I spent a long time battling with cancel culture.
Growing up, cancel culture was an evangelical Christian thing. They were always boycotting something. We couldn’t even play Dungeons & Dragons on Boy Scout trips, out of fear it would turn us into little Satan worshipers. The problem was that, as an adjective, “Christian” in front of pop culture anything like music, movies, or books meant it was going to suck rhinoceros dick, to borrow a phrase from the movie Porky’s II.
As a kid, I thought Porky’s II was hilarious. I grew up in a good, protestant Southern household, where the raunchy comedies were like liquor — they stayed hidden at the back of a closet. I’d pull those Betamax tapes out and laugh my ass off when my parents weren’t home.
Remember those pitiful kids whose parents canceled everything popular? Want some heavy metal? Here is Stryper. Want a superhero movie? Here is Willie Aames as Bibleman. Want to read a supernatural thriller? Here’s Left Behind.
I didn’t want to worship Satan. I just wanted music that rocked, and the Christian bands weren’t offering anything that competed with Danzig and Slayer.
As a kid, I saw three innocent teens in West Memphis get canceled all the way to death row for being into things I enjoyed, things you could buy at Walmart, like Iron Maiden albums and Stephen King books.
My mom went to classes at church that taught her what I shouldn’t be exposed to. They studied what to cancel. From Mötley Crüe to NWA, I learned the protestant lesson. You kept the fun stuff hidden.
I could listen to music with headphones. I could get books from the library. I didn’t really notice the ’90s Disney boycott. I had younger siblings who wouldn’t stand for any Flanders-esque substitutes, so that one didn’t last long in our house.
The one that got me was the Levi’s boycott. Suddenly we were wearing Lee jeans, an off brand who made jeans with no regard for the shape of actual human bodies. They were cut to fit a theoretical person with stick legs that merged with an ass that was about four inches tall but as wide as a dump truck. Then they narrowed back to be too tight at the waist.
These days, people are only being “canceled” to the extent they aren’t getting big money from big corporations. They aren’t censored by the government. And big companies have to go where the money is. They can’t rely on racist artifacts like the Electoral College and the Senate and voter suppression. To them, money from a gay guy in San Francisco or a Black woman in Atlanta is as important as money from a white guy in rural Wyoming. It’s that actual conservative God — the Invisible Hand of the Free Market — at work.
The Dr. Seuss estate stopped publishing some books that weren’t selling much to begin with. Pepé Le Pew, a character built around one joke that isn’t funny anymore, won’t be in the new Space Jam movie. Mr. Potato Head … nothing changed there except the logo. Mainstream conservative media just told people they should be mad. When there is a widely popular plan to tax the rich to rebuild bridges and roads, you have to change the subject somehow.
People comparing the Lil Nas X video for “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)” and Cardi B video for “WAP” to Pepé assaulting a cat seem to be missing some big points about both consent and media aimed at children versus adults. And, as someone who enjoyed so-called “devil music,” I never noticed these kinds of complaints thrown at Hank Williams III for his “Straight to Hell” song. Go listen to that one to hear a straight white guy enthusiastically singing about heading down there. It didn’t generate any uproar.
As a kid, the Bible had the most murder, rape, violence, and supernatural horror I encountered in anything I read or listened to. For all the talk about the devil, he’s a bit player in the story, rarely mentioned outside the book of Job, where he is God’s gambling buddy. The real villains, occurring again and again throughout history, are the sanctimonious, authoritarian hypocrites who abuse scripture to justify their self-serving actions. The book’s main protagonist calls them on their bullshit and tells them God wants them to help the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden. Then they cancel him on a cross.
Craig David Meek is a Memphis writer, barbecue connoisseur, and the author of Memphis Barbecue: A Succulent History of Smoke, Sauce & Soul.
