Ethics - 'Canceling' Artists Over Their Actions

Is Cancel Culture even real?

The existence of "cancel culture" is itself a bit of a controversial topic. Many feel that it is rampant in universities and in Hollywood, and is a serious threat to free speech and thought, while others feel that it is just a right wing fairy tale, and is no threat at all. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but I see enough outrage on Twitter to at least address the issue, and explain my point of view.

If you want to dig deeper into if this is even a real issue, I suggest checking out Bret Weinstein, who is arguably a victim of cancel culture (in academia, granted.) Despite not being an artist he makes what I find to be a lot of reasonable arguments against cancel culture. Of course I also encourage you to explore the opinions of his critics, who are many.

In addition the people at Heterodox Academy have some pretty strong views on the topic if you want to read what they have to say.

The small media collection problem

I have a truly large collection of music and video by most people's standards; close to 6000 vinyl records, a digital music collection that would take almost 72 days to listen to all of, as well as hundreds of movies, tv series, etc.

It would take a lot of time to experience it all, even doing so 24/7, with... help.

My point is that if I was to remove all artists who did or believed something that I disagree with or find repulsive personally, I would have a very small collection. If I took it to an extreme, I would probably only have my own music, and I might have to stop listening to that because my opinions on some topics have evolved over time, as opinions should.

I do not want to have a small collection of media.

Fuck that.

Variety is fantastic, and the ability to experience such a wide variety of arts, cultures and opinions is on the the greatest benefits of modern society. A future blog entry will be about how hard it was for me to learn about bands, artists, filmmakers, etc. in the 80's versus how it is now, but that is for another day. The TL;DR is that we should be enabling access, not locking ideas down.

As someone with more than a small number of interactions with artists throughout my life, I can with authority state that a great deal of artists are deeply flawed people, despite their gifts. In fact, so many artists are flawed people, that it has become a cliche.

I can also state that some of these deeply flawed artists have made truly great work that deserves to be seen, appreciated and the chance to influence other artists, and I do not think that the flawed actions of these artists should determine if we are allowed to experience their art.

I feel that it is completely possible to enjoy the work of Jerry Lee Lewis without endorsing his marriage to his thirteen year old cousin, to enjoy the work of Michael Jackson despite the pedophilia allegations against him, or to enjoy the work of Chuck Berry and still condemn his illegal and perverted voyeurism.

To be clear, if knowing these things somehow ruins their music for you, by all means, don't listen to them, that's a completely valid response to those feelings.

Just don't tell me not to enjoy their art, and don't make it off-limits for others in general, either.

Personally, I feel that there is a value to this art in spite of the actions of the artist, and that as long as their actions are not covered up they can and should be available to inspire future artists. That is why I feel that the desire to censor is a dangerous one, we are robbing out future artists from potential sources of inspiration.

The truly despicable and the beauty of parody

At the extremes there are some artists who are just so despicable, that one wonders if there is a reason to give them an audience at all. I would argue that for one thing, censorship is ineffective and morally indefensible, and in at least in some cases, it is worthwhile to expose oneself to the offensive content.

I have a practical example, of course, in GWAR whose bizarre practice of ritually sacrificing their fans on stage defies all reason and is beyond defense.

Just kidding, I'm going to talk about the English Nazi Skinhead band, Skrewdriver, who despite being truly horrible people, wrote some catchy music. As a young, Jewish punk/rudeboy in the 80's I was very interested in the mindset of the Nazi skinheads who wanted to kill me, so I listened to Skrewdriver when I could and I noticed that the tunes weren't bad.

I wasn't the only one who did, in fact the whole reason that I even mention Skrewdriver in the first place is this: If funny Jewish punks didn't listen to Skrewdriver, then they never would have created the amazing band/idea that is Jewdriver.

"Hail the Jew Dawn"??? (the original was "new dawn" obviously.)

Come on, man! This is gold! This is pure chutzvah!

This had to drive the members of Skrewdriver absolutely insane. "Ian Stuartstein" (seriously, LOL I'm dying here) and crew do an amazing job with their parody. I cannot think of a better way to mess with Nazis than to mock them like this, and yes, I am including physical violence against them among the ways to mess with them. Been there, done that, and I don't think it's very productive (maybe a topic for a future blog post though.)

How to approach it ethically if you really oppose someone and want the music/film

The main objection to listening to an offensive artist is the concept of supporting that artist. There are almost certainly artists out there for each of us, who we just do not want to support. Support can come in the terms of money, but it can also be in the way of grassroots promotion as well.

One way to avoid supporting an artist is to buy their work used (or pirate their work, I suppose, if that's how you roll.) The key concept is to not generate any income for them. If you aren't generating income for them, then you aren't really supporting them. For instance, when I was a teenager, I made a cassette tape of another guy's Skrewdriver record, and they made no money from that.

The other kind of support is also easily dealt with... don't talk about them and promote them to others (and yes I know that I might sort of be promoting Skrewdriver here, but they're gone, and Ian Stuart is dead, so I don't care.) The attentive eye will also notice which artists got no images. Suck it, Stuart.