Wherever you may stand on cancel culture it is always good to educate yourself on other people’s opinions as well, however I do feel while there were a lot of sides included in this documentary, the presenter’s own bias was palpable throughout.

Cancel culture is defined as a woke culture that cancels people based on their opinions, how they present themselves in real life and online, and any views they may have that may go against the norm. Now that does not mean that I agree with a lot of people that are getting cancelled, however I do feel that the issue I have with cancel culture is most the time nothing seems to come from it, and anyone who has been cancelled seems to have the ability to bounce back in life regardless of what has been said about them.

In this documentary we look at cancel culture in a variety of different areas, from the past being cancelled including the statues of slaveowners who are being torn down, to comedians being cancelled for their offensive jokes, and even just every day people being cancelled on social media due to what they are posting.

The way I stand here, and I want to try and be as unbiased as possible, is cancel culture is something that people have to deal with but, as they said many times in this documentary, cancel culture is basically being given the consequences of your actions. You can’t just go and say this type of person is wrong or that type of person is disgusting without having some backlash. The issue is people blowing it out of proportion, but in many cases the people blown out of proportion are the 1%, and unfortunately the people with the loudest voices get the most attention.

For example, and the one example that I always use, is J. K. Rowling and her being a TERF because she is against transgendered people. She goes on and on about death threats and harassment issues and all that sort of stuff when really the people that she is targeting with her hatred have had to deal with that this whole time and are not multimillionaires that can hire security and help to combat it. She is playing the victim card when really she is talking about how a group of people are wrong and then has to deal with the consequences of having a very opinionated point.

Do I believe J. K. Rowling is right in her stance? No I do not. I don’t believe that any person regardless of how they identify is wrong or disgusting or someone that should be ashamed. Every person has a reason as to who they are and why they are the way they are and the main issue here is that people do not communicate enough with one another to understand each other’s viewpoints. A lot of the time the people who have the biggest voices on these issues, i.e J. K. Rowling and the transgender community, don’t actually have any ties with it at all and they shouldn’t be the ones speaking so loudly about it because really they are not educated enough in the topic themselves.

For me I feel cancel culture has become the new snowflake woke ideology that the right like to use against the left in combating their criticisms, when really if they just took a step back and realised what they were saying was harmful or wrong, they may be able to understand the other person’s viewpoint. While I don’t agree with what cancel culture is in its heart, which is basically cancelling people in certain circles but in another they are still able to thrive, I do believe that cancel culture does do some good in helping create a discussion about topics that otherwise people hide away from because they are harder topics to talk about.

At the end of the day, cancel culture or not, people need to be able to hear from the other side’s viewpoints and that is the biggest issue here: people will not. People enjoy their echo chambers, their bubbles that they have formed around themselves for their own protection, and are not willing to hear out any opinion that opposes them because they see it as wrong. While I don’t believe cancel culture is doing exactly what it is trying to do, I do believe it is bringing awareness to topics that we need to talk about and people just need to calm down and realise that these conversations need to happen to create change and a better future, rather than everyone just hating on each other and supposedly sending death threats.

Would I recommend this documentary? I don’t really know. I don’t like the fact that the presenter has a bias against cancel culture already and doesn’t seem too lenient with his views, especially as he worries he would’ve been cancelled because he went on a Coke binge when he was a Blue Peter presenter about 20 years ago. No you wouldn’t have been cancelled for that, you would’ve had your job terminated, as you did, because that is illegal and wrong, there’s a difference. And I feel because he truly didn’t understand the point of cancel culture in its entirety that made the whole documentary a bit of a joke, because people could watch it and just agree with him and think it’s all stupid, whereas the whole point of it is to have a conversation that clearly he wasn’t prepared to have.

What do you think of cancel culture?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding