 Over the past few years, we've talked about free speech and censorship, the way ideas in media shape our culture, and the ongoing philosophical battle between collectivism and individualism. We've also talked about the psychology of storytelling and persuasion, and the massively complex nature of human communication. And on our recent short episode about Mr. Jones, we discussed the unbelievable courage it can take to speak the truth in the face of powerful opposition. These ideas are all connected, both to each other and to the somewhat controversial subject I want to talk about today, cancel culture. In spite of what some people on either side of this war would have you believe, this is a difficult subject. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences for saying things other people don't like, but at the same time, there's a tremendous amount of value in maintaining a culture that's extremely tolerant of different points of view. This means that while no one is or should feel like a victim, because they've been told that something they said or did was inappropriate, offensive, or unwelcome, we should also recognize the danger of building a culture that tries to silence every difference of opinion. None of us is omniscient. None of us is the sole arbiter of truth or morality. None of us is even perfectly honest with others or ourselves. The world can't be broken down into simplistic categories like woke and broke. We're all a mix of ignorance and knowledge. We need to allow for diversity of opinion without shouting people down or campaigning to excommunicate them from society, because that's the only way we actually learn and grow together over time. The worst aspect of cancel culture is that it denies the complexity and nuance of human communication, as if some words or phrases are inherently blasphemous, regardless of how they're used or in which context they appear. And that's never more obvious than when we look at how it handles comedy. This is a touchy subject that I'm sure some of you are going to get mad at me for even talking about, but I think it's important and I'm willing to take that risk. So I hope you have the courage and curiosity to join me in a challenging discussion on the limits of acceptable speech and expression on this potentially funny, possibly enraging edition of Out of Frame. We've all had a moment watching a classic comedy like Blazing Saddles or Silver Streak, Blues Brothers, Animal House, Monty Python, South Park or Team America, and we've had the same thought. Whoa, they couldn't make that today. A lot of these films feature deeply offensive language and scenes that expose cultural attitudes towards race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and any number of other things that are at odds with the way many people think about those issues today. I've already talked about the use of uncomfortable humor in Blazing Saddles and Jojo Rabbit in service of social commentary, and while I absolutely adore Mel Brooks, I think focusing on another movie will be even more effective for the purposes of our current conversation. 2008's Brilliant Satire, Tropic Thunder. It's a hilariously well-executed film that lampoons the stupidity of the action genre while simultaneously mocking the ridiculous pretentiousness of actors and of Hollywood in general. Written and directed by Ben Stiller, Tropic Thunder is about a group of actors making a Vietnam War movie who accidentally find themselves in an actual war with drug lords after their director takes them into the jungle to inject some much-needed realism into his project. The film stars Jack Black as a co-codicted comedian who made his career on fart jokes, Brandon T. Jackson as a womanizing rapper who is secretly in love with Lance Bass, and Stiller himself as a caricature of 90s action heroes who can't act his way out of a paper bag. But most shockingly of all, it features Robert Downey Jr. in full blackface makeup for nearly the entire movie. Lazarus underwent a controversial pigmentation alteration procedure in order to play the platoon's African American sergeant, Lincoln Osiris. And yet, as offensive as that is on the surface, Tropic Thunder is not only, in my opinion, one of the funniest movies of all time. It also earned Robert Downey Jr. multiple nominations for Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globes, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and even the Oscars. But today, just over a decade later, it's hard to imagine such a film getting made at all. And having just become aware that this movie exists, Zoomers on woke Twitter are trying to cancel Robert Downey Jr. Not a great plan. Now, some people will tell you that cancel culture isn't even real. But I think anyone who has had relatively open eyes and ears over the past six or seven years should have a hard time taking that claim seriously. What started as a handful of activists trying to rid college campuses of problematic speech and create safe spaces for historically marginalized groups of people has expanded into huge campaigns to ostracize, dox, the platform, and otherwise remove unacceptable people from society and social media. I'd love to be more specific about what qualifies as a cancel-worthy offense, but the goalposts are constantly moving. On the one hand, I've been told that these mobs just want to be free from racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry. And if it was just bomb throwers like Milo Yiannopoulos or overtly racist nationalists like Richard Spencer getting canceled, I guess I could see that. But it's not limited to people like that at all. From random Twitter users who make a dumb joke like Justine Sacco to highly credentialed conservative speakers like Condoleezza Rice to left-leaning comedians like Bill Maher or Kevin Hart, anyone can experience the wrath of the mob. And while most of the people who have been targeted for cancellation are probably conservatives, well-respected people from across the political spectrum have been caught in the metaphorical Prior to their respective incidents at Yale, Wilfred Laurier, and Evergreen State Universities, neither Nicholas and Erica Christakis, Lindsay Shepard, nor Brett Weinstein would have ever been mistaken for Republicans. What's worse, none of those people did anything to hurt anyone or even express an idea that most rational people would find outrageous. In fact, all any of those people did was offer support for maintaining an ideologically open and non-coercive environment on campus in the face of students, administration and faculty who were pushing enforceable rules against self-expression, squashing academic freedom, and I'm not making this up, mandating racial segregation. In other words, their crime was rejecting the essence of cancel culture, and their punishment was to be cancelled themselves. This has only escalated in the last several years, branching out from higher education into every other area of life. The list of cancelled celebrities and public figures is endless, but you don't actually have to be famous or even particularly important to become a target. Last year, a 24-year-old football fan named Carson King happened to have a silly sign featured on ESPN asking for beer money. Anheuser-Busch thought it was clever and helped Carson set up a charity that ended up raising over $1 million for the University of Iowa's Steds Children's Hospital. But unfortunately, when Carson was 16 years old, he'd posted two racially insensitive jokes to Twitter, so that became the main story. Even though he had apologized for his behavior before anybody even found out about it, his partnership with Bush fell apart and the donations dried up. I guess it felt better for hundreds of people to vent their outrage at Carson than it did to help children in need. Of course, I'm sure none of those people ever did anything they regret when they were 16. For something that doesn't exist, there sure are an awful lot of examples of cancelled culture shutting down debate and severely punishing all kinds of people for what they say. A few weeks ago, Harper's Magazine ran an open letter against this kind of censorship, arguing that the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers, we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk-taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won't defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn't expect the public or the state to defend it for us. This letter was signed by a diverse array of thinkers and creators, including Steven Pinker, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, J.K. Rowling, Winton Marsalis, Malcolm Gladwell, Jonathan Height, Salman Rushdie, and more. It was even signed by a few people I actually know, like Camille Foster and Deirdre McCloskey. I would have signed it too. Amusingly, a bunch of people are now trying to cancel the letter and its signatories. This shift away from openness and genuine liberalism on college campuses and in our society overall has created an atmosphere that is often overtly hostile to free speech. Any idea that challenges that orthodoxy seems to be unwelcome, but nothing is more threatening to a closed mind than comedy. This problem was already bad enough a few years ago that a lot of the best comedians on the planet simply stopped doing college shows. In a 2014 interview with New York Magazine, Chris Rock said he'd given up on playing colleges because the students had become too conservative. Clarifying what he meant, he said, not in their political views, not like their voting Republican, but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody. You can't even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive. Rock went on to talk about the same need for experimentation in comedy that the Harper's letter described, but that line always stuck with me. Firstly, there is a socially conservative aspect to cancel culture that reminds me a lot of what was going on with Frederick Wirtham's Seduction of the Innocent in the 1950s or the Parents' Music Resource Council, Tipper Gore and the Religious Right in the 1980s and 90s, which I talked about on this series in my video, The Time Rock and Roll Saved Free Speech. More importantly, what Chris Rock said about not being able to be offensive on the way to being inoffensive is worth thinking about. A huge part of what makes the dramatic arts such an effective way at communicating values and ideas to people is that it can help us imagine different perspectives and contemplate their logical consequences. In the stories we normally tell each other, murderers get caught or killed. Greedy people lose their wealth. Angry, bitter people push away their friends and loved ones. Bigots must learn the error of their ways. But in order to tell these kinds of stories, movies and TV shows have to be allowed to depict all kinds of things that make some people uncomfortable. The special magic of comedy is that it can highlight the ridiculousness of different ideas, values and behaviors in the broadest, most absurd ways imaginable. Laughter is also one of the quickest ways to get an audience to open up and buy into the story, which helps with suspension of disbelief and narrative transportation. Sadly, in my experience, the people who are constantly looking for ways to be offended and shut down language and behaviors they don't like rarely have a sense of humor and don't seem to understand the difference between genuinely believing in and promoting offensive concepts and using offensive words and imagery to show how dumb those ideas actually are. And that brings us back to Robert Downey Jr. and Tropic Thunder. The idea of cancelling Robert Downey Jr. for his role in Tropic Thunder misses the entire point of his character, Kirk Lazarus, and its multi-layered value as social commentary that makes fun of racism and racially insensitive entertainment as much as it mocks the arrogance of actors and artists. Lazarus is a mess. He's a stereotype of controversial Australians like Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe, mixed with Oscar-winning method actors like Daniel Day-Lewis and Joaquin Phoenix who lose themselves in the characters they play. Because he's so committed to his craft, his driving motivation is challenging himself to play unique and interesting characters, with no real concern for how his choices might be perceived. The essence of the character is intentionally racist. But its purpose in the context of the meta-narrative is to expose an uncomfortable truth about the way Hollywood often turns minority characters into stereotypes and, at least historically, has rarely offered leading roles to black actors. The movie makes all these points clearly, again and again, especially through the interactions between Kirk Lazarus and Brandon T. Jackson's Al Pacino. Everyone recognizes how insane Kirk Lazarus is, but it's not a coincidence that Al Pacino is the one actually calling him out for the deeply offensive nature of his role in the film. In the end, Lazarus accepts that he might have some deeper issues to work out as a human being and offers Al Pacino a sincere, if still confused, apology. And, by the way, Robert Downey Jr.'s character is far from the only problem here. There's a lot of other stuff in Tropic Thunder that's potentially offensive to other groups of people too, including those who are Asian, gay, or mentally disabled. If you take all that stuff seriously and literally, instead of in the comedic spirit and with the meaning that's actually intended, you might conclude that the whole movie should be cancelled. The problem with all this is that seeing the film only from the perspective of how it might be offensive strips it of a ton of relevant context, but understanding the context with which something is being communicated is essential to understanding meaning. And if you don't properly understand the meaning of an action or the expression of an idea, how in the world do you expect to accurately judge its moral value? Cetirical comedies like Tropic Thunder or South Park Community, The Office, 30 Rock, and All in the Family for that matter routinely use offensive humor to communicate inoffensive ideas to their audiences. Context matters. Different words and phrases take on different meanings depending on all kinds of factors. Tone of voice alone can turn a serious statement into a goofy joke, biting sarcasm, or an innocent question. Without any words at all, body language and gestures can convey sadness, anger, or excitement. The medium someone uses to communicate a message makes a difference too. The exact same words spoken on conservative talk radio or NPR on stage at a concert or a comedy club or on cable news will be understood in completely different ways. It even makes a difference who is speaking. Comedians like Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, or Russell Peters, even Eliza Schlesinger or Bill Burr can make jokes about race that will and should be understood completely differently than if those same jokes were told by David Duke. Why? Because we all actually understand that the beliefs and values held by the speaker changes the context of what's being said, and as a result we can pick up on relevant differences in subtext. The words themselves aren't the point. Their meaning is. But the mob of people rushing to cancel wrong-thinking forms of expression isn't really interested in the complexity of communication. They're interested in justice. It's just that their conception of justice is backward. Among the many great achievements of western civilization, our theory of justice ranks very near the top. The presumption of innocence. The right to face one's accuser and debate the merits of a case in front of an impartial judge and jury. A reasonable, charitable, and fair interpretation of people's words and actions. And most importantly, the equal application of these principles for all people. Even if these ideas aren't always perfectly upheld, they are the right principles. And they should not be limited only to the state sanctioned legal system. But cancel culture rejects all these values. Instead, it's adopted a different theory of mob justice on a weak foundation of critical theory and the postmodernist denial of a universally shared reality. Under this system, words alone have power. So failing to use the correct terminology or not performing the right rituals matters far more than what someone's words and actions mean in context. The rules are also completely different depending on which collectivist group you happen to belong to. Individuals are presumed to be guilty or innocent based primarily on their intersectional identity. Some people's bigotry is racist or sexist, other people's is given a pass and written off as acceptable prejudice stemming from historical and systemic oppression. There's no presumption of innocence or consistency of principle here at all. The whole ethos is defined by an almost religious sense of moral purity and a zealous demand for the constant atonement of sins. Although unlike with most religions, there doesn't seem to be any obvious pathway to forgiveness. People who are canceled can apologize all they want, even preemptively like Carson King did, but nobody cares. In general, it seems that the only escape is just time. Cancel mobs get bored and eventually move on to a new target. And I'm not alone in these observations. Columbia University English and Comparative Literature Professor John McWhorter, whose name also appeared on that Harper's letter, has compared the underlying ideology to religion as well. Today, it's a religion and I don't mean that as a rhetorical faint. I mean that it actually is what any naive anthropologist would recognize as a faith. When we use the word problematic, especially since about 2008 or 9, what we're really saying is blasphemous. It's really the exact same term. The real question is, what do we do about it? As I said at the beginning, this is actually a complex and difficult subject. I do not want to live in a world where people run about shouting bigoted slurs at each other and then hide behind free speech as if that should give them a pass for saying horrible things. Nor do I want a world where genuine fascists and communists face no backlash for supporting murderous ideologies. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of that speech. If you hurt somebody's feelings or you say something awful to someone, you will likely experience a reaction. And when you do, you should not pretend that you are the victim. That said, I do want a world where we all adopt the greatest level of tolerance for diversity of opinion possible. I want a world where good faith disagreements aren't labeled fascist or racist simply because that makes it easier to justify silencing contrary ideas. I also want a world where everyone is shown a significant degree of compassion and charity if and when they step over the line. Artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, and comedians, most of all. As a society, we need to recognize that communication is hard and expressing our thoughts and feelings publicly just isn't something most people do very well without a lot of practice. Even with practice, people are still going to miscommunicate their ideas and hurt somebody else's feelings from time to time. But none of us has the right to live in a world where no one else is allowed to say something we don't like. We're only hurting ourselves by trying to sanitize our ideological environment and walling ourselves off from contrary opinions. When we rush to judgment and censorship, instead of taking the time to listen even to the things we know we'll disagree with, we miss opportunities to explore other points of view and understand different perspectives on the world. What's more, some people who are exceptionally good at communicating the right way have terrible ideas, and some of the greatest artists and creators in history were tragically horrible people. Should we cancel the music of Richard Wagner because of his anti-Semitism? Should we avoid the Beatles because John Lennon was violent and abusive to women? What about Michael Jackson? You are going to have to decide for yourself how to feel about all that. But just because you have made a judgment about someone or something doesn't mean you get to impose your preferences on anyone else. Contrary to what we hear more and more these days, words are not violence. They are, in fact, the opposite. When we use our words to settle a disagreement or express a point of view instead of using fists and swords, that is a victory for civilization. Cancel culture is usually one step short of using violence to shut down unacceptable speech, but there are a ton of examples where it has actually gone over that line. And we shouldn't be too surprised when it does. So the next time cancel culture rears its ugly head, trying to forcibly silence unpopular opinions or get someone banned from social media for expressing a different point of view, remember that it is possible to have civil disagreements with people who think differently about almost any topic. I promise you, the world is a much better place when we all share our perspectives with each other instead of getting trapped inside ever-shrinking echo chambers. These mobs only have as much power as we allow them to have, and we can't sit by while they play judge, jury, and ex-communicator. It's time for all of us to stand together as rational people and say, enough is enough. We don't negotiate with terrorists. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. I'll be honest, this episode was really hard to write, and I hope I was able to convey my thoughts on this difficult subject effectively. How do you feel about cancel culture? Are you worried about it? Do you think it doesn't exist? Let's talk about it in the comments. I'd also like to thank all of our patrons for their support, with an extra special thank you to our associate producers, to our necks, Dahlin Case, Laura Turner, Matt Tabor, and Victoria Manshart. Thank you. If you love the show and want to help us keep making more episodes, check out the Patreon link in the description below. As always, don't forget to like this video, subscribe to this channel, ring that bell icon, and follow us on all our social media at YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks for watching.