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This week we talk a lot of TV, for some reason. Also, Tony threatens William’s life. Like, a lot. Any we have an odd discussion on cancel culture. Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
What do you think of Shuri as the next Black Panther in the MCU? –Dave of Id
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Re: Bullying. I think bullying is essentially feelings of powerlessness and/or self-contempt projected onto others. I was doing office work at a mental health clinic during a period in which there was a big economic downtown, and there seemed to be a strong correlation between men losing their jobs (it was definitely a downturn that affected men most strongly at that period in time), and domestic abuse and child abuse.
Re: Wandavision. I think the strengths of this show have nothing to do with it being of the Marvel universe, or even the kind of characters that Wanda and Vision are. To the closest analog to what this show is like would be some kind of combination of The Twilight Zone and The Truman Show.
Re: People getting fired for what they say on social media. I think Will kind of countered his original statement about “back in the good ol’ days.” And Tony added onto that. Just one additional point–“back in the good ol’ days” the studios absolutely controlled the images of their stars, to the point of dictating their personal relationships and even arranging marriages. So I don’t really believe in some era in which corporations didn’t have a lot of power over their “properties.”
Well, crap! I don’t think William is interested at all in things like The Twilight Zone and The Truman Show…
Er… if recollection serves, whatever it is I said about the “good ol’ days”, it wasn’t about whether or not people were getting fired back then for bad things. It was about how… well, for example, I think I mentioned Robert Downy Jr. and how his career was sunk by his “bad” behavior… what I recall *didn’t* happen was, nobody I knew who was a fan of his *stopped* being a fan of his, or acted like they had to pretend that they were no longer a fan of his, and I certainly don’t recall anyone expressing the sense that the guy should never work in Hollywood again. Or whatever. In fact, while everyone I knew understood why studios didn’t want to work with him, nobody I knew would have been outraged if studios *did* work with him. We all understood why his actions led to the sinking of his career, but none of us would have minded if his actions *hadn’t* sunk his career. None of *us* were demanding his “cancellation”. In fact, it wouldn’t have mattered to any of *us* if his career had gone on like nothing happened. I’m not saying that nobody existed at the time who wanted his career to end for his “crimes”, but, at least where I lived, such a person would have been the exception and not the rule. Which is all to say… studios today fire people just like they did back then and for the same reasons, because they don’t want their names in the news associated with certain kinds of behavior or even with *accusations* of certain kinds of behavior (which is a point I tried to make in the podcast). At the same time (and not a contradicting point), back in the day, at least where I lived, all of that meant virtually nothing to “the little people” like me and I think that I, at least, was better off for it.
Whatever happened to famous people back then, the story rarely involved the participation of so-called “woke mobs” the way such stories do now. Being “dragged in the press” 30 years ago was a very different thing than being “dragged in social media” today. And I do miss the days when acquaintances of mine didn’t feel like they needed to weigh in on every detail of a famous person’s life, and when acquaintances of mine didn’t appear to organize themselves into factions based upon such opinions.
On top of that, I think we do have to hold in mind that the so-called “cancel culture” isn’t just about people being held accountable for things they’ve done, the way some who dismiss the term assert. People today are being doxxed, their lives are being threatened, they’re being fired… all sometimes for things they *haven’t* done, or for things they have done but the punishment definitely doesn’t fit the crime, and many of these people are *not* famous or powerful people. Now, that doesn’t justify these acts being politicized and weaponized in the term “cancel culture” (which I think is the point Tony was making), but people are correct to criticize and call for the end of such actions, whatever label they apply to them.
Sorry for my confusion as to what you said.
I think a more accurate term for what we are talking about, and something that goes far beyond politics, is a shame culture mentality that I run into everywhere.
The place that I see it the most is in the classroom where every year my students become less and less willing to venture an answer to a question for fear of embarrassment if they should appear less than perfect in every way when they answer. This semester, because of COVID, I’m trying to use the classroom time to get them talking to each other, and I’ve actually prerecorded my lectures for outside the classroom. But it is proving daunting to get them to speak to each other. They have a list of discussion questions, and instead of talking to each other about them, they divvy them up and write out individual answers. I’ve specifically forbidden them from writing anything on the discussion sheets, and they are still doing so and not speaking to each other. (The same behavior happens with the students who are not in the classroom–I can only have 7 of them in the room at a time.) Then when it comes to the whole class discussing things, I had asked people who were on zoom to put their cameras on when answering a question, just so I start to know who they are. I had to allow them to remain with the cameras off, though, after I saw how people in the class mocked and ridiculed people who were appearing on zoom as the highlighted speaker. Calling people on the mocking behavior didn’t stop it.
This is also a big part of being “cool”–being as distant and asocial as possible in order to avoid the spotlight where one will be made fun of for whatever–making a mistake, clothing, physical appearance, having a “wrong” opinion.
I’ve mentioned this to Will before, but in an online game that I play, opponents constantly use the very limited vocal reactions the game allows to ridicule mistakes, or not even mistakes, but losses that are completely due to chance.
I don’t know what’s causing this phenomenon where everyone thinks they should comment on what another person’s correct behavior should be, but what “correctness” is, is larger than political or even moral categories, as one can see in fat-shaming comments online.
I know that sociologists used to classify the West as a guilt culture in the past, but I really think that that has changed.
It’s all good! 🙂
It’s been suggested that social media has led to people more often thinking that their opinions deserve to be heard, no matter how trivial or mean they are. Now, this reality also leads to an increased probability that one’s “deserves to be heard” opinion will be ridiculed by others who also “deserve to be heard”. So the upshot is, nobody wants to present a closely held, well thought out opinion where it will truly sting if it’s ridiculed, but that makes them all the more eager to share their superficial and mean opinions that are less vulnerable to attack in the first place and won’t sting so much even if they are attacked.
I was watching something on YouTube and was reminded of this ContraPoints video about cancelling. I think the definition of cancelling here is somewhat different from what you were talking about on the episode (but related). It’s more the kind of public shaming thing that happens on Twitter particularly to people who have a platform on social media. This video is really long, and some of it is quite upsetting so not sure I’d recommend it to everyone. The part where Natalie Wynn is specifically talking about the problems with cancelling start at about 1 hour 12 minutes. And the bare bones of the controversy that started getting her cancelled was that she had a transman named Buck Angel do a voice over of a quotation from John Waters in a previous video. And some people on twitter have decided that Buck Angel is a transmedicalist (though the evidence for that which Wynn goes over earlier doesn’t seem decisive to me). One important point she makes (in case you don’t want to watch the video) is that cancelling has been around for a long time and predates social media. It is really the same thing that Jo Freeman described as “trashing” in a 1976 article in Ms. Magazine (referenced in the video).
This is the Jo Freeman article: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/trashing.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8&t=3450s
And the ContraPoints video:
Ok, transmedicalist is a new one for me. I’m familiar with Buck Angel, but not that term.
The term “transmedicalist” is usually used by people who see themselves in opposition to those that they are labelling as “transmedicalist” and it means someone who holds that to actually be transgender one needs to experience gender dysphoria and seek medical transition. I think the reason Buck Angel is thought to be transmedicalist is that he refers to himself with the older term “transexual” rather than transgender.
Toy Galaxy is amazing, I’ve been a fan for years and make purchases based on his list of years best figures. And not been disappointed with Dan’s suggestions. The history and oddities are great and the writing is spot on hilarious.