Cancel Culture Needs to Stop

[Styx_Linoone]

I find it hard to believe that we currently live in a world of an ongoing pandemic and normality struggles, but one thing that has recently cropped up and shown its ugly side is the major issue of the mistreatment of Cancel Culture and how it's affecting virtually everybody that has made a mistake or has grown stronger.

In short, Cancel Culture is the process of dismissing someone for their wrongdoings, either recently or years ago by digging up their past and trying to locate something that can be offensive. A GOOD example of how to utilize this is when you are attempting to cancel somebody if they have committed a heinous crime in the past that is easily classed as a felony. The number one reason I'm bringing this up is when it it isn't used in the right way, and it ultimately screws innocent people over for having an opinion. Nowhere is this more worse than Twitter, where literally a tweet from years ago can cause such a big issue. Again, this is done right if the person behind the tweet says something derogatory, sexist or racist. It's only a problem when the words they use can be taken out of context and EVEN misread or misunderstood that it becomes an issue. The last few months have gotten so bad that Cancel Culture literally targets cartoon characters, text-to-speech and literally anything that will make Twitter-stans get offended.

A prime example of this is with the recent Space Jam sequel and why everything is not what it used to anymore. Cancel Culture literally targets three of the most important characters, past and present for misunderstatment.

• Speedy Gonzales is a character that debuted in the early-mid 50s and was represented as a Hispanic icon for the franchise. As such, when the character shows up in one of the posters and in the trailer, he was at risk of getting cancelled due to being a Mexican stereotype, even though he did more good for the Hispanic community than bad. Even Gabriel Iglesias, an American actor defends the character, proving how much he has an impact on the community.

 

• Pepe Le Pew debuted in the mid 40s and was a skunk who was flirty with a black cat named Penelope Pussycat. He was removed from the film and potentially any upcoming projects within the franchise for being a representation of a rapey-character. The original joke that popularized Pepe was that he would mistake Penelope for a skunk due to her being black with a white outline on her back, and would often run away from him due to his skunk oder.  He was planned to be included in the second movie, showing up in a Casablanca scene before the drama started.

• Lola Bunny is a character that debuted in the original Space Jam and was portrayed as a strong, independent woman for the female demographic. Despite having a built-in personality, her appearance was akin to a sex symbol, which made her character stand out more. The director of Space Jam 2, Malcolm D. Lee basically redesign her to be less sexualized, effectively nerfing her and causing a huge outcry among fans. However, in the first film, she was strong, capable and the best player on the team behind Michael Jordan. She often took no shit from people calling her 'Doll' and would embarrass them by performing better, thus she became some sort of a mascot for Space Jam. Lola shows that having a mix of stronger characterization and being feminine can work both ways. Of the three characters, the change given to Lola was the most impactful and everybody was covering the backlash, even the character was trending on Twitter at some point. That's how people care so much about the original design.

I know this is longer than my past posts, but Cancel Culture has become such a big thing recently and I'm noticing it way too often and it's stupid. By reading all of this, you understand the pain I am feeling. I didn't manage to get the Speedy controversary posted because of the limit regarding the file size, but if you want to read more about that, you can easily find it yourselves. This was mainly to spread awareness that the trend is going south really quickly.

 

 

[Diogenes]

Oh no, how can society possibly survive when Sexual Harassment Skunk is under attack?

There are some actual problems with bad faith "cancelling", harassment, digging up of old issues, what it takes for someone to make things right after they've done something shit, that are worth discussing, but "rapey cartoon skunk is being retired" and "bunny girl has less tiddy" are not serious issues to be concerned with. I mean you want to talk about people looking for reasons to get offended and outraged, just look at the guys who are real mad about the cartoon rabbit in a children's movie not being sexy enough.

[Piko]

They weren’t “cancelled”; Warner Bros made those decisions themselves. In fact, the only people I see talking about this aren’t the ones supposedly “cancelling” these characters, but rather the ones whining about the changes that have been made.

There are many important issues in the world that are worth discussing. A cartoon skunk being retired isn’t one of them.

[Mr Loopone]

At first it might have been a provoking thread where it would mention the pros and cons of cancel culture, the situations where it would make sense (e.g. a bad person needs to be called out to protect others, to prevent popular celebrities doing nasty things and getting away with it) or that in many cases it goes too far. How people shouldn't judge from a joke that was done 10-15 years ago online when it was the standard for a lot of people to be offensive but rather the character of the person overall. Both past and present.

Then it was just examples from Space Jam 2... They were decisions made by Warner Bros, in fact the Speedy Gonzales thing was before even modern day cancel culture was a thing. It was the case that think Cartoon Network in the US thought that the character was offensive but the Mexicans actually like the character so it was a misunderstanding that got resolved. Lola Bunny had a few redesigns and characterisation changes since the original Space Jam including The Looney Tunes Show and Pepe Le Pew wasn't really a popular character and bit more understanding why he might not be a character that is suitable in this day and age. Especially since it is not just the US but global where it is easier to remove something from the planning stages than it is to cut the scene out from other markets that would also cause complaints had it kept in. What would be worse, removing an unpopular character or appearing in certain news channels/newspapers/magazines of a "sexual harassment skunk" in a children's film? Besides Warner Bros. wouldn't completely remove the character, he will still appear in Looney Tunes boxsets targeted for the adult collector (it wouldn't be like the old 1930s-1940s shorts where you wouldn't see them again despite a few are animation achievements) and wouldn't be like what Disney did with The Simpsons.

[MetalSkulkBane]

5 hours ago, Diogenes said:

 are not serious issues to be concerned with.

 

5 hours ago, Piko said:

There are many important issues in the world that are worth discussing. A cartoon skunk being retired isn’t one of them.

...we're forum dedicated to blue hedgehog. Most of things we talk about aren't important,
Heck, when Big the Cat was going to retire we talked about it.

I'm aware that stakes are low, but even if you don't care about Pepe or Lola, doctor Seuss books being banned for being racists. The "Cancel Culture" dilemma touches many topics, some of them might actually be more important. So removal of Pepe is worth looking at just as case study of bigger picture.

I do find this moral conundrum to be fascinating and I'm not sure on which side I stand. I liked Pepe le Pew, I found his cartoons to be harmless, I can't imagine any child deciding Pepe is meant to be a role model. It's as possible as them throwing anvil at each other.
With that said, if people making this movie just don't like Pepe and feel uncomfortable using him, they shouldn't be forced to use him. Or maybe they think most audience doesn't like him. So I guess I mostly worry about the intent. (Of course movie is something made by many people, writers, director, producer, etc. That complicates things.)

Or take Lola. Accusers basically say "cartoons should not be sexy. Anyone who say otherwise just wants to see boobies". It's kinda mean argument, but also a bit hard to disprove.
With that said, banning all sexy female means banning "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". Or something closer to home, Rouge. I love Rouge as a character and her femme fatale behavior is crucial to making her who she is. "Sexiness" can be toned down, but not removed.

 

[Danj86]

It is in my opinion that even what seems like a minor thing is worth discussing and what I've seen, "cancel culture" takes on a wide range of subject matter, the ones being highlighted here are in the fun bracket. Fun equals happiness, escapism and positive mental health. Those matter in my opinion.

Somebody that's job it is to pay attention did say that UK and US suicide rates had been getting higher each year since 2015, I think? I can't find the actual numbers but I can believe them. It's not just cartoon characters. Games, Actors, YouTubers, Celebrities, Normal People. I've seen them all get targeted at some point. Why? I don't always know but if they aren't hurting anybody, why must they disappear? If I don't want to see something, I don't watch it. This concept is lost on some people. Maybe they want the media to raise their children because they're too lazy to do it themselves, I dunno...

I'd like really horrible people to get punished for being horrible, but I don't know if I've ever seen that happen with cancel culture. Sure, you might hear bad claims about certain people but then they rarely show resources or the full context of an exchange to prove it to be true. As much as I believe myself to be gullible, I don't easily trust ether and would require significant evidence before I'd ever agree that a human life should be ruined.

Regarding Space Jam 2 specifically, WB have been mocked thoroughly for their selective cancellation attempt as two weeks ago, characters from A Clockwork Orange were spotted in the background. I've never seen this movie but it seems those characters specifically are literal r@pists while Pepe was an exaggerated cartoon skunk made for comical mischief and laughs.

Space Jam: A Clockwork Orange characters spotted in trailer for new Looney Tunes film | indy100

[Teoskaven]

Might as well try to give meat to the thread (note: i started writing this before the more recent posts, got ninja'd).

I do believe there is room for discussion on the reaction that can lead to cancellation if a particular culture appreciates a stereotype associated to it (at the vary least in a majorative way), that instead is view negatively by others. As in the trope Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales, with examples like the trope namer, the Punch-Out videogames or the Asterix comics. From my limited experience (as in, observing reactions from people associated to the stereotype while i'm clearly not part of) there are also situations that seems to be more split in the middle, with one example in particular being characters like Mr. T, Augustus Cole and Barret Wallace having their stereotype being viewed positively by some, and damaging by others. But i don't i think i'm qualified to be the judge for something like that, so i'll limit myself in saying that as someone born in the early '90s i did found them cool and positive examples to follow.
Of course there is the questioning on when something stops being stereotypical and becomes outright racist, like image depiction of ethnicities used in propaganda for the wars and beyond (a lot of european comics and japanese mangas still had remnants of that even in recent times). There has been stirring in recent times about some Doctor Seuss books because of this, but i know nothing on the matter so i'll leave this to someone else.

Much less debatable is something to be associated with sexuality stereotypes, especially with our recent culture shift in the rise of movements that helped building and reinforcing equal rights for women and LGBT+ people. I do believe in the ideas that people of different sexualities have the right to be horny in equal measure, and that everything can be used for comedic potential, including dark humor, but our current times are delicate and necessary for the consolidation of these rights, so i do undestand not appreciating the behavior and stereotypes associated to that right now.
Maybe in a few decades we'll look at all of this and just laugh at it, i don't know.

As for the practice in itself, it's a double-edged sword that right now in my eyes isn't working as it should: it's immensly powerful by turning a group into judge, jury and executioner, and a testament that people hold power as a group reguardless of their social condition, but because of the same reason it's also risky and imprecise due to ignorance or bias, with the whole thing becoming very close to a witch hunt that does more damage than anything, usually sparked by someone on Twitter or Resetera acting as the firebrand. Things like the Simpsons episode Homer Badman are a good indicator on how a practice like this can go out of control, but for some more practical examples:
*One particular case i could mention was when Twitter had a collective hysteria moment because someone actually bothered to see the movie Tropic Thunder (yeah, one recurring motif is that some of these events don't start until some point because the responsable who lights the match doesn't even know the source material and as soon as they discover it accidentally, out of nowhere it gets treated like it had been always there) and believed Robert Downey Jr. was intentionally doing blackface and wanted to cancel him as a result. Especially hilarious because when the movie came out, the actor had been critizised for the exact opposite, as in preaching too much the critique of blackface in Hollywood, wich is the message of the movie. The situation has been resolved as far as i know, but the mentality behind it was this close to ruin his carreer and his life forever.
*One very recent case was against Daniel Avidan, a.k.a. Danny Sexbang, where someone out of nowhere arrived with "evidence" claiming sexual harassment on a fan that was considered minor when it happened. Due to events that have been proven right with similar celebrities like Vic Mignona and more recently Quinton Flynn, Twitter immediately jumped on the occasion, only for a few days later to find the evidence was not substantial and the events made Danny give an interview at Newsweek where he talked about the event in where at worst he had been an asshole. Same summation of the first example.
*Then we have interesting cases like James Gunn: when Twitter got to know his past takes and his involvement with Movie 43, there was some outrage, but when Disney fired him the sentiment was more on forgiving him and being reinstatedthan anything. I guess it helped tha he himself apolgized, but i do remember cases in the past where the person in question was not believed and kept being pushed down, so i wonder what happened here.
 

And when it comes to positive examples of cancelling someone like an actor because of their beliefs that got revealed (like recently with Gina Carano and J.K. Rowling) , all i can think of is that people like that should not be allowed to use social media like Twitter in the first place, doubly so if under a contract. Pretending noone has skeletons in the closet only to have the Pikachu shocked face when it inevitably happens to someone is an attitude that feels to me childish at best and inspirational for a climate of fear at worst, so i'd say it would be better if celebrities stay in their own pond and not spew their personal and/or political views to the masses. Otherwise we get the exact situation that Team America: World Police was parodying in the early 2000s.
And if it's about serious allegations like sexual misconduct and/or child molesting scandals like Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein, let the competent authorities handle that.

 

Basically, i don't think cancel culture shouldn't exist at all, but as it is now it's causing more damage than anything, it requires refining.
Also people should stop using Twitter for serious themes.

[Dr. Mechano]

None of your examples are "cancel culture," is the thing.

A company choosing to change its own products of its own volition - even if it is for the purpose of adapting to changing worldviews - isn't being "cancelled." It's just redesigning or - in Pepe's case - retiring a character.

I do think "cancelling" can be a serious issue when it applies to real people, but I also want to be clear that I don't think rightly criticizing someone for their words and actions is "cancel culture" in and of itself. I'm referring more to digging up decade-old posts that espouse views that these people may not even hold anymore for the purpose of tearing them down. That's not good, and it certainly doesn't help anyone. I'd happily agree that this sort of "cancel culture" is bad.

So yes. I think something you could call "cancel culture" exists and is a problem. But I also think the term is ridiculously overused to deflect criticism in general, and is even applied to things that are so far removed from the very concept of "cancelling" - like this example of a private company changing aspects of its own brand - that the term is quickly losing all meaning.

[Wraith]

Brands are soulless by design and make changes based on the slightest bit of pressure. Some IP have gotten worse about this over the years, but Looney Tunes was basically always like this to me and Lola in particular got heavily altered a long time ago, so I didn't see the big deal at the time and I still don't really see it now.

The thing about it being Lola that was the center of the controversy in particular is that she was always a corporate grasp at girl-power. The idea of what that looked like just changed. I wonder if she was controversial 20 years ago for the same reasons as she is now.

In general I think this topic is actually about a lot of different issues and it needs to be dived up. Not every response to vaguely left leaning critique should fall under the umbrella of "cancel culture" imo.  Serious sexual misconduct allegations probably shouldn't be paired with cartoon boobs.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I mean...I get it. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the sentiment, but you make it sound like people outside the chain of operations had direct control over those decisions over cartoon characters. They didn’t.

Maybe the directors and higher ups were heavily influenced by said culture, but they could just as easily have decided “Nah, we’re not doing that shit.”

It’s not like anyone’s rights have been violated here.

As far as the topic goes, yeah Cancel Culture can be destructive: taking comments out of context, or intentionally twisting words to mean something offensive just so people have an excuse to throw tantrums, or trying to interfere in something that they weren’t the target audience of to begin with leading to the end of something. But these problems have been around even before it was called “cancel culture” to begin with, and the funny irony about this is that backlash is often just as quick to fight back, as in the case of the very examples laid out.

But it would be far better if we had cases of things where “Cancel Culture” actually destroyed innocuous things.

[MetalSkulkBane]

On 4/18/2021 at 12:26 PM, Wraith said:

The thing about it being Lola that was the center of the controversy in particular is that she was always a corporate grasp at girl-power. The idea of what that looked like just changed. I wonder if she was controversial 20 years ago for the same reasons as she is now.

You know, that's kinda funny. She was controversial addition back then, but by now she's a staple, so "fixing" her creates new controversy.

We should laugh, saying "it's your turn now"

[batson]

Young people in general place way to much value on popular culture these days. They act as if movies and video games are the primary battlefield where the fate of peoples well being is being fought. And rest assured, I'm talking about both the left AND the right wing here. Left-wingers act as if someone just suggested we should kill all jews if they see a female cartoon character whose tits are too big, while right-wingers act the exact same way if they see a cartoon character whose tits are too small. They're both equally ridiculous overreactions. It's just cartoons. It's just tits. I know that we all love to think about cartoons and tits, but in terms of the welfare of human beings there ARE more important topics to think about.

And just to be clear I'm not saying that pop culture in unimportant. But if a societys popular culture was what truly shaped that society in real life, then Japan would have by far the highest murder and rape numbers in the world considering what kind of hyper violent and hyper sexual popular culture they produce and consume, but yet they obviously dont.

Please people, first try give just a little more thought and energy to how human beings can help each other live long and healtly lives free from violence and oppression, even if that means spending a little bit less time thinking about cartoon tits.

[SBR2]

You know maybe I'd take "Cancel Culture" more seriously if half the complaints about it weren't like "The put a disclaimer in front of the Muppet Show" or "the libs hate Speedy Gonzalez" Actually I don't even get the Speedy Gonzalez thing because he's in the movie and he's being voiced by Gabrielle Iglesias so how was he canceled?

And honestly when it comes to celebs being canceled maybe some don't deserve it but I'll admit I'm cynical enough to believe that guy's like Hartley Sawyer from the Flash still believes the shit he said. Unless there's proof they've changed or y'know an actual apology then I'm sorry but I don't feel sorry that some assholes actions had consequences.

[TurkishDelight91]

Cancel culture is a very controversial topic, but there can be some people who are incredibly manipulative about it, using altered proof to suggest a problem that the *cancelled* person has, and why they should become obsolete, but most of the time, people just jump on bandwagons, drama is really fun to watch (don't lie to me), but it can be really heartbreaking and traumatizing to see people online ramming over you and being completely against you for no reason, and most people that participate in this culture never see both perspectives, for me, it's simple, wait a day after the drama started heating up, and hear both sides of the argument (funnily enough, most of the time the guys who were trying to cancel someone realized that this someone was actually innocent). But sometimes, cancelling someone can be a good thing, there are some terrible criminals on twitter, who should be silenced or thrown to jail. You cannot stop cancel culture, the people who use twitter, are children, and if they're not children, they're adults acting like children, they're naive, ignorant, compulsive, immature, unreasonable, unegotiable, one-sided, and everything in-between, so you can't stop cancel culture if these are the people who run Twitter.

[Piko]

On 5/22/2021 at 2:18 PM, SBR2 said:

And honestly when it comes to celebs being canceled maybe some don't deserve it but I'll admit I'm cynical enough to believe that guy's like Hartley Sawyer from the Flash still believes the shit he said. Unless there's proof they've changed or y'know an actual apology then I'm sorry but I don't feel sorry that some assholes actions had consequences.

And even when they do get “cancelled”, it’s not as bad as people say it is; they almost always manage to bounce back from it. The only “cancelled” celebrity I can think of whose career has went down the drain is Shane Dawson...and even then he’d still have a big following if he was still uploading.