Here’s Why Celebrities Like J.K. Rowling And Mel Gibson Never Really Get “Canceled”
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On today's episode of BuzzFeed Daily, we broke down the top pop culture headlines AND discussed "cancel culture." You can listen below or scroll down to read more about the interview!
So let's dive right into it! Recently we talked to Fast Company’s Joe Berkowitz about the myth of “cancel culture.” Here's some of what we learned:
BuzzFeed Daily: You recently wrote a piece on "cancel culture" [and how it relates to] this season of Succession. How would you define cancel culture as it's viewed in mainstream media?
Joe Berkowitz: Well, it's one of those terms that benefits from having no fixed definition, so people can kind of make it mean whatever they want it to mean for their purposes. But I think the simplest way to define it is, it's a climate where people are more likely to face backlash for things they once might not have. But just considering that getting canceled can just as easily refer to getting yelled at for half a day on Twitter, as it might refer to becoming un-hirable — possibly forever — I think it's a term we use too loosely.
BuzzFeed Daily: Based on what we've seen in these past five years, it kind of just seems like cancel culture as we know it is just the internet in general. I mean, the technology of social media platforms has seemingly given every person on Earth the ability to react in real-time to world events. Does that sound right to you or do you think there's something more complicated happening?
@arianagrande / GIPHY / Via giphy.com
JB: No, I agree. Technology is a huge part of it — being able to record and distribute anything instantaneously. I don't know how I would have survived high school. I think everyone who's in high school now is a brave warrior for not being able to have the space to make mistakes that would be unfilmed and unseen. And then that's only half of it. The other half is that everyone has a voice to comment on something, and that might either potentially be picked up and retweeted into the internet stratosphere. Also, if it's not one voice, it's a million voices agitating for action together.
BuzzFeed Daily: You already touched upon this a little bit, but people will often point to the fact that those who are "canceled" will lose their jobs and income as one of the big problems of cancel culture. But usually, the people who are canceled are rich and famous. So is this even a material problem for them?
JB: It depends on what they did because the word "canceled" means so many things. You can be super-powerful and super-rich, and if they have you dead to rights on an actual crime, then yeah, you're going to get prosecuted by law.
And that can mean the same thing as being like J.K. Rowling, who makes comments once or twice a year that undermines the trans community. And everybody gets really mad and she goes on about her day. You could say that J.K. Rowling is canceled, but I mean, if people bought 100 fewer Harry Potter books this year than that last year, I don't think that affects her marginally.
BuzzFeed Daily: This is something that you talked about in your piece, and J.K. Rowling is just one example. We're seeing this with Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle, who were both just nominated for Grammys and are currently touring. And Mel Gibson is going to be directing and starring in Lethal Weapon 5, and actor Joshua Malina, who's Jewish, just wrote an op-ed for The Atlantic calling for Hollywood to make a stronger effort to actually cancel him. So what do you make of this? Should the entertainment industry be putting up stronger walls to keep men like this out? Or should we let the audiences determine for themselves whether they want to actually support them?
JB: Well, first of all, I love to imagine what it would have been like if either of Mel Gibson's career wrecking moments — the time he got pulled over and said those things about Jewish people or the voicemail for his ex-girlfriend — if either of those happened now, I would love to see that notes app apology. Like what would that look like?
But you know, if it were up to me, Mel Gibson would be self-financing independent movies with whichever actors were willing to work with him, not making wacky Christmas movies with Will Ferrell or possibly directing Lethal Weapon 5. But we've known that Mel Gibson has an antisemitic past and said some really, really horrible, disturbing things to his ex. We can't relearn that information for the first time. So because of the weird, fluctuating statute of limitations we have, it’s all now personal decisions. It's executives who decide to greenlight his movies and the actors who decide to appear in them, and then whether we go see them or not.
BuzzFeed Daily: You also wrote about how the terms "cancel culture" and "woke mob" have been weaponized, mainly by conservative media and Republican politicians. In fact, 64% of Americans view cancel culture as a threat to freedom. So what do you think it is about the subject that has become such a flashpoint? Is there any substance to this or do you think conservative media has simply manufactured this into a culture war issue?
JB: I think that cancel culture is in the eye of the beholder. If you don't think a person did anything wrong, then you're probably going to describe any consequence whatsoever, including just getting yelled at, as getting canceled. Yeah, I think there have been a lot of unpopular opinions and movements related to Donald Trump, and some of the politicians who are still part of those have focused on the pushback they get as the problem itself, rather than looking at the massive unpopularity of those movements as the problem.
Jim Jordan, a congressman from Ohio, wanted to hold a committee hearing last March on cancel culture. At the time, it was very unpopular to have the opinions of him and his other congressmen who voted to overturn the election. They were being pilloried at the time, and in my opinion, rightfully so. So yeah, they were very, very concerned about cancel culture. And I think that's kind of a small version of a more broad pushback that we're seeing.
We also discussed Kim Kardashian addressing the allegations of Blackfishing against her.
In an I-D Q&A, she told playwright Jeremy O. Harris that she “obviously would never do anything to appropriate any culture. But I have in the past got backlash from putting my hair in braids and I understand that."
She added: “Honestly, a lot of the time it comes from my daughter asking us to do matching hair. And I’ve had these conversations with her that are like, 'Hey, maybe this hairstyle would be better on you and not on me.' But I also want her to feel that I can do a hairstyle with her and not make it that big of a deal either, if that’s something that she’s really asking for and really wants."
