The Chill is More Dangerous Than the Heat: 9 Hidden Truths about Groupthink and Cancel Culture
Reflections on Shiny Herd’s first birthday
Dear Readers,
Shiny Herd is turning one-year-old!
Thank you so much for making the herd a part of your day.
I’m marking the occasion by examining the truths (or at least working theories) that have emerged over the time I’ve spent examining the hidden side of groupthink in entertainment, media, and more.
First a quick aside: As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t like the term “cancel culture.” It confuses as much as it clarifies, and it’ll probably muddle the issue even more as our culture moves into a different phase (more on that later).
But hey, I’m not in charge of which terms everyone uses. So for now, I’ll go with the group.
Permit me, for now at least, to continue griping about cancel culture.
1. Cancel culture isn’t a left-right fight.
Terracino is a one-name gay Latino filmmaker who was shunned by the LGBTQ film world for blasphemies like allowing one of his Latina characters to befriend a white woman and depicting a gay character as being (temporarily!) transphobic. Meg Smaker made a brilliant (and progressive) film, but the mob still took her out.
Many of the most prominent critics of The Maddening, people like Bill Maher, Dave Chappelle, and J.K. Rowling, are lefties.
The real split, as the illuminating Hidden Tribes survey reveals, is between the eight percent of Americans who identify as progressive and everybody else. The “everybody else” group includes lots of lefties, moderates, and conservatives.
2. Social media isn’t real life.
Consider it a corollary to rule #1. Entertainment execs and others have been unduly frightened by voices that are as loud as they are unrepresentative of the culture at large.
3. Activists don’t necessarily represent the groups they purport to represent.
Whether you slice it by race, sex, or most any other identity category, we humans are typically more politically diverse than it seems. That means activist groups often don’t really represent “the people.” Case in point: BLM still wants to defund the police, but most black people never agreed with that position.
4. Cancel culture hurts minorities.
When they’re not trying to claim that cancel culture doesn’t exist, some defenders of the current regime try to frame cancel culture as a noble response from minority groups who are fed up with not being heard.
But who gets heard has far more to do with political identity than race, sex or most any other type of identity.
You could be a black woman, an Indian woman, a female film director, or a gay Latino director, and if you step out of line politically, none of your intersectional attributes will save you from the thought police, a group that is often led by white people!
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5. White progressives often enforce racial rules.
They’re the ones calling to defund the police in the name of black people (who actually disagree with them). They’re the ones disinviting a black woman speaker from their campus or barring the “wrong” kind of black experts from their newsroom.
Even anti-white policies (No white kids allowed at this casting call!) and attitudes are often enforced and maintained by white progressives.
A heterodox Mexican producer says white guilt often clouds reality:
As for white colleagues, so far I’ve only seen guilt and a sense that they don’t deserve what they have. A close friend of mine was feeling guilty of being “just another white guy drinking out of the colonial trough” until I reminded him that not only had I seen him earn everything he had, but that I had been his boss for over 10 years.
6. Cancel culture is bad for art.
“This climate has no room for diversity of ideas,” declared an anonymous interview subject of mine. When creators ignore or avoid so many possibilities, they often end up rehashing the same narrow corner of human existence over and over.
Oh look, another climate change allegory!
Another takedown of Big Pharma!
Another “strong female lead”!
“So boring," many say under their breath. Some, like Emily Blunt, say it out loud:
“It’s the worst thing ever when you open a script and read the words ‘strong female lead,'” Blunt told The Telegraph. “That makes me roll my eyes. I’m already out. I’m bored.”
Shiny Herd interviewed big-time casting director Monika Mikkelsen who explained how, in our fearful culture, film fans often don’t know what they’re missing. That’s because execs and other gatekeepers often “pre edit out” challenging material.
What you’re left with, she says, is “pablum.”
“It's just easy to digest like a McDonald's hamburger,” she continues. “You can eat it from zero to 99 because you don't need teeth to chew it. It's just easy food. And it's tasteless.”
7. Cancel culture is bad for truth.
A culture that enforces groupthink is a culture that does not value the truth. We may profess our devotion to addressing important issues like racial disparities, environmental problems, and addiction. But if we’re not aiming for truth, we’re just fooling ourselves.
We all have our blindspots, and dissidents help us see what we’re missing. But if we suppress dissidents, we won’t find the best solutions to these problems we say we care so much about. If we suppress dissidents, we’re merely making peace with our ignorance. That’s not progress.
8. Cancel culture isn’t mostly about the celebrity in the crosshairs.
The ripple is bigger than the splash. The chill is more dangerous than the heat.
Choose whatever metaphor you like, but it seems pretty clear that the hidden side of cancel culture remains more consequential than whatever everyone is hollering about on social media.
The heat map highlights a celebrity like Dave Chappelle.
Will Netflix cancel him!
Why did he get attacked on stage!
Even something as silly as an SNL cast member giving Chappelle a sour look attracts lots of heat.
But far fewer pay attention to the chill, to what the Chappelles of tomorrow are not saying, to the jokes they’re not making, to the topics they’re not addressing.
Sundance quickly turned on Meg Smaker’s film Jihad Rehab, and the festival’s about-face attracted plenty of attention in the indie film world. What received less attention is the chill it caused as other prestigious festivals and gatekeepers shunned the movie.
What received virtually no attention is how the episode might affect young filmmakers who aspire to become Sundance darlings. After the monoculture updated its preferences, how will the up-and-comers respond? Might they shy away from certain topics or address them in ways that are pleasing to festival programmers and sales agents?
Super-agent Josh Braun said the industry is looking for controversial films, but not problematic ones even if they’re good. Take just about any consequential topic—from climate change to policing—and nearly all of us can read between the lines.
Maybe the witch hunters express knee-jerk outrage, but sometimes it seems like they’re more calculated in their attacks.
That’s how J.K. Rowling sees it:
The pushback is often, ‘You are wealthy. You can afford security. You haven’t been silenced.’ All true. But I think that misses the point. The attempt to intimidate and silence me is meant to serve as a warning to other women” with similar views who may also wish to speak out [...]
“And I say that because I have seen it used that way,” Rowling continues. She says other women have told her they’ve been warned: “Look at what happened to J.K. Rowling. Watch yourself.”
I try to be a “glass is 10% full” kind of guy, so I’ll conclude with a hopeful development, and one bonus truth.
9. Audiences want problematic movies and shows, and timid industry gatekeepers are starting to pay attention.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and a soon-to-be-released feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.
Happy Anniversary. It has been a great year for SHINY HERD. Looking forward to your second year. And looking forward to THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND.
Excellent timing because this article on cancel culture and TTRPGS:
https://archive.vn/0Nv3c
has also been blowing up all over the place.