The evolution of cancel culture in comedy

The conversation around cancel culture and its impact on comedy might feel like a modern problem. But as Canadian comic and comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff explains in his new book, Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars, cancel culture and comedy have been intertwined for arguably hundreds of years.

Nesteroff joins Commotion host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss what the past can tell us about current tensions around free speech, and how cancel culture has evolved over centuries.

For the full discussion, check out Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud wherever you get your podcasts.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Where — or when — did cancel culture come from?

While Nesteroff decided to limit the scope of his book to the mid-1800s onwards, he says his research into the origin of cancel culture could have taken him even further back in time.

"The idea of a cancel culture, it starts with the inception of Canada, the United States, in terms of colonizers outlawing the practices of Indigenous peoples, religious practices, ceremonies, languages — all of these things were banned very early on," Nesteroff says.

Beginning with the trend of blackface minstrelsy from the 1830s and 1840s, Nesteroff says the American theatre form was not universally beloved. Some people at the time objected to the offensive practice, including famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass who referred to blackface comedians as "the filthy scum of white society."

"We think about controversies in regards to racial depictions, or ethnic depictions, or racist depictions, as being a relatively modern phenomenon — and here we have Frederick Douglass in the year 1848 complaining about such," Nesteroff says.

The author also points out that more recently, Eddie Murphy, Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinison were protested in the 1980s, mostly by gay rights groups and sometimes AIDS research advocates claiming that they were spreading ignorance or homophobia.

"There were pickets at several different places where they performed throughout their careers…. Most people don't remember that," he says.

What cancel culture is, and isn't

Nesteroff says there's an important distinction to be made between getting in trouble for something you say and do onstage, and getting in trouble for behaviour that occurs offstage.

"If you're an insult comedian, onstage you can get away with a lot. But as soon as you step offstage, you can't start insulting people at the grocery store and expect to get a positive reaction. So we have different standards depending on what is happening onstage and off, but we have a tendency to conflate the two."

Nesteroff attributes this broad feeling that people are oversensitive today in part to the advent of social media, and its impact on how audiences express their disapproval of a given joke or comedian.

"In the past, let's say somebody complained about The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late 1960s," he says. "There was no social media. So how did people express their grievance? They wrote a letter to the editor of TV Guide or Life magazine, or they wrote it directly to the comedians or the television network.

"If there were 100 letters of complaint about The Smothers Brothers sent to the local newspaper, they didn't publish 100 complaints. They published maybe one, maybe two. Today, there is no editor. With social media, all 100 complaints are published instantaneously. And so, in my opinion, this creates the illusion that people are more irrational than in the past, that people complain more today than they did in the past, whereas it really isn't a difference in humans."

Can comedians say anything anymore?

As for comedians today, Nesteroff says there isn't necessarily much more to worry about when navigating a modern audience.

"I don't think that a funny person needs to second guess themselves too much. You'll find out right away. Long before the idea of cancel culture, it was always the audience that decided for you whether you were funny or not. And it wasn't a verbal opinion that was formulated; it was like an automatic — they laughed or they didn't laugh.

"If they didn't laugh, did that mean they were too sensitive or too stupid? Well, maybe. But a lot of the time it meant that what you had devised just didn't work, and you had to go back to the drawing board."

Nesteroff acknowledges that changing norms surrounding language and inclusivity mean that there may be new sensitivities to consider, but that the essence of the craft and the work that goes into it hasn't changed.

"I feel like things are not that different today as they were when I started to do stand-up in the late 1990s, despite the fact there are taboos on certain slurs. Yes, sometimes when you parody or satirize bigotry, it could be misinterpreted as furthering bigotry because maybe you used a slur in a satirization of people that use slurs or whatever. It is possible that misinterpretation happens. But again, as an artist, if you follow your instincts and you're talented, you should succeed more often than not.

"As comics, you adjust your act for the audience, for the venue, for the circumstance, and over the course of time you get better and better at it. And sometimes it is the audience's fault, but just as often it's your own fault, you know? And so things are not different now. Comedians should continue to follow their comic instincts and not second guess themselves."

On the viewer's side, Nesteroff cautions against taking any comedy set at face value.

"Do not be deceived by fire and brimstone just because it's not coming from the mouth of a fiery preacher," he says. "It's still fire and brimstone when it comes from the mouth of somebody who's secular. It doesn't suddenly make it more true or more rational.

"The panics of the past all look hilarious to us today … but when it's a modern panic, everybody takes it so seriously at the time — 'Oh, drag queens, they're coming for your children….' If it doesn't sound ridiculous right now, which it should, 20 to 30 years from now when you look back on it, it definitely will sound just as absurd as the hysteria over Elvis, the Beatles or The Simpsons."

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Kliph Nesteroff produced by Ty Callender.