Grace Culture: Why Cancel Culture Needs to Go

Everyone sucks. It’s a pretty well-established fact of life. I suck. You suck. Your mom sucks. Hilary Clinton sucks. Donald Trump sucks. The Queen of England sucked. Name your favourite or least favourite person alive, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that they definitely suck. The very first thing we learn to do upon exiting the womb is suck (in a literal sense, but also in a figurative sense). It’s in our human nature.

There’s an entire tirade in the Bible about this, actually. It’s particularly referring to the Jewish and Greek folks who would have engaged with this writing at the time, but you could swap in any ol’ demographic and get the same idea. Black or white, cis or trans, Christian or atheist, and anyone and everyone else. We. All. Suck.

“None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”

Romans 3:11-12

Recently, I’ve learned a lot of my favourite creators suck, too. And I’m not talking incredibly famous people, but people who are just like me, people who create and share things. These people are musicians and bloggers and writers who just so happened to reach the right amount of people to “make it,” whatever that even looks like. But the point is, I could be any one of them.

It’s exciting. It’s humbling. It’s scary.

One of my favourite YouTubers is apparently a nightmare to work with. Another took a picture with all her friends — who just so happened to be skinny, white-passing, and attractive by our narrow Euro-centric beauty conventions — and spun the post as body positivity. One of my favourite podcasts of all time got derailed because…I’m still not entirely sure. Stevie Nicks’ landmark song has a title that’s quite literally a racial slur. And I could list every infraction ever committed by my favourite guitarists, from John Mayer’s general fuckery to how Richie Sambora drove drunk with his daughter in the car. Even my beloved Chili Peppers aren’t innocent, sexually assaulting a fan in the early 90s and citing a porn star who was literally underage at the time she was active in the industry as a muse.

I’ve always wanted to be famous, ever since I was little and ran onstage at some show because I was mad the actresses were getting attention instead of me. I used to daydream at great length about becoming a rock star, crafting entire scenarios in my head about what my life and career would be like. I imagined the inevitable biopic that would be made about me, my internal dialogue becoming a narration of the story of my life from the perspective of someone who thought I was cool enough to make a movie about.

But at the same time, I don’t know if I can handle being famous. And that’s simply because I suck. Certainly not as much as some of the creators I mentioned above, but I still suck. I’ve said and done things I regret a lot, and I’m just lucky that I wasn’t in the spotlight at the time. Because I honestly don’t know if I could handle the criticism, even if it was justified. Especially if it was justified. I hate the feeling of being wrong, almost as much as I hate the idea of ever hurting anyone.

As a creator of any type, there’s so much pressure to be perfect, not just looks-wise but as a person as well. We need to be a role model. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think creators should strive to be positive influences for their fans, and I think creators should be held accountable when they inevitably fuck up. Some of those things might be unforgivable. Should the allegations against Michael Jackson be true, for example, we definitely need to stop holding him up as an idol. Should we stop listening to his music? I think that’s an even more complicated issue that I’ll probably address in a future post. But for relatively benign “maybe I didn’t realise this was racist at the time but now I know better” kinds of problematic behaviour, I think we need more space for grace. Because God knows I’ll need it.

I want so badly to make waves as a musician or writer, but sometimes I find myself paralysed by the pressure to be above reproach in all things. What if something I posted ten years ago on Facebook resurfaces and shows me as a total asshole now? You have to put yourself out there to get any ounce of fame, but in the process, you open yourself up to so much scrutiny. And sometimes I wonder if I could handle that. I cry if someone looks at me funny (I describe myself as “the stereotypical Pisces” for good reason). I think I could handle the press or some anonymous Twitter denizen calling me ugly or untalented. But if someone attacked my character, something I take more seriously than my looks or even my art, I’d probably lose it.

I hate the term “cancel culture” because of its association with the anti-“woke” (read: anti-any media that’s not cishet white male) rhetoric, but I think it’s time we cancel cancel culture to an extent. Rather, we need a grace culture, one where people are free to fuck up and be able to redeem themselves. We need to have open conversations with each other about why we suck and how we can suck less in a way that’s not defensive or vilifying. We need to be open to learning from one another.