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Today is a FREE taste of an Insight Politics article by writer Stephen Berry.
Cancel Culture Is No Joke
I haven’t previously watched any of Dave Chappelle’s Netflix specials. The furore over the last few gave me the impression that they were a black man, who makes transphobic jokes, saying “nigger” a lot. I already knew the jokes wouldn’t actually be transphobic and unfortunately decided that I didn’t need to spend one and a half hours determining if his transphobic jokes weren’t transphobic. My loss I guess because I finally did watch his final special, ‘The Closer’ and enjoyed some jokes that follow the cookie-cutter identitarian steps to transgender joke labelling. I enjoyed several of them; they weren’t transphobic and I don’t think he needed to spend an entirely new special explaining why his non-transphobic jokes, labelled transphobic, weren’t transphobic.
I don’t know whether Chappelle’s style of standup was always political or if politics had caused his shows to become increasingly political but I generally think one should avoid political comedy. It works for some people; Jim Jefferies is an Australian who became an American citizen while criticising US gun laws and does it well, even though I support US gun laws. I suspect right-wing political comedy is much harder to make work than left-wing political comedy. I’ve seen many standups resort to making Donald Trump jokes during their routine which audiences appear to enjoy but I simply can’t respect grabbing for such a cheap laugh. Family Guy is a long-running cartoon I enjoyed watching for many years until they screened an entire episode depicting Donald Trump as a Jabba the Hutt sexual predator. It ruined the show for me.
I’m probably in no position to label other people’s sense of humour as ‘lowest common denominator.’ My sense of humour is appallingly obscene. I enjoy jokes about gay people, racism, disabled people, events in which thousands of people were killed, transgender jokes and categories yet to be invented by the eternally offended. Content is an important aspect of comedy but it isn’t everything. Set-up, timing and delivery are crucial as are originality and irony. I love being insulted on the internet when it is done well and make an effort to insult others as originally as possible. I genuinely appreciate the insult that punches the wind out of my lungs and can’t be immediately countered. Usually, I just get called a nazi, fascist or white supremacist. It is so dull.
‘The Closer’ was a much more politically driven stand up show than I usually watch. There were parts in the beginning during which I struggled to keep watching because it appeared to be an episode in which I was told what I already think. There is a time and place for enjoying hearing what I think, like a talk radio station playing as I drive home from work, but I usually watch standup on the iPad in that hour between going to bed and falling asleep. Quality is crucial when I don’t have a quantity of time. It is obvious why I don’t always get enough sleep at night. In any case, as I read more opinion pieces congratulating Chappelle for his honesty, Netflix refusing to give in to criticism and ‘progressive comedians’ complaining, I had a second go at watching The Closer and I’m glad I did, because even though it continued to be political standup and a denial of transphobia, it still included many devastating inappropriate jokes targeted at identity “communities,” the alphabet people and the self-righteous left. I also enjoyed watching two large white purple-haired women in the audience who virtually never laughed.
Taking a strong stance against cancel culture is difficult to do if you do not possess the means to survive cancellation. Chapelle and Harry Potter author J K Rowling, whom Chappelle mentions, have enormous financial reserves to depend upon if their public positioning fails to win support. Fighting the culture war is far more difficult for those who are not too rich to cancel. I don’t want to belittle Chappelle’s efforts to fight his battle through comedy but it is a battle that too few of those on our side have the ability to fight, lose and survive. Our opponents on the left often have nothing to lose, fuelling their resentment and motivating a greater viciousness in response. Many of those fighting the cultural left have jobs they cannot afford to lose and families they cannot fail to support. In many Western countries, freedom of speech isn’t a constitutional beacon and being publicly linked to an employer is sufficient grounds for that employer to sever the employment relationship.
One of the numerous factors I took into account when retiring from politics in 2020, aside from my devastated mental and physical health and the impact that having a public political career was having on my promotability at work, was also the desire to escape from the fear of public cancellation. I’ve already experienced having words taken out of context during an LGBT debate in 2017 and musings on Islam from 2013 exposed on Twitter the day after the Christchurch mosque shootings. It isn’t your own public reputation at risk when these things happen; it is the reputation of the entire political party that rests on your shoulders, fairly or not.
In October last year, I finally started to see whether I could participate in stand up in Auckland, joined a few Facebook groups and introduced myself and it went worse than I imagined possible. I was banned from one group within 24 hours after another member shared a Google search and others quickly distanced themselves from having anything to do with me. Only a couple of gig organisers were willing to give me an opportunity and even they received criticism for doing so. I’ve done a handful of open mike events, some of which went well since late last year but there was a risk of being completely prevented from even trying before it had begun. Lockdown has ruined any opportunities to pursue this further since moving to Melbourne but I’m looking forward to trying once life has returned to normal.
It’s horrible to think that an art form like standup could ever be subject to the exclusion of individual participants for their opinions or attempting jokes which don’t land as well as hoped. It is even worse that established commercial superstars such as Dave Chappelle cannot fully engage without the risk of marauding woke mobs attempting to financially destroy them. I’m delighted to see entertainment monsters such as Netflix risk the same penalties by standing behind controversial performers and it appears they will succeed by doing so. However, this is just a single battle and neither side has yet won the cultural war.
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