Why cancel culture is increasingly reminiscent of The Crucible
Montana lawmakers censuring a transgender lawmaker and parents cancelling James and the Giant Peach make me question underlying objections.
Summary: Two news development this week — the Montana legislature silencing a transgender lawmaker and Texas parents cancelling a viewing of “James and the Giant Peach” over actors playing different-sex roles — are reminiscent of events in “The Crucible.”
Forgive me if I come off as stodgy or your high school English teacher, but as I'm watching news developments I'm increasingly reminded about The Crucible and the character Rev. John Hale.
If you need a refresher because the last time you opened the text for the play was the 10th grade, Hale is introduced as the witch hunt in Salem is unfolding, coming as an outsider who's an expert authority on the threat of witches. Such a profession, by the way, makes total sense in the context of the 17th Century time period of the play, when witchcraft is perceived as a real threat and expert help to contain it is legitimate and welcome.
When it becomes evident the witch hunt isn't based on the truth and sending good and innocent people to jail and to their death, Hale visibly changes his tune from leader in the witch hunt to skeptic. In a Biblical allusion, Hale toward the end of the play concludes: "Man, remember until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in heaven." Sadly, the revelation comes too late in the witch trials as Hale is unable to stop the machine he has already started.
More and more, I'm remembering the character transformation of Hale and seeing that in myself as others who support positions I share are taking them to extremes. Just in the past week, the reaction to conduct seen as inappropriate has become so over the top that I have begun to question when my initial position was right in the first place.
For example, I was among the observers who watched the clip of Zooey Zephyr, the transgender lawmaker in the Montana legislature, accusing her fellow colleagues on the House floor as having “blood on your hands” for advancing legislation banning gender transition-related health care to minors. I think making death threats over these measures is hyperbole, as readers of the Weekly Dystopia will know, and raising a fever pitch that may well have influenced the transgender shooter in Nashville (which is all the more reason to make the shooter's manifesto public). I have no reason to doubt the experience of gender dysphoria is real for many people, but the threat of kids killing themselves in a kind of temper tantrum over having to wait until adulthood to obtain transition-related care is no way to make policy.
But the Missouri lawmakers weren't content with letting observers of the clip circulating online of Zephyr make that conclusion for themselves. Instead, they censured her by prohibiting her from speaking on the floor for the one-and-a-half weeks remaining in the state legislative session. Many in the conservative movement insist they're against cancel culture, but effectively banning Zephyr from speaking certainly seems in violation of those goals.
Defenders of the move will say lawmakers are expected to adhere to standards of decorum on the floor and accusing lawmakers of being responsible for kids dying is over the line. I still think the reaction was just as over the top, more so than her remarks themselves. An AP report makes a convincing case about why Zephyr’s “blood on your hands” comments weren’t terribly unusual in political discourse. Don't tell me the act of censuring Zephyr wasn't based on an invective against transgender people and an attempt to throw out red meat to conservatives eager to harm them or wish them out of existence.
In short, by not leaving well enough alone and letting people make their own judgments over Zephyr's remarks, Montana lawmakers have shifted the debate on whether she should be silenced just to make an attempt to appease the crowd.
I had the same thoughts when I saw the news about parents in Texas cancelling a field trip to a viewing of a stage performance of "James and the Giant Peach.” I’m not familiar with the play, but I remember the 1990’s Tim Burton movie based on the book. As reported by local media ABC13 in Houston, the objections over actors voicing characters of different sexes in the performance. That's too much, apparently, like drag performances, which become a target of ire for conservatives upset about children attending the often prurient acts.
I share the concern about kids being the audience for drag shows. They're akin to cabaret acts and take place at night in bars for a reason. Drag queens often use the mask afforded to them in these performances to engage in lewd behavior. Years ago when I was at a bar before one of these performances, I remember one time a drag queen reached down to grab my crotch without permission.
Taking kids to watch drags performances isn't about learning about other cultures in the same way as showing kids a ritual by a Native American tribe or time-honored rituals from other cultures. As a gay man, I'm offended by the idea parents would get their kids more accustomed to gay people by showing them drag. Blaire White, who's transgender and one of my favorite YouTubers, had a great line about this phenomenon recently: "Taking kids to a drag show to teach them to respect gay people is the equivalent of taking them to a strip club to respect women." I don't know if the comparison is quite on point, but it's not far off.
But taking that animosity over drag shows to a performance over a play with a well-known background and actors playing different-sex roles is taking things too far, as are many of the measures in state legislature that effectively seek to cut into tradition of freedom of expression by banning drag in all public places. Just read the text of the measure recently signed into law in Tennessee and now blocked by a federal judge. I think the same people cancelling "James and the Giant Peach" would be shocked to know actors in Shakespeare's time were all men and played women's roles, Gertrude and Juliet alike, and there is a tradition of women playing Peter Pan in performances intended for youths.
So the reaction in both examples is too much even though the basis of objections is understandable. I could go on and on with many such instances not just in the past week, but over the past few years. It makes you wonder whether society has learned anything from the witch trials in the early days of America, or Arthur Miller's portrayal of them in The Crucible as a metaphor for the McCarthy era. If anything, it looks like society is destined to repeat those witch trials in a perverse never-ending cycle.