Who Has the Right to be "Cancelled"?

"Political correctness" seems all the rage in modern social discourse. Whether or not one supports its aim to punish any and all public figures found to have engaged in any wrongdoing in the past, plenty of individuals, both famous and not-so, have had their careers derailed due to their dark secrets revealed to the masses. The power of what some come to term the "cancel culture" have ensured that everyone thinks twice before saying or doing anything in public, lest their actions and words be interpreted as hurtful to any social group in the future.

For now, some themes are recurring, ensnaring some predictable figures. Those who have victimized religious, racial, and sexual minorities through verbal and physical harassment or assault have quickly fallen from grace. Brave professionals risking their lives to unveil these abuses, most heroically exemplified by the journalists covering Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein's decades-long abuse of actresses and other women in the movie industry, ensure that some genuinely awful individuals are canceled in the name of political correctness.

Predictably, most of those who are subject to cancellation so far have been older men. Across a broad segment of different societies and industries, older men are the ones who built up enough fame, resources, and networks to emerge at the top of the hierarchy, and thus have the most to lose when terrible news makes them no longer reputationally suitable to be at the top. The average Joe and Jane love it more when the most powerful and famous fall from grace, and media outlets play upon that desire to see the powerful become powerless in their attention-grabbing sensationalization. 

Yet, as movements to promote gender and ethnic rights gather pace, the world of the powerful are longer exclusively populated by older men. Everyone from women and ethnic minorities to those of LGBT and immigrant backgrounds now finds themselves also occupying powerful positions, some of which are vacated by insensitive older men who are unable to cope with the increasingly commonplace need to cater to the sensitivities of other, less powerful social groups. With society's most powerful people becoming more diverse, there is an increasing likelihood that those being canceled will also be more diverse.

The result is a rather new predicament for those seeking rights for those who used to be society's invisible minorities. Yesterday's victims can now be some of society's powerful, who then utilize their positions at the top to victimize those below them. Those who suffered in the past now seem to be a source of suffering for others. How those promoting a cancel culture can come to terms with those they champion end up becoming the very villains they look for...that will require a brand-new sense of open-mindedness toward what it means to be politically correct.

This new definition of political correctness was precisely my thoughts after watching "Tar," a story of a famed female orchestra conductor having her dark past uncovered. The first half of the movie introduces the protagonist as a strong career woman, proudly trailblazing her own musical style and being a lesbian, in a world of classical music still dominated by men and conservative traditions. Her effort to run an academy for young female conductors has also won her fans in both the world of feminism and wealthy donors keen to bring classical music into the modern mainstream.

But as the movie progresses, the audience comes face-to-face with the real possibility that the protagonist used the academy to find herself new muses. Rumors of her pushing to mental insanity and suicide a young woman in her academy who rejected her sexual advances quickly change her public image. Her career at the top of the classical music world quickly dies as protests emerge to oppose her alleged role as a sexual predator. Someone who was a symbol of a minority who fought against the patriarchy and rigidity of the classical music world got canceled for herself suppressing the downtrodden.

The fate of the protagonist in Tar speaks to the need for the world to revisit the definition of social hierarchy in the world of greater rights for minority groups. No longer can victims and victimizers be predicted based on age, race, gender, or other visual markers. Any social group can now produce both members of the powerful who abuse and those of the vulnerable who are abused. Without understanding the subtlety of these fluid identities, it could become easy for those fighting for the rights of the vulnerable to suffer from cognitive dissonance, unable to process the changes in identities of who they should be fighting for and against.