
Um, really almost the entire
time, so... (chuckles)
Um, so, like, since 1999,
basically, 21 years.
And, um, that is a long time
to be a Harry Potter fandom--
-fan, especially...
-You're a diehard,
-I appreciate it.
-Well, I'm also...
I'm also a queer, non-binary
Harry Potter fan.
-Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
-So, for me, this is...
like, it's not only personal,
it's not only--
like, it's a feeling
of collective mourning.
Like, I still talk every day
to people that I've met
in the Harry Potter fandom
in the year 2001.
You know, so these are like...
it's very, it feels very small.
It feels more like...
it's much less like...
we are going to, like,
start a social movement
against this-this far,
this-this very far-removed
creator, you know?
And it's more like we have
to come together as a community
to... as a community to figure
out how to mourn this.
You know, to figure out
how to grieve and...
Because... and that
may sound like it's, um...
It may sound far-fetched,
but, like,
Harry Potter is so personal
to so many people.
Like, this basically was,
like, a secular bible
for many...
for millions of fans,
who basically, like...
gained from these books,
uh, like, a road map on how to,
how to show empathy
and tolerance
and-and how to stand up for
and protect the weak, the weak
and the vulnerable
and the marginalized.
Because the whole books are
about, you know,
uh, magicians trying to figure
out how to safely protect, uh,
Muggles, who don't have magic
and are therefore vulnerable,
um, and are specifically,
explicitly vulnerable
to white supremacists
in the type of context
that we're seeing play out
in the real world
every day right now, right?
So, in the middle
of that context, to have
the author of these books
double down
on literally, like, the most
vulnerable, marginalized
community that there is.
Like, you can't find a more--
like, arguably, like,
black trans women are
the most attacked,
most vulnerable, most, um...
Trans women just experience
appalling rates
of violence directed at them
because of transphobia.
And when you think about the
author of these wonderful series
of books, who taught literally,
like, multiple generations,
millions of people how
to be human and... (laughs)
...being the arbiter
of this type of, like,
really transphobic discourse,
it becomes, like,
it's really hard to separate
your own personal feelings
from that, both as a fan and as
a member of that community,
and to, um... to-to separate
how culturally important
that is, you know?
So when we talk
about cancel culture,
like, this is sort of a whole
new, a whole different scale
from what I think
we're normally seeing,
where you have,
like, an individual
doing an individual action
that then you can...
you can either require
accountability for...
and then they, they show
atonement or they don't,
and we go from there, right?
-But...
-Mm-hmm. So...?
Yeah, but this is just, like,
so much bigger than that.
-(laughs)
-Yeah, absolutely.
So what about you, Terrence?
I mean, wh-what's the place
of cancel culture,
given, given everything
that's been said?
I think that
to Aja's point earlier,
it's kind of... to her point
about this collective mourning,
right, it's up to the afflicted
group, in my opinion,
to kind of dictate what
cancellation looks like, right?
Like, if you, for me,
if you're not a part
of the group that ha--
feels, um, attacked
for, by whatever public figure,
right, then I don't think
you necessarily have the license
to say what is or isn't
cancel culture.
And I also, beyond that, like,
a step forward, for me, when
I think about cancel culture,
I am thinking about, okay,
you did this, um,
it affected this many people,
it was a huge, you know,
misstep, whatever,
um... but the follow-up
is atonement, right?
Like, how are you, um,
coming back to say,
either apologize,
do some, like, uh,
some kind of work
to show that you understand
how this has impacted others.
You understand why
they have chosen to, um,
basically, as Aja said,
I think it was Aja who said,
you know, you're no longer in
my cultural sphere, so to speak.
Um, and then how you can improve
or somewhat repair
what you said, right?
Um, because I think a lot
of times when people hear
"cancel culture," they think,
"Oh, I'm canceled,
I'm no longer a part of,
you know, the world's ethos,"
so to speak, and that's not
necessarily true for me.
I don't think
any individual person
is their worst moment.
-You know what I mean?
-Mm-hmm.
I don't think any individual
person is their worst moment.
And I think because of,
you know, this,
this era of wokeness
and polarization
that people kind of for--
forget, um...
you know, that we aren't
our worst moments.
-Mm-hmm.
-And I think that all people
deserve to, um, have time
to atone and, you know, repair.
Um, and I think
if they choose not to,
then, you know, that's
a separate conversation,
but I think they still deserve
that-that moment
to do that work.
Mm-hmm, absolutely.
It's a great point, Terrence.
Well, Abby and Aja, thank you
both so much for joining us.
We really appreciate
your time and your insights.
-Thanks for having us.
-Sure, thank you, any time.
♪ ♪
Well, that's it for us.
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We'll see you next time,
and until then, Terrence,
what should they do?
Paris, they're our friends.
They have to keep it social.
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