Sections Get one year for $29 Sign in Democracy Dies in Darkness Pop Culture Analysis Home A step-by-step guide to why people Share can’t stop arguing about ‘cancel 263 culture’ SNL announces it will no longer hire Shane Gillis "Saturday Night Live" announced Sept. 16 that the show will no longer hire Shane Gillis whose past use of racist, homophobic and sexist language sparked outcry. (Darian Woehr/The Washington Post) By Abby Ohlheiser and Elahe Izadi September 19, 2019 at 1:32 a.m. GMT+8 Shane Gillis’s historically brief tenure on “Saturday Night Live” has turned into a referendum on an amorphous idea: cancel culture. Shortly after Gillis was announced as a new featured player on SNL late last week, clips of the comedian using racist language about Asians on a podcast recorded last year began circulating online — along with calls for him to lose his new job. He tried to explain himself as a performer who “pushes boundaries.” On Monday, SNL decided to part ways with him. Follow the latest on Election 2020 “This is just cancel culture. The guy shouldn’t have been fired,” comedian Jim Jefferies said Monday on David Spade’s talk show. The Federalist, a conservative online publication, praised Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang for “refus[ing] to join cancel culture” when he offered to have a conversation with the comedian. Most Read Entertainment Helping small businesses like Morgan Miller Plumbing fnd new customersAD Perspective 1 Trumpism is a lifestyle disease, chronic in America 2 With ‘The Life Ahead,’ Sophia Loren is The concept has been around for a while, but this particular approaching her term has stuck in recent months. In a Netflix comedy special 100th movie. She’s going for much more. released a few weeks ago, Dave Chappelle decried “celebrity hunting season,” prompting a round of content about “cancel 3 Mark Morris Dance Group steps online for culture.” Republican leaders used the phrase while chastising its 40th-anniversary season actress Debra Messing for publicly shaming supporters of President Trump. 4 Captain America is trying to … captain America But what is cancel culture, which is simultaneously decried as everything that’s wrong with humanity (or liberals, or 5 At home, forever and ever, with Dean & Generation Z) and condemned as a made-up term that helps Britta people escape accountability for past wrongdoing? Is there anything useful we can learn from this mess about the nature of comedy and the Internet? Let’s find out: Here’s a step-by-step guide to how people end up endlessly arguing about the idea of cancel culture. Step 1: The context Canceling someone refers to shaming a public figure for alleged wrongdoing, and advocating for them to lose access to their platform. It is a group effort, and it usually plays out these days on social media — although similar boycott campaigns predate Twitter hashtags. Helping small businesses like Morgan Miller Plumbing connect with newAD customers Cancel culture can refer to wildly different things, depending on whom you ask. Some people denounce it, pointing to instances of mob behavior and online infighting, or to situations where a career is jeopardized because of a bad tweet someone made as a teen. But it also can be used to describe how traditionally underrepresented and oppressed groups harness the Internet and social media to hold powerful people accountable when institutions won’t. That’s been the case with the #MeToo movement, the wave of many, credible accusations of sexual Today’s Headlines misconduct against powerful figures in various industries The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered following the New York Times’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein. every morning. Enter your email address Step 2: The news Sign up By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Gillis, relatively unknown to a national audience, got a huge Privacy Policy career break last week when the news of his SNL hire was released. The announcement also included fellow comedians Chloe Fineman and the show’s first East Asian cast member, Bowen Yang, a milestone that was widely celebrated. Then freelance comedy journalist Seth Simons tweeted a 2018 podcast clip of Gillis using racial slurs against Chinese people and making racist references to Chinatown. AD Sometimes people who suddenly get a big job or become famous quickly try to get ahead of this public vetting, especially because there are plenty of recent examples of what happens when you don’t purge your archive. Trevor Noah had to answer for his old tweets when he first got the “Daily Show” hosting gig, and Melissa Villaseñor caught similar criticism about tweets posted years before she was hired by SNL in 2016. Gillis’s comments were from last September. Someone had already deleted past episodes of “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast” from its YouTube page, but there was still an active subreddit with a lot of content. Other writers dug around to see if those first clips that went viral were isolated or part of a pattern, and unearthed other racist as well as homophobic and sexist language. Step 3: The debate Podcast Post Reports Stand-up comedy, just like other art forms, has traditionally The Washington Post's enjoyed an unspoken pact with the audience: Comedians can say daily podcast: unparalleled reports, expert insight, pretty much whatever they want, and people in the crowd can clear analysis. For your feel however they want about the jokes. In live comedy, the ears. Add to Apple Podcasts, Google power dynamics tend to favor the comedian who has the stage, Podcasts spotlight and microphone. If a couple of people in the audience are deeply offended, the comic may never know about it. CONTENT FROM LUMINULTRA AD Covid-19 outbreaks can be detected early with a new kind of test Environmental monitoring can drive a powerful shift from being reactive to being proactive. But the Internet changed this relationship. The audience can do more than heckle a live performance; they can talk back, at length, and get a lot of people to listen. This shift has prompted a huge debate among comedians and anybody with opinions about comedy. And Gillis’s firing brought back many of those questions: Where are the lines of decency? Is there room for forgiveness for old, hurtful bits? Gillis didn’t say that stuff in a stand-up set but on a podcast — a more conversational format — so are these expressions of opinion, or jokes? Given the content, does the distinction even matter? Is the comedian’s intention relevant? Should a person who clearly felt it okay to say such things in any context be afforded a massive platform like SNL? Does giving that platform serve as a tacit endorsement of the language or at the very least, that such language isn’t disqualifying? Is “it’s just a joke” an appropriate defense, or a lazy one? Rob Schneider @RobSchneider Dear @Shanemgillis As a former SNL cast member I am sorry that you had the misfortune of being a cast member during this era of cultural unforgiveness where comedic misfires are subject to the intolerable inquisition of those who never risked bombing on stage themselves. 640 AM · Sep 17, 2019 67.2K 14.2K people are Tweeting about this 5'9 @priya_ebooks "not all comedy has to be woke" well it has to be funny still, surely? how is it funny to be like "yuck, my Chinese waiter has an accent" that's just what ur racist old grandpa says. then let SNL hire HIM 919 PM · Sep 13, 2019 495 51 people are Tweeting about this Step 4: The content This debate soon became fodder for endless stories about the broader cultural wars. Lemon and Cuomo on SNL Firing Shane Gillis: “I hate the whole cancel culture...Everyone is a little too sensitive and I think going back in the past for every little thing that someone did, no one would have a job” pic.twitter.com/VngZIttlNI — ALX (@alx)! September 17, 2019 Fueling this commentary bonanza? Among other things: clicks. Stories claiming that “left-wing mobs” are attacking people online have become a mainstay of conservative publications, for instance. And stories about the racist pasts of minor public figures also have an enormous potential audience online. HOT -43% -34% -36% -34% AD Chico's Gillis initially responded to the increased attention by tweeting: “I’m a comedian who pushes boundaries. I sometimes miss.” He added: “I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually been offended by anything I’ve said. My intention is never to hurt anyone but I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks.” Step 5: The consequences The content machines ran at full speed for an entire weekend until SNL producer Lorne Michaels said through a spokesperson on Monday that Gillis was fired. “We were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days,” the statement read. “The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable. We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard.” Gillis released a statement of his own: pic.twitter.com/vN0htGMBVg — Shane Gillis (@Shanemgillis) September 16, 2019 Step 6: The second career options Canceling can cost opportunities; that’s what it’s designed to do. Roseanne Barr lost her show over her racist tweets. Kevin Hart lost his lifelong dream job, hosting the Oscars, over old homophobic tweets (though, financially, he is doing more than fine).