On Cancel Culture and the State of Free Speech

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2022

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every few weeks, it seems, another example of so-called cancel culture is dominating the headlines and trending on social-media platforms. The refrain “you can’t say anything these days” has become a slogan of cultural politics, particularly on the right. And yet there’s a wide gulf of opinion on what the term “cancelling” means—and whether the phenomenon even exists. In this special episode, we examine the issue with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the YouTube video creator Lindsay Ellis, the comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff, and the writers Jay Caspian Kang and William Deresiewicz.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.5	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.
0:14.3	My name is Lindsay Ellis.
0:15.5	Oh, I don't identify as anything right now.
0:19.8	I used to say video essayists because YouTubers such a dirty word, but it's also more honest.
0:28.2	Lindsay Ellis was pretty early to YouTube.
0:31.1	She started posting videos in 2008 when she was a film student.
0:35.4	In her videos, are a form of pop culture criticism, commentary on everything from Marvel
0:41.1	movies to Broadway music.
0:43.1	But anyway, not every musical, even the ones with explicit revolutionary text, needs
0:48.1	to be trying to tear down the system.
0:50.0	But what would a revolution look like if it had been included?
0:53.3	In her online world and it's a pretty big world, Ellis was a celebrity and she had
0:58.1	more than a million followers on YouTube.
1:01.9	Then suddenly, last year, in a moment of real uproar and emotion, Ellis walked away from
1:07.6	the career that she'd spent more than a decade building.
1:10.5	And it was just so, like, just such a nightmare and I'm just like this nightmare is never
1:15.6	going to end.
1:16.6	Like, I'm leaving, I quit, I give up, you won.
1:21.1	Lindsay Ellis had been to use the term of the moment, canceled.
1:25.4	You know what I'm talking about, the idea that people are somehow waiting to punish anyone
1:29.8	who says something that's deemed offensive or mistaken, justified or not.
	...

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