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Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

bbc.com

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Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#441

Post by dragonwriter »

t-writescode wrote: post #410
jandrese wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand I worry about this power being abused, but it's hard for me to side with the people being cancelled because they're so repugnant. It is hard to stand up for the rights of the bigots, the white supremacists, the science deniers, the propagandists, and the misogynists. People who spent decades denying other people access and are now finding the shoe on the other foot. Can we find some good examples of peopl…

Someone being cancelled who shouldn't have been: Monica Lewinsky.

> Someone being cancelled who shouldn't have been: Monica Lewinsky

When was Monica Lewinsky “cancelled”? The closest to that would be the negative treatment she got from Clinton’s reflexive defenders in the late 90s during the scandal, but that's substantially before the supposed sudden, recent emergence of “cancel culture”, and her current profile rather undercuts the catastrophic descriptions of “cancellation”.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#442

Post by konjin »

redteddy23 wrote: post #124

Putting aside the fact the worst examples of "Cancel Culture" are an amplified, tiny number of edge cases, given fuel by those who wish to attack fairly reasonable requests to marginalise hate speech. Ishiguro makes a good point a skilled writer can write from the perspective of someone very different from them. Not that many people are actually arguing against that. What was of concern is the perspectives of margina…

Hate speech is free speech you don't like.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#443

Post by IAmWorried »

bachmeier wrote: post #117

Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left . We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North…

Honestly, it's viewpoints like yours that I despise the most. We have innocent people losing their careers with no due process, just mob justice, and what do you people do? "Oh, republicans did it 30 years ago, so any criticism is invalid." Honestly, F that. I was never even alive for what you are talking about. How about we try to build a better society where people don't lose their jobs for their views, rather than pursue some sadistic version of "payback" towards the right for what they did 30 years ago?

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#444

Post by swayvil »

bachmeier wrote: post #117

Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left . We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North…

Cancel culture used to be just a bear in woods. Scary but not super scary.

Now it's Godzilla stomping through Seattle.

It is magnified vastly by social media. That makes a big difference.

And 10x that power when the engines of social media are in the hands of the cancellers, as appears to be the case.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#445

Post by konjin »

_-david-_ wrote: post #66

One of the biggest issues is the lack of consistent canceling for the same offense along with the changing rules. If you said something 10 years ago that was completely acceptable it will be used to attack you in the present. When others said the same thing they get a pass but you don't. If the rules were clear and generally agreed upon I think tnere would be less fear.

#MeToo died the second it was used on Biden. Something I got banned from twitter for pointing out would happen 6 months ahead of time for 'hatred'. All I did was use the Salem witch trials as a blue print.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#446

Post by konjin »

waserwill wrote: post #88

I understand the source of people's fears here, though I'm not sure whether they are justified. In attempting to clearly articulate ideas, writers too often fall into cliches--the sort of pitfall that might be widely understood at the expense of predictability. Those, coupled with topics related to current events and sensitive topics, can be a dangerous brew. Yet in a world where media are not centrally controlled (c…

If you enjoy living in such a world you're welcome to move to North Korea.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#447

Post by rrose »

_-david-_ wrote: post #177
rrose wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/opinion/bon-appetit-cance... https://www.wsj.com/articles/academic-freedom-is-withering-1... depending on if you consider george will "mainstream"- he is an establishment conservative which certainly is a dissenting viewpoint at the washington post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/unprecedented-untarg... not a newspaper, but a national magazine a front page article with a de…

> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/opinion/bon-appetit-cance ... Seems like a mainstream article. Not sure what the point of this was? I didn't look at the articles mentioned in this article so if that was your point then let me know so I can review them. > https://www.wsj.com/articles/academic-freedom-is-withering-1 ... I got a paywall so I could only read part of the article. The first part of the article seems t…

the first two articles are people who are being given a platform to complain about cancel culture. If the premise of the complaints about cancel culture is that anything outside of the "mainstream" woke consensus is silenced, these are proof that that is not happening.

The last article is not mainstream at all. Gun ownership as a means of pushing a leftist agenda is extremely different from the somewhat mainstream, right-leaning ideas about gun ownership

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#448

Post by vmladenov »

echelon wrote: post #413
bachmeier wrote: post #117

Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left . We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North…

Before Twitter, I never saw headlines like "X actor under fire for previously dating Y actor". Clicking on such trends, you find the Twitterverse raging and debating totally invented controversies. People are becoming offended by everything now. They're being suggested reasons to be offended, and many seem to adopt that stance. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is being stoked by robots. Perhaps corporate or s…

The media landscape is more diverse now. In the past, television stations would regularly censor material in order to avoid getting “cancelled” by the Christian right.[1] Cancel culture is just a new word for an age-old illiberal phenomenon.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention_co...

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#449

Post by cgb223 »

monocasa wrote: post #437
mywittyname wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dixie Chicks are a great example. They vanished from the mainstream basically overnight. People still hate them to this day and probably don't even really remember what they said.

And the attempt to cancel France. Going so far to rename french fries "freedom fries". All because France thought going to war with Iraq in 2003 was a bad idea.

The “freedom fry” troupe can actually be traced back even farther to WWI

If you’ve ever wondered why “frankfurters” are now called “hot dogs” or why “sauerkraut” was called “liberty cabbage” for a hot minute, it’s because of anti-German sentiment in the US [1]

[1] https://www.hppr.org/post/freedom-fries-liberty-cabbage-myth

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#450

Post by nine_k »

bachmeier wrote: post #117

Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left . We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North…

The underpinnings of the "cancel culture", the intolerance and mob mentality, were always around.

The "cancel culture" adds two news things to the picture. One is the ability for anyone to participate, not just the few on the TV screen or newspaper pages. Another is the attempts at totality: expel the victim from every social media platform, every internet hosting, every payment platform, every public venue. It's not yet as bad as it was during the fascist years in Italy, but the approach is pretty similar. There is also no formal totalitarian party to drive it; people just join the cause by reposting a tweet, and acting accordingly when in a position to ban, expel, deplatorm, etc.

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