- Banned
- #1
In the days after 9/11, a major US radio chain called Clear Channel circulated an internal memo blacklisting certain songs deemed "lyrically questionable" in light of the attacks in NYC. It included a bunch of AC/DC songs but also, bizarrely, John Lennon's Imagine.
It seemed crazy to me at the time. But here we are 20 years later and this impulse to "protect" audiences from content deemed problematic or potentially offensive/hurtful has gone into overdrive.
Don't get me wrong: I can accept the arguments for classifying pornography and removing ISIS beheading videos from Youtube or Twitter. I'm talking about Gone With The Wind being removed by HBO because of its questionable portrayal of African Americans, slavery and the civil war.
This is insane. Are we seriously going to re-examine every piece of film, music or literature and then repackage it with an accompanying "cultural health warning" based on the standards of 2020? Careful, this contains hazardous materials.
Apparently Little Britain also falls into the same category, deemed "unseeable" by the BBC streaming service.
The content has already been produced, distributed and widely consumed. What risk are these outlets trying to mitigate by removing these newly problematic programmes? Is HBO worried that by continuing to screen Gone With The Wind they would be tacitly endorsing racism? It is nothing but pandering to some imaginary consensus about what is now acceptable or unacceptable. People can make up their own minds. They don't need to be spoonfed a set of pre-approved objections.
When the Nazis started burning books it was, as Goebbels said, "to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past". A great purge of anything no longer approved. Of course, the Nazis did a lot of other far worse things so this is not intended as a direct comparison. People pushing for these cancellations are not literally as bad as Nazis, obviously. Rather, it is to emphasise the fundamentally illiberal spirit of taking texts and seeking to erase them because they do not align with the new pieties of the day. That's why it was bad for Nazis to burn books. That's why it came to typify the malignancy of the Nazis' worldview. You need only see them burning books and you know something has gone awry.
Of course, on Amazon you can still buy a copy of Mein Kampf. And you can access unlimited pornography any time you're online, so I've heard. But heaven forbid you watch Gone With The Wind, lest you be triggered by the mores of 1930s Hollywood. Where does it end? Maybe start by revoking the Oscar awarded to child rapist Roman Polanski. But that's another story, I guess.
Jonathan Haidt has written a great deal about this phenomenon of "safetyism" - the idea that words or content can constitute "violence". And that people have some right to be protected from offending material. There's a lot of him on YouTube but here are a couple of appearances he made on Sam Harris and Joe Rogan promoting his most recent book, The Coddling of the American Mind.
Please share further examples of cancel culture gone too far. And although I accept that this current spate of cancel culture is generally an expression of the preoccupations of the regressive left or "wokeness", any RWers tempted to insist they're immune would do well to remember the Dixie Chicks and Colin Kaepernick. Both cancelled for their transgressions against RW versions of political correctness.
It seemed crazy to me at the time. But here we are 20 years later and this impulse to "protect" audiences from content deemed problematic or potentially offensive/hurtful has gone into overdrive.
Don't get me wrong: I can accept the arguments for classifying pornography and removing ISIS beheading videos from Youtube or Twitter. I'm talking about Gone With The Wind being removed by HBO because of its questionable portrayal of African Americans, slavery and the civil war.
"These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible," the HBO spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that when the film returns to HBO Max, it "will return with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions," and will be presented "as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed".
This is insane. Are we seriously going to re-examine every piece of film, music or literature and then repackage it with an accompanying "cultural health warning" based on the standards of 2020? Careful, this contains hazardous materials.
Apparently Little Britain also falls into the same category, deemed "unseeable" by the BBC streaming service.
The content has already been produced, distributed and widely consumed. What risk are these outlets trying to mitigate by removing these newly problematic programmes? Is HBO worried that by continuing to screen Gone With The Wind they would be tacitly endorsing racism? It is nothing but pandering to some imaginary consensus about what is now acceptable or unacceptable. People can make up their own minds. They don't need to be spoonfed a set of pre-approved objections.
When the Nazis started burning books it was, as Goebbels said, "to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past". A great purge of anything no longer approved. Of course, the Nazis did a lot of other far worse things so this is not intended as a direct comparison. People pushing for these cancellations are not literally as bad as Nazis, obviously. Rather, it is to emphasise the fundamentally illiberal spirit of taking texts and seeking to erase them because they do not align with the new pieties of the day. That's why it was bad for Nazis to burn books. That's why it came to typify the malignancy of the Nazis' worldview. You need only see them burning books and you know something has gone awry.
Of course, on Amazon you can still buy a copy of Mein Kampf. And you can access unlimited pornography any time you're online, so I've heard. But heaven forbid you watch Gone With The Wind, lest you be triggered by the mores of 1930s Hollywood. Where does it end? Maybe start by revoking the Oscar awarded to child rapist Roman Polanski. But that's another story, I guess.
Jonathan Haidt has written a great deal about this phenomenon of "safetyism" - the idea that words or content can constitute "violence". And that people have some right to be protected from offending material. There's a lot of him on YouTube but here are a couple of appearances he made on Sam Harris and Joe Rogan promoting his most recent book, The Coddling of the American Mind.
Please share further examples of cancel culture gone too far. And although I accept that this current spate of cancel culture is generally an expression of the preoccupations of the regressive left or "wokeness", any RWers tempted to insist they're immune would do well to remember the Dixie Chicks and Colin Kaepernick. Both cancelled for their transgressions against RW versions of political correctness.
Last edited: