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Monty Python Comedian John Cleese Cancels Himself “Before Someone Else Does”
- Waterluvian 5y agoComedians and satirists are so good at underlining the ridiculous hypocrisy of nitwits. This kind of move is probably my favourite way to deal with people. It’s nonviolent and uses their own mass against them.
- kevinh 5y agoHas any comedian actually been successfully cancelled, or is this just Cleese finding himself a new thing to whine about?
- smegger001 5y agoBill Cosby and Rosanne Barr?
- kazinator 5y agoHas any comedian been successfully been persecuted by the Romans and crucified, or were Cleese and co. just fishing for something to whine about when they filmed Life of Brian? Oh no! Cleese chose to make social commentary about cancel culture, without passing the script through the approval bureau of kevinh.
- junon 5y agoOnly one I can think of is Kathy Griffin. She's been real silent since that happened.
- krapp 5y agoMichael Richards was cancelled before "cancel culture" was even a thing.
- rtpg 5y agoHand-wringing about political correctness has existed for many years now (with the "anti-correctness" people trouting out the same sort of stories that fall apart under any scrutiny, and major publications running the stories anyways). Not exactly a tale as old as time, but it's at least a live thing in the early 90s.
- salt-thrower 5y agoThat surprises me because she’s been getting banned from various shows and venues for most of her career. Shock value has always been her shtick. It’s weird how that one was the one that was “too far” even for her. (Maybe she was contacted by a three letter agency about it?)
- daenz 5y agoWhy do you see it as whining and not as performance art from a performance artist?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- klyrs 5y agoIf it's funny, then that's something. If not, critics gonna critique.
- rsj_hn 5y agoLouis C.K. is one I can think of, off the top of my head.
- roughly 5y agoLouis masturbated in front of other people without their consent.
- prepend 5y agoAnd some with their consent too. But he was cancelled.
- ashtonkem 5y agoThis really highlights how meaningless “cancelled” is. Louis CK is literally on tour right now.
- prepend 5y agoIt’s not meaningless as he’s not nearly as popular as he once was, lost lots of money, etc. Sometimes cancelled shows get renewed. Or they make money in syndication, etc. But it’s certainly not meaningless.
- ashtonkem 5y agoYes, you’re describing a scandal. We do have other words to describe situations, we don’t have to use the zeitgeist terms if they don’t fit.
- koolba 5y agoIt was with their consent. Or at least he gave them fair notice of what he was going to do. He didn’t assault anyone. He’s just a pervert.
- salt-thrower 5y ago
- confidantlake 5y agoKramer?
- ProjectArcturis 5y agoI think you have to do a Bill Cosby before you actually get cancelled. Or an OJ.
- ashtonkem 5y agoEven Louis C.K. is still getting invited to places. The Hollywood Improv just sent me a mailer about him doing a bit there recently.
- jollybean 5y agoLouis CK is 'cancelled'. To think that 'he does some shows' means he's not 'cancelled' would be to miss the point. Whether he deserved to be cancelled or not is another question - but he had is shows cancelled, TV show bookings, roles, future roles, any mention in pop culture outside of his cancellation etc.. When you make a career out of appearing 5 times a year on nightly talk shows, daytime TV, the occasional SNL, TV role - and then all of that 'goes away' - then that's what we call 'cancelled'. Louis CK was a tricky one because he did something questionable, that said, the details are also kind of odd and there's nuance to it.
- ashtonkem 5y agoThere is something genuinely farcical talking about how Louis CK was “cancelled” when he’s on a nation wide tour right now. If we accept that “booking fewer national specials” is “cancelled”, then we also admit that the term is watered down to meaninglessness.
- jollybean 5y ago? Louis CK went from being B/C list celebrity, TV/Comedy Start, Netflix Specials, massive sold out tours promoted on national and international media ... ... to being shunned by the entire media establishment, no TV deals, no appearances, and doing many fewer shows with a tiny fraction of the audience. If he were not cancelled, his Netflix appearances alone would be worth $25-75 Million, just in the last few years, probably the bulk of his earnings. His income dropped by 100% for several years, and is now probably less than 10% of what it was. "he term is watered down to meaninglessness." His career and personal identity were totally dismantled. His brand value is nil and future income prospects are a tiny fraction of what they were. What kind of person would see this as a 'meaningless' distinction? Honestly the question comes down to how frothy people have to be to not understand the obvious materiality of the situation.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- PsylentKnight 5y agoAziz Ansari? I mean, he's sort of back but I think it's safe to say his career was stopped in its tracks and lost its momentum.
- rufus_foreman 5y agoThat's your perception? That John Cleese is just whining?
- salt-thrower 5y agoThat’s my perception. He’s an insanely successful comedian and could probably get a gig anywhere he wants besides debate clubs on college campuses. But he’s decided to become a Twitter crusader instead. It comes off as whiny because to the average observer it seems blown out of proportion.
- rufus_foreman 5y agoWhich people that you agree with do you consider to be Twitter crusaders?
- salt-thrower 5y agoI’m hardly ever on Twitter so I only see things on a case by case basis. Whether I agree with them or not is a moot point. It’s just a behavioral pattern I noticed here.
- rufus_foreman 5y agoSo to summarize, you are on Twitter enough to know that John Cleese is a Twitter crusader, but you are hardly ever on Twitter so you couldn't know whether someone whose views you agree with is a Twitter crusader. Is that a fair summary of your argument?
- salt-thrower 5y agoCalm down, Phoenix Wright. I read the article that OP posted. That shows a huge Twitter thread of John Cleese complaining about things. I’ve read other news articles about other times he was on Twitter complaining about things.
- fouc 5y agoI suppose it depends on what you define as 'cancelled' but we can define it as something like "a dramatic reduction in demand to the point where it's extremely difficult to find work in that industry". The answer is probably yes. As for the names, the other comments mentioned some good ones.
- girvo 5y agoI think most of them still have careers. Even Chris D’Elia is back performing despite literally admitting to sexual misconduct allegations, and jokes about “being canceled”. Aside from literal prison terms (Bill Cosby) I can’t think of anything that actually truly cancels comedians. The ones who complain the loudest seem to be getting bigger and better work, so I’m honestly not sure what their complaints are founded on: but I might be missing something, of course.
- schnable 5y agoThe better question I think is, how many unknown comedians are afraid to say what they think because their career wouldn't hold up the way Dave Chapelle's did?
- francisofascii 5y agoNimesh Patel was kicked off stage at Columbia.
- jimmygrapes 5y agoGuess it depends what you mean by "cancelled". There are accusations of misconduct which caused specials and projects to be temporarily or permanently halted (Louis CK/the TV show Louie, Roseanne Barr, TJ Miller, Chris Hardwick), there are attempts to censor or delete (Dave Chapelle, Joe Rogan), and outright disappearance from the comedy scene (Bill Cosby). Each accusation has its merits and detractors, but there is no doubt that everyone above has had their comedy output affected by (usually) unrelated aspects of their personal life being called to question.
- klodolph 5y ago> …and outright disappearance from the comedy scene (Bill Cosby). Yes, a prison sentence has a certain je ne sais quoi about it that makes comedy clubs reluctant to schedule you, at least until you’re released. He’s also, you know, 84 years old and incredibly wealthy.
- salt-thrower 5y agoAre you saying Cosby’s serial drugging and raping habit was unrelated to his career? I know you’re not defending him, but that’s still a crazy take in my mind. His career and popularity helped put him in the position to be able to do that, and to get away with it for so long.
- jimmygrapes 5y agoThat's why I threw the qualifiers like "usually" in there. I doubt Cosby would have much of an audience or desire to tour even if none of that occurred.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoIt seems like it ought to be called "cancellation" only when a relatively small number of people cause the artist/speaker to go silent. If the vast majority of their audience vanishes, then nobody in particular has done anything to them. But it might be hard to distinguish those two cases -- a few clubs/publishers/etc. might refuse to book you, and that could cause your audience to dry up.
- prepend 5y agoPeewee Herman.
- salt-thrower 5y agoMichael Richards (of Kramer fame from Seinfeld) has been pretty silent since his whole racial slur fiasco. People think cancel culture is a new thing. Before there was a politicized term for it, specific incidents were just called “scandals.” It seems like a truly case by case basis as to whether it sticks or not. EDIT to add: the cultural Right has been attempting, with mixed success, to “cancel” people for decades. McCarthyism, the Satanic Panic, and ruining the careers of country singers who criticize Republicans all come to mind. None of this is new and none of it is unique to the modern cultural Left. It’s just different cultural criteria and different targets.
- hagbard_c 5y agoIf by "successfully cancelled" you mean "disappeared" or "eradicated" the answer is no. If you mean "lost gigs", "no longer welcome in certain locations", "lost income" or "forced to find another line of business" the answer is very much "yes". So-called "cancel culture" - another term would be weaponised political correctness - has had a deleterious effect on comedy by laying minefields around many areas which used to be available for comedians. Step on a mine and "boom", the mob comes out in force. While big names - Chapelle, Cleese, Rogan - have enough clout to survive this is not true for up-and-coming or beginning comedians. They can no longer expect to have the same freedom the court jesters of old had, they are no longer free to point out the king is indeed not wearing any clothes. In short, they are no longer free to sharpen their skills without being shouted down - not for bad comedy but for violating some shifting narrative. The net effect will be a dearth of comedians and comedy, a void which will be filled by "comedians" who follow the narrative and as such are anything but funny. Let's hope the tide turns and that it turns fast.
- jollybean 5y ago? Roseann Bar, TJ Miler, Louis CK, Kathy Griffin, Kevin Hart was cancelled from the Oscars although his career will probably be fine. Probably only a single Comedian in the entire world, Dave Chapelle, would have walked the line he did and gotten away with it. The backlash against his Netflix special would have probably tilted against any lesser person, and that would have been it for their careers. No regular comedian could conceivably try to do that without enormous risk, and that's the point here. I don't think that comedy is a particularly bad place for cancellation, it's the rest of entertainment and pop culture.
- dragonwriter 5y agoThis isn’t even a new thing for Cleese to whine about, just a new specific way for him to whine about it.
- ethbr0 5y agoSomewhat off topic, but also somewhat on topic, I perused the Talk page for the Wikipedia article on Eddie Izzard's pronouns. It was exactly as insane as I would have expected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Eddie_Izzard#Gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Eddie_Izzard#Gender Apparently the Wikipedia crowd cannot comprehend the nuances in 'Sometimes I use one gendered pronoun, sometimes the other.' (Personally, I felt like it would have been the most respectful and true to his comedy if the article had switched gender for every other pronoun)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- seibelj 5y agoI’m surprised anyone from Britain is willing to have any honor whatsoever for their disgusting nation. Hundreds of years of colonialism, disgusting and immoral rape and murder of indigenous people from numerous islands, plus India? The entire UK should be ashamed for their entirety brutal, racist, and disgusting past. The fact any of their leaders can show their face in public is absurd.
- salt-thrower 5y agoIt seems odd to complain about cancel culture and then make a stunt out of self-censorship. You achieve the same result as the vocal minority who would want to ban you, but now you can claim it was your own doing, so… success? It’s hard to imagine being in that situation, but I think the better move would be to show up anyway and call their bluff.
- prepend 5y agoIt seems odd to set yourself on fire to protest a murderous regime.
- salt-thrower 5y ago[flagged]
- prepend 5y agoI’m comparing to the analogy of a comedian complaining about cancel culture by participating in it. It’s as logical as killing yourself to protest killing. Perhaps you should reset your perspective a bit.
- kazinator 5y agoNo more odd than, say, the Ministry of Silly Walks or what have you.
- jollybean 5y agoCleese was acting in solidarity with someone who did something (at least apparently) similar to what he has done in the past but was actually cancelled for it (because a lot of people here don't seem to think it happens). By not appearing, he's made international headlines, which is the point. If he were to have appeared, probably nothing would have happened. As a result, the student's union has changed their tune a bit, so at least he's had some impact. The broader point Cleese is making is that he's been poking people in the eye for generations, but now there's a 'new establishment' keen to try to deride him and his peers and that he's taking the same position now, as he would have 30 years ago. There's a famous debate between him and a very conservative intellectual regarding the 'Life of Brian' and it's religious implications, I'm looking forward to that debate in 2020. The term 'woke' is a bit needlessly incendiary, but it's fully within his perogative. Cleese is on the right side of history.
- ashtonkem 5y agoThere’s few things more pathetic than a comedian whining about how audiences are too sensitive now. Your literal job is to read the audience and the culture you live in. If you can’t make audiences laugh anymore then you’re not “canceling” yourself, you’re retiring.
- mafro 5y agoMaybe I'm his audience. I thought the whole debacle was very funny.
- ashtonkem 5y agoThe whole situation is just pathetic, not funny. He’s storming off in a huff because he maybe can’t do one joke from half a century ago? Like, if the joke doesn’t land anymore, write new ones? Cancelling your entire appearance because you maybe can’t do one bit that most of your audience doesn’t even remember and doesn’t know you planned to do is more than a bit self absorbed. At this point I find comedians whining about cancel culture to be as unique and insightful as a new bit about airline food. It’s usually not funny, it’s been done, and it is far too self indulgent to be healthy. Half of the time these “canceled” comedians make these jokes from their massive platforms, making the entire situation farcical. But it seems like Cleese has stooped down so low as to do entire specials about cancel culture, a disappointing descent into culture war bullshit for a comedian I genuinely like. I suspect that this entire event was nothing more than a PR stunt for his “cancel me” series, which has increased my eye rolling.
- bovermyer 5y agoThe older I get, the less I care what other people think.
- uncomputation 5y agoOh wow thanks “Summit News.” I assume a totally unbiased perspective from partners with InfoWars with categories such as “globalism” and “clownworld.” Get real.
- girvo 5y agoThankfully it’s been flagged. It’ll be a sad day when obvious bait “news” sources are not, on here
- version_five 5y ago> Thankfully it’s been flagged. You know there is a "hide" button that removes posts you dont want to see. You dont have to wait to be "thankful" that somebody reported content you dont like in order to be protected from it.
- salt-thrower 5y agoIt’s not about an individual experience, it’s about the general quality of HN being polluted by clickbait. More clickbait makes more targets for trolls. If trolls find lots of fodder they’ll spend more time here. Etc etc. Strong moderation is the key to keeping up the quality of discussions around here. I’m also glad this post got flagged.
- leereeves 5y agoThe source sucks, but the article just quotes tweets from John Cleese himself. If it's just about the source, the URL should have simply been changed to that Twitter thread.
- salt-thrower 5y agoThat’s true. But even then I would question the thread’s relevance to HN.
- jollybean 5y ago
- klodolph 5y agoI don’t know how deep people’s memory goes, but when I talk to older generations about this stuff, they tell me all these stories about how kids at college in the 1960s were competing to be the wokest kid on the block. That’s not to say all kids at college were doing it then, and the word “woke” didn’t mean then what it means now, but the behavior of kids at college in the 1960s would not seem out of place in more recent decades, from the stories I heard. Colleges were hotbeds of posturing and hypocrisy then as they are now. College kids are typically in the most radical years of their life, when they have the most freedom and desire to redefine who they are. They largely don’t have any money or accomplishments, so the big way up the social ladder is posturing and value signaling. If you’re more spiritual, more woke, more radical, then you get attention from your peers. I don’t know what else to say, except people should spend more time hanging out across age groups, and people in college will eventually burn out of it. More people should take gap years, it lets it really sink in the reason why you’re in college in the first place, and it gives you more of a sense of how worthless posturing can be. For these reasons and others, the college circuit is a real beast.
- throwawaysea 5y agoI feel colleges today are at an extreme beyond those in the past. For example consider that UC Berkeley once had a movement to uphold free speech (https://www.dailycal.org/2020/01/26/free-speech-movement-cafe-celebrates-20-years-at-uc-berkeley/ https://www.dailycal.org/2020/01/26/free-speech-movement-caf...). Today supporting free speech would have you labeled as a far right fringe reactionary, and it’s not a position students can take freely. And of course there have been numerous events that were cancelled or disrupted by rioting mobs of students that do not want their adversaries to be heard. At a very fundamental level, colleges today are illiberal compared to the decades past.
- ashtonkem 5y agoNah, they were pretty crazy in the 1960s and 1970s too. Some students went as far as promising to take up NVA arms in protest of the Vietnam war, an obvious farce. These things come and go in waves, and people have short memories.
- wayoutthere 5y agoEveryone complaining about “woke” culture misses the fact that it’s basically driven by teenagers. The only reason it has any effect at all is because teenagers are one of the most valuable advertising demographics.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoDriven by teenagers, executed by adults.
- wayoutthere 5y agoOf course; because the adults are the advertisers. They’re trying real hard to appease the kids so they can sell shit to them.
- kazinator 5y agoYou're hitting upon something here. Woke culture is intolerant precisely because it's made of immature young people, who take in certain concepts and world views, strip them of all nuance and context and simplify them into set of hard rules to be imposed on everyone everywhere. That and plus everything in woke culture that touches on sex reeks of juvenile prudishness.
- wayoutthere 5y agoRight; the culture wars are less “the culture wars” and more “don’t offend the kids”. You can make a choice to offend them, but then you’re not worth as much as an entertainer. I’m not sure many 13 year olds in 2021 even know what Monty Python is.
- ashtonkem 5y agoMost 13 year olds don’t know about Monty python not because they’re too sensitive, but because it’s over half a century old and they’re 13. Lots of them are unaware of the beetles too, it’s just a time moving on thing.
- al2o3cr 5y ago"Help, help, I'm bein' repressed!"
- aero-glide2 5y agoHow is this relevant to Hacker news? I want to escape politics please.
- klyrs 5y agoYou can flag and hide stories
- _game_of_life 5y agoOh wow, summit.news! Those other headlines are stellar, be sure to give them a look. What's next for HN, Breitbart? I love the topic too, a comedian whining about "cancel culture." So great. Sparks joy. Definitely not a tired subject, more please!
- dang 5y agoThe site is banned on HN, like most primarily political sites. Some users vouched for this particular submission. Other users flagged it. That's not particularly unusual.
- kazinator 5y agoI demand to be shown the vouch link!
- SamPatt 5y agoWhy would people be offended at Hitler impersonations when the goal is making fun of Nazis? If someone is impersonating a bloody dictator in order to advance their evil views, then yes you should not give them a platform. If they're doing it to skewer them - isn't that good? Mockery can be an effective social tool.
- kazinator 5y ago- Because they are twelve and they heard about some social rule that you shouldn't mention Nazis or Hitler, and show swastikas. - Because their IQ is low.
- dave333 5y agoOP chose an unflattering photo of Cleese - is there an agenda here? The worst thing I've heard is the wag on twitter who said it's the funniest thing he's done in 30 years!