In a rare turn of events, Ricky Gervais has weighed in on cancel culture.
Ricky Gervais recently sat down with fellow comedians Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett on their SmartLess podcast, where he delved into the detrimental fallout that Twitter uproar has on peoples careers — likening cancel culture to “road rage.”
“It’s things happening too fast that you can’t take back. People dig in and people want to be heard,” he mused. People want to feel they have an effect. It’s why people heckle a comedian. They want to feel they were there. Now people are heard.”
He went on to chewed over the merit of “cancelling” public figures on the platform, adding “An idiot stands next to a genius on Twitter and it looks the same,” he noted. “It’s the same font.”
There is reason and nuance to Gervais argument. He acknowledges that critique is important and people are entitled to choose what artists to throw support behind, though takes umbrage with the online derangement of trying to kill careers.
“They’re allowed to not buy your things. They’re allowed to burn your DVDs and they’re allowed to turn the telly off,” Gervais said. “What they’re not allowed to do is to bully other people into not going to see you.”
This is far from the first time Gervais has offered his two-cents on the most exhausting chapter of human discourse. In an interview with Metro earlier this year he likened cancel culture to censorship.
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“Everyone’s got a different definition of cancel culture,’ he explained. “If it is choosing not to watch a comedian because you don’t like them, that’s everyone’s right. But when people are trying to get someone fired because they don’t like their opinion about something that’s nothing to do with their job, that’s what I call cancel culture and that’s not cool.
“You turning off your own TV isn’t censorship. You trying to get other people to turn off their TV because you don’t like something they’re watching, that’s different.”
“Everyone’s allowed to call you an arsehole, everyone’s allowed to stop watching your stuff, everyone’s allowed to burn your DVDs, but you shouldn’t have to go to court for saying a joke that someone didn’t like. And that’s what we get dangerously close to. If you don’t agree to someone’s right to say something you don’t agree with, you don’t agree with freedom of speech.”
I agree with Gervais’ logic that trying to “cancel” someone out of their career is pathological. I just wish he didn’t care so much.
He is too monolithic a cultural figure to experience the effect of cancel culture in a way that is meaningful. His privilege renders him immune from actual censorship. If he spent less time getting angry at haters online and more time honing his craft then perhaps he’d be able to break what feels like a decade-long streak of limp comedy writing.
