What this country lacks in honesty and healing, it makes up for in pseudo-accountability.
Cancel-culture arose in the midst of the #MeToo movement and has since evolved into a rage-fuelled machine intent on discovering and punishing any creator that has said or done something indelicate presently or in their past.
Charlie Rose was fired from his position as a co-host on CBS This Morning after being accused of sexual harassment. Louis C.K had the premier of his film I Love You, Daddy cancelled because of sexual misconduct. Harvey Weinstein faced multiple repercussions from his sexual abuse.
While these consequences are warranted, they have not resulted in any lasting change on a societal level. The reason for which can be found in the way we conduct these acts of accountability.
Outrage on social media leads to boycotts of the products, which obligates advertisers to pull funding. These punishments are strictly related to the business world, and any action taken in that realm will purely be made from a fiscal standpoint.
The networks know that they have to appease their audience, so they cancel a show or fire the director, but no real change occurs in the behavior of these individuals.
Soon enough they pop back into the public ire without facing themselves and what they did.
Louis C.K. has already made his return to stand-up without conveying what, if anything, he learned from his actions.
Creator of Bojack Horseman Raphael Bob-Waksberg notes his issue with this type of return.
“I think that there is work that those men can be doing to better themselves, and I would personally love to hear about it. I would be happy if they wanted to come back and do an interview and reflect on their misdeeds, and talk about what they’ve learned,” Waksberg said. “And then I think from there, maybe we can, you know, think about their professional development. And I feel that we’re going about this backwards. And I find it tremendously upsetting.”
These men disappear, and come back like nothing happened, which is an insult to the people they wronged.
Comedian Dave Chappelle points to South Africa for the answer of how we handle these situations.
“The end of apartheid should have been a… bloodbath by any metric in human history, and it wasn’t,” Chappelle said in his stand-up Bird Revelation. “The reason it wasn’t is because Desmond Tutu and [Nelson] Mandela and all these guys figured out that if the system is corrupt, then the people who adhere to the system, and are incentivized by that system, are not criminals. They are victims. The system itself must be tried. But… the only way we can figure out what the system is, is if everybody says what they did. Tell them how you participated.”
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) had three purposes: make sure prior human rights violations were acknowledged and recorded; allow for both reparation and rehabilitation for the victims of apartheid; and permit the perpetrators to confess fully and perhaps given amnesty.
Co-Creator of Rick and Morty Dan Harmon showed how this manner of owning up to your actions and validating the person you abused promotes viable growth.
Harmon issued an apology to Megan Ganz, a writer he worked with on Community for his inappropriate behavior.
“The most clinical way I can put it in fessing up to my crimes is that I was attracted to a writer I had power over because I was a show-runner and I knew enough to know that these feelings were bad news,” Harmon said.
Harmon went on to explain that he thinks the problem was both caused and worsened by his refusal to think about the consequences of his actions.
“I lied to myself the entire time about it. And I lost my job. I ruined my show. I betrayed the audience. I destroyed everything and I damaged her internal compass,” Harmon said. “And I moved on. I’ve never done it before and I will never do it again, but I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it if I had any respect for women. On a fundamental level, I was thinking about them as different creatures. I was thinking about the ones that I liked as having some special role in my life, and I did it all by not thinking about it.”
Ganz publically forgave Harmon on Twitter, calling his admission “a masterclass in How to Apologize.”
Holding these men accountable has to happen, but demonizing them and stripping them of their humanity will not validate the abused or promote change in the abuser.
That can only be achieved through truth and reconciliation.