Cancel Culture and related issues

Geoff Norcott’s entire shtick is seemingly that he’s a working class Tory and how that’s soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo controversial.

I’ve seen interviews with Norcott and Simon Evans and they both said that they were often snubbed by other comedians because they weren’t left wing enough.

I can remember when there used to be disgusting right wing comedians on TV who would regularly tell racist, homophobic and sexist jokes on national TV until people like Ben Elton came along.

But neither Norcott or Evans are that right wing and are certainly not bigoted in the same way but it seems as if the cancel culture has meant that anyone who isn’t on the left is struggling to get on the BBC or any of the main channels.

As I’ve said before, when you have respected, left of centre comedians like Ricky Gervais, Stephen Fry, Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese, etc, saying that it’s gone too far, there must be some truth in it.

“The other comedians didn’t want to be my friend it’s cancel culture gone mad :cry:

Basically? :grin:

It could be that all the main channels are conspiring against these two comedians because of their politics because cancel culture has taken over the entire television industry. Or it could maybe be that these two particular comedians aren’t bigger because they aren’t necessarily that good and as a result they aren’t that popular with people. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between the two.

But cancel culture is here and comedians both here and America are being affected.
Top comedy shows aren’t being shown on Netflix and loads of older respected, left leaning comedians have said they aren’t comfortable with what’s happening.

This is an article from the Guardian.

Which argues against what you’re saying?

The cancel culture is affecting what people can or can’t say on TV shows and top comedians are saying they don’t agree with it, which is what I’m saying.

You can say anything you want. No government is stopping them. The problem is, 9 out of 10 comedians aren’t funny. So they bomb, say something shitty about a group of people then get offended when that group of people tell them to shut the fuck up. Boo hoo…

99% of the complaints about “woke” culture are by shitty people doing and saying shitty things and then getting upset when people call them out. "WOKE CULTURE IS KILLING COMEDY!!!’ Fuck outta here. Your shitty, uninspired bitch fest you call “a bit” is killing comedy.

That’s like me going out in sandals and socks with my Bermuda shorts and then complaining that people don’t tell me I’m fashionable. Whiny little bitches.

That expression could be used to describe people that go around trying to get other people cancelled.

How are Little Britain and other popular mainstream comedy programmes offensive enough to get cancelled by Netflix and other broadcasters?

People seem to get offended on other peoples behalf way to much.

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So people trying to cancel Dave chapelle didn’t happen then?

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Did they succeed?

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We really can’t quantify the opportunities lost in form of endorsements, gigs etc.
Someone like Dave can handle that but an upcomer may lose an earning.

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True. But he’s still not cancelled. His shows are out there to watch for anyone who wants to.

That’s one of the things about “cancel culture” I struggle with. You can go watch Louie CK’s (for example) stuff or buy his old specials. But how is his loss of earnings or opportunities different from just the market looking at him as a commodity and saying “eh, pass” He’s still free to make content but nobody has an obligation to consume it.

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Woke culture is toxic and unproductive. Grow up and grow a thicker skin. Right and left are little whiny bitches and they got that in common.

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That sounds cool in a soundbite or on a bumpersticker but, at least in the USA, nobody really knows what “woke culture” is. It’s typically a phrase thrown around by right wing or conservative pundits as a bogeyman. It’s been stretched to the point where it means absolutely nothing and everything.

Teaching kids that the Civil War was over slavery? Woke culture.

Asking workplaces not to fire people because they’re trans? Woke culture.

Wanting access to abortion? Woke culture.

The Washington football team changing its name? Woke culture.

Paid family leave? Woke culture.

It’s just a way to rile up the base.

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He did a show a year ago and people tried to stop it, these people are perpetually offended

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The only thing that I see that is woke, in regard to comedians, is the reaction they got when doing sets at colleges/universities.

Back in the day these were regular stomping grounds for comedians, but now they wont go anywhere near them.

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Yeah I know, at some comedy clubs right? And the efforts to stop it failed. So I’m not sure how he was canceled. In retrospect he’s probably a bad example to use because I think his weird sexual harassment allegations are different from what someone like Chapelle was dealing with.

@Jules just reminded me that I saw Bob Saget’s standup at college. He was so funny.

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People have protested comedians for fucking forever. People tried to get the Monty Python gang on grounds of blasphemy. Even in this century, a bunch of Christians tried to prevent Stewart Lee’s Jerry Springer the Opera from being shown in theatres, also because of blasphemy.

It’s something that had always happened, as long as those people ultimately dont get their way, I don’t see the point getting quite so hung up on it. Louis CK’s shows seem to have gone ahead despite people’s complaints. People protested about Dave Chappelle and his latest specials, and were very vocal online about their thoughts, but his show is still up and he’s still been paid an utterly astronomical figure for his work. I have no doubt that he could basically pitch any show/special at the moment and get it commissioned, because despite some controversial material in his most recent series of specials, he’s still wildly popular and considered by many to be one of the greatest ever. Nothing that’s tangibly bad has actually happened to him, apart from lots of people thinking he was out of order and criticising him for that, which is just par for the course when you’re a taboo breaking comedian. But aside from maybe not liking being criticised, he’s absolutely fine. As far as I can tell he doesn’t even seem to be taking the criticism to heart, he knew he was stirring the pot and he seems to be coping with the reaction just fine.

I wish people whinging and bitching about cancel culture would at least focus on instances where people actually got cancelled. In half of these incidents that get cited nobody actually got cancelled, all that’s happened is they received a ton of criticism on social media because people didn’t like something they said or did, and they cried cancel culture because they didn’t like the feedback they received. Like, you didn’t get cancelled mate, a lot of people just told you that they think you’re wrong/what you said is harmful/that you’re full of shit. They’ve just exercised their right to free speech by giving an opinion, just like you did when you made the comments that people didn’t like. Much like they didn’t like what you said, you didn’t like what they said about you. This does not equate to a cancelling.

Turns out that a lot of celebrities like to use twitter for all of the marketing and promotion opportunities it provides them with, but don’t like that it’s actually democratised public discourse, that people can directly have their say about things that happen, rather than discourse being led by the editors and writers of a handful of large publications. It’s now harder for celebrities to manage public perception due to twitter and some of them really don’t like this.

Lots of the time when famous people cry cancel culture it’s more a case of them taking umbrage at criticism they’ve received than it is a case of them actually losing their job or some shit.

I’ve read Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, and he talks about average, run of the mill people who have lost jobs and had major mental health issues having been dogpiled on twitter for something that was fairly innocuous. For me, these examples highlight the actual problem with cancel culture, and I find myself agreeing that the impulse to rush to judgement and join in a twitter pile on to make ourselves feel better, that doing so means we’ve done something constructive that restores justice, is a negative influence in society and something we need to reconsider.

But what I don’t have time for is celebrities crying about being cancelled when they haven’t been cancelled, and all that’s happened is a significant number of people have exercised their free speech and called them out on something they found offensive or distasteful. And I have even less time for normal people who complain about celebrities being cancelled when they haven’t been.

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Yes please. More protection for everyday person.