Coulda gone with Polanski or Yoder here instead of R. Kelly.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe fact that there is not actually any such thing as \u201ccancel culture\u201d hasn\u2019t lessened pundits\u2019 enthusiasm for penning endless iterations of their nearly identical condemnations of it. Nor has the unanimity of these condemnations stopped such pundits from pretending that what they\u2019re really concerned about is protecting \u201cdissent.\u201d And the ease with which these pundits are able to publish their views on multiple, lucrative, prestigious platforms also hasn\u2019t stopped them from posturing as somehow being threatened and sidelined and oppressed by this nefarious, but imaginary, thing called \u201ccancel culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s be clear. R. Kelly is not a victim of cancel culture. R. Kelly disgraced himself. He brought disgrace upon himself and upon his music by engaging in harmful, predatory sexual behavior toward children. As a consequence of his own actions, he is now \u201ccanceled.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is what \u201ccanceled\u201d means. It means \u201cdisgraced.\u201d Nothing more, nothing less. And disgrace is not a New Thing. It is as old as Cain. It is not a trend, or a hot topic requiring trendy hot takes. It is no more or less a matter of concern or worry or consternation than it has ever been.<\/p>\n
R. Kelly, by his own choices and actions, brought disgrace upon himself. This was not something that was done to him, but something he did, thereby transforming himself from Pop Superstar R. Kelly into Disgraced Former Pop Superstar R. Kelly.<\/p>\n
Or, as the kids today put it with their slang and their hep talk and their computers with color monitors, he got himself canceled.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not hard to figure out where this new slang term for disgrace comes from. It arose on social media, where every post involves clicking one button next to another button reading \u201ccancel.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a playful bit of word-play, one that perhaps seeks to downplay the moralizing or sermonizing that a term like \u201cdisgrace\u201d seems to carry with it. I consider that a positive development. \u201cHarvey Weinstein is canceled\u201d manages to say much the same thing as \u201cMr. Weinstein\u2019s disgraceful behavior proves he is no gentleman<\/em> and that he is unfit for polite society!\u201d without requiring the speaker to puff themselves up as the sanctimonious arbiter of community standards.<\/p>\nIt doesn\u2019t matter what terminology we use for disgrace, the consequences remain the same: disgrace. To be canceled is to be in disgrace, which is to say to have set oneself in opposition to and apart from others by behaving so indecently that your continued presence would seem to make them complicit in your indecency. Disgrace is a kind of social exile.<\/p>\n
And, again, that exile is not imposed by some external force \u2014 not by kings or popes or \u201cTwitter mobs\u201d or edicts from the self-appointed pundit class. Those authorities may condemn and excommunicate whoever they like \u2014 they have the power to do so. But they cannot impose disgrace unless the target of their condemnation has already done so to themselves by behaving disgracefully. Disgrace \u2014 being \u201ccanceled\u201d \u2014 is something one can only bring upon oneself. (Hence the theological connotations of \u201cgrace\u201d here.)<\/p>\n
What does being disgraced and\/or being \u201ccanceled\u201d look like? It doesn\u2019t involve either formal edicts or an angry mob with torches and pitchforks outside of R. Kelly\u2019s house. It just means that all those school choirs and graduation singers and radio DJs who might otherwise have gone with \u201cI Believe I Can Fly\u201d will decide to go with some other song because it\u2019s impossible to play or perform that one now without feeling kind of icky and being reminded of the horrible things the guy who wrote it has done to many innocent people. It means we start to avoid his music because we\u2019re now hearing it differently \u2014 in the context of his disgrace \u2014 and are unable now to hear it without wondering how his actions shaped that song, or the appeal of that song, which is a disturbing and unsettling line of thought.<\/p>\n
Just as the consequences of \u201ccancellation\u201d are exactly the same as the consequences of disgrace, so too the path back from being canceled is exactly the same as the path back from disgrace. Nothing about that has changed with the change in terminology. It\u2019s still just exactly as hard and as simple as it ever was for anyone who has brought disgrace upon themselves.<\/p>\n
I think there are a couple of other reasons that \u201ccanceled\u201d arose \u2014 and needed to arise \u2014 as a synonym for \u201cdisgraced.\u201d One is the weaponized shamelessness of disgraceful people who refuse to accept any consequences for their disgracefulness. The other is because \u2014 post-\u201cSeneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall\u201d \u2014 the way we understand decency and disgrace has shifted such that it is now perceived as a threat to the circumspectly polite oppressors who have always tried to wield it as a weapon in defense of injustice. TPTB are squirming both because shaming Hester Prynne no longer works for them like it used to, and because they just saw somebody on Facebook saying that the Rev. Dimmesdale \u201cis canceled\u201d and they fear they\u2019ll be next. (The reference here to an 1850 novel again illustrates that we\u2019re not dealing with a New Thing, just a new context.) We\u2019ll get back to those points in a bit.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI Believe I Can Fly\u201d is a really good song. The lyrics may be a bit shallow, but their aspirational vagueness lets listeners take the general idea to heart in whatever way they need to. It\u2019s also a singer\u2019s song, and the singer who wrote it delivered it well, taking listeners on a ride in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-51956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-warfare","tag-indignation"],"yoast_head":"\n
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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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