by liberal japonicus
This popped up in my feeds, a youtube video about what happened with Ha Young, a Korean actress. This is a shorter version, but I wonder if both of them miss out on something. If you don’t want sit through, basically the Korean actress, who was in a top-ranked drama, and she has bragged on several occasions about her great-grandfather, who studied Western medicine in Japan and how 4 generations were doctors. That led people to figure out who her ancestors were and what they had done. Whoops. The shorter video explains that she was cancelled, the longer video takes issue with people saying that she was ”cancelled’ and goes into detail about why. The longer one feels that Yasukuni is a slam dunk, because Japanese war-criminals are enshrined there and are therefore ‘like gods’, which is overstating it a bit. Here’s a good explainer, and it reminds us that the ranking of Classes A, B and C weren’t related to their severity of their crimes, it was a broad classification created by the allies and 2.4 million people are supposed to be enshrined there, not just the war criminals.
The thing that interested me most was the longer video’s rejection of the term ‘cancelled’, possibly because the person connects being cancelled with popularity and trends, and is not serious enough for her. It is certainly different than in the West, where cancellations seem to be on politics and in Japan, where cancellation comes when social mores are broken. There must be subtle differences in Western nations, and I’m wondering if all of you have any examples.
Being “cancelled” in the US is to be loudly condemned on social media for a moral failing, typically leading to a loss of income and public visibility, usually temporary. Cancelled comedians Louis C.K. and Dave Chappell seem to be doing fine. Those with legal issues piled on top, say like Kevin Spacey, have a tougher time working through it. I don’t see the legal issues as part of cancellation but as additional fallout from the attention to specific illegal types of moral failing.
“Cancelled” is one of those words whose meaaning is shifting. When I was growing up, TV shows were cancelled all the time. Mostly for drawing insufficient audience. But sometimes because the studio, more often the sponsors, didn’t like what the show was doing.**
Now, it seems to refer most often to a person (not an entertainment) who has had their employment terminated because someone disliked what they were saying or doing. (Also more often an academic than an entertainer these days.) Sometimes the complainant convinced the employer; sometimes the complainant was the employer. But either way, the focus is on the individual, not the show.
** Having a writer, producer, or star who was, allegedly, a communist was used as an excuse sometimes. But the accusers generally had no clue what the word even meant. They disliked the show first, then went looking for an excuse.
in two years, nobody but angry Republican seniors will use the word “cancelled”.
it was yet another bit of slang that the GOP weaponized against Dems.
Fatty Arbuckle would like a word with anyone who thinks there is anything novel about the phenomenon of “cancellation”.
It’s always been about crossing moral boundaries. Making it into ammunition for political culture wars may be an innovation.
The name may change but the basic idea of shunning people who traduce social or moral norms is unlikely to go away.
Hester Prynne be like…
Making it into ammunition for political culture wars may be an innovation.
Only for those who have no classical education. Greeks and Romans were already experts in this. In a side remark in his Politeia Plato applies the technique in order to discredit Perikles (without actually naming him but likely obvious to his audience). Cicero loved it too (a bit too much. In the end it got him killed).
I’d argue that what makes “being cancelled” historically distinct from earlier forms of being blackballed is our modern ubiquitous media, and the monetization of attention through clicks. Hester Prynne social ostracism was local. Arbuckle’s blackballing happened because the studios an newspaper publishers took it upon themselves to make his scandal common knowledge.
I wonder if the social media cancellation is going to give way to AI generated “social discredit” as the AI barons marshal the power of the algorithm for propaganda. That is, after all, why Musk the Husk bought Twitter and jumped into AI so hard.
Only for those who have no classical education.
This exemplifies one of the many great advantages of your presence on ObWi, Hartmut!
My take is that the modern term of ‘being cancelled’ arose when university graduates would reject choices for their commencement speaker, and the opposite of cancelled would be ‘platformed’. Most of the essays I’ve found trace it to 2017 or so and connect it with ‘cancel culture’, which I think is incorrect and it makes more sense to me that cancellation of a speech would then move to the effects of social media.
What struck me was that the Korean podcaster had a strong frame of cancellation=false accusation, and insisted that Ha Young was appropriately censured for something. However, it’s not clear exactly what she is being censured for. It seems like it is a combination of sins of her ancestors, her either not knowing or knowing but lying about it and her pushing her ancestors too much. But I really don’t know what the podcaster felt should be the endpoint and I don’t think she does either.
I understand that cancelled is not a settled term, and I guess if some might say that Bill Cosby was ‘cancelled’, they might be making an implicit claim that it was unfair, but I’m not sure if that is the standard understanding. A lot of people have pointed out that examples of being cancelled are often people who seem to be doing pretty well so ‘cancellation’ in these cases seems to be not going far enough in censuring them.
I’ve got a friend who’s a radical feminist comedian (she was a banker when I met her: don’t tell her fans). She once had a university gig cancelled because of threatened picketing by a feminist group who disagreed with her on a fine point of the law on prostitution.
She once had a university gig cancelled because of threatened picketing by a feminist group who disagreed with her on a fine point of the law on prostitution.
This made me laugh in recognition. The schismatic nature of radical groups is rightly renowned, from “the narcissism of small differences” to the Judean People’s Front. It’s funny, until you consider how it hampers getting any meaningful action done.
Being reminded right now that when it comes to “edgy” political rhetoric, there’s a clear double standard between the right and the left in the US. A comment from a right winger on social media expressing a desire to see harm befall a figure on the left is going to be cheered on and laughed at by the far right, held up as free speech by the center right. Clucked at, but mostly ignored by the center left, and decried by the far left.
Same thing coming from the left? Cheered on and laughed at by the far left, denounced as a lack of tolerance by the center left, and decried as an attack on the free speech of the targeted figure by the entire right.
Which is why the Overton Window only ever travels to the right.
We really need to figure out how to break the right wing’s hold on propaganda (tech/media/politics) or we are going to be stuck in a technologically enforced bubble of McCarthyism for the foreseeable future.
Only travels to the right currently, perhaps. But for a big chunk of the last century, it traveled to the left. (To the bitter whining of the right.)
Which is why the Overton Window only ever travels to the right.
That’s not true. today an English football club implored its fans not to use homophobic chants.
…after McCarthyism 1.0 and through the Carter Administration.
The mechanisms of the Internet – as built by the Tech-and-Finance Overlords – are all on the side of keeping things to the right.
The mechanisms of the Internet – as built by the Tech-and-Finance Overlords – are all on the side of keeping things to the right.
Sigh… I’m an old, and my technical career was in telecommunications industrial labs. I remember when the internet was a community. The sort where you generally left your doors unlocked.
It was great right up until they figured out how to make money, and then all the jerks moved in and tragedized the commons.